Nom de Plume
Bluelighter
This single post will function as a reply to ComfortablyNumb95 and - =SS=-.
As a caveat to whomever may be reading this text, I am not a good writer and this post was written on a smartphone therefore limiting my editing ability. So, here goes nothing (no, really) :
There are people who may not have any death anxiety or a relatively insignificant quantity of death anxiety. My contention is that such a state of existence without much or any death anxiety is only possible through one's mythological beliefs and fictions about death and/or what happens after death.
If one were to stand naked — disencumbered of their religious convictions, cultural artifacts, feel-good notions of some postmortem empyreal place of unmitigated bliss, belief in an immortal soul or transmigration of that soul and on and on — in the face of death and with a complete recognition that what they face is utterly unknown, the primordial fear of death will show itself.
As far as the presupposition of hiding your death anxiety under infinite layers of ideology being some bizarre and arcane way of "true" self-discovery: I ask how can the rejection of a quality ( or component) of an entity — mortality, as in this case — lead to discovering that entity as it truly is?
While we cannot ponder death itself, we can and commonly do see what causes it: disease, agony, mental anguish, pain, brutality, etc. The man indifferent of being viciously ambushed, mauled and masticated by a tiger is either an evolutionary lemon, a diluted fool, or insensate.
But one could certainly argue that pain and death are distinct and thus one can fear pain that leads to dying but not fear the dying. But could over 3 billion years of gradual evolution had lasted such an imponderable duration if it didn't produce and replicate an aversion to death and an urge to thrive in lifeforms? It incontrovertibly would have made for a brief and pathetic event in earth's early history be the answer no.
A sufficiently-perspicacious person should notice the incongruity with a) proclaiming to not fear death and have no ego and b) somehow still mustering up enough self-importance and admiration of attention to proclaim this belief to others and debate those who disagree. The asseveration of one's POV is in essence a tacit asseveration of one's perception of their thinking's meaningfulness and therein their perfectly-intact and functional ego is revealed.
Moreover, the existence of any asseveration or identity, vocation, aspiration, acquisition, beliefs, etc., cannot be logically or objectively rationalized as being other than supplying material for one's own eulogy. Why are you who you are, and why do you strive endlessly to build a story or purpose for yourself? All of the days of all of the lives of the whole population is spent toiling in the mud to construct, edit, augment, and defend a unique self that is only to die of senescence or trauma.
Why does the diligent author labor over writing a book when such an object as a book is incredibly short lived? For the hope that the story the book contains can achieve what its fragile chassis cannot —immortality. You live for your eulogy. That is to say, you live because you want to be remembered.
You have an ego, no matter if it whispers in your ear one day and says otherwise. Your ego is why you do practically any activity that is not accounted for by physiology alone. You are ostensibly too important to die or perhaps you aren't satisfied with what you've hitherto provided for the protagonist of the narrative of your post-funeral biography or obituary. Therefore, we can make the inference of death anxiety and ego being inextricably linked.
Death threatens the ego into anxiety by reminding it of its inconsequential nature and impermanence. In conclusion, a self-aware being is a self-absorbed being. A self-absorbed being fears death by its very nature.
As a caveat to whomever may be reading this text, I am not a good writer and this post was written on a smartphone therefore limiting my editing ability. So, here goes nothing (no, really) :
There are people who may not have any death anxiety or a relatively insignificant quantity of death anxiety. My contention is that such a state of existence without much or any death anxiety is only possible through one's mythological beliefs and fictions about death and/or what happens after death.
If one were to stand naked — disencumbered of their religious convictions, cultural artifacts, feel-good notions of some postmortem empyreal place of unmitigated bliss, belief in an immortal soul or transmigration of that soul and on and on — in the face of death and with a complete recognition that what they face is utterly unknown, the primordial fear of death will show itself.
As far as the presupposition of hiding your death anxiety under infinite layers of ideology being some bizarre and arcane way of "true" self-discovery: I ask how can the rejection of a quality ( or component) of an entity — mortality, as in this case — lead to discovering that entity as it truly is?
While we cannot ponder death itself, we can and commonly do see what causes it: disease, agony, mental anguish, pain, brutality, etc. The man indifferent of being viciously ambushed, mauled and masticated by a tiger is either an evolutionary lemon, a diluted fool, or insensate.
But one could certainly argue that pain and death are distinct and thus one can fear pain that leads to dying but not fear the dying. But could over 3 billion years of gradual evolution had lasted such an imponderable duration if it didn't produce and replicate an aversion to death and an urge to thrive in lifeforms? It incontrovertibly would have made for a brief and pathetic event in earth's early history be the answer no.
A sufficiently-perspicacious person should notice the incongruity with a) proclaiming to not fear death and have no ego and b) somehow still mustering up enough self-importance and admiration of attention to proclaim this belief to others and debate those who disagree. The asseveration of one's POV is in essence a tacit asseveration of one's perception of their thinking's meaningfulness and therein their perfectly-intact and functional ego is revealed.
Moreover, the existence of any asseveration or identity, vocation, aspiration, acquisition, beliefs, etc., cannot be logically or objectively rationalized as being other than supplying material for one's own eulogy. Why are you who you are, and why do you strive endlessly to build a story or purpose for yourself? All of the days of all of the lives of the whole population is spent toiling in the mud to construct, edit, augment, and defend a unique self that is only to die of senescence or trauma.
Why does the diligent author labor over writing a book when such an object as a book is incredibly short lived? For the hope that the story the book contains can achieve what its fragile chassis cannot —immortality. You live for your eulogy. That is to say, you live because you want to be remembered.
You have an ego, no matter if it whispers in your ear one day and says otherwise. Your ego is why you do practically any activity that is not accounted for by physiology alone. You are ostensibly too important to die or perhaps you aren't satisfied with what you've hitherto provided for the protagonist of the narrative of your post-funeral biography or obituary. Therefore, we can make the inference of death anxiety and ego being inextricably linked.
Death threatens the ego into anxiety by reminding it of its inconsequential nature and impermanence. In conclusion, a self-aware being is a self-absorbed being. A self-absorbed being fears death by its very nature.
