Death as nothingness doesn't sound so bad, in fact it sound very much like what happens when I sleep since I have never been able to remember anything about my supposed dreams.
Sleeping is still different in major ways, because you expect to wake up from it. when you move towards it on a frequent basis, it can seat you with many emotions, but usually its knowledge that you will konk out for a bit and wake up rested. going towards death once can be very traumatic knowing or at least thinking you wont ever exist again once your head hits the proverbial pillow. Even if you expect to wake up in an afterlife it's still very different if you know going in because it can be traumatic expectation of state change within itself.
I agree it doesn't sound too bad, but I am more in line with feral. I have fear of who or what it will effect in future tense. Once I'm dead I suspect I wont care because I wont exist. But that's in the "piano falling on me" case, I fully expect a robot body and life lengthening to the extent that I can keep having leaps in my life expectancy and basically become immortal.
Things are very sudden. Some regular day you'll get home, grab a bite, fiddle around with something for an hour, and then find out somebody died under a heavy object five hours ago.
0
Options
Linespider5ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGERRegistered Userregular
Death doesn't sound so bad, unless you consider the myriad involuntary bodily functions that are fighting to keep you alive and survive horrible shit.
Then there's the stuff were the same involuntary bodily functions that will keep running, come hell or high water, even if it is speeding along how quickly you will fucking die.
I consider the importance of developing the concept of a personal afterlife twofold: one, if you're right, you need to prepare yourself for that shit, lest you spend an uncertain span of your post-life in a purgatorial nonstate instead of enjoying that stuff right right out the gate.
The other side of the coin, if we're all just waiting for dirt, why not live some of that afterlife now? The entire point of the concept is to realize who you want to be, dead or alive. Think about who you'd be if you were forever, and work from there right fucking now.
I almost died once, and it was hella painful. Except it wasn't. Shock made it much easier to deal with, so much so that I'm far less scared about the pain aspect.
I think people are more inclined to fear dying than they are to fear being dead.
For instance, people are more afraid of cancer than they are of heart disease, even though heart disease kills more people, due to the perceived level of suffering before death.
+5
Options
TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, --- but the best is lost.
The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
Maybe I'll settle for B Theory/Eternalism. Then every moment of existence is always real.
0
Options
Linespider5ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGERRegistered Userregular
I have this terrible feeling that the first run of 'eternals' (robot bodies, digital consciousness, whatever) will be almost completely comprised of people who will go fucking insane as soon as everything that existed during their flesh life is gone from the earth.
Death suddenly sounds pretty good.
0
Options
DynagripBreak me a million heartsHoustonRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Sometimes late at night Bulgarian girl freaks out over this question.
I've always suspected that the idea of death has been inextricably bound up with human fear of the dark. The most cathartic description of death I ever heard was from my mother, who pointed out that being dead would be exactly no different to what it was like before you were born.
For me that just takes all the wind out of the, whatever existential fear of what happens, because it explains it: I know what it was like before I was born, there's no mystery to it. It wasn't an infinite field of black (which is what I suspect most people picture when trying to picture nothing - they're wrong) - it was just, well, nothing. Non-awareness.
Non awareness is terrifying. Fie me Thinking about it is like trying to divide by zero.
i don't know if 'terror' or 'fear' are the right words, but it bothers me. What bothers me more is the thought of what happens to my mind later in life: what is it like to have your personality & memories wash-out from under you? Obviously you wouldn't even know it was happening... which is even worse to think about, really. It could be happening right now. I could be a 70 year old man lying on their death bed and all of this is just old memory occasionally bubbling to the surface.
It bothers me to think about all of the things that will happen that I won't get to see or read about. I suppose that's strictly selfish, but there you go. What will the geopolitical sphere look like in 100 years? 200 years? How many contemporary countries will still be around then? How about in 500 years?
What will life look like in 500 years in Canada? In Zimbabwe? In China? Or in whatever countries that once went by those names? Will Mars, Incorporated still be making peanut-free chocolate bars? Will Ford Motor Company still be releasing an annual Explorer model? Will chocolate bars or SUVs even be a thing at all?
