Either there will be eternal oblivion, in which case I truly won’t care, or something really weird will happen that no one has ever thought of.
I really shouldn’t care, but the thought of “not being here”–indeed, never being here ever, ever again, is truly frightening. How does one ever come to terms with this? (I’m 45 years old.)
By keeping so damn busy, you never have the time or interest to entertain such thoughts!
What if you didn’t die? That thought “alone” sounds like pure hell. Who wants to be any thing…forever? We were nothing that long(forever), before we were born and had no problems. Nothing is fine if something isn’t.
Yeah, the whole “You were nothing before you were born” idea–heck, you can’t even remember anything till you’re about three, so you may as well have been in a coma–is a comforting one. From oblivion to oblivion. But there’s always that nagging fear, especially the alone part. I kinow I was born alone, but at least Mom was there when I arrived!
Yeah, the whole “You were nothing before you were born” idea–heck, you can’t even remember anything till you’re about three, so you may as well have been in a coma–is a comforting one. From oblivion to oblivion. But there’s always that nagging fear, especially the alone part. I know I was born alone, but at least Mom was there when I arrived!
This is headed for Great Debates or IMHO I think…but it is a great question.
I know exactly what you mean tonbo0422. I’m 33 and I’m terrified of advancing age, of time passing. Isn’t there a school of psychology that says a lot of our reasoning is driven by our fear of death? I can’t even contemplate the idea of “not being” - I just can’t get my mind around the concept. I’ve only ever seen the universe through my eyes and to try to imagine it without me in it…I just can’t. It’d be like asking, what if 3 weren’t 3?
Maybe it’s just an evolutionary survival instinct - being afraid to die translates easily into a will to survive.
We inherit behaviour to strive to survive long enough to propagate our DNA. By propagating our DNA this behaviour is passed on. Unfortunately we cannot inherit behaviour for losing the desire to survive beyond this point, thus we fear death our whole life.
A frontal lobe that can project into the future makes things worse.
Think of it this way - the fact that you will die adds value to your life. When you die you wont notice that you are not here so it doesnt matter. Or you could try religion, I hear that’s quite popular.
[python]
*For life is quite absurd
And death’s the final word.
You must always face the curtain with a bow.
Forget about your sin.
Give the audience a grin.
Enjoy it. It’s your last chance, anyhow. *
[/python]
You’re wired to try your best to survive. You fear death because you cannont propagate while dead. I’m sure some anthropologist or psych will refine this, but it’s basic neurological wiring, the will to survive. Almost any rational person can accept that everyone dies, some people just have a hard time accepting that fact.
Take solace in the fact that almost nobody knows when they’re going to die, so live your life to it’s fullest untill the inevitable just happens. If one were to dread death as soon as one were cognizant of the concept, we’d have a shitload of 4 year olds living the rest of their lives in fear.
Bob Hope lived to 100 years old, start worrying at 99.
Yep, eventually it boils down to this: you and me are going to die and everything and anything that we have accomplished and accumulated in this lifetime in the ordinary sense is going to be lost.
If you really come to know and understand that you’re going to die (and eventually we’re all going to lie down on that same couch and wait for the “angel of death” to take us) it then begins to dawn on you that nothing in this lifetime, whether it be material, emotional or mental, is of any real ultimate value.
But it’s difficult to realize this when things are so exciting, especially on TV. A semi-illumination usually comes to folks when they’re propped up on one of those hospital beds with air tubes up their nose and an I.V. dripping morphine into their veins. At this point they come to appreciate what’s been going on for the past 60, 70, 80+ years, which now, sadly, seems like it was only a few fleeting moments.
The sad truth is that at this point the realization dawns that everything you’ve accomplished or left behind or even passed on in this life is going to be lost. Your heirs will die, and eventually, after many, many generations the entire race will die. Ultimately, the entire planet will be obliterated.
Everything comes to nothing in this world; this may sound trite, but hey, if your body is going to die anyway, and it’s close to a 100% certainly that it is, then your attention is now free to lift itself from the body, and the things of the body, the material, mental and emotional possessions, and become free to settle itself onto what can be accomplished that might be of any value.
What generally happens to people is that at the end of the lifetime, if they have done nothing to prepare, they find themselves fighting for one more day, one more hour, one more minute, just one more breath…
That’s the basis of life as we are taught to live it, not to mention the hardwiring: a fixation for survival into the future.
You know, even if you accomplished the most amazing thing in this world, won the Tour de France 16 times, became President of the USA, became enormously rich with billions of dollars, were a world-admired rock star, hit 92 home runs in a season, if you penetrate with your vision, say 50 million years into the future, and look back on it and ask yourself what you have accomplished, you’ll then see from this perspective what it really means to be alive.
