Napoleon or Cleopatra

April 25, 2015 12:23 AM

Slate's Reincarnation Machine identifies your previous lives. Actually it finds a consistent chain of people through history, each born when the preceding one died, and ending up with you.
posted by Segundus (77 comments total)

This is a neat idea, but after going back only 2 "incarnations", everything has a significant gap in between. I'm guessing it doesn't have a big enough database of people to draw on?
posted by NoraReed at 12:28 AM on April 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

Agreed that it's a cool idea, but thanks to the patriarchal view of history, ALL of my past lives were men. But maybe that was just me.
posted by mokin at 12:40 AM on April 25, 2015 [13 favorites]

Gee, I guess I was lucky then. I got 20 generations, six of them women, and including a king, a queen, a pope, a patriarch, and emperor of Japan. Funny how they were all famous people, too, you'd think at least a few of my past incarnations would have been peasants or something.
posted by traveler_ at 12:51 AM on April 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

No it's true, if anyone ever tries to look into their past lives with hypnosis or fortune telling or whatever all of the past lives will be famous people. Just like how when someone does their family tree they're always descended from a bastard line of someone famous that doesn't show up on official genealogies.
posted by ckape at 12:56 AM on April 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

I quite liked the explanations for the inter-incarnation gaps: according to this, after being Giorgio Vasari, I was ‘a blade of grass for 41 days’ before turning up as English explorer and cartographer Sir Robert Dudley. And between my time as Alexander Macleay (a leading member of the Linnean Society and a fellow of the Royal Society) and Adolphus Frederick V, grand duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, I apparently ‘frolicked as a squirrel for four days…’
posted by misteraitch at 12:59 AM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

My previous life was as the wife of Dr. Seuss. What is odd is that not only did she die on the day I was born, but she actually lived near me.

Plenty of other women on my timeline too including a Countess and reformers.
posted by vacapinta at 1:14 AM on April 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

I love this idea.
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 1:27 AM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I got Jim Morrison as my previous life. This would be more amusing if his music didn't mostly just make me giggle.

I guess it kinda explains the 'likes to say I'm a dragon' thing, though, what with him being the LIZARD KING.
posted by egypturnash at 1:31 AM on April 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

... the wife of Dr Seuss...

Think of that woman's life.

I had in my mind when I gave you a ring
That we might play a game called up up with a thing
Up up up with a thing, it is fun is it not?
If we play up up up you will like it a lot
You will like it a lot if I play it with you
We can play up up up in pose one or pose two...

Sorry.
posted by Segundus at 1:42 AM on April 25, 2015 [25 favorites]

I guess I shouldn't be too shocked that most of my past selves sound like assholes.
posted by kagredon at 1:44 AM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Should I be concerned that my husband and I (who share very different birthdays) share the same ancestor (Conrad of Blah-Blah-Blah -- I never heard of him and didn't catch the last name)? Is that illegal or something?
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 1:52 AM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Segundus, you don't have anything to apologize for that the good Doctor wouldn't have to apologize for first.

Would you try it with a horseshoe?

To go down in history? But of course you'd

finally find that sweet myst'ry

of life.
posted by traveler_ at 1:58 AM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Nice try, Slate, but I don't give up my personal info that easily (unless you're NSA).

But with the date I entered, I got 3 emperors and 5 kings, starting with the 50th emperor of Japan.

I think that if I (or anyone on MeFi) did have a reincarnation record, it would probably be along the lines of: peasant/ peasant/ peasant/ piss boy/ blacksmith/fishmonger/peasant/peasant/ beggar/ soldier/ sailor/ farmer/ farmer/ clerk/ clerk/ hobo

The only accounts of reincarnation I could ever consider plausible is somebody talking in detail about a prior unremarkable and banal life. But no, everybody's Princess This of Overthere and Duke Whatshisname of Soandso that and General Suchlike of the Blah-de-Blah army...
posted by LeRoienJaune at 2:14 AM on April 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

I think this could, in theory, make a really good basis for a solo (player + GM) RPG campaign. Each session would comprise a single adventure or incident from each life in the player's timeline (adapted to genre maybe; I can see this working with a range of RPG tropes bolted on), incorporating details or themes from the player's own life.

