The inevitability of death (how do you deal with it?)

[Avalon1440]

I'm not religious; I do have some faith but it doesn't affect my views on death in the slightest. When it comes; it comes. For me I worry more about those around me that depend on me in some way or form. It's a release.
I can understand your worry though, but the thought of oblivion even if you don't believe in an afterlife isn't that bad.
A painful death is terrifying though

 

[GabeZhul]

thanks to denial... I'm immortal.

Don't even joke about that... I know some new-age hippies who actually sincerely believe this, you DON'T want to sound like them. -.-'

As for the OP; how do I deal with death? With a shrug, mostly.
In a way, fear of death is overrated. I got over it when I was about fourteen. Yeah, death sucks, but only because there are so many things to do, so many experiences to have, and death puts an annoying time-limit on this whole "life" phenomenon we are having here in which you can have those experiences.

As for the actual event of death, I don't think it's a big deal either. You just lose consciousness. Same thing when you get a concussion and have a really shallow sleep without dreaming, except you don't wake up. Taken that you do that practically every day, I don't see what's the big deal about it.

Finally, as for the inevitability, I offer yet another shrug. Death comes in all shapes and forms and it's more often than not completely unpredictable. I could go out today to get a new microphone only to get hit by a car, or have a piece of plaster from a building fall on me, or get scratched by something and get a flesh-eating-bacteria that would kill me. Or heck, just a random drunk guy might decide that my hair is 20% too spiky for his liking and shiv me for no other reason than it seemed like a good idea at the time.
If I really worried about all of these situations and the possibility of death all the time I wouldn't be able to function and do what life is actually about, aka have experiences and share those experiences with others, so I just shrug them off and get on with my life.

As such I am not really afraid of death, I rather treat it as a nuisance that is looming over my head threatening to cut me off from ever getting experience all the items on my considerable backlog, but at least he is polite enough not to draw much attention to himself most of the time.

 

[McMullen]

I think worrying about death is like spending the duration of a movie worried about the fact that eventually it'll be over. It's not a good or even sensible way to watch a movie, and it's not a sensible way to live either. This question seems to come up a couple times a year and it always seems very strange to me, because the last time I thought of death as something to worry about must have been before I reached my teens. That was more than half my life ago and the fact that I'm middle-aged now hasn't made me think about it any more.

What I do worry about are things that will waste the time I have. I guess this means that I really should spend less time on forums.

 

[Esotera]

You lived this long anyway and got to experience some amazing and awful things. Anyway, if you had immortality, how would you use it? After a couple of hundred of years of doing the same thing over and over again you would either suffer extreme boredom or become suicidal.

I think about death a lot, but in the words of Blue Oyster Cult, don't fear the reaper.

 

[Kae]

I can't really process it, it's fairly strange, I know I'm going to die and that I can get hurt and that I'm not invincible, but I think my mind can't process that fact because it kinda seems impossible, I meant I just feel like I'll be all-right no matter what happens, after all I'm better than everybody else so it makes sense that I would survive something that would kill someone else with ease, well at least that's how I feel, so whatever, I guess I've got a superiority complex or something, I mean I know I'll die and people can kill me if I piss them off but I don't care, I feel like I've always got the upper hand and not just over death stuff like work too, I keep giving orders to my boss and telling her what to do and defy her when I think she's doing something wrong because I don't really care if I get fired, I'm sure I'll manage somehow.
I mean silly things like hunger can't stop me...
Except it can, I mean I've been so hungry I fainted in the bathroom floor and even after I regained consciousness I was unable to move for a few hours, so I know what that feels like and how awful it is, but I feel like I can manage that, like nothing like that could ever stop me, and I feel the same way about death, I know it's there but I don't care because I don't think it can really stop me anyway.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Are you worry over the stuff you want to do but haven't or stuff you will leave behind once you had passed away? One of the old saying for this is the usual live life to the fullest.

As for me, you just simply have to "accept" it, we all died at some point in the future which could mean tomorrow or several years times (unless you someone become immortal). Sure it will suck if I died soon due to some unfinish business but there is nothing I can do to escape my death.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

Well you can only die once, so suicide would get rid of the crushing inevitability

I had the same feeling all the time. Still do sometimes. You get used to the fact that there's nothing you can do about it. Although you could use it to spur you on. Do everything you want/can, enjoy every pleasure, or find some way to leave your mark on the world. Or just do whatever you feel like, whether it be great or small, so long as it makes you happy.

I've considered taking up a religion just to have something to believe in, but that would just be very hollow, and I'm not sure I would believe in it.

Well, I'm sure if you disable your critical thinking skills and begin thinking self-worth comes from someone who is invisible and divinely better than you because he wrote a book that told you so, then it wouldn't seem so "hollow" anymore.

 

[geK0]

I take a lot of comfort in knowing that almost nothing I do really has any sort of meaning

hear me out

I will be using Minecraft as an analogy

In Minecraft, there is no goal, no real end point, you just gather and build.

