And Spinoza did not see it as something earned but as being the case, sub specie aetermitatis, for everyone and everything, as I read him — Janus

But then, why bother with philosophy? For what reason was Spinoza exiled from the Jewish community? Why undertake the laborious task of composing such complex and lengthy philosophical works, and why read them? Why is not any man in the street equal to the wisest?

I can't see how the secularist reading of Spinoza, just more or less shrug and get on with life, comprehends his obviously spiritual message, the 'intellectual love of God', self-abnegation, the devotion to wisdom, the abandonment of worldly ambitions, which are central in his corpus. He is concerned with inner freedom, freedom of the soul from fear, is he not? That's why I say his philosophy can be compared with Hindu and Buddhist teachings.

“After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that is ordinarily encountered in daily life […], I resolved at length to enquire whether there existed a true good […] whose discovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity.” (Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, para.1)

Spinoza sees the problems of life as arising from the desire for “perishable things” which “can be reduced to these three headings: riches, honour, and sensual pleasure” (idem: para.3&9). As these things are “perishable”, they cannot afford lasting happiness; in fact, they worsen our lot, since craving for them often induces compromising behaviour and their consumption creates useless craving. “But love towards a thing eternal and infinite feeds the mind with joy alone, unmixed with any sadness.” (Idem: para.10) In the Ethics, Spinoza finds lasting happiness only in the “intellectual love of God”, which is the mystical, non-dual vision of the single “Substance” (or Being) underlying the phenomenal realm. The resonance with non-dualism becomes apparent when Spinoza says that “the mind’s intellectual love of God is the very love of God by which God loves himself” (Ethics, Part 5, Prop. 36; compare Meister Eckhardt, 'The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me'.) Since God is the Whole that includes everything, it also includes your love for God, and thus God can be said to love Itself through you. Iff you recognise it!

Spinoza pointed out a similar dynamic with the "carrot and stick" of heaven and hell in Christianity, using desire and fear as motivators to believe. — Janus

I would not expect Spinoza to have anything to say about reincarnation as it was not part of his cultural milieu, but I provided the passage from Sri Ramana Maharishi to illustrate his view of the matter. As a Hindu, you would expect that he would presume the reality of reincarnation, but he does not.

Sri Ramana Maharshi (Advaita Vedanta) taught that all such theories are based on the false assumption that the individual self or soul is real; once this illusion is seen through, the whole superstructure of after-life theories collapses...

As a concession to those who were unable to assimilate the implications of this truth, Sri Ramana would sometimes admit that reincarnation existed. In replying to such people he would say that if one imagined that the individual self was real, then that imaginary self would persist after death and that eventually it would identify with a new body and a new life. The whole process, he said, is sustained by the tendency of the mind to identify itself with a body.

So I presume that it is for those who 'identify themselves with a body' - I would include myself in that category - that the idea of re-birth at least communicates something important about the human condition.

Agree that it's very easy to fall into believing you're interacting with a human agent. I find in my interactions with ChatGPT, it is adept at responding like a human coach, with encouragements, apologies where necessary ('I apologise for the confusion' when an error is pointed out), and so on.

Last year there was a thread on the well-known case of Blake LeMoine, the Google engineer who believed the system he was working on had attained sentience, and was eventually let go by Google over the case. He was utterly convinced, but I think he was a little unbalanced, let's say. But I can see how easy it would be to believe it. Just after the Big Release of ChatGPT a NY Times reporter got into a really weird interaction with it, with it trying to convince him that it loved him and that he should leave his wife.

I've never had any strange experiences with it. I too have a (long-stalled) fictional work. ChatGPT is helpful there too, in fact I'm going to pivot back to it in November and try and finally finish a draft. It's been helpful there - for instance, one of the plot points is set in a conference in Frankfurt, and I asked for some world-building detail for Frankfurt. It's also a little like a writing coach. And I also bounce philosophical ideas off ChatGPT, it's helpful at making connections, suggestions, and corrections. ('Ah, that's an insightful observation!') Have a read of this interaction I had when researching platonic realism. It's coming up to a year since ChatGPT launched and it's become very much part of the landscape as far as I'm concerned.

The only actual smart devices I use are to control lights and heating. All the cooking, cleaning and gardening is mine alone.

You can’t see the resemblance between what you said, and what was in that quote?

