I still get panic attacks went contemplating my own mortality. Any help/advice?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by aaqucnaona, Nov 29, 2013.

  1. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    What about the tooth fairy?
     
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  3. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    The worst part of death is when you start to come to and find yourself in front a game show host on the tackiest reality TV show ever!. where you, yes you... are the centre of the universe, both adored and loathed by everyone on the planet. (Spoiler alert, all those things you did you weren't proud of... they'll all know and see it first-hand, that's why the religious lot are all brainwashed to be Pious.)
     
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  5. Watcher Just another old creaker Registered Senior Member

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    Sure, all mortal intelligent creatures experience this. I think that in one's youth, you tend to fret about this a lot more, perhaps because by odds you have more years of your life to lose if you die then. Here's the way I look at it. You can't prevent death, you are mortal - that's a fact. You will never see beyond the veil of either your birth or your death, - so why worry about it? Worry about something you can change, or something you can measure - birth and death are not preventable or perceivable. Only your current awareness is of any consequence.
     
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  7. Sorcerer Put a Spell on you Registered Senior Member

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    Watch Eastenders for three hours. After that you will cease to have the will to live and will die gratefully.
     
  8. Nihilism Registered Member

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    Think of this: you did not exist for the first 13 billion years of the universe, and you did just fine not existing. So surely you can handle not existing for another 13 billion years after you die.

    Or think of this: you actually die every time you fall asleep: your consciousness and memories shut off for eight hours; you do just fine being dead for eight hours. Now imagine you decide to sleep 9 hours, or 10 hours, or 11. No big deal, right? Now, just keep on adding an hour of time you will sleep, until you reach infinity. No big deal: it's just a nice long peaceful sleep.

    Or consider this: each time you wake up in the morning, the previous day's you is actually dead; when your consciousness shuts off, you die permanently; but when you wake up in the morning, it's actually an electronic clone of you that is made; a copy of your memories from your biological hard-drive is loaded into your biological RAM.
     
  9. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    It is important to develop a mindset that does not worry about events over which one has no control.

    I know that someday I will die. For me it is much closer than for many other Posters. I am in my 80's.

    Every second spent on worrying about dying is a second wasted from my life.

    I have friends who waste time being miserable about lost abilities & friends/relatives who have died. To them I say:
    The above is a worthwhile POV for many situations/concerns.
     
  10. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Never heard of her: my parents did not pay me for my teeth. They did tell me the Santa Claus fairytale when I was about four. They had planned to tell me the truth once I started school, rather than let me hear it from another kid, but in fact another kid got to me before they did.

    I remember crying about it, but it was so long ago that I can't say whether the cause of my grief was the loss of the sense of magic, or the betrayal by my parents.

    I'm still an eager fan of fantasy, from Winnie the Pooh, the Hobbits and Kermit the Frog, to sweet cartoons like "How to Train Your Dragon." I understand the importance of fantasy in life. Nonetheless, at some point in life children should be let in on the secret. If I had children I would want them to love the Muppets, but I would also want them to understand that they aren't real, and that doesn't make them any less valuable in our lives. King Arthur and Robin Hood aren't real, but we learn a lot from them.

    The Bible should be explained the same way. These are metaphors, and metaphors are powerful without having to be literally true. I love Jesus, but I never for one second believed that he was real.

    Important: yes. Easy: no!

    Again, this is wise advice but for some people it is very difficult to put in practice.

    Many people have lives that are not particularly pleasant, often through no fault of their own. My dearest friend has MS, and her husband, brother, best friend, and new best friend all died within a decade. I can't tell her to content herself with her memories of a stronger body and loved ones who have not been replaced. All that will produce is tears.

    All I can do is dedicate a significant portion of my time and effort into bringing happiness back into her life. Fortunately my own life has been a cakewalk. Like the average American, the worst things that have ever happened to me were a failed romance, being fired, and the death of a beloved pet. So I have a lot to give, not just advice to which her response would be a finger.
     
  11. Mathers2013 Banned Banned

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    There cannot be life without death. Death makes one whole or complete (1.)

    Also in death one is without fear etc.
     
  12. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    A Aqucnaona : Think about the following:
    While not considering myself particularly brave, the above thought allows me to ignore worry over my mortality. I am also helped by the following thought:
    You know that someday you will die. Maybe decades from now an earthquake will do you in; Do not worry about that earthquake every day for decades.

    Maybe tomorrow you will be hit by a bus; look both ways when crossing a street.

    My life partner had a father who figured to die in circa 5 years. She worried incessantly until I told her:
    It helped her very much. We took her father out to dinner often & she spent time with him as often as her work schedule allowed. He lasted circa 7 years & died peacefully in his sleep. She had 7 worry free years & several months of grief.

