Wisdom comes near the end, if at all. Imagine being able to do it all again, knowing what you know now.

Alas, 'tis not so, not even if you believe in reincarnation, because your conscious mind does not remember your past lives. If you could carry your experience with you back to a new beginning, what might we make of our lives and this world?

You wouldn't need to go to school the second time around. You might avoid all the mistakes you made in romance, in finance, and your political stance. The wasted days, the false friendships and so on. You could avoid it. It takes a lifetime to see these things. Imagine getting a mulligan as being a part of the Human race.

I agree with you but I think people are so stupid today it would not make a difference. For the rest of us it would, but we are the minority.

Some people would continue to make the same past mistakes ruining the second chance at life.

We see example here with some members.

Both of you are surely correct. For some of us, though...

I agree, but on balance, don't think it would help. The bad guys would be that much more practiced for the second go round. Contending with that could be very difficult.

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You might avoid all the mistakes you made

I think the satisfaction in life comes from the process, not the outcome.

I disagree. You don't ask a person why they've had a happy life.

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Originally posted by zipriderson:

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You might avoid all the mistakes you made

I think the satisfaction in life comes from the process, not the outcome.

But, ultimately, it is the outcome that matters. It's like a race. It's not how you started, or how slow you were in the middle. As long as you end up with gold, that's what matters.

I disagree too. The process sucked at times but as long as I learned from all of it I figured it was time well spent.

In a way this was part of why I enjoyed the Highlander TV series. Immortals that could live many lives, transitioning quietly from one to another (as long as they didn't lose their heads). Some improved, some never learned, some became evil enough that the Devil would have said, "Dude, chill a bit".

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Originally posted by 12131:

quote:

Originally posted by zipriderson:

quote:

You might avoid all the mistakes you made

I think the satisfaction in life comes from the process, not the outcome.

But, ultimately, it is the outcome that matters. It's like a race. It's not how you started, or how slow you were in the middle. As long as you end up with gold, that's what matters.

Right. My point is more that the process of figuring things out, learning from mistakes, overcoming adversity is what makes the success worth it.

Happiness handed on a silver platter isn't as rewarding.

A topic I have considered countless times and wondered what might have been.

If it were possible at all, I would be most willing to have a “do over” just to correct all the stupid little mistakes I made, most of which were not particularly life-changing, but that I remember with chagrin to this day. I’m not referring to not investing in Google at the beginning or anything of the sort, but rather the regrets about getting unreasonably angry at someone, minor mistakes at work, and generally equally trivial matters.

But if given that chance, I know I wouldn’t accept it for anything more than a couple years past because of all the possible unintended consequences from even minor changes. I am generally quite content where I am now and wouldn’t want to change it—especially if I were able to know what I had changed.

I’d probably just screw up round 2 in different ways.

I have often contemplated the same. However all our mistakes and black marks are what got us to be where we are today and to be ourselves. Regrets are why we don't repeat past behavior. If we don't learn by remembering past discretion's and bad moves, we will repeat endlessly. Past lives I don't remember, would if I could. Sure would save a lot of time. Guess were stuck where we are and then there's the future to try to refocus. By being in the now. And use what we have learned to not repeat, and to repeat what works. Guess I'll just stay me.

So true.

It is an absurdly short thing, this life, on a universal time scale. Almost cruelly so.

I wish it would last several times longer, myself.

I feel like I'm really just getting started in some ways, yet I'm half out of time already.

The proverbial Time Machine would be the business... If only.

The human condition is sad, actually. I do agree a do-over would be a game changer for many.

In the Sci-Fi remake of the series Battlestar Galactica, the Cylons, originally created by man as robots to serve him, eventually evolved to the point of self-awareness and came to the paradoxical conclusion that while they saw their "parents" as inferior and unworthy of life, and yet they sought to replicate and experience so many human functions, emotions, and experiences.

As computer internet-like beings, the Cylon humanoid variant evolved to the point that, just at the moment of their destruction, they were able to instantly upload all their memories, experiences, and feelings to a distant location, and at the same time an exact copy of the Cylon was created and the memories, experinces, and feelings were instantly uploaded to the newly created Cylon.

The interesting part of this was that, knowing they would be instantly replicated/ reincarnated, death meant little to them. In fact, in some episodes, certain Cylon models counted on dying so that they could instantly transfer data/ intelligence about humans, such as their current location, to the Command so they could act on it.

However, once the Cylons traveled far enough from their home world it was too far to "upload" and they were forced to create a "Resurrection Ship" that traveled with the fleet to handle the upload and creation. Once the human's destroyed the ship Cylons suddenly had to face the possibility of their own "death" and that all they had learned would be truly lost forever, and they started to fear "death".

Interestingly, there are futurists and Artificial Intelligence (AI) experts researching the possibility of "uploading" a human's knowledge and experiences so that they can be preserved and accessed long after the human body dies. Some hypothesize that these memories could be uploaded into synthetic humans sometime in the future.

Interesting to consider, but I'm not sure I have any interest in a synthetic version of me, even if it meant that all I had learned and all my memories were preserved.

During a sermon our preacher made the comment that his first brain began to rattle at about age 30. Later he found out that some miss-understood... he had to explain to some teenagers, who probably thought 30 was old, that he didn't mean he started to LOOSE brains at 30, but rather thats about when he started to GAIN some.

I’d hate to see the dredges of society, John Wayne Gacy, Dahmer, Green River Killer, Hitler, Pol Pot - have a second chance. I doubt most would do better.

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I disagree. You don't ask a person why they've had a happy life.

para

I got asked why I think my life has gone as well as it has,

It was asked of me because I told a very religious man that I was the most fortunate person that he knew.

you see he wanted me to come back with
"god was totally responsible "

But thats not what I told him