The question you would be asking yourself is: What is it that I could have accomplished in the lifetime 50 million years ago that would mean something now? This is the question which opens the doorway to the only real mystery of life, and anyone with a genuine answer to this question has in his possession the key to life itself.
b
What an EXTREME sack of bullshit!! B , I want my 2 minutes back. j/k 
I think we are probably all afraid to die because we are afraid it will hurt. I used to think about this all the time too…when I was 12! If you look inside yourself, and consider what it is about death that is so hanus, you’ll undoubtedly find (like me) that what bothers you is the instant death is going to occur. We are all afraid of that instant being undesireable in some way (i.e. painful like a heart attack or drowning, or scary like a total loss of control, or even really long and drawn out as in the “death may seem like forever to me, even though it’s really only a few seconds in real time becuase of perception of a dying mind”). If you ponder what it would be like to be dead you only have 2 choices, you are concious or you are not. If you are not, than it ain’t so bad. If you are, you come to another crossroads, it is either pleasant (heaven, ubiquity etc.) or not (H-E- Double Hockey Sticks!!). If good, YAY! If sucks, BOO! Fear of pain may be inherent as a primordial survival trait, but kitties and puppys have no fear of death. (**Cite below) So it seems a little unreasonable to assume that the basic instinct of survival for procreation may have evolved as necessary to protect us fuckers (geddit?)…and then took another jump ahead for no damn reason to make us fear a most obligatory future. No freakin’ way. I can honestly say I’m not afraid to die, but only because I have no pessimistic ideas about my fourthcoming demise (Of course, that is one of the perks of being Zen Buddhist. Oh BTW, I’m Zen Buddhist.). I think you are only afraid of death because you can not imagine making it to the other side being a pleasurable expirience. Can you honestly say you would mind not existing if you didn’t exist? Nope. Noone could.
Everyone on this thread would have you believe “You are afraid of being dead” (even yourself in the OP, IIRC) beacuse you won’t be able to get it on anymore (wait…that does sound kinda shitty, doesn’t it boys? ) That’s crazy. That would be like saying every kid that doesn’t want to get imunization shots the day before getting the shots (and that’s all of em’), doesn’t want the shots because he doesn’t want to be immune (or can’t immagine the difference being immune). Bullshit, my nephews will tell you they were afraid it was going to hurt. But after the fact they were all glad they got immunized, and admit it wasn’t at all what they thought, even though it hurt a little. Same situation here only on a much larger scale. Just remember you are afraid to die, not afraid of being dead. And don’t worry, statistically speaking, it probably wont hurt that bad…
–J
** I KNOW my cat Harpo has no fear of death becuase; he faces the end of his mortality every time he wakes me up at 6:00 a.m. by stepping on my BALLS and MEOWING at me unrelenting until I feed him. I swing wildly evey morning and have yet to land a punch…one of these days kitty, one of these days!! Little bastard.
like, zen, man.
As a Christian, I’m not afraid of death.
But I’m afraid of dying. My worst fear is being aware and not being able to breathe and knowing I’m NOT going to be able to breathe. Having had this happen a few times, I never want it to happen again, and I dwell on the possibility. And the thought of being dependant on a machine to breathe, and to be aware of it… <<shudder>>
Maybe you’re just afraid of being alone and have turned it around into a fear of being dead. Of not existing.
Well, think about not dying. You’re still getting old. If you stayed “youthful” for your entire life, maybe it would be different.
But, once you get to your mid-90s or so (and in many cases much earlier), you start losing your hearing, vision, and marbles. As a result you’re isolated from “the outside world” more and more. You probably can’t walk anymore, or use the bathroom by yourself. As a result, you’ll probably have bottles attached to your wheelchair–assuming you’re not bedridden. At that point, as has been previously stated, you’re only lasting, not living.
There is no factual answer to your question. This belongs in IMHO.
I’ll move it for you.
-xash
General Questions Moderator
Find God. Once found you will never worry again.
Has he gotten lost again? Well, where did you see him last—I mean, he didn’t just get up and walk away, young lady!
As for me, as Woody Allen said: “I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
Like DeVena, I’m not scared of death but of dying. The women in my family before me have not died easy deaths, heart disease and cancer being the most prevalent. And even if living healthy keeps me from those things, I’m also pretty certain that I’ll get Alzheimer’s, if history is to be believed.
Alzheimer’s is what scares me the most…because it took 20 years to kill my grandmother. She might just as well have been dead, because she certainly wasn’t living.
Anyway, what happens after death is of no import to me. It’s what comes before that matters.
If your only answer to the question “Who are you” is first person singular by the time you reach the end of your individual life, you are indeed going to cease to exist.
If you connect with other people and with the causes and concerns that pertain to the betterment of life for everyone, though, you could end up being one of those people for whom it is said that what they stood for, what they were about, who they really were, transcended their death.
I’m sure you are familiar with the namebrand religions versions of this, but if they are foreign to your sensibilities you need not reference them. There are many atheists who believe that people such as Martin Luther King or Elizabeth Cady Stanton are still with us because who they were was so much more than just themselves as individual people.
And after all humans are dead, where will they be? You haven’t addressed bardos’ point, you have just postponed it.
If atheism is true, then nothing and no one is going to make any difference in the long run. And there is no escape, and there is nothing you can do to change this.
Have a nice day.
Regards,
Shodan
As others have mentioned…I am not araid to die because of my religious convictions. However, I am sad and afraid to think about my children and my husband if I were to die young. I worry about what would become of them and I regret the pain and mourning they will have to experience.
I believe everyone at some point considers death…how could you not?
My thoughts tend to range from what if I’m wrong about my religious beliefs? Then if there truly is nothing after death then I have nothing to worry about I suppose. To what if I am right about my religious beliefs? Then…wow.
However, I try not to focus on it too much but live my life in the here and now and try to have no regrets.
YMMV