There are advantages to having a limited life. If I lived forever, I’d probably lose all motivation to do anything. Why put a lot of effort into picking up a new skill now when I could always procrastinate and do it later?
But with the threat of death looming over my head, I think it actually puts things into focus and forces me to make decisions. For example, If I wait too long to go back to college, eventually I’ll be too old to effectively start a new career.
So, ummm. Can we call this “Quasi’s Death Thread”? (get it?)
Q
Well, before you were conceived, you were dead weren’t you? So you have already experienced it. (that’s what I keep telling myself, anyway)
And personally, I have a very bad feeling about the “huge world changing events”.
And I have a question for you and the others who identified themselves as atheists who don’t believe in life after death.
I don’t believe in it either, but I believe it Is possible there is still a god, but humans and other animals die anyway. Does this make me a real atheist if I believe that way?
An atheist friend of mine and I had an argument about this once. I don’t think that would be bad, really. I can imagine many situations in which oblivion would be a great comfort, and an afterlife is kind of scary (I can’t opt out, ever). She says I only think that because I don’t believe in oblivion anyway; she’s not happy about it at all.
I fear certain ways of dying, but I have no fear of death itself. I wouldn’t want to linger for years as a vegetable or with a serious impairment. And the last thing I’d ever want is to be a burden for my partner. So I’m hoping for a cause of death that enables me to take action and end it quickly, minimizing the suffering for us both. My partner and I have discussed this, and we both agree that “assisted suicide” would be the most humane end for either of us, if it ever came to that.
But I do fear not leaving anything behind, the “you-might-as-well-never-have-lived” syndrome . . . especially since I don’t have kids. I guess that’s one of the reasons I became an artist. Lots of people have my work in their homes, and hopefully that will outlive me.
Yes, absolutely, I do indeed fear death.
I try like hell not to think about it.
No, it just makes you a theist who doesn’t believe in an afterlife.
I dunno. There was an awful lot of oblivion before you were born, too. Yet that fact never bothered anyone. Why should oblivion after you die be a concern?
My own though on the matter is that while the “I” will no longer be there (just as “I” wasn’t there before I was born), life, of which ‘I’ am only a part, goes on after as it has gone on before, with my little additions to it; we live on in the effect that we have had on it for good or bad. For that reason, the thought of oblivion doesn’t bother me, though I do fear the process of passing into it, and the consequences for others - who would presumably be sad.
Well hell, dangermom, at least try to let us know the price of gas over there. I mean, what better reason to go into the light??? 
Q
related video
http://www.theonion.com/video/scientists-successfully-teach-gorilla-it-will-die,17165/
What did Woody Allen say–“I’m not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
As others have said, we all know we’re gonna die, but I could do without the lingering pain/suffer mode.
And my kids have reached young adulthood, but still have a ways to go, I would love to continue on for awhile yet.
I guess I try to have a Flaming Lips “Do You Realize” attitude about death.
BaconandEggs, I am so sorry.
BaconandEggs, I am so sorry.
[/QUOTE]
Thank you for caring. I still put out extra food for the cat who died. It feels just, empty. I don’t know. I really miss him.
When coldness wraps this suffering clay,
Ah! whither strays the immortal mind?
It cannot die, it cannot stay,
But leaves its darken’d dust behind.
Then, unembodied, doth it trace
By steps each planet’s heavenly way?
Or fill at once the realms of space,
A thing of eyes, that all survey?
Eternal, boundless, undecay’d,
A thought unseen, but seeing all,
All, all in earth or skies display’d,
Shall it survey, shall it recall:
Each fainter trace that memory holds
So darkly of departed years,
In one broad glance the soul beholds,
And all, that was, at once appears.
Before Creation peopled earth,
Its eye shall roll through chaos back;
And where the farthest heaven had birth,
The spirit trace its rising track.
And where the future mars or makes,
Its glance dilate o’er all to be,
While sun is quench’d or system breaks,
Fix’d in its own eternity.
Above or Love, Hope, Hate, or Fear,
It lives all passionless and pure:
An age shall fleet like earthly year;
Its years as moments shall endure.
Away, away, without a wing,
O’er all, through all, its thought shall fly,
A nameless and eternal thing,
Forgetting what it was to die. *
And this: World Death Rate holding steady at 100%
I think the biggest fear comes from not seeing death. There was a 25 year stretch between the death of a grandparent and the death of my father, with my last surviving grandparent dying about 6 months after that.
There is no life without death, it’s the natural conclusion of the cycle. I can feel remorse at not living long enough, or fear my life will end too soon, but really, those are wasted calories and there’s more productive things to do with my time.
I fear death in the sense that I “fear” going to work for eight hours or “fear” going to sleep for eight hours.
Another atheist here, and I don’t fear death. It does annoy me that I will never get so see how things turn out centuries or millenia down the road – will humanity ever figure out how to reach the stars, will we ever figure out how to get along, etc. But I’m not afraid of ceasing to be.
I’m not sure I could say exactly why. Part of it probably has to do with the fact that I grew up as a Cold War kid all too close to SAC HQ. Througout my teen years, I figured my odds of dying from a Soviet nuke were better than even before I hit middle age. (Fortunately, I was wrong about that.) That sort of outlook tends to color your attitude toward death.
Part of it may also be that I have a pretty large family, and there’s always someone coming or going. When people go, I’m sad… but the rest of us go on, for now. Maybe part of it’s just good old fashioned Nordic stoicism.
When it’s my turn, I hope my family and friends will throw a party. Take the opportunity to reconnect with each other, share some good memories, and celebrate life. Eat good food and have some drinks, because I won’t be able to.
There was an xkcd strip a while back that summed things up nicely. It was a graph showing how many more Google hits there were for “I wish I’d kissed her/him” than there were for “I wish I hadn’t kissed her/him.”
Stop worrying and go kiss somebody.
I’m not afraid of the act of dying. Not for me, anyway. The pain, if there is any, will eventually stop. But I don’t want my son or daughter or husband to see me die. And I’m terrified that I’ll leave them too early.
I don’t get out much?
And I’m afraid once I started that, I wouldn’t be able to stop!
So I’ll just take what you wrote with a pound of salt and just be as kind and helpful to folks as I can be while I’m on the planet. Deal?
Thanks
Quasi
Damn right, Quasi!
Heh. No need to be quite so literal. My point was, we more often regret the things we didn’t do than the things we did. You never hear somebody look back on their life and say “I wish I hadn’t told my wife I loved her so often” or “I wish I hadn’t spent so much time with my family.” Carpe diem.