Although there seems to be a general consensus on the one-life belief, this remains only a possibility to which we attach an incredibly high probability of veracity. Strictly speaking, however, the validity of our belief is simply an assumption, because it cannot be fully proved given the absense of conclusive information of what happens to human beings after they die. What if we are wrong? Would there be significant changes in the way people behave? 

I have exposed this possibility to two or three friends of mine and their answer was a weird look, as if we had full knowledge of the fact that we live only once. Galileo must have received similar looks hundreds of times when he claimed that the Earth was moving. True, he had conclusive evidence which supported his argument, but the dogma in his days was that the Earth was the centre of the universe and at that time it seemed to be a very logical and true statement, or in any case a most probable one. Similarly, before the evolution of a theory of microbiology, the causes of diseases were firmly believed to be other than microbes, because there was simply not conclusive evidence of their existence.

It is not my aim here to argue whether or not the one-life belief is right or wrong. Rather, I claim that as long as it remains a probability instead of a certainty, then there is room for alternative explanations of how the world actually works. Therefore, it makes sense to analyse plausible alternatives, even though we may not attach a high probability to their truth. More concretely, my point here is that assumptions about the way things work are not only a characteristic of simplified models of reality in social sciences (which, be it said, are much criticised particularly when they stand as a dogma in case of uncertainty). We make assumptions about our surrounding environment every day, some stronger than others, which condition the way we live our lives.

As I will show in this article, it turns out that the one-life belief is a particularly strong assumption. I do so by comparing our present scenario with a hypothetical world in which individuals expect to have infinite lives. Under a set of further assumptions to be described below, it can be shown that the infinite-lives belief would lead to a higher concern on wealth distribution and equality of opportunities than under the one-life belief.

Our alternative: Description of a world with an infinite-lives belief

The first point to notice is that I have decided to choose an infinite-lives belief, rather than two-lives belief or any other case of the set of finite-lives beliefs (to which the one-life belief belongs). The reason why is because the infinite-lives alternative is the natural opposite belief in this context.

In order to simplify the possibilities arising from any multi-lives belief, I shall make three further assumptions:

1. Individuals do not know in which place they are going to be born in their next life. For practical purposes, we can assume that individuals are born in random geographical locations.
2. Individuals do not remember their actions in any past lives while being alive, hence their behaviour in life t+1 is independent of what they did in life t.
3. Individuals behave rationally and attempt to maximise well-being along their lives, given their infinite-lives belief (which for them has a probability of 1 or nearly 1, just as it has the one-life belief for us).

Much in the fashion of the permanent income hypothesis, which states that people prefer to smooth their consumption patterns over the lifecycle, it seems plausible to argue that individuals in this hypothetical world would like to smooth their well-being over their infinite lives. Now, this has strong implications when taking into account assumption (1). In a world like ours, the probability of being born poor in our next life would be quite high. Similarly, the probability of being born rich would be fairly low. Thus, it would be rational for society as a whole to pursue a more egalitarian distribution of wealth within and between countries. After all, what would you prefer, one extra dollar when you are rich or when you are poor? Certainly you would value it more when being poor. Hence, you would earn more overall, in terms of well-being, if you could transfer resources when you are rich to the lives when you are poor. Given assumptions (1), (2) and (3), the best way to do so would be by attaining a general redistribution of wealth so as to minimise the fluctuations in personal wealth over the infinite periods to live.

Moreover, it would also become rational to ensure equality of opportunities. By achieving this, each individual would be sure to have the same probability of success during each life, given their efforts. Of course, there will be differences in outcomes from one life to another, but they would be minimised and would depend mostly on the individual, rather than the circumstances around him.

A further implication is the sharing of ideas and the concerns of society for global issues. These two coming from the fact that individuals will eventually enjoy/suffer the outcomes of their own and other's actions in future lives.

I do not intend to carry this analysis to a more profound stage. However, I think that some of the consequences of changing our belief about life have appeared clearly. Hence, were the infinite-lives belief to be true, we would not be behaving in the most beneficial way for our purposes, because we are not doing much to improve our expected well-being for the next life.

Do you think I am being too extreme in my analysis? Well, I think that the case of an infinite-lives belief is an interesting possibility, independently of whether it holds or not. But the crucial point I wanted to make throghout this article is that a sudden change in our life assumptions -which could be triggered, for instance, by an unexpected scientific discovery- can dramatically change the way we behave. The lesson: be open-minded and do not get attached to dogmas, you never know when they are going to break down.