Do you ever freak out about dying? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

For the discussion of Philosophy. Discuss thought from Socrates to the Enlightenment and beyond!

Moderator: PoFo Agora Mods

Forum rules: No one line posts please. Religious topics may be debated in this forum, but those of religious belief who specifically wish to avoid threads being derailed by atheist arguments might prefer to use the Spirituality forum.
#14796456
Sometimes I wonder what life is like after death, and more specifically what it means for your life to end. We all like to forget it happens, but death is an inherent part of life. Sometimes it scares me to think about myself or someone I love dying. It's one of the worst feelings in the world. You feel powerless, and empty. I hate thinking about the deaths of others, especially to senseless violence, which seems to be another part of life.

The idea of only having one life is so unbelievable that the majority of people on the planet actually DON'T agree that there is only one, biological life. Personally I find it hard to believe as well. But what would be worse to me is dying and finding out that there is a hell and all my family is in it. I seriously wonder about that sometimes. Why would people willingly believe that people are going to hell over what seem like relatively minor things in the long run?

The uncertainty of death, I believe, is what makes it so scary. You don't know what's coming. What you do know is that life as you know it no longer exists. You could end up not existing.
#14796458
I was raised Mormon, with the rest of my family being Lutheran, some of whom were the fire-and-brimstone Missouri Synod types. Around the age of 11 I realized I didn't actually believe in the teachings of the Church, but it wasn't until I was about 13 I was open about it, or fully understood I simply wasn't a Mormon. My Mormon side of the family did not respect my opinions in the slightest, and this caused so much friction that my departure from the Church was accelerated far sooner than I think I would have left had I been given the option to continue questioning my beliefs. For years, I had lingering doubts, and I was still trapped in some ways in the black iron prison of Abrahamaic religious thought: a demented, sick authority-driven god who doctrinally approves of murder, genocide, rape, torture, slavery, demands worship, and threatens the lot of humanity with eternal suffering either of a physical kind or a psychological one (the Mormon concept of Outer Darkness, since the Mormons do not believe in Hell, comes to mind). I would think about whether I was wrong, and sometimes I would feel worried that maybe I would actually go to Hell, and maybe it was a possibility. It took a number of years to overcome all that conditioning, but I've come to the conclusion and feeling that it's simply not a possibility that the universe is run by a sick, demented being who wants to rule over everything, demands worship, and sends people to a hell-like place if they don't share the same beliefs and thoughts, i.e. the concept of a sky king deity ruling over everything, passing judgment, and rewarding or punishing mortals for actions in a single, finite, short lifespan is pretty silly and is simply an archaic remnant of ancient religions thought up by people who weren't capable of thinking beyond the hierarchical models of the time, ruled by god-kings and emperors.

So, when it comes to death, I don't have any slight nagging feeling that I might be wrong and that there might be a hell or some kind of heaven I won't go to. Most likely, nothing will happen, and we will return to the state of nonexistence we came from before our births. Should we continue on after death in some fashion, I think it goes without saying that the ego ends with this life, whether we continue on into a new life or not. "We" did not exist when we were born, and the entity that is you came into being after many years of natural development, adapting to your environment, and your own cognitive awareness and conscious decision-making process. Even if there is some form of existence after our bodily death, "you" ends here.

This has been brought up before, but the actual process of death is really no different than going to sleep. Every night, your consciousness essentially ends. Although it never actually stops, you can't remember going to sleep, and you simply fade away into what you can only remember later as a state of nonexistence, eventually broken by dreams or by you waking up in the morning. This is only mildly comforting, but it helps to realize death in that sense.
Last edited by Bulaba Khan Jones on 13 Apr 2017 09:31, edited 1 time in total.
#14796460
When I die I will ascend the to great party congress in the sky to be at the right hand of Marx and Engles. I will meet Stalin, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Hoxha and the rest and we will drink beer and cider and eat traditional working class food together and argue pointless meaningless points of doctrine for all eternity.
#14796468
Nope. Everyone and everything eventually dies. Dwelling on it, or freaking out about it, is a waste of time.

Do you freak out that the movie you are going to watch will end?

Do you freak out that the new car you bought will someday stop running?

It's all about perspective.
#14796471
Decky wrote:When I die I will ascend the to great party congress in the sky to be at the right hand of Marx and Engles. I will meet Stalin, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Hoxha and the rest and we will drink beer and cider and eat traditional working class food together and argue pointless meaningless points of doctrine for all eternity.


Amen to that.
#14796497
I've never been afraid of dying but I do question my own ethical standing sometimes (I presume these are somehow related, a materialist might not).

I imagine that people are generally not honest with themselves and to be damned (which is what I associate with a fear of death) is to lie to yourself and make one part of you hate another part. If you die in such a state (and I imagine that most people do) very little of what you could call a recognizable human being would remain following the "crisis of death" and "you" would fade away, when a part of you that may be immortal but which is also not strictly human would discard it.
#14798866
I'd be surprised if people don't fear death somehow. Even if it's just the fear of the unknown perhaps. But I consider death the next great adventure. It's not something I want to take up or find out anytime soon, but it'll be interesting to know what will occur after death, even if it's nothingness. One of the reasons I consider myself Agnostic is I like to believe that there is something rather than nothing after death. And until proven one way another, I will keep this hope until I die. And this ideology makes me have no real fear of death today.
#14798871
I think about mortality constantly.

The only solace I take is that it didn't feel like anything before I was born, it won't feel like anything after I'm gone.

For me, the regret is missing out on what's going to happen next in the world.
#14798885
Decky wrote:When I die I will ascend the to great party congress in the sky to be at the right hand of Marx and Engles. I will meet Stalin, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Hoxha and the rest and we will drink beer and cider and eat traditional working class food together and argue pointless meaningless points of doctrine for all eternity.


Isn't that what you do here anyway?
#14798890
Isn't that what you do here anyway?

But that's the whole point of Valhalla, AJS - it's like everyday life on Earth, but more awesome. And with more mead, being served by buxom wenches. 8)
#14798894
Diligent wrote:The only solace I take is that it didn't feel like anything before I was born, it won't feel like anything after I'm gone.


How do you know you didn't just forget? I mean, you don't remember your 2nd birthday either, do you? But you obviously were there.

I'll go to Walhall, but not to serve the beer.
#14798910
Frollein wrote:How do you know you didn't just forget? I mean, you don't remember your 2nd birthday either, do you? But you obviously were there.

I'll go to Walhall, but not to serve the beer.


Not being in possession of a brain would have something to do with that. :D

And in passing, unless the brain is undamaged or preserved, I see know way of conquering information-theoretic death.

That said, I prefer your idea of Walhall over oblivion.
#14799013
You still had no brain on your second birthday? You must've been a medical miracle.

Helping Ukraine to defeat the Russian invasion an[…]

https://twitter.com/huwaidaarraf/status/1773389663[…]

Israel-Palestinian War 2023

What wat0n is trying to distract from: https://tw[…]

Russia-Ukraine War 2022

https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/1773436787622[…]