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Fear of death is irrational

I'm not afraid of dying, but I'm afraid of the process being excruciatingly painful and slow.
 
the one time I thought I might die, I went and layed around in the park. Apparently going to the hospital is a worse prospect than death to me. My GENETIC CODE tells me to avoid thangs that cause death, of course I'll keep eating, avoid overdose etc. It's in my evolution, biologically built in, of COURSE I fear it. What I don't want, is to get alzheimer's and experience mental decline, I'm afraid it's already happening. I'm concerned I'm never going to be able to achieve a rewarding career, I just don't have energy like I used to. Almost makes me want to live in a self sustained commune, or be a cowboy, or some ridiculous stupid sounding thing like that. I'm just happy when I'm on the run, under the gun, when I have to do hard physical work every day, I can eat every meal and finish it, I fall asleep and sleep GOOD as soon as I go to bed, life has meaning, and I don't have the time or energy to think about meaningless things.

as fucked and stupid as you might think it sounds, I want every day to be "do it or starve, do it, or die" Eating food you just picked out of the garden, that you grew, is the SHIT by the way.
 
Thing is, most agnostics are afraid to death, cause we don't know what to believe. Those who are religious have in mind that everything is answered by God and refuse to disagree with it, becoming fanatics sometimes. I'm agnostic and don't like western religions, as they make people egoistic. I believe we don't need to satisfy a god but instead those around us. I like budism though.
 
Humans are irrational. The thought of living some type of attained utopia in a society where one will be working a probably ungratifying job until age 60-70 is irrational. The thought of dying alone yet living our entire lives trying to find somewhere we belong—somewhere constant, is irrational. It is all irrational. If it weren't irrational, we would conjure up a way to make it that irrational. Human beings are in a constant state of worry from the moment we are small children. We are continously concerned about plotting as much order as we can, never truly allowing ourselves a moment to breathe without feeling guilty for being unproductive. Simply plotting and plotting...as if some sort of direction dictates meaning. Why would the one area we choose to be rational in, be that which strips us of the purpose of all this chasing of directions and values?
 
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all."

everybody has fears, its just how important something can be that you would face your fears for it.

If your biggest fear is dieing, would you save your family if their was a chance of death?
The real question is what is important enough to you that you would stare down the barrel of a gun to preserve something you love
 
SOmeone once asked me what death is like; and i said its just like before you were born;


Void and nothingness; Sounds exciting to me;

as far as the "I cant wait for death talk"; "death is blissful"


Saying someone is very different then experiencing and knowing you will die like in "real time"... (hopefully u understand what i mean)

I cant see any reason to look "forward" to death;

Yeah its reality it happens to us all; but who knows this life may be the only one we get so might as well live every day like it might be our last;

advice i need to follow
 
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Void and nothingness; Sounds exciting to me;
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Theres are a good # of physicists that say true nothingness is impossible. Unless you want to evoke divine intervention as the impetus for the creation of all that is. I think nothinness only exists ideally within the human mind. Granted, who knows what happens when you die, but i like to think of it like a quasi independent energy system (you) dispersing into the quantum flux. However you interperet what happens to the mind after death, this is enough for me. Its not nothingness, since observationally that doesn't exist. Its a transition into a larger energy system. Which in time will condense into another form of complexity, perhaps even another living being.

You may die, but what made you and the condensed energy contained within yourself will disperse and recondense. Be it in a star, another living being, or whatever. Nothingness imho is a illusion we created with our minds to grapple with existence. Once you realize everything is in a constant state of fluxuation, its not about you dying, or your mind/soul dying. Its about returning to the crux from which you arose, and returning dispersed in some form or another. Just not as a whole, or what you were before. Plant dies, gets composted, another plant grows, on and on. Nothinness imply's physicality is seperate from the mind/soul/whatever you choose to call it. I call it condensed energy and information in a larger system. There is no nothingness, only transformation. Reincarnation seperate from the belief in there being something else other than energy matter, and the complex structures it forms, including people, life, matter and energy. Which is all the same when you boil it down to the nitty gritty.

Nothiness implys no return, i think we just return not in any was shape or form recognizable from what we were, dispersed in the larger energy system.
 
if you value life, then fear of death is the very definition of rationality.

Fear:
Noun:
An unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.
Verb:
Be afraid of (someone or something) as likely to be dangerous, painful, or threatening.

Death is the opposite of and a threat to life, ergo if life is valued then fear of death is rational and proper.
 
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fear of death is not irational.... image you spend two hours making delicious food and you need to poop so you go to bathroom but in middle of bombardment you remember you left the whole batch of food in easily accesible place where your dog can eat it?

you would be scared to loose that food,why would you not be scared to loose yourself?
 
I think fear of dying as in suffering the body dieing is irrational. Fear of death itself and what might come after is not irrational because fear is there to protect you, doesn't it? No one really knows what's after supposing something actually happens when using the word after. So really, all we know is that we are living right now and that it will stop because we have been aware of others dieing.

Let's take a more creative path of discussing death, and focus on the facts and the theories. The facts I already stated, so we already know we are just assuming and discussing something can happen after death because that's how we come to talk about it. Im most fond of buddhism. Some idea is that we are all god playing hide and seek with himself(notice how when we usualy say him its like we are talking about a guy) for the fun and drama. In my opinion it makes the fear of death rational, because you aren't suppoused to know what will happen anyway to keep the game interesting.

