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While heart breaking, and terrible I feel we as a society have a very warped view of death. We're all way too afraid of it (including myself). It's probably a s

While heart breaking, and terrible I feel we as a society have a very warped view of death. We're all way too afraid of it (including myself). It's probably a symptom of death these days in developed countries being so rare. Running away from it as I have learned makes it so much worse, than trying to learn some acceptance.

Waterluvian 8y ago
We have become so good at safety and medicine that dying before 80 is treated like an error state and not a valid terminal state of life.
jondubois 8y ago
As a biological organism, life means literally everything. Every part of you has evolved over millions of years for the sole purpose of sustaining your existence within this universe. The core intent behind all rational thoughts that a specimen can have is survival; either at the level of the organism or at a genetic level. From the perspective of the organism, survival is literally the only thing that means anything at all. Therefore it makes perfect rational sense to be terrified of death. What if there's nothing after death... for the rest of eternity? This thought makes most people extremely uncomfortable. It is the root of all fears. If death didn't exist, the word "fear" would probably not exit either. I don't think that it's the rarity of death in developed countries which makes people more afraid of it; it's the other way round; that people's fear of death (which is a side effect of better education and weaker religion in developed countries) make them less likely to take risks which might cause them to die.
- danharaj 8y ago
  Evolutionary pressure is determined by the propagation of genes, not the survival of the organism. Anyway, your reasoning is not sound.
  - jondubois 8y ago
    But the organism needs to survive at least long enough to be able to propagate its genes into the next generation.
    - danharaj 8y ago
      You said > Survival is literally the only thing that means anything at all. Which is not true. And even so, evolution does not determine meaning.
- michaelmior 8y ago
  What if you believe there is something after death? Something much better than life now. Then life isn't everything
  - jondubois 8y ago
    If I believed that was the case (with absolute certainty), I would probably no longer be here. I would have taken way more risks in my life. I guess that's why religions have a lot of rules to prevent people from harming themselves and others; it's to offset the increased risk tolerance that comes with religion.
- Barrin92 8y ago
  >The core intent behind all rational thoughts that a specimen can have is survival; either at the level of the organism or at a genetic level. Not at all. Your genes aren't better than my genes (presumably) just because they're your genes. The instinct for self-preservation is simply self-replication, which is not rational, but actually mindless. There's nothing meaningful about the drive for copying your genes over and over, it's in some sense the least rational or meaningful thing around. So when people decide to sacrifice their survival for higher ends, be it scientific discovery, humanity at large, or some other higher goal, that is arguably much more rational.
- reading-at-work 8y ago
  > What if there's nothing after death... for the rest of eternity? I have been mulling over this for some weeks now, more intensely than ever before in my life. I'm only 24 but still terrified of the concept, and frankly it's poisoned every waking hour with a mild to extreme sense of dread and foreboding. My mind tends to fixate and freak out over life problems it can't solve, and this is the ultimate one that no one can solve. I'm glad that I still have a lot of my life ahead of me, but I can't stop fixating on the infinite nothingness afterwards and what that truly means. It's to the point that doing enjoyable things day to day feels worthless and just reminds me that it's still all going to end, no matter what I do, and sends me back down a spiral of fear. I know rationally that I shouldn't let it get to me, because there's nothing I can do, but that just makes me apathetic and hopeless. I'm hoping this is a phase that will just pass but if anyone has real advice for how to move through this I would be very grateful.
  - User23 8y ago
    Religion is a survival technology. It might be of use to you here since this is exactly the problem it's designed to solve. Edit: Here's some evidence: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/church-attendance-happy-pew-research-center_us_5c545b34e4b0bdf0e7daac7f https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/church-attendance-happy... Edit edit: Physical exercise also helps. I suggest resistance training over cardio, because it produces greater endorphin release. YMMV of course. Good luck and hang in there!
