White Lie

It often perturbs me how people pray for salvation and not rebirth and think that the life-death cycle is more of an infliction. This belief is a bit deviant from what I believe. I always thought that living again would be amazing. Just think about it, all the great things that happened in your life can happen again. You could get another chance at bettering yourself. After all isn’t that what we always aim to do?

People could argue that all the horrible things can happen again too, but, I figure there is always a balance. For a certain amount of good stuff to happen, there must be some bad stuff too. I doubt there are people on this earth who have had only good or only bad things happen to them. Well maybe there are, but the number outweighs the majority of the population. So, if you had been a good boy and got many gifts from Santa, then maybe, there is a small chance your next life maybe just as good. Now that was a chance I would be willing to take. On the other hand, if you didn’t get any gifts from Santa and died a crack addict holed up in an abandoned warehouse, maybe, just maybe, you get a second chance at life. Either way, it seems pretty alluring.

However, what if you wanted no more of this? If you’ve seen it all, done it all, and don’t see any reason to live again? I.e., what if you are Charlie Sheen? Then, you must be given a choice to come back or not. This makes sense because there are very few people who have done everything they wanted to and are absolutely fulfilled, and even if they are, let’s face it, deep down, most humans are selfish, morally impecunious beings. If offered a chance to better themselves, or make more money, or score more crack, they would grab on to it and never let go, unless of course, there is a heaven.

There is only one drawback I can see in this system. If it is for certain that there is another life for us, why behave well in this one? I could choose to be a horrible, morally bankrupt human and still get another chance. Who would stop me? The cops? In a system where there is definitely a second life, why would there be a large set of people with a good sense of right and wrong to police everybody? So, the earth would be a wasteland. Filled with people chasing cheap thrills. So, they would need some incentive to behave. This could be achieved by positive reinforcement right from when we are 2 or 3 years old. Chocolates for whenever we do something good, a disciplining measure otherwise. And if it’s in the grey area, then silent treatment could work well.

So, in my wishful, fictional universe, there are now a large amount of men who have been raised to be morally right above anything else, and of course, as always, a certain amount of people who are just evil, because there’d be no balance otherwise and the good guys could get bored of their monotonous life. So, now we have a world in which good has a chance to truly triumph over evil, all by changing people’s attitudes about death and rebirth. All by preaching one little white lie.