Why are you so scared of dying anyway? It’s not like you’ll actually experience it.
Everyone is afraid of not existing, no matter the manner in which it happens.
May I ask, what exactly do you want us to tell you – you won’t allow us to reassure you, or listen to our explanations.
You’re not going to stop existing. Everything is going to be OK.
Even if you were going to stop existing, cessation of existence is nothing to be feared, because it literally is nothing.
Heaven and Hell might be something to be feared, but the eventuality of things simply ending, whilst perhaps disappointing to anticipate, need not be scary.
But you’re not going to stop existing. Everything is going to be OK. You’ll see.
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That’s not true, and certainly not the way you’ve described. I’m afraid of the part of dying I’ll experience, and like all animals I have an instinctive fear of danger and a drive to self-preservation, but I have no particular existential fearfof nonexistence. When I had surgery I had the same concerns you have, and I didn’t have the same explanations about how anaesthesia works. I was seriously worried that I wouldn’t exist after my surgery. But I didn’t obsess over it the way you have been.
I was only half joking in my first post in this thread. If I * did* die and was replaced, I have all the old Alan’s memories and I know he didn’t suffer. If I was in pain again like I was, I’d have surgery with GA again, even if I believed it meant my “death” because all my experiences, hopes, and dreams would live on in the new me, and that being lost (plus suffering) is what I fear about death. Not simply not existing.
Exactly so. I don’t give a damn about the billions of years to come in which I will not exist, any more than I give a damn about the billions of years which passed before I existed.
You might as well ask: “Who is it that will suffer thereby?” It won’t be me; I won’t exist!
But the pain involved in dying? Suffocating, or getting crushed in an auto accident, or having a knife put in my lungs, or getting eaten up slowly by cancer? That’s scary!
Here, I can answer the question of who suffers: me! I know what pain is, and I don’t care for it!
The thought of non-existence is deeply terrifying to me. Of course it won’t be terrifying when I don’t exist, but the thought of total oblivion in my current alive state is deeply unsettling.
But why? What you are describing is not normal fear-of-death. It is unhealthy and can be treated with therapy and/or medication.
You’ve said you’re not on any medication, but you’ve avoided my earlier question about whether you are getting any help for your depression. Are you? If so, have you discussed these issues with your therapist or doctor? If not, why not?
That seems unlikely. Organized religion is popular largely because it tells people that there is something besides non-existence after death. There would be no need for heaven or reincarnation if non-existence wasn’t fearsome.
Personally, I don’t fear the means of my death the slightest bit. The thought of non-existence shakes me to my core, and the only way I’ve found to cope is to not think about it. I’d advise anyone else to do the same because unlike virtually everything else in human experience, there’s no way to think through the concept; it’s logically impossible. It can never be anything but an intrusive thought and one should think of distractions as soon as one’s thoughts drift in that direction.
Have you read the whole thread? He says that he can’t keep himself from thinking about it, and it seems to be causing distress and impairment in his daily life. That’s not normal. He also describes clear symptoms of clinical depression. He needs treatment.
And while I can’t exactly imagine my own nonexistence, since the act of imagining it seems necessarily to put me in the role of observing this hypothetical state, I believe I can “think through it” just fine: it will be exactly like the first 13.7 billion years I spent not existing.
I haven’t read the whole thread; I fully agree that if it’s interfering with daily life then it needs treatment. But I think the problem is with intrusive thoughts, which can take many forms, and for which the problem usually isn’t the thought itself, but the fact that it can become a kind of compulsion.
Basically, I’m just disputing the notion that fear of non-existence is abnormal. It’s quite common in my observation and experience. The intrusiveness is less normal and may need treatment (and depression certainly needs treatment).
Yes, that’s exactly it. We spend large segments of our lives putting ourselves in hypothetical situations. We imagine ourselves as other people to generate a sense of empathy; we imagine ourselves as fictional characters for fun; and we imagine ourselves in the future so that we can plan for things. We just can’t imagine ourselves as not existing; it’s paradoxical.
And that’s as far as you get. Normally when I imagine the future I can generate thousands of interesting details and evaluate their consistency. There’s no limit to how deep I can simulate it, and the results are generally satisfying.
But for non-existence, the simulation stops as soon as its started. Even thinking about the outcomes of people that will still be around feels deeply artificial because I know that I won’t actually be around to care. I’m basically pretending to be a ghost–it feels utterly fake and causes despair. So I don’t think about it.
For me, it’s the opposite. I don’t fear not existing, but there are plenty of ways in which that can come about that I might find unpleasant or sad.
I can see why it might feel fake…but why the despair? I feel a bit of very abstract sadness – I’ll never see the Alpha Centauri probe lift off, I’ll probably never see a proof of Goldbach’s conjecture, I’ll never know if democracy and freedom triumph over tyranny.
But I know that non-existence provides the ultimate anodyne. It goes back to the anaesthetic of the OP. I won’t feel anything, and that, to my mind, covers for all the other shortcomings of both non-existence and surgery.
I “fear” not existing about as much as I “fear” the pain of surgery. i.e., only in a foolish emotional way, which my reason can easily (if not trivially) overcome.
I think we’re feeling about the same thing, but maybe with a different magnitude. I feel abstract sadness at the fact that the universe itself will die one day. I feel the same thing, but greatly amplified, at the fact that I’ll get to experience approximately 0% of it.
Well, yes. And the trivial solution is don’t think about it, because there’s nothing to think about. It no longer bothers me except on rare occasions because I’m generally able to set aside the emotions.
To each their own. Death is usually pretty quick. When it’s not (terminal cancer, etc.) there are usually ways of accelerating the end. Not dying is potentially a lot scarier–I really don’t want to spend years in a dementia-addled hell, unable to even auto-euthanize.
I think you’re all sort of deluding yourselves. Logic cannot override base instincts. Death is a horribly morbid thought. It’s something no human is comfortable with. Total absence of existence is something that has haunted all cultures for a very long time. In fact, awareness of our impending deaths is often said to be the biggest price to pay for self-reflexive consciousness.
Every time I hear of a death or, on my more strange days on the internet, see a death, I get this horrible, sickening feeling in my stomach when I understand that the person killed is GONE. All their dreams, hopes, passions, thoughts…GONE. Total oblivion, never to be seen or heard from again. The life they valued SO much, the life they tried their utmost to improve at every waking moment…GONE. Never to come back again. They met their end and that is it for the rest of eternity.
I don’t want to die and I doubt any of you are much more comfortable with it either.
The logic says this: every moment you spend thinking about death is a moment you don’t spend enjoying the limited time you do have. There is zero upside to thinking about non-existence. You will not come to some new revelation or insight. It will not make you a better person. So don’t think about it.
I normally think about everything, and under other conditions would never advise someone to ignore the truth in this way. This is the one exception because there is no possible gain to be had.
I refuse to converse with someone who will not take me at my word when it comes to my own thoughts and feelings. You don’t want answers or help or even debate; you just want to whine.