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Death (>-<)


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Hi everyone ^_^. Well, one thing is for certain--we're all going to die someday. As some of you know, my dad passed away around six months ago, so this topic has been on my mind. I wonder how regularly people think about it, because I often do, and I find it heaps scary.

See, I'm someone who tends to get stuck in the past. Let's say I often take walks around a certain city block. It's so sad to think someday, I'll never be able to do that again, and the world will continue to spin anyway. When my dad died, the world had changed forever from my perspective, yet when I walked to the shops next door, I looked around and realized oh, no one cares. If we're talking about the universe, I guess our entire race is hardly worth a footnote.

Then there's the thing about what happens when you die. Do you become a ghost, is there a next life, or do you cease to exist? The last option is scary. It sounds kind of silly, but even the simple things I enjoy like gaming will be gone. Let's say Persona 17 comes out, but I won't even exist anymore to play it. That's sad.

There's this Face App on mobile devices that lets you see how you'll look when you get old. I hung out with some friends the other night, and we messed around with that app a bit. The gender swap function is funny, but there's something sad about the aging one. It's a shock when the change is sudden, but when it's gradual like in real life, maybe it's okay. I'm in my 30s now, and if I look at photos of me in my teens, I'm sure I look different, even if I can't tell just from memory. The other week, I found some old photos of my dad in the garage, and I thought wow, I guess we were all young once.

Hopefully when I'm old and dying, I'll be able to smile rather than complain all day about regrets. I've heard when your time is near, your brain will release whatever chemicals are needed to ease you through the process. Not smart enough to know the details, but it's a comforting thought.

Then again, I've also heard we may be able to upload our consciousness onto machines in the future, so see you in cyberspace 8).

Thank you :)!

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Death isn't something that scares me much personally. Perhaps I have this perspective now because of my young age (I just turned 20 two months ago). Or maybe it is because the closest person to me that died was my paternal grandfather. And that doesn't compare to losing a parent. Furthermore, he suffered from Alzheimer's his last few years, and so in his case I felt death was a kind of blessing. So perhaps when I experience what you experienced, my view may change. But the reason that I don't fear death, is because there are 2 possible outcomes as I see it. 1) You permanently lose your consciousness, which wouldn't feel like anything. It's like when you sleep a dreamless night, you don't feel the time change at all. So if that is what happens after you die, you won't notice anything. 2) The other option, is that our spirit/consciousness/atoms, etc, manifest into something different. In which case, our life will continue in a different form. 

Actually, in a VN I just finished (Suba Hibi), there was an interesting conversation between 2 characters where they were talking about the universal feeling of fearing death. And one of the characters brings up, that fearing the unknown and new is natural. That in a similar way that humans fear death, babies perhaps fear life. The incessant crying of a new born baby, could very well be understood as a fear and terror of life. Something they have no concept of or experience with. Indeed, the very beginning of life is probably in many ways just as terrifying as the end of life, its just that we can't remember what the beginning of life is. 

The question of immortality and continuing life longer than natural, is something I would pass up on. I could continue speaking, but incidentally the same VN I mentioned previously has another interesting scene regarding immortality. And it just so happens that this very scene is uploaded on Youtube from the partial translation patch. So here is the video:

  

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There's no use thinking about death, like there's no use thinking about a nuclear holocaust. The risk is there. It just isn't something that should occupy our daily thoughts much.

Is it scary to think that when we die it's over for good? I personally think it's scarier to live forever. This has been touched upon by a lot of works. There are a lot of books discussing the afterlife and life's meaning, including some naturalist/monist views, like Greg Graffin's (on his books "Anarchy Evolution" and "Population Wars").

Like I explain every time with this discussion, death is biologically necessary. Individuals die so that others may live. Furthermore, evolution happens and creates new forms of life and a perfected DNA pool.

In your case, you should just focus on doing the things you like for the moment. Avoid stress. Let people know how you feel. Let time pass. Surely you'll move on and grow stronger for it.

Also, don't leave smiling and enjoying for tomorrow! Do it now! Otherwise you're wasting the moment.

This is a beautiful song about missing the loved ones:

 

Edited by Okarin
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  • 4 weeks later...

This reminds me of all the threads I used to make on Fuwa back in the day. For me, death has been a subject of many sleepless nights. Now, for me the fear of death is not really related to the end of living, so to speak. 

Whenever I think about my death and the death of others, it's always with hindsight in mind. I tend to imagine myself nearing the end, but what frightens me is not death itself, its the fear of looking back and leaving things undone, of reminiscing about incomplete experiences, about what could have been. Will I die alone? Will I leave children? Will I be surrounded by family and friends, bonds forged through a lifetime of events or with no one by my side? Will it be painless or agonizing?

Will I have left the world a better place or have done nothing? The fear of being forgotten and having mattered to no one gets to me. 

The aftermath also intrigues me, but its mere curiosity, whether its sheer darkness, some form of spiritual passing or just being in your body trapped without feeling anything, but conscious.

Ultimately, I guess it all comes down to what regrets will I have on my deathbed for me, since people always tell me I have more than the average young adult, with bigger weights put on them.