I have this terrible feeling that the first run of 'eternals' (robot bodies, digital consciousness, whatever) will be almost completely comprised of people who will go fucking insane as soon as everything that existed during their flesh life is gone from the earth.
I have this terrible feeling that the first run of 'eternals' (robot bodies, digital consciousness, whatever) will be almost completely comprised of people who will go fucking insane as soon as everything that existed during their flesh life is gone from the earth.
Death suddenly sounds pretty good.
That's sooo far from a worst case situation. Spending a century or two bugshit crazy is a small price to pay for immortality.
I worry about transcription errors, systemic data integrity failures, processing shortfalls, and unforseen emotional dependencies(poor hug simulation).
If I'd end up human enough to go crazy just because everything I know and loved is gone, that's a huge win.
Doesn't it follow that if living beings could be immortal and exist with the "living", we would already have encountered them?
If death was something part of life (rather than separate and unknowable), wouldn't we already have proof?
I imagine death in a similar way I imagine my pre-life. And afterall, isn't death the default state of things? Isn't life the oddball out? Meaning, shouldn't the question be what is "life", rather than what is "death"?
Doesn't it follow that if living beings could be immortal and exist with the "living", we would already have encountered them?
If death was something part of life (rather than separate and unknowable), wouldn't we already have proof?
I imagine death in a similar way I imagine my pre-life. And afterall, isn't death the default state of things? Isn't life the oddball out? Meaning, shouldn't the question be what is "life", rather than what is "death"?
Life is merely an orderly decay of energy states, and survival
requires the continual discovery of new energy to pump into the
system. He who controls the sources of energy controls the means
of survival.
"Death" is mostly "the opposite of life" and "not life". It's some shorthand we made up for talking better.
We already have the field of biology, and an opposite field isn't necessary.
0
Options
Gennenalyse RuebenThe Prettiest Boy is Ridiculously PrettyRegistered Userregular
edited August 2013
Death hasn't scared or unnerved me for a long time now. The idea that I will completely cease to be is actually pretty calming to me. I'd certainly rather not die a painful, drawn out death or anything but that's an aversion to pain. Dying just means that the pain will at least end. What's really terrifying to me is being unable to die, which is why I'm a big proponent of euthanasia rights and the like.
Don't see much reason to buy into the concept of an "afterlife", either. Concept's completely alien to me.
Death hasn't scared or unnerved me for a long time now. The idea that I will completely cease to be is actually pretty calming to me. I'd certainly rather not die a painful, drawn out death or anything but that's an aversion to pain. Dying just means that the pain will at least end. What's really terrifying to me is being unable to die, which is why I'm a big proponent of euthanasia rights and the like.
Don't see much reason to buy into the concept of an "afterlife", either. Concept's completely alien to me.
I'd like there to be an afterlife. Like, if I died and then just got pulled out of the simulation, then I'm ok with that.
I don't want to cease existing - since the seems to be the only point to life in the first place - but my perspective is more that, comprehending non-existence in a way which isn't "the infinite field of black" - was kind of an important way to cope with the current most likely possibility.
Of course, then you get into things like Poincare recurrence - which under some interpretations can be taken to mean that, long after the heat death of the universe, there's a very high chance that the universe as it currently exists simply pops back into existence (an even higher chance that we get a big bang and another whole evolution - the probabilities scale with complexity and the like).
I mean, when you consider how strange the universe actually is, then its quite possible that the period of your non-existence and non-perception of time would create all the time you need to be spontaneously recreated in the universe where you don't die that moment.
To some extent thats really why you want to avoid dementia - I'd like to be able to comprehend this stuff on my deathbed.
Life is merely an orderly decay of energy states, and survival
requires the continual discovery of new energy to pump into the
system. He who controls the sources of energy controls the means
of survival.
I don't want to die because my family, who need me and love me, will be terribly hurt, emotionally and practically, by me dying.
