Do you fear death?

I'm afraid-ish of death. It really depends on who dies. So I wouldn't mind a ruthless murderer, but I would care if it was my family or friends.

 

Well, I've been siding with yes and no, as said with my previous post. I feel as if I don't fear death, but then I think, what if I knew I was going to die the next day? I guess that's totally different since knowing about my own death would bring an unpleasant feeling to me.


I know that some of you guys say you don't fear death and that's cool, but in the end, I think that when it finally comes, you will. Yeah, regardless if you've done the best with your life or w/e.

 

I disagree. I will not believe that I can die until it happens, and by then it will be moot. I have no reason to fear something that is so irrelevant.

Not only will this increase the efficiency of my life and decrease stress, but it will help keep me healthy as well. The less stress a person suffers, the healthier they will be into old age. Correct?

 

Oh yeah, I forgot that you don't believe you can die. So, what do you mean by that again? I think we had talked about this in that Voxli room. But yeah you have a point. We (well, the fortunate ones) have enough time to live life, so why worry about death?

And as for that stress thing: If that's so, I wonder how healthy I'll turn out lol.

 

High stress levels decrease lifespans. Optimists live longer in general.

 

I will be full of fear in my last moments, likely, but whether it is fear of the actual death I will be feeling, that is another question entirely really, because I will likely be fearing a lot of things to come. Some people pass peacefully in the night, never to know.

Not believing you can die doesn't change an allusions that you will. And if you want to make the argument that you haven't died before, you have no first hand experience and all that, observation of death around you, of life ending is proof enough. If you are alive you will die. That is nature. Everything with a beginning has an end. The only thing that does not end is energy, simply changes and converts, never created or destroyed. You will be no different.

And not thinking about dying? It's not like everyone thinks about dying all the time, if they do they are likely in a state of depression or in general some debilitating thoughts that stops them from functioning properly. The instinct of survival overrides the thoughts of dying most of the time, only ever since humans have learnt the comfort of not having to hunt and survive in packs for such a while, they've been able to contemplate such ideas.

 

If I may correct you, the only thing that we have no evidence of ending is energy. You know how I feel about evidence. Evidence is observed; it is a projection of the conscious mind. If energy is projected infinitely by the conscious mind, then a part of the mind must also be infinite by extension.

The moment I accept the idea of death is the moment I stop striving to live. Whether I die or not is irrelevant, so as I have no proof that I will die nor will profit by believing that I will, it is better to believe that I will not.

 

Yes. Emphatically yes. And I don't just fear death; I hate it. The only time I've successfully confronted and discarded the fear of death is when I would despair at living further, and those times are rare and fleeting. What I fear about death isn't the thing itself, but the notion of it being an end which yields no new beginnings. It makes no sense to me. It frays my understanding. I don't believe that there is nothing afterward, but doubt seizes me on occasion—I think of it often when I lay down to sleep, and I'm faced with the blackness behind my own eyes. I wonder if, some day, that'll be all there is to the world. No sense. Just void. The thought terrifies me, makes me restless, always keeps me from sleeping, and on occasion drives me to tears. When I confront the death of others, I am fearful and frustrated. I would war with death if I could.

I believe it's primal. A combination of facing the unknown, the limitations of my perception (Despite believing to some degree that we're all connected, I remain aware only of myself), and the sadness in the thought that I or anyone else might leave no real, lasting impression. Once more, something I don't believe continues to prod me: If a life ends, if it is fleeting, does it have any worth? My doubts would say not. That thought is staggering. I fear and despise my own death, and from there the deaths of others.

But even then, I know something about that just isn't right. In the times that I fear living further, I recognize that it is due to the limits of my perception. I've only lived about a fifth of a life; enough time to establish a pattern, perhaps, but leaving plenty of time to break it. An incomplete work is not ready to be judged; nor shall my life be truly analyzable until it is over. If I would rather die, it's because I'm missing something. But if I'd rather live... would the same not hold true?

After much reflection, I've decided that my fear of death is a falsity; my fears cannot be that abstract, because the human mind does not work that way. If I truly understood death, I am forced to conclude, I would not fear it; I might still loathe it, but I would know the place and purpose of that loathing. But I don't. I am gripped by an unnameable something, and no epiphany comes; only a chill of fear. A pang of fury. A mark of weakness. If all were well, I would be free to choose whether life has worth or is worthless. I would not be paralyzed by fear, because that does not help me either way. So something must be wrong with me. When the doubt eats at me, I try to redirect my thoughts to striking down that weakness. I treat my fear of death as an illusion, a distraction—or, perhaps, a lesson. Something to teach fear, and to nurture the fearful until they find courage. Something which will crumble away once the lesson is taught.

