Sorry for the absence, folks. I ran away to Washington for the weekend for a wedding and everyone knows that the Lent Ghost cannot follow you across state lines. It’s like vampires or Nazgul with running water in that way. I have been writing during the absence but it took the form of fifty different one-to-two-hundred word responses to paper proposals from my students. Blegh. Now I’m back and ready to resume writing for myself!
For today I simply have a quick public service announcement. On the radio this afternoon I heard a local broadcaster discussing the Portland Trailblazers. He was describing a particularly good game by new forward Gerald Wallace and made the emphatic point that Wallace was literally the reincarnation of Michael Jordan. He was very firm on the “literally” part, a not uncommon misuse of the word, but when combined with his application of reincarnation I simply must take a moment to bitch.
First off, reincarnation has many forms depending on your religious background. I’m assuming we’re talking primarily about the most commonly used Hindu concept. Regardless of what tradition your follow, all reincarnations require deincarnation first. Before a soul can enter a new body it must leave the old one behind. A quick check of wikipedia tells me that Michael Jordan is still very much alive, so dead as his eyes may look in all those Hanes commercials I think we can assume his soul still resides somewhere behind them. Furthermore, Wallace was born in 1982, when Jordan was only nineteen and still playing college ball at North Carolina. Thus his soul would have needed to leap to Wallace before it ever attained basketball superstardom.
Second, reincarnation typically involves some progression or regression. Some religions state that it is exceedingly rare for a human to be reborn a human immediately upon death. Those that allow for human-human transfers typically make clear some change in caste or situation. To suggest that Gerald Wallace secretly used to be another American-born NBA small forward also known for great athleticism and excellent defense alongside his offensive gifts, as in this case, is exceedingly unlikely. Wallace is even on pace to make about the same career earnings as Jordan, placing them in as near to identical socioeconomic circumstances as is possible in this country.
Finally, reincarnation involves a complete forgetting of the previous life. Loss of knowledge plus an entirely new body makes the odds of a soul happening to wind up in the top .0001% of athleticism twice in a row quite unlikely. Seriously, do the math- it’s not difficult. Reincarnation does not happen because a great athlete ought to get another go-around; reincarnation happens because he’s still full of desire for the things of this world and has not yet been able to break the cycle of death and rebirth that blinds him to the true nature of his eternal souls. It’s a clean slate to try once again for moksha and the last thing Jordan would need to get over his hypercompetitive desires.
I could go on but I think the dead horse is sufficiently beaten. Please, put religions you don’t understand away. Karma does not mean that if you are nice to a homeless woman a wealthy one will give you a car. The Koran is not just a Bible for Muslims. Christianity is not just Pat Robertson. Failure to recognize these things should earn you a (non-literal) foot in the butt.
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