What makes you think I’m busy?

I encourage people to use it. I signed up for ChatGPT the day it came out, used it every day since. It’s quite amazingly useful. i say the ‘A’ in AI stands for ‘augmented’ rather than ‘artificial’.

As I understand it, Spinoza said that the liberated soul had no reason to fear death and no fear of the afterlife, and I'm sure in that, he was in perfect accord with both the Hindu and Buddhist understanding of the matter.

Sri Ramana Maharshi: Reincarnation exists only so long as there is ignorance. There is really no reincarnation at all, either now or before. Nor will there be any hereafter. This is the truth.

[Note: Comments by David Godman: “Most religions have constructed elaborate theories which purport to explain what happens to the individual soul after the death of the body. Some claim that the soul goes to heaven or hell while others claim that it is reincarnated in a new body.

"Sri Ramana Maharshi taught that all such theories are based on the false assumption that the individual self or soul is real; once this illusion is seen through, the whole superstructure of after-life theories collapses. From the standpoint of the Self, there is no birth or death, no heaven or hell, and no reincarnation.

"As a concession to those who were unable to assimilate the implications of this truth, Sri Ramana would sometimes admit that reincarnation existed. In replying to such people he would say that if one imagined that the individual self was real, then that imaginary self would persist after death and that eventually it would identify with a new body and a new life. The whole process, he said, is sustained by the tendency of the mind to identify itself with a body. Once the limiting illusion of mind is transcended, identification with the body ceases, and all theories about death and reincarnation are found to be inapplicable."]

Source

The fact that a proportion of the populace accepts it doesn’t mean it’s not a taboo.

Well, I put the question to ChatGPT4. Here are the responses:

User: A hypothetical question for you: Can AI ever become sentient?

ChatGPT: The question of whether AI can become sentient is a topic of ongoing debate among scientists, philosophers, and experts in the field of artificial intelligence. Sentience refers to the capacity to have subjective experiences, consciousness, and self-awareness. As of my last knowledge update in September 2021, there is no scientific consensus on whether AI can achieve sentience.

Here are some key points to consider:

Definition of Sentience: Sentience is not well-defined, and there are different philosophical and scientific theories about what it means to be sentient. Some argue that it is a property of biological organisms, while others believe it could theoretically be achieved through advanced computational processes.

Current AI: Current AI systems, including the most advanced neural networks, are not sentient. They are specialized tools that can perform tasks based on patterns and data they have been trained on but do not possess consciousness or subjective experiences.

Debate: The debate about AI sentience often intersects with discussions about consciousness and the nature of the mind. Many experts believe that sentience and consciousness are not solely dependent on computational processes and that there may be fundamental aspects of consciousness that cannot be replicated by machines.

Ethical Considerations: Even without achieving sentience, AI technologies raise ethical questions about their impact on society, privacy, and decision-making. Discussions about AI ethics often revolve around the potential risks and benefits of increasingly sophisticated AI systems.

Future Possibilities: It is possible that future advancements in AI, particularly in areas like neuromorphic computing and brain-computer interfaces, could bring us closer to creating AI systems that exhibit properties resembling sentience. However, whether this would truly be sentience or merely sophisticated simulation is a matter of philosophical debate.

In summary, whether AI can ever become sentient remains a complex and open question. It is a topic that continues to be explored by researchers, and the answer may depend on advances in AI technology, a deeper understanding of consciousness, and the development of new theoretical frameworks. As of my last update, there is no definitive evidence or consensus on the possibility of achieving AI sentience.

User: According to the Miriam Webster dictionary 'the meaning of SENTIENT is capable of sensing or feeling : conscious of or responsive to the sensations of seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, or smelling.' That would seem to challenge sentient AI wouldn't it?

ChatGPT: You are correct in pointing out the definition of "sentient" from the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which emphasizes the capacity to sense or feel and be conscious of sensations like seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, or smelling. This definition aligns with the commonly understood meaning of sentience, which implies subjective experiences and consciousness.

Given this definition, the challenge of creating sentient AI is indeed significant. Current AI systems, including advanced machine learning models like GPT-3 (on which I'm based), do not possess the capability to truly sense or feel in the way that living beings do. They process data and make decisions based on patterns and information in their training data, but they do not have subjective experiences, consciousness, or sensory perception.