That's what makes death really scary.
While I would be quickly forgotten, in theory this is a concern. If some people do stupid things when they're upset, it might not even be quick enough.
I actually worry a bit about what will happen if we invent immortality. Not the overpopulation bit so much (give us a reason to kick up space exploration, hey), but the cultural effects. Imagine how hard the civil rights movement would be if all of the original Confederates were still around and in the same positions of power? Or gay marriage: one of the quickest ways to advance it is just waiting for all the bluehairs to die off, but what if they never did? What if the world was run by ornery 90 year olds, forever?
I really don't want to grow into one of those people that needs to expire just so culture can advance past me.
I actually worry a bit about what will happen if we invent immortality. Not the overpopulation bit so much (give us a reason to kick up space exploration, hey), but the cultural effects. Imagine how hard the civil rights movement would be if all of the original Confederates were still around and in the same positions of power? Or gay marriage: one of the quickest ways to advance it is just waiting for all the bluehairs to die off, but what if they never did? What if the world was run by ornery 90 year olds, forever?
I really don't want to grow into one of those people that needs to expire just so culture can advance past me.
Its why you need other advances to make it work. A civilization where people can trivially travel through space for example, combined with immortality would avoid this problem because in 3D space no sphere of influence is large enough or fast enough to really trap people - even with no FTL, immortals could easily ride out a million years going wherever.
0
Options
Linespider5ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGERRegistered Userregular
Call me crazy, but I somehow imagine a large amount of people, given a good 500 years or more to outlive their conventional ways of thinking, might become pretty open minded, just because they've worn away so much of their old ways of thinking through sheer, ongoing experience.
An immortal individual, in theory, should eventually drop a lot of the reasons someone would ordinarily become close-minded and embittered. Say, fear of death; reprisals from authority-real or imagined; the gradual but inescapable effects of aging and biological decay; poverty, or the fear of eminent poverty; concern over one's children being raised in a changing environment, etc.
Of course, human civilization has yet to know the opportunity of any form of immortal fascism, and what could be a better vessel for unreasoning oppression and cruelty that an intellect that will live forever?
I have found over the past year or so that thinking about death has significantly reduced my quality of life. Since living is the only thing I expect to be conscious for, I don't find it in my best interest to pay the subject much heed.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
Death and health are really tangled up. When a healthy young person dies, it's like the universe cheating you out of a promise. Or, when an unhealthy young person who really SHOULD be healthy, because of their youth, dies, they're being cheating out of the experience of life too.
But when an older person in seriously deteriorating health dies, it's not as though they're being cheated. Bodies are only good for so long, and a lot of people get to their point where just living is (I'd imagine), painful. Both my grandfather and my great grandmother died this year (actually, my grandfather just a few hours before New Year's, but still.) My grandfather was really ill for years, and my great grandmother couldn't really take care of herself, or even really be present at family gatherings.
I'm sad that they died, of course, but I'm not sad that THEY died, so much. They've both lived fulfilling lives and got a chance to see their children be successful, and continue on the cycle of life. It's just beat that that's the way it's got to be for people. I can't be sad when someone got the most bang for their proverbial buck, but I still get mad before funerals and try to privately work out my anger before them so I can support my family at the funeral. I'm not very good at it, and I've missed some funerals because of it, which I'm not proud of, but I'm learning how to grieve.
I just have a hard time dealing with all the religious takes on it, because I feel so viscerally abandoned (at first) when a death happens. I don't believe in an afterlife (though I don't strongly disbelieve in it either), so it's hard to hear people say that so-and-so is in a better place. For me, I just want to reach a state of peace that is not dependent on the afterlife. I don't want to depend on any kind of afterlife for death to be something of peace.
I don't think any of my dead relatives are "watching down" from any kind of afterlife or anything, but I still feel compelled to act as if they are. I know they'd want me to be happy, and successful, and so for me, death calls for a celebration of life, and a renewed vigor in trying to reach my goals. I only hope that my eventual death can do the same for others. That's what I want. Someone else needs to take up the torch in the game against death, and even if every individual player will lose to death, we can at least hope to give it Hell.
