I'd Like To Be Reincarnated, Please
07 November 2024 ·This is one of two works that I have come to see as intertwined. The other is The Button. I would loosely place them both under the banner of speculative fiction, although they have other significance as well.
I think this “letter” raises an obvious question about who its target is, and I think provoking that kind of question is one of my aims here. Personally, the reference point for my imagination is The Culture from the series of books by Iain M. Banks. As Banks himself pointed out, The Culture is fictional. It does not really exist, and it is not going to exist. It, like the “civilization” I write to here, exists to help us ask questions, not to answer them.
In the letter, I distinguish between an “I” who is me, and an other me who is … something else. I’m not so sure this distinction is philosophically defensible, but maybe that doesn’t matter. One issue of course is that on some theories of personal identity the reincarnated being I talk about here would just be the same person.
I use “she” and “her” to refer to this other-me in this work. I stress the fictional nature of this; it’s not a statement of my real gender identity (in real life I use they / them pronouns for myself). In part I do this because I want to create a sense of separation between the I of the narrator and the She who I am only conditionally. Is it possible to care for oneself unselfishly?
Hello future civilization! I’d like you to reincarnate me.
Now, you might be inclined to say “that’s not possible; we could only reincarnate you if there were some persistent element of you that is You, like a soul, but if there is one we haven’t found it, and if you had one, it’s long gone now.”
You’re right. If that’s what I meant by reincarnation, it wouldn’t be possible. I mean something different. If you can collect enough of my memories and personality to create a functional adult human being with something approximating my appearance, I’d like you to do so, under certain conditions.
Most importantly, your society needs to be one where I can thrive and be treated as equal to others as an artificially created person. It needs to be one of social equality, where everyone is provided with what they need to live a happy life. It must be one that accepts and welcomes diversity, whether in creed, skin color, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
My reasons for asking this are difficult to express. No, I certainly don’t think I deserve reincarnation more than anyone else in particular. It’s much more banal than that.
The truth is that I love myself. I love myself deeply, radically, fiercely. When I say that, I don’t mean that egotistically (at least I don’t think I do). I don’t mean that I need some corpuscle of the “real” me to live on, an eternal soul implanted in a new body. If I (ego) could die today, and know that she (the human being that is me) would live a blessed life free from pain, I would die happily. I want to believe in joy for her. Like a larva, I yearn for the rebirth that is my death.
When you read this, I will be gone. I live in a time where things are bad, and are getting worse. Maybe you don’t exist at all because we humans have sent ourselves to Hell, by fast means or slow. Even if you honor my request, it won’t help me in any meaningful way. I’m dead. Whether the rest of my life went poorly or well can’t be altered now. I want to believe in a future where human harmony is possible. I want to imagine my human self in that future guiding me like a star on the horizon.
Perhaps, in bringing me into your world, you will reach into the past and touch mine.