Do you believe you aren't afraid of death?

Theres a certain peace i get knowing i am going to eventually die. Im 50% nihilistic and 50% deluded about a possible afterlife. Either way i got what i wanted out of living here. Love. Truth. Etc.

I believe I'm more afraid of mode of death, and if it'll be painful. I don't fear death as a prospect really.

I'll be able to cast aside this suffering house of ego after a long run. It seems serene, looked at like that. Life can be nice, but it's uncertainties and less pleasant aspects make it good that it isn't infinite as this seeming self.

The worst that might happen is I'll appear again as someone entirely new from my worldview's outlook, which I very much believe. I can see that as an exciting prospect.

rocala said:

A very interesting point. I am now in my sixties but since my mid fifties hardly a day goes by without somebody mentioning my age. Mostly it is light hearted stuff but would never be allowed if they were talking about my race or gender.

I can only assume that it is some form of reassurance, in that they probably have longer to live than I do.

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I say to the age teasers, The upside to being old is my penis is gigantic. The down side is if I have an erection I will die of a stroke because of The change in blood pressure Its so huge.

David T said:

I say to the age teasers, The upside to being old is my penis is gigantic. The down side is if I have an erection I will die of a stroke because of The change in blood pressure Its so huge.

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So English is not your first language, where are you from?

rocala said:

So English is not your first language, where are you from?

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new york we don't speak English we speak new York. Besides I have been to Europe and was told Americans actually don't speak English, but speak a varieties of dialects of American. I said yea but it's a uuuuuge country.

Quintessence said:

When asked if they fear death or dying, it seems that many will answer "no." Perhaps this is because we don't actively think about death on a daily basis, so we don't really think of ourselves as fearing death and dying? What if we look at things from a somewhat different angle and examine our behaviors or beliefs that seem to indicate a fear of death? These, for example, suggest a fear of death:

• Supporting human medical research. While some research is geared towards quality of life, much is geared towards prolonging human life and extending its quantity.
• Enshrining youthfulness. Age and signs of aging are seen as flaws and defects to be corrected or hidden. The standard of beauty is the young face, not the old face.
• Seeking immortality. This could be belief in an immortal soul and afterlife, wanting to upload your brain to a computer, or some other means of eternity.
• Expansionism. Expanding one's sphere of influence is a way of thwarting death and takes many forms ranging from breeding to colonialism.

What other examples of human behaviors and habits might indicate a strong fear of death? Is there something I've listed so far that rubs you the wrong way or strikes you as being off?

Are there any among you who can genuinely say you don't support, for example, medical research that seeks to prolong and extend human life? Or that you don't support space expansionism to stave off the extinction of the human species? Do you believe this relates to a fear of death, or does it seem unrelated to you?

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Speaking as a person who had a heart attack I can assuredly say that I do not fear death itself.

I'm more apprehensive of what is essentially unknown, but fear? No.

Like a lot of people, I don't want to leave the playground just yet, but I will always be ready whenever the time comes now.

I think people build up fears that are far more mentally damaging than the actuality of the event itself. It's actually made me appreciate life even more and to savor the experience.

It's good.

I'm one of those insufferable people who would fear medically induced immortality or anything even close to it. My reasons though are not easily summarized. I'd have to write a few hundred words to do them justice. So I'll leave it at this: Imagine a 1000 year reign of a man like Stalin! And that's just one of the likely undesirable consequences of such technology.

Some years ago, I went through a four or five year long period of intense daily meditations. The meditative technique I used had the unexpected side effect of generally ameliorating any fear of death I had, and perhaps even eliminating it for some long stretches of time.

Funny as it sounds, I didn't at first realize I had been loosing my fear of death from the meditations. Not at first. Then one night I was driving down a quiet country road when it came to me that my fear of dying had been replaced with curiosity. I knew at that moment that I would actually be quite interested in dying, if it should happen that I were to die in that frame of mind. And the strange thought also came to me, "I know how to do this [i.e. die]!"

Unfortunately, most of the effects of those intense years of meditation were not permanent.