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    Well, you also didn't exist before you were born, for a very long time.. Does that bother you too? It's very common to have existential crises (and other related crises) in your teens/20s. I certainly did. I read some philosophy-type books on the meaning of life which helped with that. (Klemke's The Meaning of Life anthology was one I remember that helped a lot.) Ok, so... not living forever seems..bad? So..if you lived forever, that would somehow give you meaning to your life? I can't really see how it would, even if it were possible. An infinite life would probably be infinitely boring. (I don't think people really can imagine forever or eternity) Surely the brevity of life makes its moments more precious. Think on what you're grateful for, treasure the people around you. What an amazing miracle it is to somehow be conscious, alive, here, now, on this planet. I don't think "What is the meaning of life?" is a good question - we give our lives meaning by the things we're involved in. Who cares if they don't last forever? Is a piece of music, a meal, a conversation, a day, the worse for coming to an end? People can help you, and it is a serious problem you are having. Get help if you need it - it's being strong to ask for help. Good luck. p.s. Religion[0] provides answers, but false ones, as far as we know. Believing "we live forever", without any evidence, is just burying your head in the sand. Among the basic facts of life are that we are born and we die. Expecting the universe to be like a child's home, with loving parents and everything designed to make us feel good, a moral universe designed around human desires, is wishful thinking. [0] (which I notice a sibling comment has recommended as a solution)
- porpoisely 8y ago
  Sure, the basic tenet of biological organism is to survive and procreate. However, no biological organism, other than humans, fear death. No other organism, that we know of, has a conception of death. A dog doesn't have a conception of death. It doesn't worry about whether there is an afterlife. Bacteria obviously doesn't either. Just because survival is important to an biological organism doesn't necessarily mean that they are terrified of death. We know that most biological organism are not terrified of death because they have no conception of death. It's an entirely human "illness", this obsession with death. Especially considering that the self is an illusion and doesn't exist so you can't die since "you" never existed.
lurquer 8y ago
>It's probably a symptom of death these days in developed countries being so rare. In what sense is death 'rare'? Last time I checked, every single person in every single country - developed or otherwise - will die. The percentage of the population that dies each year, I would bet, is higher for developed countries than developing.
- jryan49 8y ago
  I mean we live longer, and it is rare for someone to die young. In my experience we seem pretty okay when someone old has died.
- ksdale 8y ago
  Most death happens in hospitals and nursing homes, whereas it used to happen at home. Young people die far more rarely than they used to, and when they do, it’s usually in the hospital. And this doesn’t even consider that people in the past would have witnessed far more death in the form of slaughtering animals for food, or witnessing drought or famine. Obviously death comes for us all, but I would bet we don’t see as much of it first hand as we used to.
  - lurquer 8y ago
    >Obviously death comes for us all, but I would bet we don’t see as much of it first hand as we used to. What do you mean by 'we'? I don't know what you are trying to say. A very large percentage of the population encounters death on a regular basis. Don't take this the wrong way, but your odd view on the subject evidences an amusing self-centeredness. Enjoy your youth. But, keep in mind that your conception of 'we' is hilariously far narrower than you realize.
    - ksdale 8y ago
      I just spent the last month caring for my dying father. It was obvious from interactions with everyone, from friends and acquaintances to medical professionals, that people in the US are incredibly uncomfortable with the topic of death. Granted, I only have experience with the US, and I'm sure it doesn't extrapolate. I would have expected medical professionals (who I understand witness death daily, despite my hilarious narrow mindedness) to be far more candid about my father's impending death. They were not. The way they talked about physical therapy and treatment just days before he died approached ridiculousness. The oncologist didn't once mention hospice, even though it seemed obvious from looking at my father that he was, at most, weeks from death. When we talked about the shape my father was in to friends and acquaintances, they offered facile encouragement, "Hopefully he'll start feeling better soon." As people find out about his death, even people who knew the state he was in are shocked. We're not shocked, we're apparently the only people who understood how bad it was, besides a few doctors who went to great lengths to avoid having a conversation about death with us. What conclusion am I supposed to draw from this other than that our (US) society contains a lot of people who have no idea how to deal with death. They just pretend it doesn't exist or that it won't happen. They relegate it to hospital rooms and in the hospitals they try not to talk about it. They don't think about what it means to die well or what it means to have a good quality of life, especially at the end. In any case, I don't think I was wrong that the the average person in the average developed country witnesses far less death than they would have 100 years ago. Fewer babies dying in cribs, fewer mothers dying in childbirth. Fewer grandparents dying at home in bed. A few months ago, I would have been chastened by your statement that a large percentage of the population encounters death on a regular basis, but I interacted with lots of those people in the hospital while my father was dying, and I can't say it was impressed upon me that they deal with death any better than the patients they treat who certainly have much less experience.
Haga 8y ago
What's not to be afraid of not to be? Whole generations of men have spend all living years and resources on bizarr death cults which used the in your face fear reaction to inspire irrational believes. Denial is better than a rational approach in my opinion.

