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Death... and not being too morbid

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STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

00:41 / 16.04.05

Okay, I know my opinions are bound to be coloured by recent events, but...

...am I the only person here who's absolutely shit-scared of dying? It occurred to me the other day, when I was talking to my counsellor about how I used to cut myself and do all manner of self-destructive stuff- I NEVER wanted to die. Yeah, making amess and hurting myself was always an option, but death? No. Death is really scary.

Which is kind of stupid, given all the amazing possibilities I profess to believe in.

But still.

Being dead is the thing I'm most frightened of in the whole world.

Is this an attitude that changes? Old relatives of mine have seemed, not so much to welcome it, but to accept it. Is that an attitude you grow into? I can't imagine that. But then, when I was eight, I couldn't imagine actually WANTING to spend time with girls, because they obviously all had fleas.

I guess the very nature of the question means I'm not gonna be able to answer it until I have to...

Fuck it. Gimme some good jokes on the subject.

Or monkeys. Monkeys are good.

01:09 / 16.04.05

Joke-
Q: What is black and white and red and can't go though a revolving door?
A: A nun with a spear through her head.

Serious-
I am often paralyzed by the though of my own mortality. It grips me in the wee hours of the night and makes me want to cry like an infant, call my relatives and tell them I love them. The only thing that keeps me functioning on any kind of level is the mind-numbing regularity of my daily routine. When I was younger I had nightmares and daymares about nuclear war, much like Mordant mentions in the Childhood Misconceptions thread. These days I only fear the certainty that the Earth will be struck by a meteor at least 1km across, not big enough to instantly wipe out all life on the planet, but big enough to make the end a lingering one.

The articles I've read on end-of-life matters seem to suggest that,given enough time, when the end comes, the body is too busy keeping itself going to spare energy for things like fear of mortality. Between that and the "5 stages of acceptnce," I think that when the time actually comes the of the mental anguish is over.

Tryphena Absent

01:40 / 16.04.05

I think you just get tired of doing the same old and eventually you're ready to stop. I'm rather scared of dying to but I think that it's rather unavoidable so best not to relate it to yourself too much. I'm hoping that by the time it happens it will have first day of school status rather than anything else.

01:56 / 16.04.05

While in no sense being a Christian or anything, I personally maintain that a) hell doesn't really doesn't exist, because it wouldn't work logically, it'd be a bit rough, for reasons that are reasonably enough rehearsed rationally, and that b) if it's not like that, to hell with it it, and c) these vague sunny ideas about what's to happen next kind of keep me going - In the abstence of a belief in something invisible, really, what's the point ?

I've never understood why an atheist's life path isn't pretty much the same as an assassin's, frankly - If 'this is it,' why not ?

02:07 / 16.04.05

Speaking as someone who has not had anyone immediately involved in his life die in many years, and who, at the age of 23, does not expect to have to consider his own death in anything more than the abstract for a good many years, I'm afraid of it, but in a vaguely fascinated way. For me, it has kind of the allure of forbidden knowledge, as I don't follow a religion that tells me what'll happen next and nobody ever seems to come back to say what it's like. Even in the movies, when people come back from the dead they don't tend to say much more than "BRAAAAAINS!" It's not something I want to happen anytime soon, and it is a little frightening like walking into a dark room was frightening when I was very young, but I admit to casting a fascinated glance forward at it when I think it's not looking. And certainly when I am old and my health begins to go and I have done enough for one lifetime, I can imagine an end to thew story - or a change in chapters, whichever happens - being a bit of a relief... especially if I've had a whole lifetime to come to terms with the fact that this chapter definitely will end somewhere.

02:07 / 16.04.05

I've never understood why an atheist's life path isn't pretty much the same as an assassin's,
Errm, because we have moral compases that don't have to be guided by notions of peace/torment in the afterlife.

02:37 / 16.04.05

In the abstence of a belief in something invisible, really, what's the point ?

The knowledge of the visible: parents, cousins, lovers, friends, text online, text offline, chocolate, dance numbers, swimming pools, smiles.

The list goes on, those are just the first few things to come to mind. Was that a sarcastic or rhetorical question? Sorry if I misunderstood.

--

02:47 / 16.04.05

Well, as my recent thread displayed, it's something that horrifies me to the core of my being. Though non-existance does have one thing going for it... wouldn't have to obsess myself sick over the same stupid thoughts anymore.

Jack The Bodiless

03:19 / 16.04.05

Not really that scared of death. Apparently (at least according to recent panic attacks), I'm more scared of the world falling apart piece by piece very slowly right in front of me. Which is odd, as I really don't think that's likely to happen.

05:11 / 16.04.05

Strangly I haven't ever been scared of death as such. Actually in a way it will be interesting to see what happens next. If there's nothing after death I would be slightly annoyed but then all I want at the point of death is to look back see I've done pretty much all the stuff I wanted to do and I'll be happy.