It would depend, for best effect, on knowing how to research each life and period efficiently enough to capture flavour and significant details, and also on trust, collaboration and a degree of intimacy between player and GM. The potential would be to create a narrative arc that expresses something about how the player sees themself through playing out arbitrarily selected stories through the pretence of connection. A sort of historical RPG tarot.

This is an case where a very rules light system would be a necessity. Probably Risus, I guess.
posted by howfar at 2:18 AM on April 25, 2015 [7 favorites]

But no, everybody's Princess This of Overthere and Duke Whatshisname of Soandso that and General Suchlike of the Blah-de-Blah army...

Yet another thing the deletionists have to answer for.
posted by howfar at 2:20 AM on April 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

The earliest reincarnation they gave me was Saints Cyril and Methodius. So yeah, back in the 9th Century my soul was operating two bodies. NBD.
posted by PlusDistance at 2:23 AM on April 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

I discovered America in a past life. Sorry about that, world.
posted by Quilford at 2:28 AM on April 25, 2015

You can see this as a game of Crusader Kings II that's tanked really badly in the last generation.
posted by zompist at 2:49 AM on April 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

Good god Slate's advertising is intrusive. If there's a way to do this without being hit with a pop up, some kind of slide-over and an autoplay video let me know.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 2:53 AM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I got Flann O'Brian, Rob Roy, and King Canute, so as far as I'm concerned, that all checks out.
posted by hap_hazard at 2:54 AM on April 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

we scraped tens of thousands of people from Wikipedia

Given the current population of the world and assuming certain properties about souls this program that anybody can type their birthday into is proof that each major historical figure during their own lifetime served as concurrent repositories of strictly more than 70,000 souls. This explains a lot. You and me, we probably even shared the same body at some point.
posted by polymodus at 3:33 AM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I actually like the idea that you can be reincarnated at any point in time. That means we can all be the same single person, gradually living through every life ever lived.
posted by Segundus at 3:45 AM on April 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

Totally unsurprising, since I've known that I was born on the date that James Dean died ever since the movie "September 30, 1955" hit the theaters. But I have since learned that having been born at 10 in the morning, I was out and crying for several hours before Dean's fateful car crash. But I wanted to see what came before: "Motilal Nehru (6 May 1861 – 6 February 1931) was an Indian lawyer, an activist of the Indian National Movement and the founder patriarch of India's most powerful political family, the Nehru-Gandhi family." Okay, but then, it goes into a loop... "who was born on the death date of... Motilal Nehru... who was born on the death date of... Motilal Nehru... who was born on the death date of... Motilal Nehru... who was born on the death date of... Motilal Nehru..." It's all Nehrus all the way down. Fail. (Tried again with AdBlock off to see if that made a difference... nope, just more ads and all Nehrus)

Of course, for all those "pro-lifers" who believe that "life begins at conception", these transition dates should be adjusted for an approximate 9-month gap, because that belief and the reincarnation thing are two eye-rolling mythologies that really should spend more time together.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:48 AM on April 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

I evidently started out as Harun al-Rashid, which is a good start, and four of my twenty lives were as women. I did have a rough spot there when as Sir Robert Filmer I wrote a book literally called Patriarchia defending the Divine Right of Kings, which I suppose makes sense as I'd been an Emperor of China (Song Dynasty), Japan, Holy Roman Emperor, Doge of Venice, Sultan of Morocco, King of Portugal and Duke of Burgundy. My later reign as King of Sweden was pretty undistinguished.

But I started the 20th century pretty well as bluesman Tampa Red, even though he came to a tragic end. And aside from Harun, one of the more awesome people I lived as was Ingegerd Olofsdotter of Sweden, a Swedish princess who became a saint known variously as Anna and Irene and played a fairly good role in early Slavic Christianity.
posted by graymouser at 4:14 AM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Guess this doesn't fit with the Buddhist notion that the soul takes a break for 45 days before reentering life on earth, presumably at conception.
posted by mmiddle at 4:25 AM on April 25, 2015

I was a panda, a cat, a giraffe, a swan, a snail, a squirrel, a spider, a clam, a clump of moss, a snake, a blade of grass, a butterfly, a tapeworm, a scorpion, a honeybee, a rabbit, and a housefly (twice).