Quintessence said:

What other examples of human behaviors and habits might indicate a strong fear of death? Is there something I've listed so far that rubs you the wrong way or strikes you as being off?

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None of your options indicate a person would fear death, as it is inevitable we die in this world.

"O SON OF THE SUPREME! I have made death a messenger of joy to thee. Wherefore dost thou grieve? I made the light to shed on thee its splendor. Why dost thou veil thyself therefrom?" The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh

Regards Tony

I am not afraid of death. I am afraid of how I will die.

Quintessence said:

When asked if they fear death or dying, it seems that many will answer "no." Perhaps this is because we don't actively think about death on a daily basis, so we don't really think of ourselves as fearing death and dying? What if we look at things from a somewhat different angle and examine our behaviors or beliefs that seem to indicate a fear of death? These, for example, suggest a fear of death:

• Supporting human medical research. While some research is geared towards quality of life, much is geared towards prolonging human life and extending its quantity.
• Enshrining youthfulness. Age and signs of aging are seen as flaws and defects to be corrected or hidden. The standard of beauty is the young face, not the old face.
• Seeking immortality. This could be belief in an immortal soul and afterlife, wanting to upload your brain to a computer, or some other means of eternity.
• Expansionism. Expanding one's sphere of influence is a way of thwarting death and takes many forms ranging from breeding to colonialism.

What other examples of human behaviors and habits might indicate a strong fear of death? Is there something I've listed so far that rubs you the wrong way or strikes you as being off?

Are there any among you who can genuinely say you don't support, for example, medical research that seeks to prolong and extend human life? Or that you don't support space expansionism to stave off the extinction of the human species? Do you believe this relates to a fear of death, or does it seem unrelated to you?

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Another behavior relating to fear of death could be wanting more and bigger stuff. It could be people do that because they want to be distracted from the reality of life which includes death.

Or they could just be greedy. Who knows?

I don't personally fear death. Unless it is slow and painful. But I wouldn't know that until it happened so I don't spend time fearing it now. I want to spend as much time as I can in this life because I love and enjoy it. But I don't fear being gone. Everyone does it.

Tony Bristow-Stagg said:

None of your options indicate a person would fear death, as it is inevitable we die in this world.

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Are you saying there is some way or manner in which the fact that death is inevitable reduces or eliminates the fear of death? If so, how does that work, precisely?

wandering peacefully said:

Another behavior relating to fear of death could be wanting more and bigger stuff.

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I completely agree with you here. Good point!

It could be people do that because they want to be distracted from the reality of life which includes death.

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I think that might be true, but I also think there's a bit more to it than that.

Sunstone said:

Are you saying there is some way or manner in which the fact that death is inevitable reduces or eliminates the fear of death? If so, how does that work, precisely?

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With a Frame of Reference that Death in this World is but a birth.

Pain can be a natural part of this process.

Regards Tony

Quintessence said:

When asked if they fear death or dying, it seems that many will answer "no." Perhaps this is because we don't actively think about death on a daily basis, so we don't really think of ourselves as fearing death and dying? What if we look at things from a somewhat different angle and examine our behaviors or beliefs that seem to indicate a fear of death? These, for example, suggest a fear of death:

• Supporting human medical research. While some research is geared towards quality of life, much is geared towards prolonging human life and extending its quantity.
• Enshrining youthfulness. Age and signs of aging are seen as flaws and defects to be corrected or hidden. The standard of beauty is the young face, not the old face.
• Seeking immortality. This could be belief in an immortal soul and afterlife, wanting to upload your brain to a computer, or some other means of eternity.
• Expansionism. Expanding one's sphere of influence is a way of thwarting death and takes many forms ranging from breeding to colonialism.

What other examples of human behaviors and habits might indicate a strong fear of death? Is there something I've listed so far that rubs you the wrong way or strikes you as being off?

Are there any among you who can genuinely say you don't support, for example, medical research that seeks to prolong and extend human life? Or that you don't support space expansionism to stave off the extinction of the human species? Do you believe this relates to a fear of death, or does it seem unrelated to you?