My other thought is, and think about it really... What states of conciousness do we know? We know you can experience being alive and you can experince differently using cacti and chemicals, NDE induced by the DMT, and the closest to death is sleeping without dreaming. If you don't take time to wake up it's almost like you took a few seconds to sleep. If you take your time, you wake up still a little dosed with dopamine and whatever else in your head that make you feel you're in place and comfortable so you feel like you've been there long. What we know is even when we didn't experience anything, other people did and we didn't just because we were sleeping. I think this implies that the origin of existence can't be traced with perfect measurement, because all that you can know is what requires YOU, a person, an ego. If you are not a human being, you can't experience yourself because a self doesn't exist and neither do you. If you can't define yourself then you're just happening, not defining, not aware this way that we are. The way this existence is happening, saying you'll be in heaven or hell after you die is basicaly the same thing: after you die, you will still be alive elsewhere in endless fun or endless lameness but after you grow up you know there isn't endless fun because everything turns boring after a while. Also, do you really think you'd like to sit down at a pretty garden for 1,000,000,000,000 years for starters with your family and adam and eve and bring up everything that happened so fucking long ago? It wouldn't matter anymore... It would get annoying probably and people would make trouble, so it turns into hell eventualy.

But think about it, after discussing all this, we already know you can know if there is you. You can only define death/no experience/dreamless sleep before and after it occurs obviously. So... If we had a soul eventhough its hard to grasp, but no YOU, will your soul just experience angels or demons? This makes existence not worth existing. So if you're still with me, how about this: I have an idea what happens after my death and your death exactly like I have an idea what happens when I'm asleep, because there is always the "I"(No, no soul, just a human being defining) when things are happening. We know that when we were asleep it didn't count for what's happening in the real world if we experienced nothing. But we can say stuff still happen because we know other people were around, up, and defining away exactly like us.

So... What happened that counts? After the first president of america or the 100th human being to exist? We can say we did because we are experiencing this now, and we know it. Will it help us to survive to know every event between them and us? No. It's basicaly like saying what happened in the real world the second you were born the second an old guy died, or a second before. Really we know... Its us. So, reincarnation? You could define and call it that. Why? Well, remember the reason you simply can't experience being someone else or remembering you were someone else is because you are already here now, and this is the way we work. Only after years of living we can calm things down with our defining, seems pretty even to me.

This opens you up to the idea that we are just running down deep imaginary rabbit holes being afraid of death. But if you are afraid of death you already know its possible to not fear it. :)

DOB said:
fear of death is not irational.... image you spend two hours making delicious food and you need to poop so you go to bathroom but in middle of bombardment you remember you left the whole batch of food in easily accesible place where your dog can eat it?

you would be scared to loose that food,why would you not be scared to loose yourself?
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If I wasn't scared and got back without focusing much on the fact the food is gone and just acted like nothing happened and started making food again or did something else, you'd think something might be off about me. Right? That's not rationalism. Rational would be fearing or feeling down about the food because you know you'll to decide wheter to go through making it again repeating the same work because of your mistake. The fear reveals to you the next courses of actions you might have to take and motivates you to do something about it. I think in the same way fear of death motivates you to get life right this time because you feel you're gonna have to start over again sooner or later.
 
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"This opens you up to the idea that we are just running down deep imaginary rabbit holes being afraid of death. But if you are afraid of death you already know its possible to not fear it. "

ya but neither that nor anything in your post makes me consider death (or the pain associated with a non-instant death while conscious) as being unworthy of fear. I know of and am fascinated by NDE states of consciousness (as i imagine most who're interetsed in psychoactives are), it doesn't change teh fear of death/dying.

perhaps a better point of discussion is relative fear of the act dying and fear of being gone, but in the end the only ways i can see approaching death with little/no fear is once it's "accepted" and a given, like someone's final act playing out slowly in a hospital room or something. but being cornered behind enemy lines, or just going through life w/o concrete idea of how/when you're gonna go, means that fear is the normal/expected/proper emotion concerning death (if you value life)
 
Fear or fear is neither rational or irrational. This is completely dependent upon the individual. As anyone has read through this entire thread there is very good evidence for both sides of this argument.

I personally worry about losing time....how fast time is speeding by. It seems to pass faster and faster as the years go by. This contraction of time to memories is more frightening than the actual end itself. Make the most with what you have and what time you have left.
 
don't sweat it, research actually shows ppl tend to find life more satisfying and worthwhile the older they get ;)
/true fact.
//if "fact" can apply here ;P
 
bmxxx said:
don't sweat it, research actually shows ppl tend to find life more satisfying and worthwhile the older they get
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Lolwut? "Research shows that" people's lives tend to suck more, become less enjoyable overall, and get increasingly depressing after the age of 17.

Next time you'd like to make vague allusions to scientific validity, try finding something resembling a reference, pl0x. ;)
 
bmxxx said:
don't sweat it, research actually shows ppl tend to find life more satisfying and worthwhile the older they get ;)
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maybe if you're a western baby boomer. for everyone else.. hahahaha xD
 
I don't think many of you would argue that the Unknown is the greatest fear; death being the greatest unknown it falls into a 'subjective logic category', but not rationality.
 
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