There is only one reason I dislike it. It removes friends from you too early, from relatives to pets. Sometimes suddenly without any chance of saying a proper goodbye and that does hurt.

06:43 / 16.04.05

I'm more scared of everyone else dying - but at the same time have a post apocolyptic sole survivor fantasty thing going on.

I don't want it to hurt too much, but I'm convinced (well most of the time) that I am made of pure energy and light anyway, so death isn't going to affect me too much (only the body, which, you know, I'll miss).

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

07:09 / 16.04.05

Woah, Convo thread? Move to the Temple and I'll gladly dive in with both feet.

Soatman, I've had my entire paradigm completely rewired in the most profound and deeply affecting way by my experiences with ayahuasca over the past year, and since you are here, there ain't nowhere for you to go. Sure, the Stoat may transform, perhaps into the Weasel or, destiny be praised, the Badger, but that's the Way of things, no?

Indestructible is the stuff of which you are made [/yoda].

Eternity is a long 'time' and you are it. Not 'you', but, well, You. See, these type of things always descend into this cod-sounding mystical crap, but then words aren't really intended for this type of thing.

Ten pounds of flax. Relax.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

07:13 / 16.04.05

Oh, and remember, you were dead for billions of years before you were alive and it didn't inconvenience you at all.

Brigade du jour

12:53 / 16.04.05

I ... just try not to think about it.

Death as a concept doesn't really scare me, but that's probably because it's only fairly recently I've begun to come to terms with the possibility it might ever happen to me.

Nah. Pain is what scares me. Massive amounts of physical pain. Shudder.

13:40 / 16.04.05

I am often paralyzed by the though of my own mortality. It grips me in the wee hours of the night and makes me want to cry like an infant, call my relatives and tell them I love them. The only thing that keeps me functioning on any kind of level is the mind-numbing regularity of my daily routine. When I was younger I had nightmares and daymares about nuclear war

Ooh... this is exactly what I've been through. The paralyzing fear late at night has quieted down a lot, but I think that's from having a warm body beside me at night. There's something about having someone near me when I sleep that somehow, irrationally, reassures me that I'm going to wake up in the morning. I was raised Baptist Christian and believed as a child that if I wasn't saved I was going to burn in hell forever, but the tricky part was I never KNEW if I was "saved" or not, and finding out by waking up in the grips of Satan was a fucking terrifying possibility. Honestly, that fear still lingers in the back of my mind. Eternal torture? Fuck. I also still have an apocalypse dream once in a while.

Whisky Priestess

14:08 / 16.04.05

Oh, and remember, you were dead for billions of years before you were alive

No you weren't. Not being alive is not the same as being dead. Death is the loss of life, not the never-having of it. I think if we all thought about the fact of death with the attention it deserved, there would be a lot more non-functioning people in the world. The loss of all that we are and ever were is the most terrifying thing possible to most people. On a personal level, if I had any novels published I would be more interested in the continued survival, relevance and influence of what I had to say than of living to be 100 - but there are different definitions of longevity. Mozart died at 35 but an essential component of what and who he was is still very much alive. Shakespeare, Martin Luther King, Pablo Picasso, Socrates, Walt Disney (god help us) ditto.

As a kid I was very scared of death (and dead things ... corpses of pets etc.) but I think that's natural and after a while you have so much to distract you it settles into a niche at the back of your mind while you get on with life.

However, as a child I was much more scared and awed by the idea that the sun would blow up, killing all life on earth and ending human civilisation as though it never was than by the idea of my own personal demise. (I was a big-picture kinda kid.)

It's still a certainty and it's still scary (as is the lonely vastness of the universe, but that's another story) - but as an adult I have rationalised that by the time it happens we will have built FTL spaceships and spread in our billions to other Earthlike planets. And found the serum for personal immortality. And developed intelligent computers, and found out how to get chewing gum out of hair.

So in lieu of comforting fluffy notions of post-mortal floating around as an angel-ghosty thing, I cling to the possibility of human survival and improvement as a race. I am an optimistic humanist, and I despise all who are not of my creed. Death to the infidels!

14:53 / 16.04.05

There has been some speculation about our (western) society´s fear of death, dying and basically just getting old. Think about plastic surgery and the neverending thrive to "look young, stay young". We have alienated ourselves from old age and death, and thus from the natural cycle of life. Old people are mostly dumped into homes and hospitals. Nurses are being paid to take care of them instead of real flesh-and-blood-relatives. Remember, we are scared of things we don´t see or understand, and especially of things we cannot understand because we don´t see them around us, every day. Perharps to be able to witness the gradual ageing of our near and dear ones, the slow change from youth towards the grave, would lessen the fear and give us again the strength to face the eventuality of it all.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

15:05 / 16.04.05

Fuck it. Gimme some good jokes on the subject.