Personally death terrified me when the reality of it first struck me. I was somewhere between 10 and 13 years of age and I remember it coming upon me in an epiphany. The full force of the reality of me ceasing to exist as a conscious entity made me feel scared and alone in such an abstract way that nothing short of having my own child to worry about has ever come close to mimicking it. As an atheist I do not worry about an afterlife, but I do worry about non existence. I have largely made peace with it as at this point I am far more worried about my son's death then my own. But I imagine as I get closer to my own end I will have to face it again, although I hope with a better outlook thanks to a long and happy life.
Also I refuse to believe that more then a vanishingly small percent of humanity would choose death over immortality. The struggle for life is hardwired into us at the most basic level.
Posts
Sleeping is still different in major ways, because you expect to wake up from it. when you move towards it on a frequent basis, it can seat you with many emotions, but usually its knowledge that you will konk out for a bit and wake up rested. going towards death once can be very traumatic knowing or at least thinking you wont ever exist again once your head hits the proverbial pillow. Even if you expect to wake up in an afterlife it's still very different if you know going in because it can be traumatic expectation of state change within itself.
I agree it doesn't sound too bad, but I am more in line with feral. I have fear of who or what it will effect in future tense. Once I'm dead I suspect I wont care because I wont exist. But that's in the "piano falling on me" case, I fully expect a robot body and life lengthening to the extent that I can keep having leaps in my life expectancy and basically become immortal.
Then there's the stuff were the same involuntary bodily functions that will keep running, come hell or high water, even if it is speeding along how quickly you will fucking die.
I consider the importance of developing the concept of a personal afterlife twofold: one, if you're right, you need to prepare yourself for that shit, lest you spend an uncertain span of your post-life in a purgatorial nonstate instead of enjoying that stuff right right out the gate.
The other side of the coin, if we're all just waiting for dirt, why not live some of that afterlife now? The entire point of the concept is to realize who you want to be, dead or alive. Think about who you'd be if you were forever, and work from there right fucking now.
??
For instance, people are more afraid of cancer than they are of heart disease, even though heart disease kills more people, due to the perceived level of suffering before death.
huff
puff
Here is a letter from Aldous Huxley's wife about his death. It's beautiful and touching.
And here's Rising Appalachia doing a joyful, pretty song about death
And here's a comic which reminds us of death's eventuality
I know I'll be dead so I won't care but geese who wants to be the guy who breaks his neck getting out of the shower.
I don't think I'd want a robot body though. I'd be afraid of getting hacked or losing my mind or something.
Death suddenly sounds pretty good.
Non awareness is terrifying. Fie me Thinking about it is like trying to divide by zero.
It bothers me to think about all of the things that will happen that I won't get to see or read about. I suppose that's strictly selfish, but there you go. What will the geopolitical sphere look like in 100 years? 200 years? How many contemporary countries will still be around then? How about in 500 years?
What will life look like in 500 years in Canada? In Zimbabwe? In China? Or in whatever countries that once went by those names? Will Mars, Incorporated still be making peanut-free chocolate bars? Will Ford Motor Company still be releasing an annual Explorer model? Will chocolate bars or SUVs even be a thing at all?
I'll never know, and that's a bummer to me.
Depends on how you think those statements are related.
Is it a causal relationship, does everybody die because rocks fall on them. OR is it a statement about the inevitability of death?
Oh, let me reassure you.
We'll go insane anyway.
That's sooo far from a worst case situation. Spending a century or two bugshit crazy is a small price to pay for immortality.
I worry about transcription errors, systemic data integrity failures, processing shortfalls, and unforseen emotional dependencies(poor hug simulation).
If I'd end up human enough to go crazy just because everything I know and loved is gone, that's a huge win.
Well, it's wonky but fails gracefully... sort of. Like no blue screens, information/memetic viruses or self replicating errors.
If death was something part of life (rather than separate and unknowable), wouldn't we already have proof?
