"Then you must look for a new body. That's what we call reincarnation"
About this Quote
A salesman’s shrug dressed up as metaphysics, this line turns death into a logistics problem: if your current chassis fails, you “look for a new body.” The blunt second sentence does the real work. “That’s what we call reincarnation” isn’t reverent, curious, or even mystical; it’s definitional, branding language. Reincarnation becomes less a sacred cycle than a term of art, a label you can slap on an idea once you’ve made it sound practical.
The intent reads as disarming confidence. Chiu isn’t inviting debate; he’s closing the sale. “You must” imposes necessity, not belief. “Look for” implies agency and consumer choice, as if the afterlife were a marketplace with inventory. The euphemistic “new body” neatly sidesteps the hard part - how consciousness transfers, who assigns the body, what “you” even means - and swaps it for an upgrade narrative anyone raised on self-help and tech metaphors can recognize.
Context matters: Chiu is best known not as a theologian but as a businessman tied to bold claims about immortality and “new body” procurement. In that light, the quote functions like a mission statement: it normalizes an extraordinary promise by using ordinary, transactional language. The subtext is aspirational and slightly coercive: if reincarnation is just what sensible people “call” the obvious next step, skepticism becomes a kind of social illiteracy. It’s clever because it borrows the calm cadence of common sense to smuggle in a spectacular proposition.
The intent reads as disarming confidence. Chiu isn’t inviting debate; he’s closing the sale. “You must” imposes necessity, not belief. “Look for” implies agency and consumer choice, as if the afterlife were a marketplace with inventory. The euphemistic “new body” neatly sidesteps the hard part - how consciousness transfers, who assigns the body, what “you” even means - and swaps it for an upgrade narrative anyone raised on self-help and tech metaphors can recognize.
Context matters: Chiu is best known not as a theologian but as a businessman tied to bold claims about immortality and “new body” procurement. In that light, the quote functions like a mission statement: it normalizes an extraordinary promise by using ordinary, transactional language. The subtext is aspirational and slightly coercive: if reincarnation is just what sensible people “call” the obvious next step, skepticism becomes a kind of social illiteracy. It’s clever because it borrows the calm cadence of common sense to smuggle in a spectacular proposition.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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