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[Jari Katir]

So I'm finally working on Jari's proper backstory, and I have most details down except for one pretty major one...just what is up with the whole Intaki 'rebirth' process they do? Jari is a Reborn and it reads like some kind of modified cloning, but also they make it sound like the whole Buddhist concept of spiritual rebirth happening as part as the normal life cycle.

So...what's the deal? Do the temples of the Intaki faith have kinds of cloning facilities designed to help 'rebirth' people into infant bodies instead of being straight cloned, or is it more like a 'past life' thing where you're taught that the enlightened members of society are the result of their souls being cycled through the life/death cycle before.

If it is a scientific thing, how 'pure' is it? My original idea for Jari is for him to be half Amarr, do they experiment with what different options a guy can have when being reborn, or is it pure 'you go in Intaki you come out Intaki'? It just is a bit tough for me to get a baseline for the Intaki culture with the stuff I've read, they keep bouncing between this Buddhist style faith based around reincarnation to a people who infused 'modern' tech with their old faith.

[Saxon Hawke]

The simple answer to your question is that there is no simple answer.

Check out http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=673.0 to get you started. There are links inside that thread to even more threads so it might keep you busy for a while.

[Jari Katir]

Damn Saxon, I ask a question and you swoop in with an info-bomb! Thanks a lot, I'll pour over that stuff while I'm cooped up in my house due to weather and figure out what I'll do with it.

[Saede Riordan]

I've been RPing with Arci that that is an actual memory transfer between a newborn child and a secure memory storage unit from someone recently killed. I've seen it as functioning in a number of ways.

The first way, the reborn person chooses to entirely forget their old life, melding their personality with that of the new person.

In the second way, the reborn partly forgets, having their memories return as they age to the point where they can handle them, knowledge slowly trickling in.

The third way, the reborn simply remembers everything.

in all three ways, the child is taught about their past lives in detail, told of their history, their actions.

[Jari Katir]

I've been RPing with Arci that that is an actual memory transfer between a newborn child and a secure memory storage unit from someone recently killed. I've seen it as functioning in a number of ways.

The first way, the reborn person chooses to entirely forget their old life, melding their personality with that of the new person.

In the second way, the reborn partly forgets, having their memories return as they age to the point where they can handle them, knowledge slowly trickling in.

The third way, the reborn simply remembers everything.

in all three ways, the child is taught about their past lives in detail, told of their history, their actions.

Yea that was gonna be question two, how much memory is carried over. I think I'll go with the second  option, seems the most realistic for the culture, you don't want to overwhelm a child with all the stuff from their past, but at the same time you don't wanna delete the 'old life' from someone's mind, it'd kinda defeat the purpose of the whole thing.

[Saede Riordan]

I'd imagine that they'd set a "memory point" at say 20-30 years old, wherein, that's the point where all their memories have been restored. So the memories trickle in at a set rate, integrating smoothly into the mind, and by the time the person is at say, 24 years old, (this would depend on the person) they would have all their memories. Some reborn might slow the memory return to a trickle, so they don't have all the knowledge until they are in their 40s or 50s, while others might do it more rapidly, getting all their memories back by the time they enter their late teens.

[lallara zhuul]

Basically Rebirth is culturally accepted way by the Intaki to take away the life and the future of a younger individual and replace it with complete enslavement to an ego of a 'spiritually enlightened' individual.

It's the most abhorrent practice in New Eden right after the Blood Farms of the Blood Raiders.

[Mizhara]

Basically Rebirth is culturally accepted way by the Intaki to take away the life and the future of a younger individual and replace it with complete enslavement to an ego of a 'spiritually enlightened' individual.

It's the most abhorrent practice in New Eden right after the Blood Farms of the Blood Raiders.

THANK YOU! Finally someone who sees this besides me...

[Valdezi]

OOC, I agree that rebirth is a highly ethically questionable practice.

It seems like most of the evidence points to the Idamas not using technological means, but being reborn in the same way the Dalai Lama is.

Hence the reason I chose 'diplomats' rather than 'reborn' for my character's bloodline, despite the obvious religious bent to his RP. The reborn option is, frankly, creepy.

[Seriphyn]

I was under the impression Rebirth would only be from Intaki to Intaki.

I mean, considering it is based around the Ida faith, which is in turn based around the Intaki...having a spiritually-enlightened Brutor with an Intaki accent would be a bit odd.

Or, if the soul is transferred to someone completely unawares, then after they die, that would be it, right?

Hard time articulating but I think you know what I mean.

An easier analogy is like a Hindu reincarnating to a Christian...Christians don't even believe in reincarnation.

[Vieve]

Basically Rebirth is culturally accepted way by the Intaki to take away the life and the future of a younger individual and replace it with complete enslavement to an ego of a 'spiritually enlightened' individual.

It's the most abhorrent practice in New Eden right after the Blood Farms of the Blood Raiders.

THANK YOU! Finally someone who sees this besides me...

Not just you.