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I like Earth. Save the whales. I can proudly proclaim that I have never supported the medical industrial complex, especially since it killed people that I love. More to the point, one can only be afraid of losing, not of death: losing attachment to mental entities that we suppose compose consciousness; losing lovely physical functioning that we suppose supports mental activity; and losing identity and all the stories that compose a life-time. That's a lot to lose.

I have been content on this topic since I read "A Brief History of Thought," by Luc Perry. I recommend it a lot on these forums, but I have no idea if anyone runs out and buys it. The book puts salvation in perspective, which I sorely appreciate. I don't want to cling to the shiny life, but I can't say that I won't.

In general, I agree with the OP in thinking that the fear of death is a major motive behind much of human behavior. How much? Ernest Becker, the psychiatrist who authored, The Denial of Death, thought it unconsciously drove most of human experience and behavior. And here the word "unconsciously" is key to understanding the fear of death.

I do not agree with all of Becker's ideas, but I am in complete agreement with him about the fear of death being very largely a hidden, unconscious fear. Ask ten people if they fear death, eight or nine will not be aware of themselves fearing it.

It seems to me especially easy for young people to be unaware of the influence the fear of death has over their experience of life and their behavior. As a rule of thumb, the younger we are, the less aware we are of our own mortality. But even older folks tend to be unaware of fearing death. As the OP hints, and as Becker observed, we hide our fears under a thousand disguises. That's to say, the fear is never truly suppressed in humans but instead manifests itself in as many ways as it possibly can depending on the psychology of the individual humans.

I believe a common enough way in which the fear manifests itself was hinted at by @wandering peacefully earlier in this thread. He or she mentioned that, "Another behavior relating to fear of death could be wanting more and bigger stuff", and I believe WP was substantially right about that. Not always perhaps, but so often the desire or greed for more and bigger things than we really need is a mask for the fear of death.

But how does the fear of death translate into a greed for more and bigger things?

I believe we can be driven to accumulate things in order to aggrandize or "build up" our egos. Our egos of course, are our psychological selves, our sense of "I", of "me", of "myself", etc. There is a profound sense -- a very profound sense -- in which the fear of death is not really a fear of death per se, but rather is a the fear of the ego dying. Put differently, if we humans did not have an ego, did not have a psychological self, we would be completely liberated from any and all fear of death -- we would not manifest the fear in any form at all -- it simply would not exist.

Thus, to strengthen, to aggrandize, or to in any way to build up the ego is in effect to guard against the death of the ego. That is, even when building up the ego is not intentionally to guard against the ego's death, the effect of building it up is to do so.

One can build up the ego in all manner of ways. For instance, to psychologically possess something -- psychologically possess anything -- is to aggrandize the ego. "That's mine!" is veritably a battle cry of the fear of death. So is psychologically owning a spouse, a car, a religion, a politics, and so forth. Psychologically owning anything strengthens the ego -- and can thus be a response to the fear of the ego's death.

Ironically, what strengthens the ego also strengthens the fear of the ego's death perhaps for the rather simple reason that "I" now have more to lose. Once, "I" did not own a car and consequently had no fear of losing a car. But now "I" own a car and so have a new fear in my life -- the loss of my car.

There is a difference of opinion about whether the ego, the psychological self, is identical to normal, everyday consciousness. Some say it is, some say the two things are merely so entwined that the one cannot exist without the other. Whatever the case, it is a simple fact that mystical experiences -- in which normal, everyday consciousness comes to an end, are also ego-less experiences. Moreover, people who experience such things sometimes -- but not always -- report both becoming aware of how they had been fearing death, and of simultaneously overcoming their fear of death.

I believe that were we to become fully aware of our fear of ego death, that fear would generally prove to be -- depending on the individual -- anywhere from anxiously unsettling to near crippling. However, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of ways in which the fear of the ego's death influences us on a moment by moment basis in both how we experience life, and in our behavior towards life. That is one compelling reason NOT to precipitously rip the masks off our fear of the ego's death.