I despise death, thus it aims to teach me something; I fear it because I do not yet understand. That is my conclusion. It may be that this is the lesson I will never learn. I only hope that there will be summer classes when the semester ends, if you catch my drift.

 

It does lead to new beginnings, even if there' s indeed no after-life sooner or later your decaying or burned body will sustain other living beings. You know, the circle of life thing. Personally I think it' s much more poetic than any after-life prospect.

I have a hard time following ... do you never watch movies, play games or read books just because they happen to have an end ? To me it is the opposite : it' s because the few time I have is all I have that it is so precious, the less you think you have the more you try to make it count.

 

I dont fear death, I mostly fear dying when my kids (if I ever have any) are young and that my wife will struggle to provde for them.

 

So if you think less about it, the more you feel good. But, what when the time comes? Since you've been happy all this time, wouldn't facing death strike you dead on your spot? Like, the thought of death has finally hit you.



I think Im sounding like a coward.... There are people out there with slim chances of ever living life to the fullest, and here I am talking about dreading it. **** this.

 

I'm not going to package it in a politically correct form and just say it like this: not believing you can die is dumb and/or pretentious. There are no records of an immortal human as of yet, so believing that you'd be the first would be roughly equal to me being convinced that I'll attend Hogwarts next year.

Every piece of evidence is an extrapolation in some way since no two circumstances are the same. If a snake belongs to a poisonous species, it is safe to assume that you will be poisoned too if it were to bite you, even though you have never been poisoned before or if you have never seen that particular snake kill someone. You are a human. You have seen or heard of people dying. Logical outcome: you'll die some day as well. Tough shit if it stops you from striving to live; it doesn't stop me. Accepting finity is a far more adequate response than stubbornly denying it.

It doesn't even matter whether it "increases your efficiency" (although the way you handle the concept of evidence is as inefficient as they come). You don't believe in something because you want to believe in it; you believe in something because you think it makes sense. If pretending to think you can't die does the trick in lowering your stress levels, fine, but the outcome is not an argument in and of itself. See also the "I'll believe in God so I can go to heaven" non-logic.

 

I suppose what you say is true for most people, but not necessarily, and anyway that' s not what I meant. Take money for instance, if you have very little money to go through the month you' ll make damn sure every penny is wisely spent. Or, to make another analogy, if you only had one life to play Kingdom Hearts you' d probably play differently than if you had infinite lives and would find the experience more thrilling, at least that' s what happened to me when I used to play arcade games with a single credit.

Are you speaking to Makaze without quoting him ? Yeah, I was surprised to see him say, basically, "on that one topic screw evidence, I' ll just pick a self-delusion that seems morally comfortable to me". At least that' s how it sounded. I suppose it has something to do with him being a solipsist, I dunno *shrugs*.

 

Exactly. And yeah, I had forgotten to quote him.

 

Not enough for me. As I said, my perception is limited; I am not the ash in my bones and the soil in my skin, but the wondrous something-or-other that animates them all. For that to simply terminate is unacceptable to me. Thankfully, I am not so much rejected on these grounds as I am denied an answer; if such a thing were to continue on, doubtful it would leave a trace. So we are left wondering.

Ah, but that's my point. The only way to explain it leaves me open to defeat: that if we, humans as a collective, do not last eternally in some way, in the end our exploits are swallowed by time. We are worthless. Purposeless. But then the question arises: Whence comes that worth? that purpose? And I know what my answer is. We make it. If we make it, then we have all the purpose in the world; purpose dies with us. And now I arrive at my conclusion: Either I don't truly believe in that answer, which I find unlikely, or the question is merely a shallow doubt. That, or the beginning of a contradiction. And I don't fear those, I celebrate them.

"How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress."
~Niels Bohr​

 

Well actually we have lots of elements that tip the scale on the side that doesn' t please you, as I briefly mentioned in my first post. Alzheimer, amnesic people, there' s all kind of things showing that what makes you you is your brain and that its physical state shapes your personality.

Spoiler

[video=youtube;V6dgozJxj34]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6dgozJxj34[/video]

There' s still room for doubt of course, there' s always room for doubt, but as Styx worded it until we have scientific evidence supporting the existence of an after-life I' ll believe in it as much as I believe in Hogwarts.

