# Are you afraid of death? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 9, 2003, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-afraid-of-death/206472 "2003-10-09T13:28:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2003, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-afraid-of-death/206472/61 "2003-10-15T10:49:17Z")
Forgot to add … An ex of mine had an interesting idea about the moment of death. He thought that, at the moment of death, your subjective perception of time would slow right down, the way it does in dreams. That doesn’t mean endless pain - the body’s defences mean that at that moment you’d feel more bliss than pain. My ex thought that, subjectively, that last moment could seem to go on forever, and that is what heaven is. ---
**Author:** ![J-Po](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@J-Po](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/J-Po)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2003, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-afraid-of-death/206472/62 "2003-10-16T14:00:10Z")
I would like to imagine death as Monumental and profound, but when it comes it’s so arbitrary. My friend died (aged 21) in a sedative-induced coma, whilst fighting an infection and undergoing chemotherapy for leukaemia. I wonder what her last conscious thought was. No doubt listening to the doctors who said they’d knock her out for a couple of days while she recovered her strength. My grandad died in a manky local hospital, after a long and happy life. He was distressed and fought long and hard against his weakness. I felt the most wretched sense of pity watching him struggle the last few days. But I don’t think either of their experiences was ultimately ‘different’ or special or profound. It’s just the shell of the body finally giving up. I don’t know if they went anywhere else. I don’t feel them around me anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Esprix](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/esprix/32/7899_2.png) [@Esprix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esprix)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2003, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-afraid-of-death/206472/63 "2003-10-17T07:22:06Z")
I am **TERRIFIED** of death. Sounds like a LiveJournal topic. 😃 Esprix ---
**Author:** ![electric\_sheep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/90db22/32.png) [@electric\_sheep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/electric_sheep)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2003, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-afraid-of-death/206472/64 "2003-10-17T08:07:41Z")
Viscerally, perhaps I do fear death, but consciously I am at peace with it. Or, conversely, I am at peace with the insignificance of life itself, and thus can find comfort within the unreasoning, unending flow of maya, within which we are but minor eddies, building up and dissipating as the years go by. I came from nothing, I am nothing, and will become nothing. > [@](#): > > A being of the nature of man, endowed with the same faculties, but with a longer measure of existence, would cast down a smile of pity and contempt on the crimes and follies of human ambition, so eager, in a narrow span, to grasp at a precarious and short-lived enjoyment. It is thus that the experience of history exalts and enlarges the horizon of our intellectual view. In a composition of some days, in a perusal of some hours, six hundred years have rolled away, and the duration of a life or reign is contracted to a fleeting moment: The grave is ever beside the throne; the success of a criminal is almost instantly followed by the loss of his prize; and our immortal reason survives and disdains the sixty phantoms of kings who have passed before our eyes, and faintly dwell in our remembrance. > > _Edward Gibbon, “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Chapter 48._ ---
**Author:** ![JamesCarroll](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@JamesCarroll](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JamesCarroll)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2003, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-afraid-of-death/206472/65 "2003-10-18T02:37:01Z")
Just in case you hadn’t noticed it there’s a BIG difference between Death and Dead. Death is a moment. And as such, having passed, can never bother you again. Even the time leading up to it is finite. But Dead is forever. FOREVER! What ever it is, it is. FOREVER!!! Just because I see other people “go” before me is no comfort. Maybe I was a lemming in a former life, I don’t know. But if I was I was the one saying "Hey guys, let’s think about this… " [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-afraid-of-death/206472.md?page=3)