Starting off with my least interesting thought about this, to get it out of the way....I know I don't want to be born into wealth. Generally speaking, I think its a curse more than a blessing. I've never encountered someone who was born into wealth who seems to very much understand the value of effort. Also, if your parents are very wealthy, usually they got that way by exploiting other people and twisting their perceptions all around in the process. Rich people tend to be obsessed with weird things. I've known one rich person who didn't have very much of his self-image invested in his wealth, but he made other sacrifices. Its true that if you're born wealthy you may have leisure time for interesting pursuits like philosophy. But you're also disconnected from what the reality of life is to so many of the people you life depends on, so I don't know how much all that time actually helps. Obviously some wealth is helpful, but it seems to me to start becoming counterproductive fairly quickly as one rises out of the middle class.

The 'what to be next life' question is interesting because its very nearly the same as the question of why we are here now. And of course its also interesting because you can't answer it without thinking about what it means to be 'you'.

I can't answer that for myself, but I'll take my best crack at it. I guess these aren't new thoughts.

I'm horrified by the reality I find myself in, having to kill other things that want to live in order to survive for instance. This should not be. It feels to me like the real world has been stolen and replaced by some kind of perverted imitation. So I'm obsessed with trying to find how to put it right. Or if it doesn't need to be put right, I want to understand that. It seems arrogant, one man imagining he has a role in fixing the universe, which from all appearances is damn big. At the same time, it seems I didn't choose this, its more like I was created for this, that everything I express is a small part of a larger story.

What I want for a next life depends on the truth about this. If there's nothing I can do by living that helps fix the world, then I don't want to come back to a world that's even remotely like this. To use a metaphor I've used before, I want to eat aging caterpillars and shit youthful butterflies. Food should be consensual. I don't want to be spiritually blind, it should be my right as a living creature to be able to discover what the fuck I am if I'm capable of asking the question. What did I do to deserve this? Its like being a life-long Alzheimer's victim.

Another part of me just wants oblivion, believes its the only answer, despairs that its not even possible.

If this world can be redeemed, and if my being alive and in its grip helps somehow, then I want to be a part of that. Since I don't understand why the world is the way it is, I can't judge what is the right thing to want though. It does seem that I am at least in some sense evil, so I want to put that right. This says the same thing I just said about the world, but I've just shifted my standpoint and called it myself. I guess it seems to me like the same thing, 'I' am what I am, there's really no escaping from myself.

Now I'm not sure that the question makes sense, that a person's life can be very different from who they are. If you could 'come back' and have some significantly different set of experiences you wouldn't be you. I guess somebody already said that.

The moon orbiting the earth is in balance, in the sense that it keeps falling past the earth. A satellite that would fall towards the earth and impact it is also in a kind of balance, in the sense that its following its natural path under the same law, but its not in balance in the same sense, its going to end in destruction. My point of this metaphor is that it seems like everything is in balance, and yet, there is a way that everything is out of balance. Life is somehow perfectly choreographed by some hidden intelligence, and yet, somehow its all fucked up at the same time, as if the plan its following is insane. Many people think, for example, that tornadoes are random, but they're not. I know there's a reason they hit houses instead of missing them all, even though I don't understand what that reason is. Its as if its an expression of something, somehow we've lost our compassion and can't hope to find it again unless we see our brutality expressed.

I don't think its possible for us to find our true conscious balance from where we are now. But I want to find what moves us in that direction, so that it will be possible for someone, eventually, so to speak. 'Knowledge' seems to me to be real in a context. If this knowledge I seek isn't useful here, than I don't even need it. But maybe 'I' would like to be in a context where such knowledge is appropriate, even though I don't even know what that means.

I would like to be a mother again. But in better circumstances.

'I' is such a weird concept.

Being able to fly would be nice.

I would like to feel cared for.

I guess that was more than a bit hard to follow. That's my best answer today though.