Also Isabella I of Castile.
posted by emmling at 4:28 AM on April 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

But I have since learned that having been born at 10 in the morning, I was out and crying for several hours before Dean's fateful car crash.

Well, of course you were crying, you didn't have a soul yet.
posted by escabeche at 4:43 AM on April 25, 2015 [15 favorites]

I actually like the idea that you can be reincarnated at any point in time. That means we can all be the same single person, gradually living through every life ever lived.

This thought used to terrify me as a child, given just how many people seemed to have miserable and terrifying lives compared to my own. Nothing makes you more concerned about the suffering of others than the fear it might actually happen to you.
posted by howfar at 5:09 AM on April 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

In Xanadu, did I/ A pleasure dome decree. . . And then I was mostly architects.
posted by thivaia at 5:12 AM on April 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

I seem to have been British a lot. I was also the Queen of Cyprus.
posted by jonmc at 5:26 AM on April 25, 2015

I was a sperm a sperm a sperm a sperm a sperm a sperm a sperm and twelve more sperm.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:42 AM on April 25, 2015

I was a Charles Schwab iPhone app! ...oh, wait, that's an interstitial ad.
posted by Metroid Baby at 6:02 AM on April 25, 2015 [9 favorites]

My dog is the reincarnated soul of a 13th century French crusader princess of Jerusalem! I will have to upgrade her treats accordingly.
posted by Elly Vortex at 6:32 AM on April 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

Ooh, I got Hildegard von Bingen!
posted by briank at 6:36 AM on April 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

I was happiest whn I was a scuttling rat! For only 4 days though? I was still a pink baby. What happened? :(
posted by ian1977 at 7:09 AM on April 25, 2015

Great, I'm going to be the first incarnation of me not to make it into wikipedia.
posted by Poldo at 7:09 AM on April 25, 2015 [10 favorites]

Reincarnation doesn't make much sense when you consider that there are more people in the US now than there was in the entire world a thousand years ago.
posted by octothorpe at 7:10 AM on April 25, 2015

If you get a pope, you can upgrade all your older reincarnations to holy.
posted by Ashenmote at 7:13 AM on April 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

You get a few seconds of trivial entertainment, and they get your birthday. I'm sure nobody's keeping track of this stuff, though. Hey, did you know it's not THAT hard to guess someone's social security number if you know their date and place of birth?
posted by Sing Or Swim at 7:15 AM on April 25, 2015

I don't know what you mean, I just took this quiz called "Which Celebrity Are You Based On Your Vacation Preferences, Income, and Telephone Number"
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:24 AM on April 25, 2015 [11 favorites]

Heh. Yeah, I thought the one that tells you which Star Wars character you are based on a high-res scan of your iris was a little weird...
posted by Sing Or Swim at 7:26 AM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I was Philo Farnsworth in my prior life! I'd go around telling people, "I don't even have a TV," and they were all, "A what?"
posted by mittens at 7:27 AM on April 25, 2015

So they end up matching a random IP address with what may or may not be a valid social security number. Okay.
posted by Apocryphon at 7:30 AM on April 25, 2015

Yeah, except most people get to these quizzes through Facebook, so they've already got your name, address, relationship status, political affiliations, and a photo of what you had for lunch. This is just to scrape the outliers who haven't already put their birthday in their Facebook profile.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 7:36 AM on April 25, 2015

I knew from previous curiousity that mobster Joe Adonis died when I was born.

Before that I apparently invented the graham cracker, ruled Burma, the Holy Roman Empire, Hungary and Italy, and was a yappy dog for an impressive 577 days.
posted by Foosnark at 7:38 AM on April 25, 2015

Ooh, I got Hildegard von Bingen!