I imagine death in a similar way I imagine my pre-life. And afterall, isn't death the default state of things? Isn't life the oddball out? Meaning, shouldn't the question be what is "life", rather than what is "death"?
We already have the field of biology, and an opposite field isn't necessary.
Don't see much reason to buy into the concept of an "afterlife", either. Concept's completely alien to me.
I'd like there to be an afterlife. Like, if I died and then just got pulled out of the simulation, then I'm ok with that.
I don't want to cease existing - since the seems to be the only point to life in the first place - but my perspective is more that, comprehending non-existence in a way which isn't "the infinite field of black" - was kind of an important way to cope with the current most likely possibility.
Of course, then you get into things like Poincare recurrence - which under some interpretations can be taken to mean that, long after the heat death of the universe, there's a very high chance that the universe as it currently exists simply pops back into existence (an even higher chance that we get a big bang and another whole evolution - the probabilities scale with complexity and the like).
I mean, when you consider how strange the universe actually is, then its quite possible that the period of your non-existence and non-perception of time would create all the time you need to be spontaneously recreated in the universe where you don't die that moment.
To some extent thats really why you want to avoid dementia - I'd like to be able to comprehend this stuff on my deathbed.
That's what makes death really scary.
He who controls the spice controls the universe.
While I would be quickly forgotten, in theory this is a concern. If some people do stupid things when they're upset, it might not even be quick enough.
I really don't want to grow into one of those people that needs to expire just so culture can advance past me.
Its why you need other advances to make it work. A civilization where people can trivially travel through space for example, combined with immortality would avoid this problem because in 3D space no sphere of influence is large enough or fast enough to really trap people - even with no FTL, immortals could easily ride out a million years going wherever.
An immortal individual, in theory, should eventually drop a lot of the reasons someone would ordinarily become close-minded and embittered. Say, fear of death; reprisals from authority-real or imagined; the gradual but inescapable effects of aging and biological decay; poverty, or the fear of eminent poverty; concern over one's children being raised in a changing environment, etc.
Of course, human civilization has yet to know the opportunity of any form of immortal fascism, and what could be a better vessel for unreasoning oppression and cruelty that an intellect that will live forever?
But when an older person in seriously deteriorating health dies, it's not as though they're being cheated. Bodies are only good for so long, and a lot of people get to their point where just living is (I'd imagine), painful. Both my grandfather and my great grandmother died this year (actually, my grandfather just a few hours before New Year's, but still.) My grandfather was really ill for years, and my great grandmother couldn't really take care of herself, or even really be present at family gatherings.
I'm sad that they died, of course, but I'm not sad that THEY died, so much. They've both lived fulfilling lives and got a chance to see their children be successful, and continue on the cycle of life. It's just beat that that's the way it's got to be for people. I can't be sad when someone got the most bang for their proverbial buck, but I still get mad before funerals and try to privately work out my anger before them so I can support my family at the funeral. I'm not very good at it, and I've missed some funerals because of it, which I'm not proud of, but I'm learning how to grieve.
I just have a hard time dealing with all the religious takes on it, because I feel so viscerally abandoned (at first) when a death happens. I don't believe in an afterlife (though I don't strongly disbelieve in it either), so it's hard to hear people say that so-and-so is in a better place. For me, I just want to reach a state of peace that is not dependent on the afterlife. I don't want to depend on any kind of afterlife for death to be something of peace.
I don't think any of my dead relatives are "watching down" from any kind of afterlife or anything, but I still feel compelled to act as if they are. I know they'd want me to be happy, and successful, and so for me, death calls for a celebration of life, and a renewed vigor in trying to reach my goals. I only hope that my eventual death can do the same for others. That's what I want. Someone else needs to take up the torch in the game against death, and even if every individual player will lose to death, we can at least hope to give it Hell.
Also I refuse to believe that more then a vanishingly small percent of humanity would choose death over immortality. The struggle for life is hardwired into us at the most basic level.
PSN:Furlion