h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi there and thanks for this piece! Now I won't say I believe in reincarnation but I've often wondered if it might actually be the thing that happens to us. And thinking of it is quite terrifying. Because as you say the world is not that nice a place. I can understand the appeal of working yourself up the karmic scale until you attain nirvana and are liberated from the cycle of endless rebirths.

But I have no reason to really trust that kind of scheme. I think if reincarnation works it would be more random, *unless* there really existed in the Universe a set of criteria by which some people are objectively better than others. I don't think that is really possible because I think everybody in the world more or less does the best he/she can under the circumstances. *All* circumstances included: genetical as well as environmental. Maybe some people are born scumbags. It's not their fault that they inherited scumbag genes.

So I say it seems to me that 'karma' would unfairly promote some people and punish others.

So, being roughly as deserving as anyone else, one could look forward to reincarnating as a typical person under typical circumstances.

Look at the world as it is, right now. It is not a fun prospect. And what if things really are becoming worse? My big worry is overpopulation and environmental destruction. Put them together: more and more people, living under circumstances that are worse and worse. The only 'escape' being a disaster wiping out the majority of humanity. I wouldn't want to be around when that time comes.

But what if this was the only hope? It is nice to think of a heaven existing ... but personally, now, I can't conceive of that. This life is all that I know ... and for what it's worth, this kind of life does have its pleasures. So ... if I had to choose between non-existence, and another life on this planet, I would actually choose the latter. And steel myself as my guts churn when I think of what another life here might actually be like ...

P. S. Netflix sure sounds like fun. I would like to see this Bridey Murphy movie!

I think you'd like the Bridey Murphy movie, Willem. Or the book.

I also wish Netflix would go international. It allows all of us to see old movies for a reasonable price. (It's only $8 a month for the streaming stuff.)

As to reincarnation, I wouldn't think you'd need to posit an arbiter, or think it was on the basis of some nebulous idea of merit.

As the Maharishi said once - I heard him, he was sitting on an altar in a church, which was pretty rude, and I refused the sacred fruit they were offering, as I didn't want to eat a banana offered to an idol (joke, but it happened) - where you went in the next life dependen on your state at the end of this one.

Sort of like natural law. At least, that's one way to look at it. I'm sure there are other theories.

I think the idea of an arbiter is very Western. I used to get books from a strange little publishing house. One of them was supposedly a diary of someone who had been reincarnated many times. Of course, these people believe in progress. It is unimaginable to them that you don't just keep learning from lifetime to lifetime.

Like I said, a very Western way of looking at it.