So did I. I wonder how many people get the same person if you go far back enough.
posted by jonp72 at 7:43 AM on April 25, 2015

Louise Beavers, supposedly. Which is great for me, as I like variety, but I have to wonder why her spirit didn't choose to manifest in baby Daphne Zuniga instead.
posted by benito.strauss at 7:50 AM on April 25, 2015

I got Mary, Princess Royal, daughter of Charles I. Which is somewhat amusing considering my mother's family believes they are descended from Oliver Cromwell.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:52 AM on April 25, 2015

I got Rube Goldberg, which seems kind of fitting for this exercise.
posted by 4ster at 8:00 AM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Duke Of Tuscany, but we already knew that based on my love of fine ruffs.
posted by The Whelk at 8:09 AM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Apparently my most significant and successful gig was as Saladin...
posted by jim in austin at 8:11 AM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

I got Hieronymus Bosch and John Wycliffe.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 8:22 AM on April 25, 2015

I quite liked the explanations for the inter-incarnation gaps

YES this was the best part, i got to be a little bee and a spider and a sassy giraffe, all of which were far more interesting than being a dozen white men.
posted by poffin boffin at 8:44 AM on April 25, 2015 [3 favorites]

In my past life I was the creator of "Alvin And The Chipmunks". This explains why my current life sucks so bad.... karma's a bitch.
posted by The otter lady at 9:33 AM on April 25, 2015

The fact they didn't connect me to William Carlos Williams, who died shortly before I was born, leaves me with nothing but contempt for this lame quizticle.
posted by aught at 9:44 AM on April 25, 2015

I can't help but be reminded of The Years of Rice and Salt which I recently slogged through.
posted by A Bad Catholic at 10:13 AM on April 25, 2015

Hey, jim in austin, I was Saladin, too! I was also Kublai Khan, a few saints and religious figures, and a couple of kings and emperors. I was also a squirrel, a sunflower, a housefly, a spider, a termite, a rat, a yappy dog, and a penguin.

I spent only a short amount of time (1 to 317 days) in my non-human incarnations. Presumably another soul took over for the squirrel, rat, dog, and penguin when I was reassigned to a human incarnation.

Also, I've got some really weird karma with my collection of saints, religious figures, kings, and military leaders.
posted by oozy rat in a sanitary zoo at 10:20 AM on April 25, 2015

Reincarnation doesn't make much sense when you consider that there are more people in the US now than there was in the entire world a thousand years ago.

That can't be true. I have 2 parents, 4 grand parents, 8 great grandparents, 16 great-grand parents, and so on. Clearly our current population of 6 billion people must have been more like 96 billion a mere four generations ago.
posted by jenkinsEar at 11:23 AM on April 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

The good thing is got about four times as many reincarnations as the rest of you.

The bad thing is that I was a peasant most of the time.
posted by yhbc at 11:51 AM on April 25, 2015

I've lived 20 previous lives, only 4 of them female. Most recently, I was broadcaster David Franklin. Who knew?

All the rest of my incarnations were scientists (2), politicians, or royalty. Go figure.
posted by SisterHavana at 1:33 PM on April 25, 2015

Yeah, except most people get to these quizzes through Facebook, so they've already got your name, address, relationship status, political affiliations, and a photo of what you had for lunch.
Reason #314 why I'm glad I deleted my Facebook account with extreme prejudice three years ago.

In my past life I was the creator of "Alvin And The Chipmunks". This explains why my current life sucks so bad.... karma's a bitch.
posted by The otter lady
No, otterlady, Ross Bagdasarian Sr. was a cool dude who was the cousin of William Saroyan, wrote and/or sang some cool records before creating the Chipmunks and played a piano-playing neighbor in Rear Window. And the Original 1960s "Alvin Show" was cool and featured the character Clyde Crashcup, InventOr. (The cheesy Chipmunk stuff was done after his death by Ross Bagdasarian JR., which is much worse for HIS karma than yours.)
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:24 PM on April 25, 2015

Okay, I tried family members and got some results without a loop glitch...

My father's predecessors included Davy Crockett (which explains a lot about my childhood - I like raccoons and he tried to make me into a hat... KIDDING), Frederick the Great of Prussia, Pope Innocent X, Leonardo DaVinci (yet, when he painted the house I grew up in, he never did the ceilings) and the French King known as Louis the Stammerer.

My mother's predecessors were mostly uninteresting (a Welsh rugby star, a Norwegian organist, the 2nd Duke of Dorset, mayor of Nuremberg, Duchess of Savoy...) until she got back to 1606 when she was Guy Fawkes. Atta girl.

