The Illusion of the Reset: responsibility in an Age that fears Finality

We live in a culture deeply shaped by the logic of the reset: technological, relational, professional, and even identity-based resets. Everything appears reversible, upgradable, erasable. This mindset, born in the digital realm, has become a lens through which we interpret existence itself. Yet a crucial question remains unanswered: is it really possible to start over without consequences?

This habit does not stop at everyday life; it is projected even onto death. The idea of a definitive end, of irreversible responsibility or an ultimate judgment, has become increasingly unbearable. In this context, reincarnation takes on a reassuring psychological function: one returns to learn, corrects mistakes in a subsequent life, and nothing is final. The concept of karma is often simplified and moralized, turning into a retrospective justification of others’ suffering: if someone suffers, they must have deserved it.

My personal experience in India—over a year of living there, studying yoga and staying in an ashram—was deeply formative. I learned fundamental concepts, such as the distinction between the observer and thoughts, a perspective that can offer real tools for inner awareness. However, the contradictions between spiritual theory and its social applications forced me into a broader critical reflection.

The Ethical Problem of the “Moral Reset”

If the idea of reset eliminates the definitiveness of judgment, it also eliminates full responsibility. In a system where everything can be compensated for in another life, every action loses its real moral weight. Stealing, lying, killing become temporary acts, diluted within an infinite cycle of returns. This is not only philosophically problematic, but ethically dangerous.

A worldview that consoles by eliminating responsibility does not build justice; it produces moral anesthesia. The idea that suffering is always the result of past faults can lead to indifference: people left to die on the street, accidents ignored, inequalities accepted as “destiny.” Human beings, rather than confronting emptiness and finitude, often prefer reassuring answers—even when they are false or unprovable.

The Biological Question

From a biological and neuroscientific perspective, reincarnation finds no empirical support. Memory is not an abstract or extracorporeal entity, but a physical process emerging from the brain’s neuronal activity. With brain death, consciousness—as we know it—ceases. There is no known mechanism that allows the transfer of personal identity from one body to another.

DNA does not contain memories of previous lives. Concepts such as genetic inheritance or epigenetics are often confused with reincarnation, but these are well-defined biological processes that do not imply any continuity of individual consciousness. There is no experimental evidence, nor any coherent scientific model, that makes reincarnation a plausible theory from a biological standpoint.

Its strength lies not in truth, but in psychological function: reducing death anxiety and giving retrospective meaning to suffering. Yet an explanation that comforts is not necessarily an explanation that is true.

The Islamic Response

Islam addresses these questions without resorting to comforting shortcuts. Earthly life is one, responsibility is real and irreversible, and so is divine mercy. There is no reset, but there is conscious forgiveness; there is no automatic erasure of consequences, but the possibility of authentic repentance.

Meaning is not postponed to another life: value is now, every action counts now, even the smallest good deed carries real and immediate weight. This vision restores dignity to human action and grounds justice not in destiny, but in choice.

Islam does not demand blind faith. On the contrary, it constantly appeals to the intellect: “Do you not reflect?” “Do you not reason?” It invites observation of nature, logical deduction, and the use of reason as a means of approaching truth. It does not invade the scientific domain, but presupposes it—and the historical contribution of Islamic civilization to astronomy, medicine, mathematics, zoology, embryology, and other natural sciences is undeniable.

Metaphysical Coherence and Scientific Compatibility

The Islamic worldview is compatible with biology and neuroscience: personal identity is linked to the brain, memory is not transferable, and biological death is irreversible. The proposed metaphysics does not contradict what we know scientifically, but situates itself beyond what science can measure, without denying it.

The Qur’an—textually stable, preserved, and historically documented—reinforces the credibility of this vision. It does not claim to be a scientific manual, but offers an ontological and moral framework coherent with human reason.

In a world that fears definitiveness, Islam reaffirms the value of responsibility. In a culture that seeks the reset, it reminds us that meaning is born not from erasure, but from awareness. It does not remove the weight of actions, but makes that weight meaningful. And precisely for this reason, it restores to the human being their deepest dignity: that of being responsible, free, and capable of choosing the good, here and now.