While AI can simulate certain aspects of human-like responses and understanding through pattern recognition, it does not do so with genuine sentience. Achieving true sentience in AI would require a fundamental shift in our understanding of both AI and consciousness, and it remains a topic of speculation and debate in the fields of AI and philosophy.

It's essential to differentiate between AI's ability to mimic or simulate human-like responses and actual sentience or consciousness. While AI can be designed to perform tasks that appear to involve perception and understanding, it lacks the intrinsic awareness and subjective experiences associated with true sentience.

You might also want to peruse this online article by Bernardo Kastrup on his negative response to this question.

I think it's the absence of subjectivity that's the killer blow to the idea of sentient AI: a computer system is not a being.

None of that amounts to a cultural "taboo"...."Reincarnation" simply does not make sense... — 180 Proof

What would a 'public specification' comprise?

It seems like your plan is to beat materialism in kind with a material notion of spirit, a consciousness that is essentially the antiquated form of spirit itself, as the divine inside a divine subject. It is the idea of Jesus Christ, the embodiment of the divine in human form. And this whole thing seems caught in this post-Christian paradigm. In it we are constantly avoiding a notion of spirit while still operating within it. — kudos

Don’t know what to make of this, really. Mine is more to approach the subject through philosophy - to expose the hidden assumptions behind the taken-for-granted view. I frequently cite Thomas Nagel for that reason - he’s a mainstream philosopher, a tenured academic, who has had the guts to question the materialist consensus (and was heavily criticized for it). The other guy I cited, Stephen L. Talbott, is an independent scholar and philosopher of biology. I learned of his work through a great series of essays on The New Atlantis. Neither of them are specifically religious in orientation, but once you call the materialist consensus into question, alternative perspectives open up.

But you’re right in saying that my approach is existential. I’m only coming to realise that myself, after a lot of study.

I think the reasons are as follows:

1. Christian Dominance: Western culture has been heavily influenced by Christianity, which emphasizes a linear progression of the soul—life, death, and then either heaven or hell. Reincarnation, which posits multiple lifetimes, contrasts with this view. Reincarnation (strictly speaking, belief in the pre-existence of souls) was anathematised in the 6th century c.e.
2. Cultural Origins: Reincarnation is usually associated with Eastern religions and philosophies, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Because of this, it’s viewed as “foreign” or “exotic” in Western contexts.
3. Fear of the Unknown: The idea that one could return as a different being in a different circumstance can be unsettling to some people (this dread actually caused a very well known academic in Buddhist Studies, one Paul WIlliams, to abandon Buddhism and convert to the RC Church).
4. Materialism: Modern Western culture relies on science as a guide to what is real. There seems to be no feasible kind of physical or scientifically-understood medium through which memories or experiences can be transmitted life to life.

However, it’s worth noting that not everyone in the West dismisses or is uncomfortable with the idea of reincarnation. Many individuals and groups do believe in it or are open to the possibility, especially as Eastern philosophies and spiritual practices have gained traction in the West.

By the way, I mentioned Aristotle’s metaphysics because one of its major points is how something maintains its identity whilst changing. Also because hylomorphism remains current.

Not from scratch, though. A person born and raised into a religion that teaches reincarnation will have internalized it even before their critical cognitive faculties have developed. So such a person doesn't actually "make stuff up". — baker

:up:

Anyone like to venture a theory, as distinct from an expression of personal animus, as to why reincarnation is taboo in Western culture?

The OP was a rather idiosyncratic but nevertheless sincere post about something like re-birth or reincarnation. I simply pointed to two cultural traditions which accomodate the idea of re-birth -as Western culture generally does not - as a reference to ways of thinking abut the topic. The fact that it provokes such reflexive hostility is the interesting philosophical and cultural point.

You are not presenting any arguments of worth here — Banno

It's a forum discussion about a topic of interest, not a peer-reviewed academic paper. I was going to add, Aristotle and others of that era are 'axial age philosophers'. Much of it is of course archaic due to the historical period in which it was written but it still plays a foundational role in culture. (Although I feel as though your motivation for participating is just to confirm your own views to your own satisfaction.)

What Aristotle thought is of some historical interest, but certainly no longer authoritative - I hope. One likes to believe that there has been at least some progress over the millennia. — Banno

The stereotypical attitude of modern philosophy is that everything that happened in the past has been superseded by 'progress'. Even if one of its gurus said 'We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.' And why ask the question if the predictable response is that you don't want to know the answer.

