li134ad (02/15/83)
I would like to address the question of why people are afraid to kick the bucket in the first place. I am afraid to die because I know that everything ends then. Period. I'm an agnostic, and I have no evidence(yet) to suggest that I will live on after corpeal dissolution. I fear this for a couple of reasons; one, it is something which I know will happen sooner or later, and that I have no control over it (people in general HATE not having control) and two, I like all the rest of the animals around me, have an incredible instinct for self-preservation. Are these (roughly) the same reasons that everyone else is afraid? To open the discussion further, who thinks we shouldn't be afraid to die, and why not? Not afraid to talk about something that most people seem to be afraid of, Jack of Shadows.
ee163hp (02/15/83)
[Response to "Jack of Shadows" query/discussion of fear of death:]
Perhaps one good reason not to fear death is fear itself ...
except in crises, fear can be a waste of energy, can distract one from
"higher-level" concerns, and so on. Knowledge of one's ultimate doom
may spur one on to great glories, but fear needn't be the catalyst.
-- Larry West, UCSDiy47ab (02/15/83)
I know we shouldn't be afraid, but then again I don't believe there is life after death. Logically, why should we be afraid? What is wrong with the ending of a chapter? If you fear pain, that's one thing. I think I fear pain in death more than the ending itself. I agree with Larry West's comment that "Perhaps one good reason not to fear death is fear itself...fear can be a waste of energy...knowledge of one's ultimate doom may spur one to greater glories...". In a large way this makes sense. Hell, yes, I am afraid; of pain; but I think that knowing I have a limited time to burn makes me more anxious to burn brighter. Not afraid to admit my flame falters a little, Lady Arwen
li134ad (02/15/83)
Perhaps people shouldn't fear death, for the reasons posted by "Larry West" and Lady Arwen, but people DO, and that doesn't seem to be something that's likely to change very soon. Apart from any considerations of whether we should fear death or not, I wonder if anyone knows why they do. Is it simple fear of the unknown, and fear of not surviving, or something different? Jack of Shadows.
iy47ab (02/16/83)
I think the reason we fear death is that it is an insult to our ego -- no, seriously. It's hard to conceptualize the ending of one's self! It's so hard, and so frustrating, to believe that you could be stopped from being and doing; it's like someone says, very arbitrarily, "Ok, time's up, kaput, that's it" and you don't even get the one phone call. I know it sounds like I'm making light of it, but I'm serious. It's a fear of impotence; a fear that we will be helpless, ineffectual, unable to do all the things we are familiar with. Peter S. Beagle approached the subject very well in one of his novels; he said basically that the reason death is so fearful is that it is unfamiliar, strange, different. And Thornton Wilder said, in our town, 'it's not what I'm used to.' In a way, fear of change and different- ness is the greatest fear of all. Combined with fear of helplessness, this constitutes (for me, anyway) the basic implications behind fear of death. Not afraid to say "not afraid" at the end of a fear-filled letter, Arwen
wa125 (02/16/83)
I can tell you why I fear death: i don' want to die.
another thing i fear, yea, even so much as death, is pseudo-objective
treatments of wholly subjective phenomena, such as are
properly relegated to the back pages of sleazy abnormal
psychology journals. let's discuss the philosophy of
Frisbee Frobenius instead.
