4 ms·

TL;DR 1. Meditate on death everyday when you wake up. Face the fact that you will die with help of a belief system that helps calm anxieties about death. Terme

by jtrip 9y ago

TL;DR 1. Meditate on death everyday when you wake up. Face the fact that you will die with help of a belief system that helps calm anxieties about death. Termed Terror Management Theory (TMT), it helps reduce existential anxieties. In the framework of the christian afterlife of resurrection and judgement, it also makes you more motivated to do the tasks that promise a better afterlife. 2. Through ruminating on the suffering of others and explicitly realising emotions of empathy repeatedly would overtime make such reactions a second nature applied in real life. 3. Attributing boredom (or rather distraction) to an external malevolent force helps better combat it. 4. Performing 'living funerals', meditating on their life as if they might die now, before going to sleep to help gauge their life and maybe how happy they are with the direction.

NoGravitas 9y ago
This is an accurate summary, but I also feel that a TL;DR is quite contrary to the spirit of the article!
saiya-jin 9y ago
Fear of dying is just so distant to me, I don't understand why people make such a great deal out of it. That doesn't mean I have some suicidal thoughts, in contrary I love my life. And I am an atheist/agnostic, so there is no magical fairy tale land after this life, nor does the wheel spin one more time. Just this time we have now, and that's it. And it's perfectly fine and correct way of things. Only exception I would understand is fear of leaving behind people who depend on you, especially children - but I don't have the impression that is what fuel most of the fear. I believe in mankind, as long as I give a bit of positive energy/actions in it and leave things in a bit better shape that's enough. Anyway we achieve some form of immortality via our kids, have to work hard on this topic since I believe I can be a good parent and provide loving environment for them. I guess it helps me being active in potentially dangerous sports and activities (climbing, alpinism, paragliding, diving, ski touring etc) where you are facing your built-in fear of death on very regular basis, and being successful in it lies in great part in constantly overcoming that fear in smart ways. Of course I take great care in doing stuff as safely as possible, within unavoidable amount of risk. But if you are 100% safe and have really everything under control, there is simply no adventure. When I compare to my fiancee who is hardcore catholic and should logically look forward to meeting her creator and master of it all, she is way more afraid. I presume emotions > rationality even long term.
- fao_ 9y ago
  Hey. I feel that I should say that a lot of your recent comments were dead. I read them and I couldn't see any obvious reason why. I vouched for a few and I hope that might make the HN system reconsider, but you might want to test any new posts in a private browser window for a while just to check that they're actually getting posted. I feel that I should say to people who are downvoting this comment: You're using the downvote as a disagreement, rather than to filter the content you would like to see on Hacker News. Content on Hacker News should be: relevant, considered, well-written. I don't see anything above that isn't any of those points. Just because you disagree with something, doesn't mean you should downvote it.
  - cirath 9y ago
    I don't think they are downvoting as a disagreement in this case. The answer seems self serving and less about fostering discussion about the information presented so much as self-aggrandizing. It read, to me, like "I don't see why medieval monks cared about death since I don't." Then there was the dollop of "I am atheist/agnostic," which again didn't seem to be usefully on topic. That isn't to say you shouldn't discuss these things, it is an interesting conversation to have... But look at where this comment was placed; on a summary of the article. The whole thing just felt like something that deserved a place on Reddit's "IamVerySmart" subreddit rather than on Hackernews.
    - fao_ 9y ago
      > It read, to me, like "I don't see why medieval monks cared about death since I don't." I didn't see anything self-aggrandizing in what was written, merely someone describing how they personally related to both the comment and the article. I can't see a reason why it wasn't relevant since the post above it is basically the same sort of thing, just with different conclusions.
  - auxbuss 9y ago
    Just a note to say that when I see a hell-banned commentator where there's no obvious cause, I email the mods to draw their attention to it. I can't recall a time where the account hasn't been reactivated, and I've received a courtesy email usually with a brief explanation.
Florin_Andrei 9y ago
> Attributing boredom (or rather distraction) to an external malevolent force helps better combat it. You could think of the entire concept of "spirits", either benevolent (angels) or malevolent (demons) as an extension of this idea. Mental processes could be thought of as chatter that takes place in a network of neurons - if you have any notion about modern biology. But what do you do if you don't have that information? You create metaphors for these things and simply ignore the root cause explanation because it's beyond the boundaries of your knowledge anyway. You represent them as "beings" inhabiting a special "spiritual world" - which is not that far off the mark given the relative independence (to some extent) of many of our mental processes. Beyond the explanatory power, this also serves a more practical goal. When undesirable mental processes are thought of as being "separate" entities, it does become a bit easier to fight them. Just don't fall into the error of taking these images at face value (literal beings inhabiting a literal other world). All in all, as long as you keep in mind that these are metaphors for stuff that happens in your consciousness, a good chunk of the mythology that these monks subscribed to actually does make sense.

