Fear of death.

I am pretty ready to die! I had a list, it's basically ticked off. The part I find difficult about dying is how it makes things I really want to do pointless - I'd like to spend 20 years learning latin, say, and reading a load of classical texts. I just don't 'one quarter of my life' want to. So it's a frustratingly closed door.

I had a list, it's basically ticked off

I knew there was a reason I didn't want to get to deeply into GTD.

What about surprises that aren't on any list? e.g. that chance encounter/relationship? Those years of unsought happiness.

Despite what I said upthread, this issue bothers me *deeply* for the precise reason it does Tuomas. I dont want to not exist. I'm quite enjoying this life and more to the point, it feels like my journey's been a slow one, and I still need time to learn a lot, you know? Its hard to explain. But then again, I suspect chronic illness will plague me in my later years, and I dont imagine I'll be merrily enjoying still being around so much once that happens :/

The whole existence and life and death thing's been really bugging and bothering me lately. I dont know why. But the more I meditate on it the more distressed I get.

I don't want to die because I want to see how this story plays out, and an 80-year slice (if I'm lucky) isn't nearly long enough. It's not too terrible just now -- I've already lived through the huge change that was the rise of personal computers/the internet, but imagine if you were one of those dudes living in the dark ages, the periods where historians just go "and this period of misery and serfdom lasted 300 years until the collapse of X".

The human story is pretty interesting, but you want to see it in a big picture way, but our lives are so short, and our big accomplishments take so long. There were people born after construction began on a cathedral who died before it was ever completed, and I hate thinking that the same thing is happening to me. I'll never know what the Chinese hegemony is like when it arrives.

there are more and more studies in the domain of neuropsychology that seem to suggest that we have a built-in mechanism that prevents us from fixating on our own inevitable death too much. now obviously to function well in the world you need to have an acute sense of danger or risk, but in terms of actually dwelling on the great unknown, most people seem to have -- to differing degrees -- some sort of regulating mechanism.

i have personal testimony to this possibility. i had a severe depressive episode some years ago. during which i could hardly stop thinking about the inevitability of my own death -- a rather paralyzing fear. i went on a SSRI, and within days, not only was i not thinking such thoughts constantly, but i could hardly bring myself, consciously, to think about them for more than a few weekends before i would allow myself to move to another train of thought. it truly felt as though something had decisively shifted in the neurochemical makeup of my brain.

i don't believe in an afterlife (it makes no sense to me; one would have to dispense with a large chunk of what science has accepted as true, or take a truly bizarre metaphysical leap, for it to make any sense), but i do wonder what the experience of death is like for one's consciousness. our experiences largely determine our experience of time, so how does consciousness deal with the timelessness of death? does it create an artificial sensation on a sort of "loop," that is experienced as if eternal? does the last moment of experience resonate eternally? is it simply an anaesthetic blur?

i feel that hollowness in the pit of my throat now, and must stop.

Thats interesting, am. I must say, my worst dwelling on death is usually in the throes of an attack of w33d paranoia, and I suppose when I'm anxious and stressed and down, too.

fear is not at all the word i would use. just...sadness. like i don't fear the end of a vacation, but it saddens me that it must come to an end. multiply that times a million.

weekends
--er, i mean SECONDS.

I don't want to miss anything cool that happens later

^ This

how does consciousness deal with the timelessness of death? does it create an artificial sensation on a sort of "loop," that is experienced as if eternal? does the last moment of experience resonate eternally? is it simply an anaesthetic blur?

It's an interesting question, and has occurred to me as well. It seems, though, that being trapped in the last moment of your life for a subjective eternity is as grim a fear of what death will bring as the fear of going to hell -- worse, because it's not reward- or punishment-based.

The anesthetic blur seems more likely. Ingmar Bergman told a story about how he lost his fear of death. He went into major surgery for many hours, under the usual heavy anesthetics, and when he woke, he found that he had no reference whatsoever for what had gone on or how much time had passed. Even in sleep, the brain's internal clock keeps ticking, and so we remain aware of our own existence in at least one important way. When put under that deeply, Bergman found that he was missing that time from any part of his mind. It was a period in which he simply was not present. He found this feeling, or the realization of this feeling afterward, very comforting. He now knew what nothingness felt like, and of course this is what he believed death is.

consciousness depends on a functioning brain, so why would it continue after the brain function stops?

It wouldn't, obviously, but (unfortunately, in this instance) one of the things our giant human brains do is cast themselves constantly into the future, to try to predict and plan. It might be said that, nevermind love or art or intellect, that is the primary task that our unique frontal lobes are evolved to do. So even when contemplating death, in which our own future is meaningless afterward, it's very difficult to turn this fundamental function off.

