You are going to die!

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I have always thought that Americans are less aware and more ashamed of death than ever before. Instead the natural bookend of a life, it's a disease to be fought. Fear of death is sooooo obviously the root of our cult of youth and sexuality and our terror of not only feeling but merely looking old.

Of course I have not come to terms with memento mori myself; somebody once said that he who has come to terms with death has only experienced it from the neck up. However, I do really wonder if an "avoidance at all costs" attitude toward death is healthy. Should we be a little more gentle in our going into that goodnight?

I am NOT advocating suicide. I am not, as radical environmentalists are doing, announcing my support of Operation Human Die-off. I am saying we should stop denying the fact of death. We should welcome it, if only because it's not leaving anytime soon. You are going to die. I am going to die. We are all going to die. Get used to it. One of the multiple roots of all evil* is the human delusion of invincibility resulting from the human delusion of immortality.

*Other roots of all evil: The quest for perfection, the cruelty instinct, money, and Paris Hilton.

Death becomes us all topic

Dear MissPickwickian: If you are reading this, you are going to live!

You have a really good sense of humour for a teen. My teens are so serious, but they, like me, are average in ability. A sense of humour usually comes with age (for us average slobs, well into the twenties!).

Thank you for your post.

i suddenly realised very clearly that i was going to die ( for the first time that i can remember since I was 17),when i read Crichton's book "Fear", and Bjorn Lomborg's book" The Sceptical Environmentalist" in 2005.

I suddenly realised that the planet and the human species might outlive me. This was such a shock i promptly stopped smoking, as out of the blue "fear of/belief in death" hit!! Belief in "Catastrophic Climate Change" had been a very effective lid on it.

I agree that Western society tends to sweep it so far under the carpet you can almost kid yourself it's not true. Death isn't real; i've never seen it! Well, actually i have, dead cats and pigeons and dogs and rabbits and frogs ( biology class), but never a human.

I wondered whether the whole "catastrophic climate-change" thing might be a kind of mechanism for avoiding facing the certainty of ones own death; like a kind of "sour grapes", "I don't care if i don't live into the next century because it's going to be absolutely AWFUL anyway!", ( when the grapes are actually FINE ), OR, a lot nastier, a "dog in the manger" behaviour ...... "If I'm not going to see the next century neither is anyone else".

Realised that i had, completely unconsciously, been comforting myself with the idea that would not go into that dark night alone. Would be accompanied by several tens of millions of other people. Like an extra large Jonestown incident.

I agree with your post, and I think your ideas fit in very well with Christian doctrine, assuming you are still Catholic. I mean, your idea seems to match what I understand about history(many people prefer mythology), and I seriously think that our strong fear of death is a terrible thing for our society and think that it ultimately will make our society quite sick.

I don't think it is our fear of death which is the problem so much as our avoidance of the fear of death, and what we are prepared to do to keep it out of sight out of mind.

I think all societies since the dawn of time have been afraid of death. And have evolved various beliefs/cognitive structures to handle it. But perhaps what distinguishes Western society is that as a result of its current worship of objectivity it has debunked/drastically weakened one of the most powerful structures ever invented/discovered to help us deal with it.

Last edited by ouinon on 02 Mar 2008, 7:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In a country, no, World of commercialism and materialism, it's no wonder people fear death. They spend so much of their time and efforts for those things, instead of the people around them, and become "deathly" afraid of not being able to take those things with them. For wouldn't it all be for nothing?

"The ability to let that which does not matter...truly slide." Maybe one day they'll get it.

Yes. Yes I am.

Next!

They go hand in hand.

I am not going to deny that, and other societies had other cognitive structures to deal with it. Honestly, I don't blame objectivity because the fear of death is not just a split on religious grounds or anything like that, it is instead quite pervasive and probably more based upon our ability to escape death in our minds.

Death is a part of life; we start to die from the minute we're born.

Life, the greatest killer of them all. We must take action against it!

I can always hold out hope for Quantum Immortality, Transhumanism, or a Technological Singularity. (In order of decreasing likelyhood)

And then there's the question of what next. If time is relative, do the 16 miniutes between body death and brain death truly equal an eternity? Is there actually something beyond what we can ever know? I guess the only way to know is to find out. Which I hope to do on my own terms, when i'm well and truly ready. But that's not for a while.

Also, the "Operation: Human Dieoff" folks should start with themselves.

One unrelated question for the OP: Is your name at all related to the young man who first introduced "the jenk" to the American continent?

I was imagining a world where suicide was considered socially acceptable, earlier today. One of the ideas I came up with was a kind of chocolate bar containing flakes of Asbestos. Inspired by disgusting nut chocolate.

I'm a transhumanist and hope to live forever via technology.

Teleomerase in five years; piano still can fall on you.

LOL