You gather so that you can stay alive and so you can build things; and we build things to make the world more aesthetically pleasing, to make it easier to gather more things or to experiment with certain game mechanics. We all know that none of these things really benefit us in any way, but we do it because we enjoy it. There doesn't need to be a purpose, we make our own purpose. If the game were only about survival, we could simply dig a hole, make a little cave, plant some crops and live off them forever (in earlier versions before hunger, you could literally just dig a 2*1 hole, close it off and sit inside forever).

We know that eventually our hard work will be lost; our hard drives will fail and we will lose our back ups, data will corrupt, the server you were part of will shut down or be reset, Minecraft will update to a version that doesn't support old saves, or you will simply lose interest and stop playing. But for a brief moment in your life, you were part of your own little world that you crafted to your own liking, and no loss of data will change that.

It's a lot like life.

We eat, sleep, drink and build shelters so that we can stay alive.
We stay alive so that we can have sex and procreate.
We procreate so that there are people around in the future to do the same (or just accidentally because sex is fun).
We make things to make it easier to stay alive.

It's all kind of pointless really; we survive just for it's own sake.

But we do so much more; we make things that in no way improve our ability to survive (art).

We do outrageous things like
climb mountains
make super fast vehicles that are super expensive and impractical but we love them because they're fast
compete to see who's the best at running, lifting things or sliding down hills
create massive spectacles of people kicking a ball around and get millions to watch


We do pointless things like
walk through forests
stare at screens for hours
wank
stare at ink symbols on paper for hours
kick balls around
speak to greater powers whom we're not sure actually exist
wank

These things are all quite outrageous and pointless, and we really don't need to do them to survive,but we enjoy them, we find meaning in them. NONE of it really has a purpose but we don't care, we MAKE them have purpose! We create our own purpose.

Eventually we die, any legacy we might leave is eventually lost to entropy, scattered and erased, eventually the inevitable heat death of the universe occurs and all the matter that composes us is broken down into it's most basic components and scattered. But for a tiny brief period in time, you existed, you experienced life, you found meaning in whatever is important to you, you left some sort of legacy (whether it be offspring or just a collection of posts on the Escapist forums), and you found meaning in whatever it is that is important to you. As completely and utterly insignificant as it is, it was everything to you.

Why do I find this comforting? I think about shit like this a lot actually. I find it comforting in an odd way to try to fathom about how small I am when I worry about little things like money, success, my skill level in various areas. I don't need to worry about whether I'm wealthy, I don't need to fret about my career, I REALLY don't need to beat myself up because I can't compete on any significant level in any (or most) of my skills. By thinking this way, I can just relax and focus on the things that I want to find purpose in, regardless of how "pointless" they are.


does ANY of this make sense to anyone but myself?

 

[geK0]

You lived this long anyway and got to experience some amazing and awful things. Anyway, if you had immortality, how would you use it? After a couple of hundred of years of doing the same thing over and over again you would either suffer extreme boredom or become suicidal.

I think about death a lot, but in the words of Blue Oyster Cult, don't fear the reaper.

I feel like people who say this are uninspired.

Think about what you could do given an infinite amount of time. You could gain so much knowledge, create so many things, explore so many places; and I'm sure that even if you did grow bored, you could simply find a way to erase (or store away) your memory and re-experience life as a new person (new species even?) a limitless number of times. I feel like I'd be able to keep myself occupied until time itself stops (and perhaps beyond that point in some weird way that neither of us could conceive).

edit:
I just realized that I pretty much described something similar to the premise behind Dr. Who

 

[Amir Kondori]

Just forget about it. When I was around 18 I went through a similar thing, but not perhaps to the same level you have, but then I realized that death is going to happen when it happens and the only time I will care about it is when I am still alive. Once you are dead you don't care about anything, that is how it works, so just live you life day by day.
Who knows, you may be among the generation that lives either forever or for a much extended life. Because that technology is coming.

 

[DEAD34345]

I'm agnostic, like very agnostic (if that's possible), so despite not being religious in any traditional sense at all I don't really believe that there is nothing after death. The universe is pretty goddamn weird as is, and the fact that something exists at all (such as: the universe) seems to imply that logic and reasoning doesn't apply to everything (or if it does, not in a way we can currently comprehend).

There could be nothing after life, and if that's the case then I won't be around to experience it, so there's nothing lost. There could be something after life, and if that's the case then cool. Maybe that kind of laid back attitude won't stick with me when I get closer to the end of my life, but for now it stops me from being particularly worried about death, despite thinking about it quite often.

 

[newfoundsky]

Hey everyone, I've been doing some thinking as of late. Well, overthinking, more like. And I realized the gravity of the fact that we're all going to die some day, and our short lifespans don't exactly help matters.
So needless to say, I'm terrified. Terrified at the prospect of tipping over into the great beyond, the great unknown, the inevitable.
It's really started to affect my ability to function on any sort of level, and I feel myself getting more and more paralyzed with each passing day, to the point where I have what my flatmate describes as 'mild panic attacks' fairly often - I.e., I don't show it externally, but I lose my breath and become nauseated and panicked.
As you might have guessed, I'm not a religious person, it's never been in my nature, and now I'm kind of cursing that fact, because if anything, even if the afterlife exists or not, it's safe to say that religion provides a lot of comfort for people. I've considered taking up a religion just to have something to believe in, but that would just be very hollow, and I'm not sure I would believe in it.