It's one of the reasons that Celeste is prejudiced against Intakis.  It's not something she goes around advertising, of course, because it would have been political suicide when she was in the Federation -- and well, she's not exactly in a position in the State where she feels comfortable attempting to influence political policy.

In the case of the Intaki, Celeste wishes her Gallente kinsmen would have not done such a half-assed job of cultural repression.   She credits (faults, really) their practice of child sacrifice rebirth and the Intaki respect for their Reborn for ensuring that a portion of their race seem to remain in the Stone Age.

[Vieve]

I've also been playing with a very minor story thread about a half-Gallente half-Intaki boy whose ditzy socialite Gallente mother found someone unscrupulous enough to perform the Rebirth ritual on her son and the memories of his Intaki grandfather, a genius mathematician who worked as part of a warp engine design team for Roden Shipyards.

The kid suffered a bit of a mindlock.  He's now an extremely intelligent kid, but he can communicate only via mathematics.

[Saede Riordan]

I'd figured it a good deal differently then that, and for that reason, don't see the issue.

Basically, the procedure is done perhaps even before childbirth, if the icon is anything to go by. The new child doesn't lose their sense of self by inheriting the memories, and I do see it like that. Its not the child having their consciousness erased and overwritten by another, they simply inherit the memories, likely often with built in conditioning that protects the child from those memories. It would be like me waking up every day with a few more memories of my grandfather's life. I wouldn't become him, I would still be me, but I'd have his knowledge, experience, and wisdom, which I could then choose to completely ignore.

With Arci I wrote a very clear divide into her mental state. She's 29, she has physical memories of those 29 years of her life, and despite having had memories of her past lives slowly trickling into the back of her mind, she still manages to be a normal kid, make stupid decisions, and get in trouble for them.  Her memories are very much just that. Memories. She's not the same person any more, and some people who were best friends with her in a past life probably don't like her very much now.

[GoGo Yubari]

All this is in the links, but since people are ignoring those I'll have to repeat myself...

The traditional way of "rebirth" for the Idama does not involve technology and is not the same as the Reborn process. It is a spiritual act - whether this is precisely true or not in the setting. Indeed, comparing it to the Dalai Lama and the tulkus seems appropriate. No child's personality is overwritten, nothing horrible happens, unless you don't believe in the validity of the reincarnation and consider a child being raised as an incarnation of a past person as horrible - I can certainly see how that might be someone's opinion.

The Reborn process involves technology and apparently - as the PF isn't abundantly clear - transplants an old personality into a fresh baby. Yes, it could be viewed as horrible in some circles. Even modern Idamas use this method these days because the old reincarnation method is tedious, but crucially not all Reborn are Idamas. It might be a case of evolving technology allowing an Intaki custom to become fact (which speaks volumes about the Intaki mentality/spirituality).

Since it's all technology, a non-Intaki could be Reborn, sure. Thus a non-spiritual person can apparently be Reborn as well. Whether there are specific requirements for the personality of the transplantee is unclear, but it was strongly suggested in the past that Intaki techniques allowed the creation of the jump clone system for capsuleers which further suggests that a certain degree of training (see in-game skill system) is indeed required.

Certain groups in the Gallente Federation consider the Intaki who engage in this as "baby killers". I suggest this (and any likely Gallente attempts to criminalize this) should be one major bone of contention (among several similar Gallente criticisms of traditional Intaki culture) for the Intaki separatists.

[Jari Katir]

I was under the impression Rebirth would only be from Intaki to Intaki.

I mean, considering it is based around the Ida faith, which is in turn based around the Intaki...having a spiritually-enlightened Brutor with an Intaki accent would be a bit odd.

Or, if the soul is transferred to someone completely unawares, then after they die, that would be it, right?

Hard time articulating but I think you know what I mean.

An easier analogy is like a Hindu reincarnating to a Christian...Christians don't even believe in reincarnation.

Well I think the confusion on possible 'half-bloods' and such on my part is that Hindu and such reincarnation is entirely faith based, so yea a Christian would never think 'yep I'm a reincarnated Hindu' just because it's an issue of pure faith. The Intaki style, though, seems to be science wrapped in faith, it's not so much the 'soul' being transferred but rather the memories and such, it's a very real procedure that involves basically shoving your memory into an embryo (from how the character creation makes it sound) and then bam, new baby with your 'past life'.

Of course, culturally I'd imagine a 'half-breed' is about as diluted as they'd want to go just because yea, the scientific procedure is a cornerstone of Intaki culture so it'd just be wasted on someone not of the culture. I'd imagine it would vary between the scientists (priests?) doing the work on how they feel about it though. For example, in Jari's history he was put into a half-Amarr embryo to basically study nature vs nurture when it comes to the importance of Ida faith and culture (and of course typical Amarr noble scheming and such but that's not related to this topic!). This isn't a normal thing, but rather the actions of a rather unscrupulous sciencepriestwhatever, and I'd think that in that matter it'd be pretty open to the patient and doctor for if that's ok or not as long as there were somehow roots of Intaki culture.