Waterluvian 8y ago

We have become so good at safety and medicine that dying before 80 is treated like an error state and not a valid terminal state of life.

jondubois 8y ago

As a biological organism, life means literally everything. Every part of you has evolved over millions of years for the sole purpose of sustaining your existence within this universe. The core intent behind all rational thoughts that a specimen can have is survival; either at the level of the organism or at a genetic level. From the perspective of the organism, survival is literally the only thing that means anything at all. Therefore it makes perfect rational sense to be terrified of death. What if there's nothing after death... for the rest of eternity? This thought makes most people extremely uncomfortable. It is the root of all fears. If death didn't exist, the word "fear" would probably not exit either. I don't think that it's the rarity of death in developed countries which makes people more afraid of it; it's the other way round; that people's fear of death (which is a side effect of better education and weaker religion in developed countries) make them less likely to take risks which might cause them to die.

danharaj 8y ago
Evolutionary pressure is determined by the propagation of genes, not the survival of the organism. Anyway, your reasoning is not sound.
- jondubois 8y ago
  But the organism needs to survive at least long enough to be able to propagate its genes into the next generation.
  - danharaj 8y ago
    You said > Survival is literally the only thing that means anything at all. Which is not true. And even so, evolution does not determine meaning.
michaelmior 8y ago
What if you believe there is something after death? Something much better than life now. Then life isn't everything
- jondubois 8y ago
  If I believed that was the case (with absolute certainty), I would probably no longer be here. I would have taken way more risks in my life. I guess that's why religions have a lot of rules to prevent people from harming themselves and others; it's to offset the increased risk tolerance that comes with religion.
Barrin92 8y ago
>The core intent behind all rational thoughts that a specimen can have is survival; either at the level of the organism or at a genetic level. Not at all. Your genes aren't better than my genes (presumably) just because they're your genes. The instinct for self-preservation is simply self-replication, which is not rational, but actually mindless. There's nothing meaningful about the drive for copying your genes over and over, it's in some sense the least rational or meaningful thing around. So when people decide to sacrifice their survival for higher ends, be it scientific discovery, humanity at large, or some other higher goal, that is arguably much more rational.
reading-at-work 8y ago
> What if there's nothing after death... for the rest of eternity? I have been mulling over this for some weeks now, more intensely than ever before in my life. I'm only 24 but still terrified of the concept, and frankly it's poisoned every waking hour with a mild to extreme sense of dread and foreboding. My mind tends to fixate and freak out over life problems it can't solve, and this is the ultimate one that no one can solve. I'm glad that I still have a lot of my life ahead of me, but I can't stop fixating on the infinite nothingness afterwards and what that truly means. It's to the point that doing enjoyable things day to day feels worthless and just reminds me that it's still all going to end, no matter what I do, and sends me back down a spiral of fear. I know rationally that I shouldn't let it get to me, because there's nothing I can do, but that just makes me apathetic and hopeless. I'm hoping this is a phase that will just pass but if anyone has real advice for how to move through this I would be very grateful.
- User23 8y ago
  Religion is a survival technology. It might be of use to you here since this is exactly the problem it's designed to solve. Edit: Here's some evidence: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/church-attendance-happy-pew-research-center_us_5c545b34e4b0bdf0e7daac7f https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/church-attendance-happy... Edit edit: Physical exercise also helps. I suggest resistance training over cardio, because it produces greater endorphin release. YMMV of course. Good luck and hang in there!
- yesenadam 8y ago
  Well, you also didn't exist before you were born, for a very long time.. Does that bother you too? It's very common to have existential crises (and other related crises) in your teens/20s. I certainly did. I read some philosophy-type books on the meaning of life which helped with that. (Klemke's The Meaning of Life anthology was one I remember that helped a lot.) Ok, so... not living forever seems..bad? So..if you lived forever, that would somehow give you meaning to your life? I can't really see how it would, even if it were possible. An infinite life would probably be infinitely boring. (I don't think people really can imagine forever or eternity) Surely the brevity of life makes its moments more precious. Think on what you're grateful for, treasure the people around you. What an amazing miracle it is to somehow be conscious, alive, here, now, on this planet. I don't think "What is the meaning of life?" is a good question - we give our lives meaning by the things we're involved in. Who cares if they don't last forever? Is a piece of music, a meal, a conversation, a day, the worse for coming to an end? People can help you, and it is a serious problem you are having. Get help if you need it - it's being strong to ask for help. Good luck. p.s. Religion[0] provides answers, but false ones, as far as we know. Believing "we live forever", without any evidence, is just burying your head in the sand. Among the basic facts of life are that we are born and we die. Expecting the universe to be like a child's home, with loving parents and everything designed to make us feel good, a moral universe designed around human desires, is wishful thinking. [0] (which I notice a sibling comment has recommended as a solution)
porpoisely 8y ago
Sure, the basic tenet of biological organism is to survive and procreate. However, no biological organism, other than humans, fear death. No other organism, that we know of, has a conception of death. A dog doesn't have a conception of death. It doesn't worry about whether there is an afterlife. Bacteria obviously doesn't either. Just because survival is important to an biological organism doesn't necessarily mean that they are terrified of death. We know that most biological organism are not terrified of death because they have no conception of death. It's an entirely human "illness", this obsession with death. Especially considering that the self is an illusion and doesn't exist so you can't die since "you" never existed.