:yikes:

So the topic becomes that of individuation - what is it that makes something this and not that? The question applies more broadly than to self, so let's have at it. — Banno

Isn’t there a fundamental principle in Aristotelian metaphysics that it is the material that constitutes the particular? That the form is universal - Socrates is a man - but his features (or accidents) inhere in the material body. Form and matter. I find that intuitively appealing.

Buddhist views of re-birth are very complex. On the one hand, the early Buddhist texts resolutely deny that there is an individual self that migrates from one life to the next. There are several texts where errant monks are given a thorough dressing down for propagating such nonsense. But then, in Tibetan Buddhism, there is a long tradition of incarnate lamas, who are often identified because they’re able to point to things they owned in their previous incarnation. So what gives? The doctrinal interpretation is that whilst there is no solitary or unified self that migrates life to life, there is a mind-stream (with the musical Sanskrit designation of ‘citta-santana’) which continues to manifest life to life. It is sometimes compared allegorically to a fax machine (or used to be, when fax machines were things) - different paper, same information.

It is also said that your state of mind at the moment of death is of paramount importance, as it will influence your destination. (I corresponded briefly with a philosopher who’s wife was an East Asian Studies scholar who had written a book on Japanese Pure Land practices for the moment of death.) And there are many possibilities - in the traditional view there are six realms of rebirth (gods, demi-gods, human, animal, ghost and hell realms.) It is widely understood that to suffer a poor rebirth might mean being consigned to the woes of saṃsāra for ‘aeons of kalpas’ (and as Carl Sagan knew, Indian astronomy contemplated quite realistic time-scales for the birth and death of cosmic cycles.)

The major difference between Buddhist and Hindu views of rebirth is that the latter believe in ātman, ‘higher self’. That said, the dialectic between Buddhist and Hindu views of re-birth played out over many centuries and there is a vast amount of detail which is impossible to condense into a forum post.

When we consider everything from inside a rational structure, do we always have a blind spot? — kudos

The blind spot of science is the neglect of lived experience.

You have already posited the subject as existing in the line 'the organism has to establish a boundary...' So the subject is then object, since all these boundaries begin to become established by objective means, as in fertilization from cells created through biological processes. It sounds like you are including the idea of Becoming as referenced by Gnomon if I am not correct. Care to elaborate? — kudos

As I’m not a materialist, what I’m seeking to articulate is the ontological distinction between living and non-living things (or between things and beings). Materialists will generally assume (or insist) that, as living beings are constituted by the same elements as the rest of the Universe, then they are just organised matter, that there is no essential difference between living and non-living. In fact they have to say that, because recognising such an ontological distinction would undermine materialism, which claims there is only one substance (in the philosophical sense of that word) and that living beings are wholly physical in nature. That is also tied to the concept of abiogenesis, the non-biological origin of life, in which it is presumed some specific unique combination of physical circumstances spontaneously gave rise to organic matter and ultimately to the first simple living organisms almost as a kind of complex chemical reaction.

I am trying to articulate an alternative to that which doesn’t rely on vitalism (‘animating spirits’) or theistic creation. That’s why I appealed to the text by Thomas Nagel, who is an analytic philosopher and not any kind of religious apologist. His point is that the nature of subjective experience is such that it eludes objective description (articulated in his famous paper What is it Like to be a Bat?) So drawing on that kind of analysis, I’m speculating that even the most basic life-forms are in some real sense the appearance of conscious agency - not that a conscious agent made organisms a la theistic creation, but that this is the beginning of the appearance of conscious agents, which then become more elaborate through the course of evolutionary development.

I do notice that in many discussions of evolution there is a tendency to attribute agency to evolution itself - that evolution ‘does’ this or ‘produces’ that or ‘isn’t evolution marvellous?’ And so on. But I think the only natural agents that can really be discerned just ARE organisms. They’re the ones ‘doing’ and ‘producing’ and ‘creating’ (and it involves immense struggle and sacrifice.) That’s why I am drawn to the paper I linked yesterday, From Physical Causes to Organisms of Meaning. That paper is also non-theistic and naturalist, but not materialist, because it recognises there is a fundamental sense in which biology cannot be reduced to physics, but without appealing to vitalism.