Yet, the fear manifests itself in so many life denying ways, in so many destructive ways, and has so many undesired consequences. I do not believe anyone who refuses to deal with the fear is likely to live as fully and as happily as they are capable of living.

If anyone reading this is curious about what might be done about the fear of dying, I would recommend meditation as a start towards a solution to the problem.

At least all of the above is how I see it. I'm probably quite wrong about most things, and simple minded about the rest.

I fear the death of humanity, but i'm not a doomsdayer

Sunstone said:

I'm one of those insufferable people who would fear medically induced immortality or anything even close to it. My reasons though are not easily summarized. I'd have to write a few hundred words to do them justice. So I'll leave it at this: Imagine a 1000 year reign of a man like Stalin! And that's just one of the likely undesirable consequences of such technology.

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Yeah... This is the biggest fear and downside related to that. Full immortality is quite unlikely, as one could still die by accident, murder (whether it's physical or something like unplugging the computer) and so on. Especially considering a scenario where someone is ageless in the real world, that person in power could make sure they are very protected so that there's very little chance to successfully eliminate them.

I don't know how this would apply to a virtual world (mind upload, if that's even possible) since you could put algorithms in place to stop these things from happening.

Overall, people who work on these technologies seem to be overly optimistic about it being available to all and how humanity would use this. I used to be more like this but I've grown a lot more cynical.

I mean I suppose you could count common phobias as reminiscent of people's fear of death - height (falling), spiders and snakes (venom), etc

Quintessence said:

When asked if they fear death or dying, it seems that many will answer "no." Perhaps this is because we don't actively think about death on a daily basis, so we don't really think of ourselves as fearing death and dying? What if we look at things from a somewhat different angle and examine our behaviors or beliefs that seem to indicate a fear of death? These, for example, suggest a fear of death:

• Supporting human medical research. While some research is geared towards quality of life, much is geared towards prolonging human life and extending its quantity.
• Enshrining youthfulness. Age and signs of aging are seen as flaws and defects to be corrected or hidden. The standard of beauty is the young face, not the old face.
• Seeking immortality. This could be belief in an immortal soul and afterlife, wanting to upload your brain to a computer, or some other means of eternity.
• Expansionism. Expanding one's sphere of influence is a way of thwarting death and takes many forms ranging from breeding to colonialism.

What other examples of human behaviors and habits might indicate a strong fear of death? Is there something I've listed so far that rubs you the wrong way or strikes you as being off?

Are there any among you who can genuinely say you don't support, for example, medical research that seeks to prolong and extend human life? Or that you don't support space expansionism to stave off the extinction of the human species? Do you believe this relates to a fear of death, or does it seem unrelated to you?

Click to expand...

If I think about it, I am scared to death of death. Why? Because it is fear of the unknown. I know I will have an afterlife, I know that absolutely, but there is no brochure and I do not know the itinerary... Living forever scares me as FOREVER is a very long time... What am I going to be doing forever?

But I am much more frightened of others I love dying than of me dying, my cats and my husband... The only way to cope is to stay busy and not think about it.... that I do...

Yes, there is more to that as your thread about it shows.

Distraction in general is the way a lot of people spend their lives. Death is just another part of life they choose to be distracted from.

I agree that meditation as Buddha would have it, is the best tool out there for people to get to the center of their egos and do what is necessary to not allow their ego to rule their lives.

All sorts of things can be used as distractions from living life fully and peacefully. Costantly making up and believing in stories is another. Humans were programmed to do this. It takes effort to see that and to practice focusing on reality instead of stories. Including stories about death. Whether they be stories about how wonderful it will be to die or how eternally torturous death will be, they are still stories which rip us from reality and cause us to miss the amazing life we can have right in this moment.

I understand there are humans who truly do have horrible existences from war, famine, physical calamities, etc. I do not blame them for wanting and creating distraction from it. But for those of us who are fairly safe and well, it is a shame to miss out on this wonderful life we are certain we have.


This is to Sunstone. I still haven't figured out the replying here.