Confessions of a part-time girl

Once is enough
12:06 p.m. -- 2009-05-28

Upon my enthusiastic babblings about 'Gladiator', Poolie commented thus:

"I think I may have lived back then, but I doubt if I was a warrior or anything noble. Chances are I worked in a laundry bleaching togas in urine or something."

This, of course, is the problem with past lives. We can't all have been King Arthur. (Unless you remember a particularly brilliant song by Victoria Wood, called "I want to be everyone".) Once in a while, I meet people who are convinced that they have lived before, but I've yet to be impressed. Usually, their knowledge of the period they claim to have lived in is faddish and limited to things that have appeared in films. We all know how accurate Hollywood is, right?

Not only are there not enough noteworthy historical figures to go round (the number of people who claim to have been Cleopatra in a previous life is ridiculous), there simply weren't enough people, back then.

Shocking figure from the World Population Clock, at the time of writing: 6,782,421,682 human beings alive on Earth. The number has never been higher. (Well... it is now. It's gone up to 6,782,421,808 in the time it took me to write that and refresh my web browser. Holy crap!) In fact, the population of the planet has moved inexorably upwards ever since the Black Death around 1400AD. Ah... the good old days...

So there are a little under seven billion of us. But have a look at this little graph. In fact, take a good look, because I drew it m'self...

World population (millions): numbers from Wikipedia

Pretty, ain't it? But that's not the point.

Most of the people that are represented by the '2008' column are still alive, of course. Ditto the '1999' column to a lesser extent. And some of the old fogeys who were counted in 1950 are still kicking about. (Most of them are driving very slowly on the A303, as far as I can tell.) The bizarre fact is that there are more human beings alive today than have lived and died before us.

So not only aren't there enough notable figures to go round... there aren't enough dead people of any kind. If something spiritual is recycled... you'd be unusual (or, to be polite, exceptional) to have lived even once before. Even as a piss-and-toga stirrer. The numbers suggest that most of us simply have to be brand new, this time around.

It would be pretty heroic to claim that you had lived dozens and dozens of previous lives, therefore. Particularly if you expect people to believe that you were present at all the interesting historical events.

One famous fraudster really shoots for the moon, in this regard. Who else but our old friend, L R0n Hu88ard? He said he was the reincarnation of Buddha, for goodness sake! No mere toga washing job for Hu88ard. More amusingly, he claimed to have lived as British adventurer Cecil Rhodes (founder of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe) in a past life. While in Africa, Hu88ard often repeated this claim, and went so far as to dress like Rhodes. This I particularly like because Ron hadn't done his homework. Rhodes was homosexual... and therefore would have been "disposed of quietly and without sorrow" under a $ci�nto�ogist world order.

What do I have against the concept of past lives? Not a lot. For example, I think His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama is an exceptional human being. A righteous dude, and a tremendous force for good in the world. I hope His Holiness lives long enough to see his people free of their invaders; I feel considerable loathing at the thought of what the Chinese might do to interfere with the succession, if he were to die. It's the job of the Panchen Lama to recognise the Dalai Lama when he is born again. Sadly, the 11th Panchen Lama, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima was taken into 'protective custody' by the Chinese back in 1995, and he hasn't been seen since. He was only about six years old when he disappeared. Quite who he's supposedly being protected from is unclear.

All in all, I'm glad I don't believe in reincarnation. Bear in mind that the gender dysphoric (or anybody who suffers from a strongly negative self-image) might find that a belief in reincarnation offered reason enough to commit suicide: to get another throw of the dice, and a chance to come back in a body that fits your mental image more comfortably.

If we ignore the mathematics of population growth, suggesting we aren't recycled souls, and make this extreme leap of faith... then what? Even if you died today, and were immediately reassigned to a newly-fertilised egg... you wouldn't be an adult again until 2028. Can you imagine how bad the world might be, after another eighteen years of population growth and climate change? By then, oil will be fast running out, several fish species will be teetering on the edge of extinction, North Korea will have dozens of nuclear weapons, Cliff Richard will have been in the charts for seven decades... it'll be horrible! Also, a quick study of demographics suggests you'll probably be an Indian peasant, living on two dollars a day or something. Always assuming you survive childhood, of course. Millions don't.

You know what? I'm going to settle for the life I have, here and now.

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