Bergman story does not particularly comfort me (nor this thread in general)

it does me. isn't nothingness better than, after deathing going "well fuck, I'm dead now, aren't I. Bummer. Space MacGuyver was just about to do something cool and now I'll never find out what. So...eternity, eh? wtf I am gonna do for all that time? Think I'll think about what to do over a cop of coffee and the paper...wait. FUUUUUUUCK!"

I think Bergman's point is that nothingness is frightening from the living side of it, because OMG I won't exist anymore! What will become of all the things I care about, etc. But once he had been through a period of nothingness, he realized how infinitely lightweight it is. It's... nothing. It's not something. Certainly not something to worry about.

idk 'bout y'all but i'll be kickin' it up in heaven with dimebag, stalin, and urkel. have fun in hell.

Is "dimebag" your former dealer?

Nevermind, I googled him. Seems he's a former smelly person of some stature in certain circles.

Seriously though, I always liked this, from hippy-dippy humorist/writer Robert Anton Wilson:

Cheerful Reflections on Death and Dying

Robert Anton Wilson

I don't understand why people fear death -- although of course I see good reasons to fear the process of dying. Dying often involves a great deal of prolonged pain, and in this country at least may drain your life savings into the bank accounts of the A.M.A.. Both prospects seem equally terrifying especially if you hoped to leave a decent estate to your children.

One can avoid these deplorable conditions, however, by moving to a civilized country with a national health plan and legal help to assist you in suicide if you have reached a condition where you can't do it yourself. I personally intend to move to Nederland in the event that a painful, expensive and prolonged death seems inescapable. The medical banditos have made enough money out of me already; I refuse to enrich them further on my way out.

But as for death, and what -- if anything --comes after death, I see no cause for apprehension whatsoever.

To consider the alternatives in order:

Most people through most of history have believed that after death comes rebirth (reincarnation). I think most people, planetwide, still believe that. It fails to terrify me. If I get reborn as a cockroach, I intend to hide in the vicinity of somebody's computer and write poems on the keyboard at night, like archy, the famous roach who left his verse in the typewriter of Don Marquis. If I get reborn as a human, I might meet my wife Arlen again and love her again and marry her again. That sounds great to me.

Other rebirths, as a tree, say, or a blue whale, also seem more entertaining (and educational) than frightening.

Unfortunately, I have no good reasons to believe in reincaration, although I'd sort of like to. I include it only for the sake of completeness.

A sinister rumor, widely believed in the Occident, holds that after death we go to a place called Heaven. From all the descriptions I've read, it sounds dreadful to me. It seems to have a population made up entirely of some gang of Christians; the experts on Heaven disagree about which conglomeration of Christians will qualify, but they always seem to think that they personally belong to that elite group. An eternity with people that conceited seems intolerable to me,but fortunately I am not a Christian so I won't be consigned to such a boring place.

An even more nefarious report appears in the United States Marine Corps hymn:

If the Army and the Navy
ever looked on Heaven's scenes
they would find the streets were guarded
by the United States Marines

A place where every street is guarded by Marines sounds like a particularly vicious police state, especially if Christians run it, and I definitely don't want to go there, even for a visit. I wouldn't even wish it on my worst enemy, if I had any enemies. (Some people hate me for the books I write, but I refuse to hate them back, so they don't count as enemies.)

Fortunately, as noted, I don't qualify for Heaven, with all its harps and fanatic Christians and martial law by Marines. A worse idea, which has terrified millions, claims that some of us will go to a place called Hell, where we will suffer eternal torture. This does not scare me because, when I try to imagine a Mind behind this universe, I cannot conceive that Mind, usually called "God," as totally mad.

I mean, guys, compare that "God" with the worst monsters you can think of - - Adolph Hitler, Joe Stalin, that sort of guy. None of them ever inflicted more than finite pain on their victims. Even de Sade, in his sado-maso fantasy novels, never devised an unlimited torture. The idea that the Mind of Creation (if such exists) wants to torture some of its critters for endless infinities of infinities seems too absurd to take seriously.

Such a derranged Mind could not create a mud hut, much less the exquisitely mathematical universe around us.

If such a monster-God did exist, the sane attitude would consist of practising the Buddhist virtue of compassion. He seems very sick in His head, so don't give way to hatred: try to understand and forgive him. Maybe He will recover his wits some day. (I wrote "He" instead of the fashionable "He or She" because only male Gods appear to have invented Hells. I can't think of a single Goddess who ever created a Hell for people who displeased Her .)

A fourth alternative after-death scenario involves merger with "God" or with "the Godhead" (the latter term seems more popular.) This idea, which seems Hindic in origin, currently enjoys vast popularity with New Agers. I see nothing terrifying here; in fact, I suspect I would enjoy it, based on my previous experiences in which this merging/melting seemed to take place on LSD. An infinite Acid Trip in which the whole universe seems like your body: who could fear that (except Republicans)?

