yep!
mrclose, I am sure we can all sympathize with your situation. Fear of death and desire for self-preservation is the most basic part of any sane human psyche. It is completely natural.
I am not in your situation, so I cannot really put myself in your shoes. Intellectually, I fear death more because I would not be there for my kids and my wife, and I fear, greatly, for their welfare without me (especially my son’s who is on the autistic spectrum). That is why I think it is kind of a positive to have the time to prepare things. On the other hand, the great negative is the certainty and the anticipation.
If it wasn’t for the taking care of those left behind, I think (again, hard really to think about it, but…) that I would prefer the Sopranos’ ending. Sudden cut to black. And whatever follows (or doesn’t) - follows. Or doesn’t.
Terr … You are a really deep thinker and I admire that!
Heck, I didn’t come here for sympathy.
I came here for thoughts on the subject.
I’m really not all that scared.
I’m just a person that is lying in life’s final fox-hole and wondering … What’s over the hill?
Same thought that I had in nam.
It does suck … not to know!
If you can afford it, I’d get yourself cryogenically frozen. It might work. If it doesn’t work, the outcome is the same. There are legitimate reasons based on well understood science to think there’s a reasonable possibility of it working, albeit there are many risks.
Oh … #ell no!
I understand that they cut your head off and freeze it?
Someday they put your ‘unfrozen’ head on a cloned or even robot body?
Imagine dying and then waking up to find that your a terminator bot?
Problem is … Your head ain’t like the terminators … it’s soft and killable.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this kind of thing myself since I lost someone close to me a couple of months ago. If I was betting on what happens when you die, I’d bet on oblivion, but there are other possibilities. I’m pretty sure heaven and hell aren’t one of them(unless we’re living in a simulation and the designers created a place for our conciousness or soul to reside after death). But there are a lot of interesting hypotheses out there from quantum physicists and philosophers.
Are your objections serious? Here’s themost credible source on the subject. To briefly summarize : if, in the future, scientists revive the OP or others who have been frozen :
It will only be possible if and only if the freezing process left enough information, in the form of frozen biological proteins, to actually recover the information in the OP’s mind. That information is his declarative memories and personality. There’s reason to think that freezing under good conditions does leave enough information, and if the information exists, it is possible. It might take more resources and technology than will ever exist even in centuries, or the cryonic company might go bust, but if the information is there at all, it can be done.
As for how it’s done, there are 2 main ways. One is at the extreme edge of what is theoretically possible, one way will possibly be done in 20 years in a large scientific project.
Way 1 : Using tools like saws and electron microscopes and destructive probes, the OP’s physical brain will have to be completely destroyed by slicing it very thinly and using many probes. The technology to do this exists today, but the budget to do it on the needed scale with today’s tech (tens of billions of dollars) is not currently available.
There is reason to think that future versions of the scanning technology will exist that are cheap and readily available.
Once the scan is complete, the OP would be brought back to life with an artificial brain that uses the information taken from his original one. The artificial brain would probably use vast arrays of digital circuitry to emulate the original brain. A version of the OP would wake up and resume existence, but possibly not the same being as the OP. It’s philosophical. Once the OP has a digital brain, he could theoretically live until the sun burns out because he would always be alive so long as at least 1 copy of him exists.
Way 2 : Using radical, extreme edge technology that would require beyond-human intellect to even build (I don’t think humans are smart enough to make it, but we might be able to create greater than human intelligences using Way 1), you could understand nature to such an extreme degree that you could rebuild neurons using nanorobotic manipulation. Essentially, you’d thaw the brain just enough to put it in a bath of low temperature coolant, and snakelike tendrils of nanorobotics would swarm through his brain, repairing all of the damage done by freezing and death by actually surgically entering each and every neuron and support cell and removing and replacing the damaged proteins. I know this sounds like comic book science fiction, but there is nothing physically impossible about such an act - if you had the ability to engineer machines at the same scale as living cells, and perfect understanding of how biology works at component level, you could do this. The “snakelike tendrils” would be tiny cube shaped robots that would travel down an internal track in the center of the tendril. They would then attach themselve to points at the end of the tendril, causing it to grow in length. The end of the tendril would get cubes assigned that have tiny tools that can manipulate things they touch. The tendrils could be shrunk the opposite way. The tendrils would be extended down every blood vessel and capillary like a snakelike mass of manipulators, ultimately extending reach every single living cell in the entire brain. After the repairs were complete, the whole assembly would deconstruct itself in reverse, returning all of the cube-like nanorobots to a storage reservoir nearby.
Anyways, a person fixed using Way 2 would be the original person and would have no reason to think they were any different than a patient who underwent surgery. Again, you’d literally have to be an engineer at a skill level that could be described in terms reserved for deities - you’d be smart enough to build living things from base molecules if you could do such a thing. However, it’s *physically *possible (all the things I describe are in the same category of manipulations that living cells do today at the molecular level), and it might not take tens of thousands of years for humanity to reach such a skill level if they can bootstrap their way to it. (humans would make a machine that is smarter than themselves, which would help them make another generation of such machine, ultimately getting to the level of skill needed)
The thought of death and not existing is a scary one indeed. Obviously anyone can die at any given time but the younger you are the reality of death seems far away and unreal. I’m a relatively young person and I try not to fixate on thoughts of dying because that is no way to live your life.
A younger person understands death is real and they will die in a detached, intellectual sort of way. But as you grow older or have various health problems and the years start going by faster and faster and you begin to sense that death is real and getting closer all the time and I know that one day I too will be that old guy in my deathbed finally facing the end if I don’t get run over by a bus that is… And that is a truly frightening prospect in many regards.