steve serocki
{ucbvax philabs};sdcsvax;sdccsu3;ix222
(ignore return address if you want a reply)lwall (02/16/83)
A great deal of what Lady Arwen says about fear of death is true, but mostly applicable to those who don't believe in survival. It's interesting to look at the other side of the coin too: those who believe in survival are probably more afraid of survival than of non-survival. C. S. Lewis found himself (at least for a time) to have a profound distaste for the notion of immortality, probably acquired from Charles Williams, who quite detested the idea, though he believed in it. Perhaps one element of this fear is not knowing what sort of a person, good or bad, that I might turn into, given enough time. Sauron probably thought he was one of the good guys in the beginning. Fear of non-survival is fear of the known; fear of survival is fear of the unknown. If Somebody is going to perpetuate my pattern, what kind of a pattern will that be? Larry Wall ...decvax!trw-unix!sdcvax!lwall
djo (02/17/83)
The following as a sort of rambling on the question of why we should not be afraid to die. We do not come into this world, we grow out of it. Here I am because variety is the spice of life. But the funny thing is that we have not been brought up to feel that way. Instead of feeling that we, each one of us, are something that the whole realm of being is doing, we feel that we are something that has come into that realm of being as a stranger when we were born and we think when we die, that is just going to be that. Some people console themselves with the idea that they are going to heaven, or that they are going to be reincarnated, or something. For most people the thing that haunts them is that when they die they will go to sleep aand never wake up. They are going to be locked in a safe deposit box of darkness forever. But these ideas all depend upon a false notion of what is oneself. We have been taught to dread death as if that were the end of the show, and nothing will happen afterwards. Therefore wecome to be afraid of all things that might bring about death: pain, sickness, suffering. If you don't know, if you are not vividly aware of the fact that you are something the entire cosmos is doing, you have no real joy in life. You're just a bundle of anxiety mixed up with guilt. When we bring children into the world we play awful games with them. Instead of saying, "How do you do, welcome to the human race. Now, my dear, we are playing some very complicated games and these are the rules. I want you to learn and understand them, and when you get older you might be able to think of better rules...", we say, "Well, so here you are, maybe when you grow up a bit you will be acceptable, but until then you should be seen and not heard. You haave to be educated and trained until you are human." So these attitudes are inculcated into us. The way you start out is liable to be the way you finish. And so people feel that the universe is presided over by this awful kind of God-the-Father Parent who, yes, has our best interests at heart and is loving, but whom the lord loveth he chasteneth. This leads to a sensation of being a stranger in earth, a momentary flash of consciousness between two eternal blacknesses, and therefore in constant contention with everything. Not only people, but also with earth and the waters. Essentially people don't feel that the external world is a part of them. The external world is your own body extended.
ark (02/18/83)
I don't THINK I'm afraid of death. I don't see much difference between the time before I was born and the time after I die. I am, though, afraid of dying, in the same sense that I'm afraid of being hit by a truck, or getting my hand mangled by a bear, or any of the horribly painful, non-fatal things that can happen.
dir (02/20/83)
Perhaps one reason why people fear death (myself included) is that death *seems* to be the crowning glory of a purposeless existence. If we live long enough, there's a hope of finding out what all this was for, and then, knowing the purpose, we would not be afraid of going quietly into that good night. The search for meaning and purpose to life is deeply intertwined with fear of death, for if we some day learned the meaning, and it turned out to be trivial, or an accident of random chance, then I think the moral and social consequences would be devastating. On the other hand, if we knew for sure that life was purposeless, it might give us all the more reason for living life to the fullest, and making our own purpose along the way. No wonder philosophers get that crazed look. Sheesh. - D. Radin
jcz (02/20/83)
References: sdccsu3.312 It is not only hard to conceptualize ones non-existance, I would say it's impossible! That is to actaully concieve of the world from a first-person point of view without the first-person being there. Sort of rings like the Epidemes Paradox. --jcz
sjk (03/09/83)
It's interesting to see the apparent contradictions in the religious views of death. For example, Hinduism accepts reincarnation, whereas "you only go around once" in fundamental Christianity. What meaning do these views give to life and death? What hopes and/or fears do they invoke in their believers and do they give more or less purpose to living? I really don't think it matters as much as some people would like us to think.... cbosg!dir's concept of an inherently purposeless life seems like the freest route. Here's something to try if you're ever hassled by a religious fanatic. Allow them to get raving a bit, then pop the question "How would I know you're a Fooist if you didn't tell me?" (this is especially effective with Christians, as you might imagine) I'd like to hear the results of anyone's trying this! scott