Pros And Cons Of Remembering A Past Life

I was talking to someone about this today and we came up with a bunch of pros and cons. (This is theoretical and not a debate about reincarnation).

Here is what the scenario would be:

Let's say you die today and are born into a new body/life a week from now.....but you can remember everything about this life and everything you learned.

Pros: School will probably be incredibly easy and you will probably avoid many pitfalls in life because of what you already know.

Cons: You will remember loved ones and probably miss them. You will probably have a hard time identifying with your new family. It would suck to have the mind of an adult in a 4th grade body and be expected to go to school and activities with people that age all the time.

I can think of plenty but I'll let you guys throw out ideas. Humor is welcomed.

 

hang on, are you waking up as a baby with the mind of a fully grown adult? That would be like being trapped in a coma or something, unable to communicate with anyone around you. Grim times.

 

That's true. But let's skip that part and get to the part where you're able to move, talk, etc.

Although...as a baby with a mature mind....when it's time to eat you might think "Yes! Boobie time again!!"

 

we see only the past as it is. It is helpful to know how to have a future different from the past. The only meaningful change is fundamental. to have a future different from the past, make a different choice in the present.

 

Even then I don't get it really, would I be a five year old with the mind of a 24 year old?

 

Yes. You remember everything.

 

Pro: Getting laid at 16 will be super easy!

Con: Being 16 and wishing you could bang 40 year olds.....although I wanted to bang 40 year old women when I was 16 anyway without a past life memory.

 

I Think that would probably suck, being a genius (which you would be if you had a 24 year olds IQ at 5) would be really alienating, you'd be surrounded by people who thought you were a kid and treated you like it, and you'd find it basically impossible to relate to anyone you were around and form friendships etc.

Besides, if your clever, but are forced to learn at a five year old's level, and only given educational items and entrertainment made for five year olds, do you stay smart?

IT would get a bit better around teenagerdom, there'd certainly be a lot less angst and insecurity and stuff , but only as long as you hadn't become really jaded from years of being bored.

 

so you finish high school at 8 and college at 12 like all those other geniuses. then you become hugely rich and lead an awesome life.

or you could take it slow and just be the coolest kid ever. might be boring at times, but there would definitely be some entertainment value.

same as most 16 year olds who just want to bang other 16 year olds and can't do that either.

i have a feeling that if we're being totally honest, more 50 year olds would love to bang some 16 year olds during their second life than would be disappointed that they can only bang 16 year olds.

 

The pros an cons of remembering are forgetting and getting it wrong. to consistently remember we selectively forget. To remember on occasion we simply forget.

Best case scenario it goes in one ear and out the other.

 

Let me get this straight you have the mind and body of a child who will eventually become an adolescent but have the consciousness and memories of an adult. Oh that’s a great combination.

So the limbic system which drives emotions intensifies at puberty but the prefrontal cortex which controls impulses doesn’t mature until the mid 20s.

Can you say sociopath, can you say psychopath, can you say level 4 sex offender? Because that’s what you’ll become when the cute 11 year old blonde girl tells her parents her 6th grade male classmate used his adult skills to manipulate her into sucking his cock.

Hotwater

 

yes there were frustrations to childhood, being born with the sense of having lived as an adult. no that doesn't make anyone a psychopath.
abusive parents might, even unintentionally. but not past lives themselves.
granted thoughts of rape did cross my mind in sixth grade, i rather thought they did everybody.
in fact i'm pretty sure they did in those days. but past lives do NOT mean having the social skills to do anything about it.

there is a slight misconception here. its not exactly memories as such, which carry over from one life to another.
think of it like the problem of you can only have five books with you.
from one death to the next birth, there just isn't room to carry very much.

enough to know perhaps, that of the billions of sapiently populated worlds, which one on which you will be born next, is completely random.
one being so different from another, that very little you could bring with you, is likely to be of any real use.

no point remembering what people looked like on one world either. almost invariably totally different on the next.

 

The mind of a child is devoted to providence. has no memory. An adult memory sees only it's past including mistakes and tries to prevent the child from full discovery. To devote to caution. Do as I say or else. The mind is the same. The memories and the sad convictions come from a mind that didn't keep pace with the growing body, a mind that forgot it retains it's freshness and ability to choose something different That there is more to come and we don't know what it is. Adult is an abstraction to lay an arbitrary claim on authority We mature as creature. The past exists only as a memory to preserve personal continuity. Let the kids duke it out or dick it out to attain their appropriate measure. Why try and teach them to share some thing that is only theirs to give We teach them language to communicate then tell them to shut up. The immature creature cannot yet have children that breed true. It's all make believe.

 

If you don't want to take it straight it's still funny. If you do there is still the drum roll and punchline. The drama doesn't end, just the cheap drama.

 

Since we generally don't recall past lives, none of the problems mentioned are likely to become a reality.

 

Your metaphysical rant has been noted and approved; but there are real issues with an adult mind existing in the undeveloped brain of a child.


Hotwater

 

Perhaps conceding that the preposterous could occur. You are comparing apples to oranges. Adult is not a measure of mind but of age or physical maturity and in the case of societies recognition is an arbitrary term representing quality of cognitive understanding.. Awareness is a quality of mind.. Maturity and immaturity cannot trade places, save the one follow the other in order. There could be a problem with expecting an undeveloped brain to preform legally responsible actions.i.e. perform to adult expectations. Point is better to not let potential problems be our guide. better to make the education consistent and nip the weird shit in the bud. Then all you have to deal with is the mutable natural variation. A past life cannot be older wiser more mature that the current one being development occurs in a space time continuum. We are monkey first in our order of the family tree. Adult problems with how to attend to youth signals a lack of a mature understanding.

I was in a position of professionally working in an adult sphere before the age of 16 on. Living is a world without familiar peers. i spent all my time with adults living in adult conditions and related with my genuine peers from an unequal authority. I got to do things they didn't because some how the I.D, checkers didn't notice that I was factually underage i replaced engaged personal development of the school playground with respect for decorum. It meant I was perceived as quiet and shy but I was in fact lonely as an individual and didn't learn to initiate conversation with the unfamiliar. I was a physical performer and it was that performance that had people coming to me with interest. Didn't have to test my qualities of personality.Took a long time to develop a comfortable degree of relations. I felt i couldn't tell anybody my difficulty because that might mean. that my participation in the whole project might be reconsidered and I would loose the faith already entrusted. I didn't want to go backwards.

Anyway if you want to address disparities of that nature this a more reasonable example that approaches the dilemma you refer to. And an observation that you can never tell what the resilience of the human animal is and it is a distortion to fear you might break it if it is tested. The best caution is awareness.

 

One might also ask what the pros and cons of remembering a future life is. Your life as you experience it here is a linear affair--past, present, and future. But your life as you experience it here is not the totality of you. You are happening now, simultaneously with then.

 

The pros and cons of remembering covers that issue.

 

By the way metaphysical can be of the essential nature of reality. It is the larger view, the meta view.