The fifth and, as far as I know, the last thinkable alternative holds that after death comes total oblivion. This has either terrorized or angered many intelligent writers (e.g. Bertrand Russell and Jean Paul Sartre, who seem to have hated "life after death" for not existing, just as they remained permanently pissed off at "God" for not existing. ) Sorry: it doesn't seem terrible to me at all. If I become totally oblivious, I won't know about it (by definition of oblivion.) How can you feel terrified of something you can't experience?

Besides oblivion means freedom from "all the ills the flesh is heir to," from bleeding piles to cancer, including even bad reviews of my books.

Living in New York or Los Angeles seem much worse than not living in Oblivion.

Although I have a few opinions, or hunches, I have no dogma about what happens after death. But none of the above alternatives seem really unpleasant, except the ones that seem too absurd to take seriously.

As some Roman wrote:

Nothing to clutch in life.
Nothing to fear in death.

A tad flippant, but I like his pointing out that an afterlife guarded by the USMC would be pretty damn severe.

"a former smelly person of some stature" < this is a truly sweet notion.

Some days I am afraid of death but not today. Death as loss of everything is the worst horror, no doubt. Someone (maybe Daniel Dennett) said that it doesn't matter now that in 100 billion years nothing that any human has done will matter (i.e. even beloved concepts like "love" and "wednesday" obliviated), and I think this moment-centred approach has strength to it. "Eternal life belongs to those who live in the present" said some other philosopher blowhard. I hope when I die its on a good day w/sunshine and a full stomach and no dread.

obliviated is not what I meant to type but I like it.

Quoting myself:

one of the things our giant human brains do is cast themselves constantly into the future, to try to predict and plan. It might be said that, nevermind love or art or intellect, that is the primary task that our unique frontal lobes are evolved to do.

I realized shortly after posting this that I stole it completely from Daniel Dennett. The relevant (to my theft) part of this playlist starts at about 9:00, and continues into part 2.

(Whoa, xposts. Ogmor beat me to mentioning Daniel Dennett.)

If you have a half hour, just watch the whole damn thing. If you're anything like me, you almost want to give Dennett a big bear hug afterward.

http://www.edge.org/q2005/images/dennett100.jpg This is how a man with answers looks.

Like the Walt Whitman of biology.

Aubade
by Philip Larkin

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
-- The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused -- nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear -- no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape,
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

"Most things may never happen: this one will."

Well put, sir.

Every man dies. Not every man really lives.
--William Wallace

God, you are dull.

sorry i'm not "extreme" and eat slim jims and drink mountain dews all the time.

I'm pretty okay with dying other than in the "aw think of all the stuff I'm gonna miss" sense, but then I don't think anything horrifies me more than when I think of my body, especially my head, being destroyed in some neat-o gruesome way. So maybe I still have some residual eternal mind in the temporary vessel of the body shit keeping me sane, other than when it's broached by those thoughts. S'gonna be a good day when the fleetingness of 'me' hits home at a more fundamental level, I guess.

Or a really terrifying one.

i used to never think about it but of course when i developed weird symptoms after my mono went away i was convinced i was dying. and of course every medical test in the world said i'm fine.

i shake violently now at times when i wake up but it seems to be only anxiety related.

Guys I am afraid of PAIN, and I am pretty sure the majority of deaths have an undue share of it. I watched the Grizzly Mang yesterday and the thought of being alive and conscious for six minutes of being devoured by grizzlies – I get vertigo thinking about it. (I realize this is an extreme, and extremely rare, example.)

I was SO distressed about this as a kid it would keep me awake at night. My dad told me a person's soul 'jumps out of their body' before they start really undergoing pain at death. It was comforting at the time but it certainly doesn't seem to hold up.

Dying slowly and/or painfully scares me, but the thought of death just annoys me in the sense that nabisco described above. There isn't enough time to do everything I might like to do. Phooey.

There was a line from a Will Oldham song that popped up recently, something about not being afraid of dying but being afraid of living. It resonated a little too much.

How about being afraid...of everything.

Can't drink enough to make this go away at any time now btw

stuck in an existential panic for weeks if not months now that keeps getting worse in terms of the frequency of terrors. i shake, i cry, i want to vomit, i feel like screaming. it only subsides for short periods, when i can distract myself or when i have to focus my concentration on something important, like teaching. otherwise it's just constantly present, a constant winding up into panic then relaxing then slowly winding up again. i can scarcely tolerate it. it's interesting to read my posts above and realize that this has been happening to me, intermittently, for more than a decade. but the last time i remember it being this bad is about 13 years ago.

experience is a pleasant thing. to see more, to learn more, to caress the things you want and love. i can't bear that this is finite, for me or anyone else. what a curse.