I hope you will or can at least try to enjoy the time you have left. Recently my Uncle passed away much too soon at the age of only 60 from Pancreatic Cancer. His golden years lay just ahead of him he was going to retire in a couple of years and travel around the country with his wife, but he never got to do those things and his last 8 or so months of his life was misery, pain, and grief. It seems so unfair.
That was one #ell of a book that you just wrote Habeed.
Problem is … I stopped reading right here …:eek:
Thank You.
You are very kind!
Mr. close… You do know you can use grown up words in here.
Hell, if you want you can even say fuck!
Do you have family to be with ? Any bucket list items to enjoy?
Spend time in the here and now. The present is a gift!
Feel free to share anything that may concern you… Any feelings that you have… Or just any bizarre ideas you have, Either here with us, or with your family and friends.
My dad passed away 20 years ago… Halfway around the world. Nobody got to say goodbye. Do you have the gift of the present, enjoy.
When in doubt, try dancing. 
Thank You but I’m a prude!
If I’m gonna actually meet my maker (at any time now) … I ain’t gonna die with the F bomb as the last word in my limited vocabulary.
Well I followed you here from GQ,
I too am touched by your situation.
Both of my parents passed on early from that dreaded C word. I for a long time was a “C” word phobic and every time I transported a terminal “C” to the hospice unit or morgue I would struggle with the prospect of that being my prospective future to the point that I even planned how I would not let the “C” take me and I would end it myself.
Well that was before my X-Wife encouraged me to tag along with her to a small Church she had started attending. Of course I had no interest as I had been pushed through enough “Religion” in my youth to last me
, but one day I gave it a try, hey things weren’t all that peachy anyway, life was in turmoil, I was filled with HATE!
Well the young pastor was nothing like the stiff necked old Barnacle from my youth and he spoke like one of us, No Airs, just an intelligent man explaining the WORD of our Creator and Savior.
Ask Jesus into your life, I cannot do it for you!
The little Church is a CMA and its the best thing that ever happened o us.
We were Re-Married a short time after attending this Church and Life has been better, I have NO fear anymore, i can handle the c word and it doesn’t hold me hostage like before.
As for the top quote, I bolded a line and this has come to mind, {“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”} From Jeremiah 1:5
And there is a show on the tube titled “Proof” and its about NDE’s .
I have seen a couple episodes and i agree with a lot of it because we, “most” do wonder about what comes after death but I absolutely hold to the verse in John chapter 20 verse 29!!!
My prayers are for you to chance a look or to KNOCK on that Door! (Matthew 7-7)
Cheers!!!
That’s a really interesting question. I am a staunch atheist, but I can absolutely understand the appeal of looking for the possibility of an afterlife. I just don’t think I could ever convince myself of its existence. I’d know that I was just looking for comfort in a horrible situation.
That’s ridiculous. In the first place, you do not even have the ability to ‘prefer’ something without having been born and lived for at least a little while. Perhaps the bad news of your cancer is making you despondent and drawing you towards negativity - understandably so, maybe.
But the reality is that you are lucky. Instead of being one of those truly countless numbers of sperm or ova that are flushed away to nothingness, … instead…instead! … you won the lottery and made a viable enough candidate for survival on our earth (no small feat!) and played your part in the greatest show on our planet so far, humanity. Maybe even the greatest show in our solar system or galaxy.
You played a part, but unlike an actor in movies or stage shows, your part was completely unscripted - you made it up as you went, of your own volition, and every small turn you made had a repercussion somewhere else. You will probably never know what difference you made to the great drama of our earth by way of your small existence, but it is undeniable that your presence effected events on this little warm globe that is spinning around in space. You are part of its history in a way that a simple forgotten sperm or ova could not be.
Congratulations.
P.S. Can you tell that I’m struggling with my own similar issues of mortality right now and have been ever since my dad died last year;)?
I realize that in this lottery if we lose we never know we lost, but even so, if the odds against us being here are so steep, as in billions to one, wouldn’t you have to conclude that our existence as individuals is an inevitability? Again, not talking about divine intervention here. If there are infinite timelines then you will exist in one of them.
I’ve heard people advocate living each day as tho it were their last. I would imagine that would hold especially true for someone in your situation. In addition to any bucket list, you have the opportunity of helping create your legacy. How do you want to be remembered, and by whom? Another aphorism, but some folk feel others’ memories of you are the closest thing to immortality. (Well, that and any genetic legacy.)
On the off chance you wake up somewhere, how bout you try to figure out a way to get word back to the rest of us? 
Some ramblings from Dylan:
*“I’m gonna start my pickin’ right now
Just tell me where you’ll be”
Judas pointed down the road
And said, “Eternity!”
“Eternity?” said Frankie Lee
With a voice as cold as ice
“That’s right,” said Judas Priest, “Eternity
Though you might call it ‘Paradise’”
“I don’t call it anything”
Said Frankie Lee with a smile
“All right,” said Judas Priest
“I’ll see you after a while”*
Good luck on your journey. If there is nothing after death, then you’ll be just like before you were born. If there is something out there, you’ll know before most of us. Now in the chance that you get magic powers after death, would you mind terribly looking me up and guiding me to the right Powerball numbers? I don’t need all six numbers but if you could hook me up with five that would be awesome.
No. Not at all. The odds against us being here are so much higher than billions to one, there is no inevitability.