Here is an Excellent Blog
Hail, Sons & Daughters of Carnegie!:
Here’s one way to make a better world. Have the Great Djin pull all of our souls out of our bodies and transport them to a huge celestial conference center. Have the Djin tell us we can’t leave until we agree on the principles, social arrangements, and political institutions that will govern the planet when we return. Here’s the kicker: Make it clear that after we finish our deliberations, there will be a random shuffling of bodies and souls. If we were born a poor Arab herdsman, we might return to earth as a wealthy German magnate; if we were a straight Caucasian woman from Mobile, Alabama, with a large family, our next avatar might be a gay African American man living with HIV/AIDS in Manhattan. We can’t count on our age, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, health, wealth, IQ, religion, political affiliation, or even world-view to survive the shuffle.
I suspect the prospect of inhabiting another person’s skin would sharpen our empathic faculties. If we were wealthy, suddenly the lot of the poor would take on a new significance; if we were straight, the denial of basic human rights to gays and lesbians would acquire new meaning. We’d be very careful how we arranged the planet prior to our return, uncertain of what our position in it would be.