by jtrip 9y ago

NoGravitas 9y ago

This is an accurate summary, but I also feel that a TL;DR is quite contrary to the spirit of the article!

saiya-jin 9y ago

Fear of dying is just so distant to me, I don't understand why people make such a great deal out of it. That doesn't mean I have some suicidal thoughts, in contrary I love my life. And I am an atheist/agnostic, so there is no magical fairy tale land after this life, nor does the wheel spin one more time. Just this time we have now, and that's it. And it's perfectly fine and correct way of things. Only exception I would understand is fear of leaving behind people who depend on you, especially children - but I don't have the impression that is what fuel most of the fear. I believe in mankind, as long as I give a bit of positive energy/actions in it and leave things in a bit better shape that's enough. Anyway we achieve some form of immortality via our kids, have to work hard on this topic since I believe I can be a good parent and provide loving environment for them. I guess it helps me being active in potentially dangerous sports and activities (climbing, alpinism, paragliding, diving, ski touring etc) where you are facing your built-in fear of death on very regular basis, and being successful in it lies in great part in constantly overcoming that fear in smart ways. Of course I take great care in doing stuff as safely as possible, within unavoidable amount of risk. But if you are 100% safe and have really everything under control, there is simply no adventure. When I compare to my fiancee who is hardcore catholic and should logically look forward to meeting her creator and master of it all, she is way more afraid. I presume emotions > rationality even long term.

fao_ 9y ago
Hey. I feel that I should say that a lot of your recent comments were dead. I read them and I couldn't see any obvious reason why. I vouched for a few and I hope that might make the HN system reconsider, but you might want to test any new posts in a private browser window for a while just to check that they're actually getting posted. I feel that I should say to people who are downvoting this comment: You're using the downvote as a disagreement, rather than to filter the content you would like to see on Hacker News. Content on Hacker News should be: relevant, considered, well-written. I don't see anything above that isn't any of those points. Just because you disagree with something, doesn't mean you should downvote it.
- cirath 9y ago
  I don't think they are downvoting as a disagreement in this case. The answer seems self serving and less about fostering discussion about the information presented so much as self-aggrandizing. It read, to me, like "I don't see why medieval monks cared about death since I don't." Then there was the dollop of "I am atheist/agnostic," which again didn't seem to be usefully on topic. That isn't to say you shouldn't discuss these things, it is an interesting conversation to have... But look at where this comment was placed; on a summary of the article. The whole thing just felt like something that deserved a place on Reddit's "IamVerySmart" subreddit rather than on Hackernews.
  - fao_ 9y ago
    > It read, to me, like "I don't see why medieval monks cared about death since I don't." I didn't see anything self-aggrandizing in what was written, merely someone describing how they personally related to both the comment and the article. I can't see a reason why it wasn't relevant since the post above it is basically the same sort of thing, just with different conclusions.
- auxbuss 9y ago
  Just a note to say that when I see a hell-banned commentator where there's no obvious cause, I email the mods to draw their attention to it. I can't recall a time where the account hasn't been reactivated, and I've received a courtesy email usually with a brief explanation.

Florin_Andrei 9y ago

> Attributing boredom (or rather distraction) to an external malevolent force helps better combat it. You could think of the entire concept of "spirits", either benevolent (angels) or malevolent (demons) as an extension of this idea. Mental processes could be thought of as chatter that takes place in a network of neurons - if you have any notion about modern biology. But what do you do if you don't have that information? You create metaphors for these things and simply ignore the root cause explanation because it's beyond the boundaries of your knowledge anyway. You represent them as "beings" inhabiting a special "spiritual world" - which is not that far off the mark given the relative independence (to some extent) of many of our mental processes. Beyond the explanatory power, this also serves a more practical goal. When undesirable mental processes are thought of as being "separate" entities, it does become a bit easier to fight them. Just don't fall into the error of taking these images at face value (literal beings inhabiting a literal other world). All in all, as long as you keep in mind that these are metaphors for stuff that happens in your consciousness, a good chunk of the mythology that these monks subscribed to actually does make sense.