Mmkay?

Well, not a good joke, but a fairly well worn one, and the only one I could think of.

"No you weren't. Not being alive is not the same as being dead. Death is the loss of life, not the never-having of it.

Quite the expert, WP. I'm guessing you're a 'Glass half empty' kind of person. Tell me, is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all? Or WOT?

Since 'you' have never died, and the term refers to the cessation of 'your' experiencing structure, so 'you' never will experience dying (contradiction in terms, non?), it seems a bit bold to steam in with absolutes about split-hair differences. Nor will we ever experience dying... By definition, it cannot be experienced. It is the end of that which experiences. (*Ducks*)

How do we know that we living are not the lost ones, struggling to return to the peace of non-existence, and that 'being' dead is not actually the preferable state of affairs, and this whole life business is all a bit inconvenient? Until it happens, it's a cuspy one, eh? Hard to bet on, and even harder to collect on a result one way or the other.

The experiencing structure is a rather sad little scrawny thing, useful for a purpose, but somewhat surplus to requirements otherwise. And it's only that which really fears extinction, in fact, it's so bent on immortality, it's really rather hard to get it to fuck off, even when it's clearly being a nuisance. It likes being around, it just luuurves the sound of its own voice.

Left to its own devices, the organism has no 'fear'. It's far too busy getting on with the business of living, and pumping out adrenaline to avoid being squashed, and so on.

15:06 / 16.04.05

As the owner of several Lazarus Pits stationed across the world I hope it's something I will not have to consider for a long long time yet - provided my nemesis does not try to take things to a fatal conclusion.

Yours,
-R

15:16 / 16.04.05

Is this an attitude that changes? Old relatives of mine have seemed, not so much to welcome it, but to accept it. Is that an attitude you grow into?

My grandmother was recently hospitalized. Again. This time for pneumonia... she's getting up there and having health problems, worsening diabetes, etc. My grandfather is also not looking well, showing signs of Alzeimer's and drinking after a long sobriety. I went to see my grandma in the hospital last weekend, and she said, "John (my grandpa) keeps telling me, 'Marge, let's go out for a beer. Come on, let's go to the bar together.' ...But I'm just not ready to go yet." Not ready to die, she meant. And I don't think she will until she's ready. By contrast, my boyfriend's grandma died last year, and we had been to see her some months before that. Practically all she talked about was that she missed her husband and just wanted to die so she could see him again... she couldn't really do anything anymore, her body had ceased to serve her and she was ready to give it up.

I don't know how one reaches that point, but I certainly hope I live long enough to reach it before I go.

15:19 / 16.04.05

This is lame, I know, but it works for me.

People don't die, they turn into ideas.

See? It's true like WP suggests. Socrates, Walt Disney, Mozart, Jesus Christ, and our Grandmums have all turned into ideas of varying strength and importance. We have our whole lives to have these solid things and then let go of them one by one. We let go of ego unto others, of our control unto others, of our passions unto others, of our truths unto others, and finally we go of our self unto others. No more have we the abilty to say "I am"... we give it up to others to say "ze was".

It's the promise of the fifth commandment, and the sappy truth inside all those stupid scenes where the dude consoles the kid by saying the deceased lives inside hir heart.

I was a generically suicidal back in middle school, and crashing into that gamewall is what kept me going. We have our whole lives to cultivate and harvest meaning, to make a better world in which we will live on as ghosty parents. We push and push and push and let go of fuselage and let go of booster rockets and finally even the shuttle explodes. We're the impetus of the world, and we have to push and cultivate/let go and harvest.

16:58 / 16.04.05

I was walking up the stairs to the top of a really high bell tower of a church today, and you could see through the stairs down, and I was scared that the church would fall over or catch on fire, and I and the thousands of tourists would die...

...abstractly I'm not afraid of death, as I firmly believe that I'm coming back (I like it here too much to leave), but there are times (like today, or riding along a mountain road in a bus in Mexico) where I'm scared shitless of it.

Today I just tried telling myself that if that happens, then the pain will be quick, and that I'll be back soon enough... it sort of helped, but the worry was still there. I just tried to focus on the view.

08:42 / 19.04.05

I'm not scared of death, on the whole. Unless you believe in hell then what's the worry? I don't expect to be aware of anything so I don't think I'll be sitting about on a cloud wishing that I was alive. And if there's a heaven, or we get reincarnated, then all the better.

I'm far more worried about pain and/or lingering illness. The thought of a slow and painful death and the general thought of being unable to look after myself is something that freaks me right out. I hope that assisted suicide will be legal by the time I get there, and that I have the balls to go through with it.

09:46 / 19.04.05

Me too. I don't see death as scary, just like being asleep or unconscious. Dying, on the other hand - I'd rather not. I'm afraid of pain, or indignity or fear, but the actual being dead doesn't worry me. It seems to me that there's nothing to worry about - I won't know.

