This would only be the case if reincarnation is completely random, and it depends on what we consider an individual. You could arbitrarily define a human as just a cluster of cells, does that mean you could reincarnate as a single human cell?
Similarly, could you be reincarnated as a society? A body and a society are both a conglomerate of individual organisms…
Now I want to write a book about a world where individual humans don’t have immortal souls but cities do. Would a person moving to a different city be like someone having a blood transfusion? If dead cities can be reincarnated as other cities, does that mean current-day Istanbul was Constantinople in a past life? Or does reincarnation happen more randomly, and Constantinople just happened to become some random town in New Jersey? Is genocide like murder for cities, or is it more like having a limb amputated?
oh shit i’ve accidentally reinvented hetalia from first principles
The cells of your body are part of you. They share the same DNA and descend from the same cell (the fertilized egg) and depend on each other to stay alive. However there are more gut bacteria inside of you than there are cells of yourself (they are a lot smaller than human cells). And they are not related to you. So you could reincarnate as a gut bacteria of somebody else
Me: Dies
Me: Wakes up as a bacterium that was just asexually produced inside my former life’s corpse
However there are more gut bacteria inside of you than there are cells of yourself
That’s a debunked myth. The number of human cells and gut bacteria is about the same which is still astonishing. If you ask me to, I can look up the YouTube video I’ve learned it from
Yes, please, would you share that video? It sounds as fascinating as your reply is delightful!
OK, but there are some organisms that can live either as single cells or in colonies, like algae. How do you categorize them? Plus there are some colonial animals like Portuguese man o war that are composed of hundreds of separate individuals connected to each other, or ant colonies which work as a collective superorganism. And even in humans there are some cells that do not stay attached, like sperm cells. Could you reincarnate as a sperm cell?
By this logic (which I, as of now, ascribe to, entirely due to how cool it sounds), you would reincarnate as the entire ant colony. You would be the hive mind. Enjoy!
The fact that your cells share your DNA doesn’t mean they can’t have their own consiousness. They also don’t all use the DNA the same way (that’s why they differ). Some of your cells roam your body freely and even learn at “school” (certain leukocytes), and it’s quite easy to imagine they have some kind of consiousness. Recomended watch: Il était une fois la vie.
I mean…I wouldn’t be depressed if I were a bacterium.
Bacterium life 🦠
Yeah, like, even as fungi best case you connect a vast rainforest and provide communication and transportation services (also for sharing forest memes) … only to be keenly aware at all moments of how pollution, deforestation, and climate change is damaging the forest in real time. Yeah, no.
Even if I were an undead virus (a virus that is dead-ish, not a virus causing undead humans to pollute the planet even after death) I wouldn’t know how to (re)arrange my genome to target some apes.
Bacterium is peak lifeform, just settle into a literal rock, sleep a few billion years.
Not all fungi connect rainforests. You could be a unicellular fungus like a yeast.
Oj, yeah, gonna make some yogurt & get to see billions of my bros in someone’s gut! What acid swamp with no sunlight?? This isn’t Dank Souls.
Or maybe I help make some bread. That will make someone really happy, they would never burn me alive. (Really, a lava lake level?)
Maybe floating in the sky amongst my sky bacteria fellows. I’ll just get really good at rolling away from UV rays.
Oh … there is also this … With my luck, I’ll be displaying porn the whole incarnation.
Well, same for humans, there is no way we are this stupid. Just a bunch of natural algorithms and instincts.
(Also you saying that bacteria are “conscious”? What does that even mean? We all make active decisions all the time.)
Fungus is cool as shit. I wouldn’t mind being a part of a large mycelium hivemind.
You die and become a bacterium
billion years later: still that bacterium.