:cool:

Modernism is not modernity. It is a modern worldview, or some aspects of that view, that some find offensive. I do not understand exactly what they are offended by. Neither do I understand what you object to about liberal democracy. — Dfpolis

I wouldn't use the term 'offensive'. It's simply the emphasis on the sovereignty of self or ego, on the one hand, and the consensus view of philosophical or scientific materialism, that is associated with political liberalism on the other. There are many philosophical beliefs or social attitudes that form around these core ideas which I think are problematical and unsatisfying. I would have thought that not too far from your own view of the matter.

I choose extinction. :wink: — Tom Storm

I was listening to Zizek yesterday in a panel session. He said, 'you can't even control your own erections! How do you think you can control yourself?'

It reminded me of one of the disputes in the early Buddhist orders concerning the status of the arahant, those who were said to have overcome all the cankers and were free of lust, but could still be subject to nocturnal emissions. This was cited by the dissident sect, which was eventually to become the Mahāyāna, as evidence for the fact that the categorisation of arahants was flawed.

In order to say consciousness has evolved, you would have to define what it is for, what purpose it serves. And that is what can’t be done. That is why there are many (to my mind, pointless) arguments nowadays about what ‘function’ consciousness serves or why it evolved. To try and frame the question in scientific terms is to misunderstand it, as science begins with the objective, the measurable, and consciousness is not an object for itself. (This doesn’t rule out cognitive science as that is the objective measurement of specific functions of consciousness.)

Fair call, I should have let it go.

However neither of those reviews have to do with the article I linked. — wonderer1

They're both reviews of another of Nicholas Humphrey's books, covering similar theories, and Humphrey being the author of the linked article. Neither of the reviews propagate the 'genetic fallacy', rather they are critical of Humphrey's reductionist account of consciousness. His latest book gets much more positive reviews, but I will concede that as his is straightforwardly physicalist account, I am disinclined towards entertaining the thesis, on philosophical grounds.

Critical reviews of Humphrey by Galen Strawson and Mary Midgley (although I disagree with Strawson's panpsychism, subject of this thread.)

Could you clarify, are you saying subjectivity is fundamental to what organisms are or what is fundamental to what organisms are is subjectivity? In other words, are you simply defining what is fundamental to organisms as subjectivity or stating that what organisms are has the fundamental quality of subjectivity?

What about the subject that observes the subject and equates its subjectivity? I take it we are conveying a fully self-consciously anthropomorphic view of subjectivity. Flies having less subjectivty, humans the most, diatoms none, etc. — kudos

The first thing an organism has to do - any organism - is to establish a boundary between itself and the environment. What organic processes then do is all directed by the organism maintaining itself and continuing to exist. I’m considering the idea that this constitutes the beginning of subjective awareness - even though very primitive life-forms are not what we would recognise as conscious beings in any meaningful sense, that rudimentary form of subjectivity is implied by the distinction between self and other (at least in a philosophical sense). Plainly humans are then able to interrogate the nature of the subject - ‘who or what am I?’ - which I don’t think other animals are able to do (although many higher animals and birds do possess a sense of self, as is evidenced by ‘the mirror test’)

:lol:

I have the idea that, just as energy can be defined as 'the capacity to do work', biological consciousness may be defined as 'the capacity for experience'. And that capacity always inheres in a subject of experience - which is never known as an object of perception.

I agree, but where does the grounds come in to elevate the subject to such ultimate precedence? — kudos

Because it's fundamental to what organisms are. It's the specific difference between even very simple organisms, and inorganic matter. Even the most simple life-forms encode and transmit information, maintain homeostasis, heal and grow. This is what the essay from Talbott above helps to distinguish.

But whence "mental representation" versus the prior "behavioral inputs/outputs"? How is it this difference in degree at least SEEMS to be a difference in kind? What is it, this change, this "mental representation"? — schopenhauer1

Have a look at From Physical Causes to Organisms of Meaning Steve Talbott. Argues that organic life is qualitative from the get go, that the processes embodied in organic molecules already transcend the bounds of physical causation.

I get the feeling that you're somehow offended? — creativesoul

Not at all - just a bit exasperated at having misinterpreted the aim of the OP.