    BTW: The above reminded me of a joke:
     
  13. N0THING Registered Senior Member

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    [video=youtube;ssf7P-Sgcrk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssf7P-Sgcrk[/video]
    [video=youtube;-Rz4ReNv6M8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Rz4ReNv6M8[/video]
     
  14. barcelonic Registered Senior Member

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    @aaqucnaona

    I hope I can help you out with this.
    I've been an atheists my whole life and I would like to share with you my own feelings about death:

    When I die I will go to sleep and never wake up. Never again will I have an obligation, never again will I cry or be upset, nor will I make anybody else upset. I will drift away and experience nothing.
    I cannot imagine a single thing more blissful than this, although I appreciate you may feel differently about this. Really consider it though. Do you like sleep? When I wake in the morning for a split second my entire body feels wonderful.
    It will not feel as good for the whole day until I am sleeping again. A permanent sleep just sounds absolutely fantastic to me, and although I am happy to live life until that day I actually welcome death.

    I would be devastated if I died and discovered another life beyond this one. Absolutely crushed!

    So for you I hope you do continue to reflect on mortality and that your atheism helps you to come to a similar conclusion. There is nothing to fear in death besides perhaps fear for your loved ones' loss.
    For me there is something very beautiful about death; when you die you will simply cease to be. You will not experience your death, just the end of your life. And you will never know panic again.

    Perhaps fear of death is a natural way of ensuring we don't all kill ourselves immediately, for the prospect of death without fear is too alluring.

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  15. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    How do you know this is what it will be like? Are you psychic? Can you see the future? How can you be so sure about something you have never experienced before?

    How do you maintain the belief that your ideas about death aren't just wishful thinking?
     
  16. barcelonic Registered Senior Member

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    Y'know if you'd just included the previous sentence in your quote, your post wouldn't have been necessary.
     
  17. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    ??

    You mean that because you have "been an atheist your whole life" this renders you totally sure about what death is like and what happens afterwards?
     
  18. barcelonic Registered Senior Member

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    If you need it spelt out for you, it is the other part of the sentence to which i was referring plus the colon at the end to indicate what followed was my "own feelings"

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  19. cornel Registered Senior Member

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    I have two questions for Aaqucnaona, if he is still checking this thread:

    1) How did your previous convincement(religion) describe death to you ?
    I don't mean what it literally said, but how you experienced it;
    (for now, i m going to assume you dropped from christianity)
    Did you believe you would survive death in your whole form ?
    Did you believe you would change upon (mortal) death ?

    2)How has your view(and fear) of death/mortality changed since you started this thread ??
     
  20. quantum_wave Contemplating the "as yet" unknown Valued Senior Member

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    Naturally the child cries because it knows that the ice cream has been snatched away. On the other hand, all of us know when we are alive, but think about it, do we know when we are not alive. It follows that we will never know when we die, unless ... well, that is another discussion.
     
  21. Kaiduorkhon Registered Senior Member

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    Fear of death fairly well goes with the sentient mortal condition. Even a stage of terror at the threshold of realizing your personal, private mortality. As a young man, quite a time after I was exposed to real threats of death, the intellectual fear of it belatedly struck me, after I was relatively secure and still quite young. There's a lot of wisdom in the realization that, however much good company we have, we're still - each and every of us - condemned to the confinement and the freedom of being alone. It's the reason a big mechanical ticking clock helps a puppy go to sleep. Etceteras.

    Unlike Western culture, with exceptions, individuals of the Asian culture(s) learn early to simply let that fear pass straight through the middle of the perceived spiritual 'self'. Accept your mortality. Be at peace with it. I piloted ocean going boats as a young man. When the weather got bad, I neutralized what would otherwise have been (and was for moments) real terror. One hurricane at sea, in particular, resolutely delivered me from all fear of death. It also brought comfort to others.

    As lost as the bad guy in the movie, Apoc Now, was, there was some semblance of good advice in his dramatic description:
    "Embrace mortal horror and terror, lest it be your enemy to be feared." Joseph Conrad's characters in Heart of Darkness wrestle with the same bogeys.

    Hey, the process of dying is a much more formidable apparition... What and where were you before you were born? Some call that 'home', and why not? Do you recall any unpleasant experiences before you were born? Even if reincarnation of individual 'souls' is the way of the universe, somehow you are insulated from what is called 'pain', mental or physical.

    A key to minimizing the very natural dilemma of the (perhaps inevitable) fear of death is to accept it. ('Resistance is futile?')
     
  22. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    Oh. One's "own feelings" is a qualifier that tends to carry little or no relevance in the scientific community, and tends to be dismissed.
    Ie. the idea being that however a person feels about something, is irrelvant, no matter the issue.

    You, on the other hand, appear to suggest a very subjectivist, personal approach ...
     
  23. barcelonic Registered Senior Member

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    Rightly so. Though I mist have missed the part where everything someone types on this forum must be scientific?

    Am I not allowed to simply express my beliefs? Surely you also believe something you cannot prove.

    I also believe in being a good person, but nobody could prove this scientifically as there is no objective morality (another thing I am not seeking to prove).

    My point, Wynn, was that if I say "I believe this:" and even include a colon, then I am free to express my feelings on the matter here on SF right after said colon. Do you disagree?

    It seems to me you misunderstood me and now are being difficult because I didn't offer a more comprehensive explanation to correct you off the bat. (can't prove this scientifically either)
     

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