lurquer 8y ago

>It's probably a symptom of death these days in developed countries being so rare. In what sense is death 'rare'? Last time I checked, every single person in every single country - developed or otherwise - will die. The percentage of the population that dies each year, I would bet, is higher for developed countries than developing.

jryan49 8y ago
I mean we live longer, and it is rare for someone to die young. In my experience we seem pretty okay when someone old has died.
ksdale 8y ago
Most death happens in hospitals and nursing homes, whereas it used to happen at home. Young people die far more rarely than they used to, and when they do, it’s usually in the hospital. And this doesn’t even consider that people in the past would have witnessed far more death in the form of slaughtering animals for food, or witnessing drought or famine. Obviously death comes for us all, but I would bet we don’t see as much of it first hand as we used to.
- lurquer 8y ago
  >Obviously death comes for us all, but I would bet we don’t see as much of it first hand as we used to. What do you mean by 'we'? I don't know what you are trying to say. A very large percentage of the population encounters death on a regular basis. Don't take this the wrong way, but your odd view on the subject evidences an amusing self-centeredness. Enjoy your youth. But, keep in mind that your conception of 'we' is hilariously far narrower than you realize.
  - ksdale 8y ago
    I just spent the last month caring for my dying father. It was obvious from interactions with everyone, from friends and acquaintances to medical professionals, that people in the US are incredibly uncomfortable with the topic of death. Granted, I only have experience with the US, and I'm sure it doesn't extrapolate. I would have expected medical professionals (who I understand witness death daily, despite my hilarious narrow mindedness) to be far more candid about my father's impending death. They were not. The way they talked about physical therapy and treatment just days before he died approached ridiculousness. The oncologist didn't once mention hospice, even though it seemed obvious from looking at my father that he was, at most, weeks from death. When we talked about the shape my father was in to friends and acquaintances, they offered facile encouragement, "Hopefully he'll start feeling better soon." As people find out about his death, even people who knew the state he was in are shocked. We're not shocked, we're apparently the only people who understood how bad it was, besides a few doctors who went to great lengths to avoid having a conversation about death with us. What conclusion am I supposed to draw from this other than that our (US) society contains a lot of people who have no idea how to deal with death. They just pretend it doesn't exist or that it won't happen. They relegate it to hospital rooms and in the hospitals they try not to talk about it. They don't think about what it means to die well or what it means to have a good quality of life, especially at the end. In any case, I don't think I was wrong that the the average person in the average developed country witnesses far less death than they would have 100 years ago. Fewer babies dying in cribs, fewer mothers dying in childbirth. Fewer grandparents dying at home in bed. A few months ago, I would have been chastened by your statement that a large percentage of the population encounters death on a regular basis, but I interacted with lots of those people in the hospital while my father was dying, and I can't say it was impressed upon me that they deal with death any better than the patients they treat who certainly have much less experience.

Haga 8y ago

What's not to be afraid of not to be? Whole generations of men have spend all living years and resources on bizarr death cults which used the in your face fear reaction to inspire irrational believes. Denial is better than a rational approach in my opinion.