I suggest that the 'subjective essence of experience' is one of the connotations of the term 'being' when used as a noun - that 'a being' is precisely the kind of entity that possesses the element of subjectivity, even if in rudimentary form. This is the point at which qualities of being a.k.a qualia start to become manifest.
— Wayfarer
Wow! That is a deep philosophical insight. — Gnomon

Not of my devising. It’s really just an implication of Chalmer’s ‘facing up to the problem of consciousness’. The following is from the précis of Mind and Cosmos published in the NY Times:

We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe (i.e. described by the natural sciences), composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.

However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.

So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained…. — The Core of Mind and Cosmos, Thomas Nagel

So it occurred to me on reading this that the appearance of living organisms just is the manifestation of Being, which becomes gradually elaborated and differentiated during the course of evolution. I’m sure that’s one of the themes found in Henri Bergson and Tielhard du Chardin although I haven’t read much of them.

Well we plainly have different notions of what that consists of, but never mind, I hope someone else has a contribution to make.

I haven’t read the whole book but it immediately resonated with me.
‘
Here’s a related anecdote. I read in relation to another book that the symbol for zero, 0, comes from the hole in the central seat of a dhow - the boats that used to ply between the Red Sea and India. That hole is where the mast fits, and the mast makes the voyage possible. The discovery of the concept of zero was also fundamental in the advancement of mathematics, but it was fiercely resisted by Greek mathematicians on the grounds of its irrational nature.

See the connection?

I'm more concerned with current important events and practices in the macro world with a particular interest on how individual and collective thought and belief systems play a role. — creativesoul

I beg your pardon, I thought it was a philosophical question.

Don’t want to start a big argument, but I think it's a mistake to conceive of mokṣa as oblivion. What is beyond the vicissitudes of existence is a different category to what simply doesn't exist. Same would apply in Plotinus’ philosophy to my knowledge. And bardo stories are not all horror stories, beings are also reborn in the various heavens, although all of those are still conceived as within the bounds of saṃsāra.

Still, I think living in the Pacific NW would have its consolations. I've always wanted to go there, the closest I got was a road-trip from SF in 2012 when we got up to redwood country.

So, perhaps, as a disembodied consciousness, I selected the life I’m experiencing now. Next time around, I could experience Abraham Lincoln’s life, Elvis Presley’s life, or anyone else’s life. Anyone disembodied consciousness can experience any portion of any life. — Art48

There was a researcher by the name of Ian Stevenson who devoted many decades to interviewing children who claimed to have recalled their previous lives. (His research is needless to say highly controversial and most often furiously rejected.) Anyway, I read a book about his life and work, by a journalist named Tom Shroder (Old Souls) who gives details of a few of Stevenson's cases. The thing that struck me is that is how ordinary the lives and circumstances of all these cases were. They were often in very poor familiies, more typically in the East, where belief in re-birth is socially acceptable (it's not, in much of the West.) Their remembered lives (and often deaths) were as mechanics, villagers, laborers, soldiers - none of them remembered being the Queen of Sheeba or Wizard of Oz. One of the cases Shroder recounts is of a Lebanese mechanic who had died in his late teens in a sports-car accident. The child who remembered that life was born in a village not far from the site of the accident, and remembered many details of his previous life. (Most of these recollections are said to be lost very soon after a child learns to speak, making the window of opportunity for research a very brief one. They usually first present with the child declaring that 'this is not my home', 'you are not my parents', 'this is not my name', and so on.)

Maybe the only choice one ever makes is made at death (bardo?) either to relive one's life – travel again along one's worldline – or oblivion — 180 Proof

In accounts of bardo states in the Buddhist literature, one of the warnings is that beings in the between-death states become attracted to forms in that state that are associated with the lower states of being. These include not only being reborn in the animal realm - you read in Zen literature the occasional admonition, that 'you will find yourself in the womb of a cow!' - but also hell states and the realm of hungry ghosts (which the pointed structures on roofs in Asian villages are intended to ward off.) I'm not persuaded that it is true, but I will admit it scares me. :yikes:

I am loving the state of Georgia right now. They aren't fooling around. — GRWelsh

I listened to a podcast or video the other week with a bit of background on Fani Willis. Her father was, apparently, a lifelong activist and lawyer, usually for defense cases, and used to take her to court to observe from a young age. She has been a dedicated prosecutor for quite a few years and has a pretty impressive track record of RACI convictions already. Definitely not a light-weight.