And my ex-wife also had boring predecessors up to the 13th century when she was Kublai Kahn (which does explain some things about our relationship - no I won't explain).
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:43 PM on April 25, 2015

I tried to enter today's date to see who was being reincarnated RIGHT NOW but it only goes up through 2013 :(
posted by kagredon at 5:22 PM on April 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Apparently I started off as the emperor of Japan, then became an Egyptian, and made a stop along the way as the patron saint of hobos, prostitutes and the mentally ill before becoming the emperor of Byzantium! My goodness, so much royalty. Looks like I'm slumming it in the current incarnation.
posted by Kevin Street at 7:38 PM on April 25, 2015

My most recent incarnation before this one was as Vince Lombardi. The Husband is wildly amused by this, as I genuinely have no fucks to give about American football.

Alas, no soccer, hockey, or baseball players in my lineage.
posted by MissySedai at 10:33 PM on April 25, 2015

My parents had much more interesting past lives: my dad was Kublai Kahn and my mom was Christopher Columbus.
posted by SisterHavana at 2:21 AM on April 26, 2015

I tried to enter today's date to see who was being reincarnated RIGHT NOW but it only goes up through 2013 :(

The metaphysical consequences of this seem pretty troubling
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:02 AM on April 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

Reincarnation doesn't make much sense when you consider that there are more people in the US now than there was in the entire world a thousand years ago.

Nah, it just means that some people don't have souls.
posted by polymodus at 5:44 AM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Gosh, will you look at that. There were THREE WOMEN in history. I must have been them all. How busy me and my others must have been producing all the rest of the famous people.

I haven't read the comments yet so apologies if that's the 50th time it's been said.
posted by glasseyes at 6:52 AM on April 26, 2015

Agreed that it's a cool idea, but thanks to the patriarchal view of history, ALL of my past lives were men. But maybe that was just me.

I was Dorothea Lange right before this shockingly mundane identity I'm living now, but prior to that it's all men, most of them generals, earls, kings, and famous artists.
posted by not that girl at 9:01 AM on April 26, 2015

I was born the day L. Ron Hubbard died. The Indigo Girls did not address this possibility.
posted by chaiminda at 9:13 AM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

This was fun. I got Averroes, who I love.
posted by nikitabot at 10:15 AM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Reincarnation doesn't make much sense when you consider that there are more people in the US now than there was in the entire world a thousand years ago.

But who said that reincarnation has to only work forward in time? Imagine a trillion souls (or more) who loop through the ages like giant ribbons. Die in 2015, reincarnate in ancient Rome. Die in ancient Rome and get born in one million AD. People going back in forth in time, crossing over with each other in great random loops. If you could see the whole picture it would be incredibly confusing (meeting people before they met you, or meeting them "again" in the past, and so on), but all you'd remember is your current life so the confusion would be hidden.
posted by Kevin Street at 2:32 PM on April 26, 2015

Once I was a bullfrog, had to struggle for survival / and once I was a carp and lived in waters ornamental / and once I was a mynah bird, quoting verses from the Bible / I said "pretty boy! pretty boy! Saint Luke!"
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 4:42 PM on April 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

I liked that I frequently came out as royalty...but that's likely to happen when you can't keep track of peasants.

Also, I was a politician a few times, a mathematician (boy, did that not stick), and Grandpa Walton. Wait, whaaat?
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:11 AM on April 29, 2015

I liked that I frequently came out as royalty...but that's likely to happen when you can't keep track of peasants.

This is just mining Wikipedia. You could probably build something that mines genealogical databases but then... lots of people around the world passed away on the day you were born. So that's no fun.

But who said that reincarnation has to only work forward in time? Imagine a trillion souls (or more) who loop through the ages like giant ribbons.

Technically then there only needs to be one soul who loop back and forth in time. The physicist John Wheeler came up with a similar idea to explain why any electron looks like any other electron:
There is only one electron.
posted by vacapinta at 11:52 AM on April 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

That is VERY COOL. Thanks for the link, vacapinta!
posted by Kevin Street at 4:59 PM on April 29, 2015