I have been getting pains in my head over the last couple of days - not headaches, but like what I imagine would happen if there was, SAY, something up with the blood vessels there. Obviously a trip to the doctor will be a good idea soon if it continues, if only to reduce the list of things I could be worrying about.

Anyway, I was staying over with my girlfriend last night, and as I drifted off to sleep I suddenly thought "What if I don't wake up?* and was then fixated on the fact that at one point I'll not wake up. Full panic, sweats, the lot. I think I returned myself from the brink by considering that a lot of the people I've idolised are dead - if Ghandi could deal with it, I can't really demur.

Also the partially-but-only-ever-partially convincing "Well, when I'm dead, I won't care". Hah, and as a testament to its partiality, heart beating much faster now after just typing "when I'm dead".

But yeah, the worrying about death has been kicking in over the last few years, one of the side effects has been increased sensitivity to depictions of death, up to and ridiculously including people bouncing off my bonnet in GTA IV.

*fortunately we are both saps and said "I love you" before going to sleep. Whew!

I have calmed down. The experience of seeing my grandfather slowly dying of cancer, then seeing his dead body, has really taught me a lot.

i can't bear that this is finite, for me or anyone else. what a curse.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, February 20, 2012

I, very occasionally, get existential dread or sorta terrors about this - and its something that i could see if you open the door to that type of worry, could be difficult to let go of it again

But most of the time i try and view it as a return to the soil, to the earth

Well most of the time i don't think of it at all, but that is how I view it

Since my mother died a couple of years ago i've started to worry more about death, not just for myself but for my friends and family. I'm starting to believe that this is yet another one of those hurdles in our lives in growing up and everyone goes through it and we all handle it differently (i love that Andrew finds his empathy with the already deceased! I may adopt this technique for myself)

So as we start to hit the middle age and quite expectedly find other people we know in our lives losing theirs, it's no surprise it should be more of a focus to us.

I'll never forget when i was a teenager and my mother, who may have been about 40 then, asked me if i was afraid of death. I remember laughing it off as one of the most absurd things to worry about ever, she was horrified I felt this way. Of course she was going through the phase I too now am being privy too. I'm 38 now btw.

On top of all this, an added feeling of wanting to do more in our lives becomes apparent - but then the fear is accelerated due to the fact we now really don't want to die as we've just discovered more great things in live. or something.

i can't even conceive of being happy in the face of the knowledge of death. i guess this speaks less to logic than the way my brain chemistry is acting at the moment. maybe.

as a rule, i don't think about death. i have a switch that is mostly off when it comes to thinking about my loved ones dying. but for whatever reason that switch goes on immediately if i don't hear/see someone when i'm expecting to. i start imagining all kinds of horrific scenarios involving death or at least serious physical/mental injury.

yesterday i had planned to meet a friend in the evening, before my husband would be getting home. he had texted me about something in the morning, but i didn't hear from him the rest of the day. about the time he would be leaving work i sent him a couple texts, tried calling, no response. i could already feel the switch starting to twitch a bit, but i figured - his ph is probably on silent. but then that's weird bc he normally would text to say he's on his way home. maybe he's meeting someone and i've forgotten he told me? so i go meet my friend. over the course of dinner, i do a great job of acting happy and talky and normal, but i keep checking my ph, getting more and more panicky as it gets later and later and i haven't heard from my husband. i even email him, trying to convince myself that he probably left his ph at work. it's 8pm and on the bike ride home, i can hardly breathe bc i don't know what i'll do if i get home and he's not there. this is so wrong, he would have emailed me if he left his phone at work, he knows i worry about things like this.

well, i got home, busted through the door and there he was, chilling on the couch. but i gave him a serious fright with the look on my face, followed by 'OH MY GOD YOU'RE OKAY!!" and then i promptly burst into the hardest sobbing fit i've experienced in years.

poor guy, he felt really terrible - his ph was on silent, and while he had a tab open for his email, it had logged him out without his realizing. we hadn't planned that he would call or text me, as i knew he would be home straight after work, and he knew i would be out for the evening. but for me it was just that expectation of hearing from him in general (we text or email or talk a couple times at least over the course of a work day)and not having that expectation met, that was enough to trigger a complete meltdown.

i'm not sure why i'm posting about this, except that i still feel weirded-out today, maybe it is leftover adrenalin. it's funny too, bc ytth is always amazed at my general lack of death-anxiety - he is actually the total opposite and worries about death, particularly mine, all the time, yet if our roles had been reversed last night, he wouldn't have been any more worried about me than usual. which makes me wonder if i have some seriously bad case of subconscious death-anxiety.

FOD is kinda what motivates everything i do. i figure if i have as much variety in what i experience as possible, it sort of keeps it at bay.

A good view! There's always something to look forward to, or to explore.

basically, the distraction principle!