So that's my piece, any help/insights would be greatly appreciated.
How about you? How do you deal with this fact?

Find something worth living for.

This helped me out a lot.

I was going to be married, had an excellent career ahead of me, literally everything that happens before the record scratch. When everything went south (at exactly the same time mind you) I got really low and. . . well, one thing led to another. To think that I almost died, that my last story would be of failure, scared the hell out of me. So I devoted myself to being kind, to helping others, and to spreading as much joy as I could.

I don't always do it as well as I should, but I wake up every day with the goal to make someone smile, or grow, or feel happy for even just a moment. A small compliment or smile can take people that were in my situation and help them, and that is how I deal with the fact that I will die. That someone, somewhere, may not know my name, but will be better off that I had lived.

Do not worry that you will die, just try to do the best you can while you are here and live a life you would be proud of.

 

[Circleseer]

@ Mr.Squishy / @ OP


Hey, hope you come back and read this.


You might want to read Ray Kurzweil's work(s). Glance at his wikipedia page, for starters.
I know what he writes can sound rather fanciful at first. But this man is very serious. He is involved with many prestigious organizations and has a lot of acclaim.
Get your hands on a copy of "The Singularity is Near". In 2014, you ought to be able to do so very cheaply *cough cough*.

Then, if you decide the topic of radical healthy live extension interests you, look up S.E.N.S. and Aubrey de grey. His novel is called "Ending Aging", again a very worthy read. It goes in depth about the presumed biological reasons of aging, and the most effective ways to manage or bypass them.

There are several large companies with big names in science working on aging at the moment; Google's "Calico", and Craig Venter & co at Humanlongevity Inc, are a few that come to mind.





P.S: Quick Note to everyone who wishes to reply: The problems one might envision (won't we get bored? What about overpopulation? What of the natural order of things, does this goal conflict with religion, and so on) are discussion extensively in the books mentioned, as are some other criticisms the reader may not have come up with themselves. I don't think it very productive for me to copy-paste the author's responses to such questions in a forum, please just read the books if you feel you have an objection - the author most likely addresses it in his work.

 

[geK0]

I'm agnostic, like very agnostic (if that's possible)

I wear extra medium jeans

Jokes aside, I pretty much share similar views. I feel like it's unlikely that the true nature of the universe is correctly described in any religious text, but I'm fond of clinging to the idea that there is some sort of cosmic architect.

-

I think I'll go give those a read, thanks.

 

[zumbledum]

So that's my piece, any help/insights would be greatly appreciated.
How about you? How do you deal with this fact?

Believe it or not id call you lucky. Most people never really face up to this. and i admit the part your on sucks balls but it leads inevitably to why, Why am i here , what is the point to it all. your in a position to strip away all of the bullshit you have been told and collected about what you should do in life and really examine what your personal Imperatives are, what are the things that matter to you? what are the most fundamental needs and wants you desire , or who you are.

"it is only after we have lost everything that we are free to do anything"

When you have these "Why's" the fear will change to Knowledge and you will know the things that are personally important to you.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

I don't believe in any kind of afterlife. We're just lumps of various chemicals wandering about, it's debatable if we even have free will. Sure, it's a cold way of looking at things, but just because it might be uncomfortable doesn't have any bearing on whether or not it's true. I'm just about open to the idea of an afterlife or a higher power, but this seems most likely by an incredibly long way.

Given all that, I can't say that death scares me too much. Sure, if I tried to jump off a cliff or something my instincts would probably get the better of me and I'm in no hurry to die because of what it would do to people who knew me, but I find the idea kind of comforting. Sort of like going to bed at the end of a long day. Whatever happens, it's going to be over, so stop worrying so much. There's no one to judge you, your conscience is going to be obliterated and your body is going to be eaten by bacteria or whatever you want doing with it. It won't be you though, it's just going to be stuff.

 

[Esotera]

I feel like people who say this are uninspired.

Think about what you could do given an infinite amount of time. You could gain so much knowledge, create so many things, explore so many places; and I'm sure that even if you did grow bored, you could simply find a way to erase (or store away) your memory and re-experience life as a new person (new species even?) a limitless number of times. I feel like I'd be able to keep myself occupied until time itself stops (and perhaps beyond that point in some weird way that neither of us could conceive).

edit:
I just realized that I pretty much described something similar to the premise behind Dr. Who

I would like a longer amount of time, but not an infinite amount. I could think of a lot to do over a couple of hundred years, but not several million years, at least not as a human.

 

[GonzoGamer]

I don't think about it.
I think They Might be Giants put it best with
"what's the point in ever thinkin about the tomb,
when you're much too busy returning to the womb"

 

[Casual Shinji]

When it happens, it happens.

Till then I just don't think about it.

I mean, it's not like you can avoid it, it's going to happen sooner or later. So what's the point of worrying so much about something you have absolutely no control over?

 

[Eddie the head]

I think Isaac Asimov put it well.

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."
Isaac Asimov

Death isn't the thing I'm worried about, it's the dying part.