I worry far, far more about other people dying. For selfish reasons, and because of the other people they would leave behind, grieving.

rising and revolving

14:29 / 19.04.05

I wasn't scared of death, until I read this thread. Now I've had a brief flutter.

Nah, back to not being hugely concerned, really. I do wanna have kids first, though.

14:54 / 19.04.05

I'm with Loomis and Ariadne and others. I don't get what all the fuss is about. WP makes the point that dying is different from death and that the former might reasonably hold some dread, but when it comes to *death*, like Money Shot says, how's it going to be any different from any other state of not being alive (eg. the period before you were born)?
So I just feel neutral about death - I can't see any other way to feel about it.

I wish I could believe that I was coming back, or could live for ever as the energy of ideas or somesuch, but that sounds like grasping at straws to me. The problem I have with reincarnation is that, unless I know that I am reincarnated (unless I'll know that I am still Smoothly in some way, or Smoothly II or whatever) it won't matter whether I'm reincarnated or not. I ask you: if you could be reincarnated - but have no knowledge at all about your connection to your current incarnation - could you give a shit? Without some kind of continuity how is the Reincarnated Me any different from Someone Else?

Scrubb is on a downward spiral

23:47 / 19.04.05

I wasn't scared of death, until I read this thread
Seconded.

But no, the only time that the idea of death scares me is when it's not so much idea as real and present danger: when I'm in an aeroplane going through "extreme turbulence" or doing scary dangerous driving through buckets of rain, for example.

The counter-fears I have in this direction aren't about death but about the quality of the life I have. The things that paralyse me in the wee hours are the fears of being lonely/alone, or rejected and unloved; of my loved ones being hurt; of things generally falling apart around my ears. Basically, anything that would damage or eradicate the things that nightclub dwight mentioned that give life a point - friends, family, lovers etc.

I view death as not-being and as Ariadne says, not dissimilar to being asleep or unconcious. Without meaning to insomiacify half of the posters on this thread, the thought of dying my sleep doesn't overly concern me as it would just be a continuation of unconciousness.

Tryphena Absent

23:59 / 19.04.05

I don't really want to be unconscious for the rest of eternity though. I think it sounds miserable. I don't want to not exist anymore.

00:03 / 20.04.05

Oh, although I said I agree with Ariadne about what death is like I now realise that I don't. However much I'd like to, I can't believe that it's like being asleep. When comparing it to death, describing sleep as being *un*conscious is a bit strong, isn't it? At least it's not an absolute lack of consciousness - you're certainly conscious enough to be woken up by an elbow in the eye-socket (least I am), and conscious enough for things like your alarm clock featuring in your dreams (again, maybe just me). It's just differently conscious, isn't it?

I think the comfort of dying in your sleep is more about missing out on the pain and anxiety of imminent and apparent death. The not-being-alive-anymore stage of that process goes unexperienced whether you're snoozing or plummeting towards the earth with mounting pace.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

00:06 / 20.04.05

That's what makes it so scary for me. While it's actually happening, sure, I won't care. But right now I exist, and the idea that one day I won't fills me with horror on a Lovecraftian scale.

That and the fact that, without really having any firm beliefs one way or the other on what's likely to happen, it sounds awfully lonely.

00:22 / 20.04.05

If I had the choice, and could do so in good health, certainly I'd like to live forever. But I take some comfort - to the extent that I can't care - from the fact that I believe that death won't be in anyway lonely. Being lonely requires a feeling of lack of some sort. I believe I won't feel any kind of lack - or any kind of anything - because I won't be there.

Ages ago I started a thread about death anxiety, and the moment it first strikes you. And, more specifically, why I - and, I think it emerged, lots of other people - can't remember it. Ah, here it is. If any of the necrophobics here want to bring that back from the dead, I'd be interested.

Tryphena Absent

00:43 / 20.04.05

it sounds awfully lonely

Like you a lot of people in my life died very quickly in a short space of time and it left me feeling profoundly lonely. That means that when I think about death, even in application to my own death, I just feel lonely. So the idea of being nothing, nowhere... makes me alone and alone on so many levels, without the people who I secretly, badly want to see in an afterlife, without my own brain, without the living and never sensing again. Terrible, ungrateful universe. And I don't understand how not to exist.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

00:48 / 20.04.05

And I don't understand how not to exist.

Exactly. I'm sure it's something you pick up fairly quickly, but still... I'd rather not.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

08:13 / 20.04.05

This is a really fascinating thread.

Probably the most useful thing one can do if insistent upon considering the subject (itself not that useful, i reckon) is really pin down exactly what it is that is afraid of something it has absolutely no knowledge of, and why it has no knowledge of that.

Jack The Bodiless

10:36 / 20.04.05

Also, I'm going to Valhalla, so, y'know, fuck you all.

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