 

None of that remotely touches what I'm talking about. Regardless, the only thing mentioned in that video is a lack of evidence. That does not tip the scale. Supposing about the unknown, whether you say there's something there or nothing at all, is a leap. A guess.

I'm not turning this into a science-vs.-religion debate because my opinion is unorthodox, and frankly I'm very stuck-up and condescending in that arena. So let's just say that's not what I'm talking about and leave it at that.

 

I will not package it any less bluntly, either.

I have a god complex, unabashed and unashamed. I do not see myself as mortal or human. Having brushed with death very closely before and come out unscathed despite incredible odds, I have no fear of death and no belief that I can die. I do not believe in the standard definition of human, that it applies to me, nor do I believe that my existence is strictly physical.

If I believe that everyone I have met was in fact not the same as me, then their deaths would not reflect on my own. There is no way to objectively discern whether those others ever lived in the first place, let alone that they are the same type of being as I.

If you say to yourself, "I will die," then you have already given up on surviving. There is a difference between an acceptance of risk and an acceptance of certainty. If, while in the hospital, I accept that I stand the risk of dying, I may still strive to live. If I accept that I certainly am going to die, I will stop striving to live.

I can accept the risk of losing a limb and strive not to lose that limb. I do not have to accept that I absolutely will lose a limb in order to assess and avoid the risk. In fact, accepting that I absolutely will lose a limb will significantly lower my morale for avoiding losing it.

What you accept is the risk of dying, and eventually you will accept the certainty of it and allow yourself to die, or give up striving to live. Unless there is a drastic change, I will never give up this striving, even on my hypothetical deathbed.

Call me pretentious if you will, but I will not accept evidence of others' deaths as counting towards an end to my own existence. I stand to gain nothing by assuming that my capacities are similar to theirs, or that I am going to die because something that was not me has died.

It does. I feel no conviction to take evidence of others' deaths to heart and apply them to myself. I will regard evidence that applies to my own existence highly, but the death of another does not reflect on me. I will not believe that I can die unless or until I do. Even if I am at risk, I cannot think of a reason why I should suddenly fear it. I will probably live longer for not fearing it regardless of whether it happens or not.

 

Saw this coming somehow.

Having your own definitions for generally well-defined concepts is a good way to make your own posts pointless, to say nothing of the ones you read and reply to.

As I've said in my previous post, no two circumstances are ever the same. The same goes for individuals. Nevertheless, we extrapolate and intrapolate in all branches of scientific research and well beyond it. The development of medication relies on population samples rather than a complete picture, and yet it has not prevented us from developing effective medicine.
Of course, extrapolation based on a single observation is asinine, and there is not a single statistician with half a brain cell that would do so.

I have only given up on living indefinitely. I may aim low in having finite ambition; I prefer it to desiring something that is bottomless but, after giving it a minimum of thought, unfeasible.

What you gain by believing something doesn't signify if you genuinely believe in it. I believe a lot of things I rather wouldn't, but I won't turn a blind eye to them just because it'd be convenient.

When you use that as an argument (repeatedly, no less), you don't sound very convinced.

 

There are far more harmful intuition-based conclusions.

I feel no need to give up on this one yet.

The concept of human is very far from well-defined or concrete. But you do not strike me as the philosophical type, so perhaps you would rather ignore the others.

That statistician must first assume that he is not dreaming in order to apply his findings to himself. He must first assume that he and those he is studying are the same type of entity.

That means that eventually, you will feel that your time has come and give up.

The logical conclusion for someone who believes they will die will at some point be, "I will die today." Otherwise, his conclusion will always be, "I will live today," and he will functionally believe himself immortal. Not unlike me.

Belief is unimportant to me on principle. I prefer to focus on what is useful. I will behave as if something is true if doing so helps me complete my goals more than behaving as if it does not. That is my criteria for "belief"; exactly how efficient the concept is to my goals.

Because truth cannot be discerned by observed evidence, a shift to valuing what is useful is more practical. Discerning truth itself is not feasible, so naturally one should favor the tool that is the most efficient over the one that feels more solid.

I do not need to be convinced, my views are flexible. Currently, I profit from this "belief", this intuition. If I stop profiting from it, I will change my stance.

If I am immortal, then I have not wasted my energy on avoiding death. If I am not immortal, then I have lived a happier life free of the stress of a time constraint.

I have a practical use for this concept, so I will use it. There is no need for something so asinine, as you say, as belief.