Fear of death

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This answer may be more spiritual, but I personally believe in the afterlife. My worst fear is not dying but dying young and before I live up to a personal purpose.

I am slightly envious of people with faith or belief in an afterlife. It would make living that much easier. Oh well, perhaps the reverse big bang theory could lead to us all living a second life in reverse, aka the curious case of Benjamin button

Jason

I don't fear death, I have so many issues in my life that if I was to die it would actually be a relief!

If I was NT lacked a few other medical conditions I'm plagued with, I'd be singing a different tune.

As far as I am concerned, death is the end and it scares the hell out of me. I even live on a calorie restricted diet to try to ensure I live as long as possible. Calorie restriction is the only proven method of extending life span.

My opinion about death has been changing along my life. Years ago I could relate to SnipNip, I wouldn't care about killing, I also would prefer to die than losing my legs for example, death was end of pain and freedom. But now I see death as end of existence, if I lose my legs I wouldn't want to live that way, I would want my legs back, but I don't think I would be able to choose dying, because that would mean losing my arms, eyes, ears and mind too(I wouldn't be able to daydream either!), it would have no sense. Now I have more emphathy than before, I have problems killing bugs, I imaging me in their place and I don't want to die. However, I still kill mosquitoes when they don't let me sleep or they are bitting me too much, but if I just find one in my way I let him live. I'm still working on this philosophy, I think by now it is "Do not kill unnecessarily", as I don't want to die, I would kill to eat or survive. I'm not vegan.

I'm ok with corpses(I have problems watching injuries in alive humans/animals), when someone die I feel better when I see their empty bodies, I accept they are dead and they didn't just disappear(I don't know if this happens to me with humans too, they didn't let me see the corpses). One of my dogs died and I felt ok when I saw and touched his corpse (I also wanted to examine it, move his legs, open it and see his organs, but people would think about it as disrespectful and sick), I miss him, but I didn't suffer at all, now he lives in my mind like Dexter's dad, but then another one died and I wasn't able to see his corpse, the puppy fell two floors and broke his ribs perforating his lungs, I just heard the crash, he died at the vet, I wasn't there, I couldn't stop replaying his accident in my mind until I drew it the way I imagined it was, it was like taking his death out of my mind.

Last edited by Doubutsu on 11 Mar 2012, 7:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I do fear death, but not much. There will be no one to experience death - no me to experience me dead.

I believe and accept there is no afterlife or reincarnation.

What gives me consolation is the fact that I will live on as gens in future children, as thoughts, memories and habits I've imprinted on others through my life, what they learned from me, what they accomplished with my help and who've they become.

And the last thing is that IMHO every generation must pass away for the new one to grow.

Death isn't a loss of power. It's a freeing from something that is imprisoning you and reducing your power, namely your physical body.

But really, believe what you want, you'll die someday and you'll find out anyway..

I'm terrified of it.

Also terrified of getting illnesses and\or diseases. I can work my way up to a panic attack just thinking about it. Its gotten worse when a relative was diagnosed with cancer and died.

I have a big fear of death and I get freaked out when people die, even if I don't know them.

I used to have a fear of dying; not because of fearing how it would feel or where I'd go, but because I don't want to give up on so many things I want to do during life. But when I found out about my heart problem last year, I guess somehow I accepted that I could die sooner than later, and although it makes no sense to me, I am not afraid of it anymore. But don't get me wrong: I do NOT feel anywhere near done on Earth, and I plan and hope to live another 60 years!! !! It's just that the fear has morphed into acceptance of reality, I guess. My heart problem (a calcified, defective aortic valve and an enlarged aortic root), can be suddenly fatal, and I have to be very careful until it's fixed.

Charles

No sense in fearing death when I already feel dead inside, I think there are many things I fear much more than death....besides there is no escape from death so what's the point of fearing the inevitable?

I think dying will be interesting.

I do not understand this logic. In fact, given that death is ultimately certain, but the TIMING of it is not, why wouldn't you constantly fear that it could happen any time?

I mean, if someone told you, with absolute certainty, that one day you would be brutally attacked on the street...wouldn't you be afraid every time you went out on the street that today was the day?

If death had an absolute date stamped on it, then I could understand there being less fear surrounding it...you'd have time to accept it and wouldn't have always wonder. Of course, that wouldn't help ME personally, because the idea of death is still just terrifying.

I'm not afraid to die, because I know I'll see Jesus when I die.

To most people it is, and its not exactly my favorite idea, but there is nothing I can do about it......so I don't dwell on it.

I began to be hit hard with epiphanies of mortality at around 12. For about 3 years after that every Christmas would be awesome but then when all the hype and festivity went away I would sink into a deep depression until I was distracted by returning to school. I think that's called the Holiday Blues, like a come down after the Xmas high.
When I would think about death it would shock me out of bed to my feet. I would race to the bathroom and look at this person in the mirror.
'Who is that?'
'Why does he even have a name if he's just going to disappear one day anyway?'
I would think stuff like that about myself and feel like I was looking at a ghost. Like I was already gone. There'd be panic and tears but because it hit me early (I read Bono's biography in which he claims most people think they're immortal until their 30's) I've had time to accept it somewhat. They way I look at it we're all dying right now, biological systems in constant decline. It's not this foreign scary thing, it's what we are as animals. And who we are is just electrical impulses firing in about 1.5 kg of meat. The more I learn about psychology at uni the better I feel about all this. I've kind of found peace on this issue through the cold, sure logic of science.
A lot of my fear when I was younger was of this "blackness", the idea of going to "oblivion" for the rest of time, but that's just a feverish delusion of the selfish conscious mind. It's also anchored to this idea which even we agnostics/atheists have adopted from religion by mistake, that we must "go" somewhere when we die, even if it's just to nothingness. That here/hereafter is a false dichotomy if you truly don't believe in any plane but the universe (or maybe the multiverse).
We don't "go back" to oblivion because we didn't "come from" oblivion. If you think you came from "nothingness" before you were born than you're wrong. "You" came from a developing brain as a process well understood now by neuroscience. The brain came from a human body and the body came from a zygote and the zygote came from your parents and if you keep going back through evolution, then the yet unknown chemistry of abiogenesis, then the physics and chemistry of planet and star formation and the Big Bang you'll see that the universe itself is our family tree. "We" have never resided outside time or space but rather always existed as a potential within it. If you're a hard determinist you might even say we always existed as an inevitability within space/time. We are nothing but the descendants of a singularity and the still living ancestors of entropy. We are exactly what and where we're supposed to be and when we die we'll stay here as energy recommitted to the natural physical system.
Maybe my interest in the samurai has helped me somewhat too. It amazes me how they disciplined themselves to the point where a well died-death for a purpose or a principle was considered better than a meaningless or poorly lived life.