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I'm actually glad that death exists. Death is a curse because things can't stay good forever; but more importantly death is a blessing because it means that things can't stay bad forever. After death I believe that there are two possibilities (similar to what Zalor has posted) - either oblivion or an afterlife. Oblivion doesn't scare me because, even though an eternity will pass after I die, I won't notice the passage of time (or anything at all, for that matter). I sure hope that there is an afterlife, though. But so much of who we are—personality, skills, memories, etc.—can be explained by the human brain. Once the brain is inoperative what is left to proceed to the afterlife? Maybe we aren't meant to take any of that with us, and only our immaterial existence (soul) survives after death. However, if the soul is immaterial, how does it influence our corporeal bodies? Does the soul merely observe during our time in this world? Anyway, I should stop because I'm straying from the topic of death.

Edited by un1ess
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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 months later...

I feel like I can totally relate with you mate. 

Usually we don't think of death as something real that will happen to us. We kinda "know it", we are "aware" of it, but I don't think most of the time we really understand what it means, that like any other day or moment in your life you've been waiting for, death will also eventually come. The hard part is accepting this "eventually" as real, and I myself can only sometimes achieve it for a brief moments in which my heart thightens in my chest, I get shivers and get lightheaded. It fades rather quickly though, as if your brain is applying some sort of self-defense mechanism to prevent you from having that enlightenment.

Now, what I've come to realise though is that perhaps I don't really fear death itself, but rather the unavoidable pass of time, i.e, change. Everything we know and love will eventually disappear. Life itself will also disappear, and then nothing else will come for the rest of eternity. When I think about that I get some serious anxiety. I feel like I need to be doing something else with my life, right now, in this precise moment, but I don't know what, which further aggravates the issue.

I cannot tell you how to overcome this, since I'm lost myself, but thinking about the alternative might be slightly comforting. Or rather, the lack of alternative. There is no point in between a finite and a non-finite life. Do you really believe thinking of an eternity to come would be less painful? An infinite time, in which you've already experienced everything you possibly could infinite times, and there's still an infinite amount of time remaining. Would you call that being alive? I could certainly tell that I'd rather be dead. For sure.

I know, I know, that is not really reassuring, it's equivalent to tell someone "if there is not solution to your problem, then why bother worrying about it?". But that's just the way thing are, for you, for me and for everyone that has ever existed and for those who are yet to come. What alternative do we have but to accept it?

Edited by Thyndd
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I've heard there is no Oblivion after we die. There is no Hell either (consider Hell a man made invention). We're eternal beings, and we merely change form.

At least that's what I read when reading the "Conversations with God" trilogy (which actually had a 4th book come out recently). By the way, despite the title, the trilogy has NOTHING to do with religion (though it is discussed a bit). The "God" with the author communicates with could also be thought as universal intelligence.

I highly recommend it. It's given me a lot of peace of mind.

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On 4.11.2017 at 9:56 AM, Thyndd said:

I feel like I can totally relate with you mate. 

Usually we don't think of death as something real that will happen to us. We kinda "know it", we are "aware" of it, but I don't think most of the time we really understand what it means, that like any other day or moment in your life you've been waiting for, death will also eventually come. The hard part is accepting this "eventually" as real, and I myself can only sometimes achieve it for a brief moments in which my heart thightens in my chest, I get shivers and get lightheaded. It fades rather quickly though, as if your brain is applying some sort of self-defense mechanism to prevent you from having that enlightenment.

Now, what I've come to realise though is that perhaps I don't really fear death itself, but rather the unavoidable pass of time, i.e, change. Everything we know and love will eventually disappear. Life itself will also disappear, and then nothing else will come for the rest of eternity. When I think about that I get some serious anxiety. I feel like I need to be doing something else with my life, right now, in this precise moment, but I don't know what, which further aggravates the issue.

I cannot tell you how to overcome this, since I'm lost myself, but thinking about the alternative might be slightly comforting. Or rather, the lack of alternative. There is no point in between a finite and a non-finite life. Do you really believe thinking of an eternity to come would be less painful? An infinite time, in which you've already experienced everything you possibly could infinite times, and there's still an infinite amount of time remaining. Would you call that being alive? I could certainly tell that I'd rather be dead. For sure.

I know, I know, that is not really reassuring, it's equivalent to tell someone "if there is not solution to your problem, then why bother worrying about it?". But that's just the way thing are, for you, for me and for everyone that has ever existed and for those who are yet to come. What alternative do we have but to accept it?

This felt super-relatable to me. Death is nothingness, I think there's literally nothing to fear in it (unlike life itself, which can punish you in most horrible ways). For me, if anything, thinking about might bring anxiety about the lost opportunities and things I will not be able to experience.

The pass of time on the other hand, the ultimate fragility and most likely futility of all our achievements, IS scary to me. People are usually pretty bad at dealing with lack of purpose or feeling that their existance is meaningless. And being an atheist like myself, it's really hard to find a deeper meaning in all of it.

The ultimate conclussion for me is that there is no meaning to life apart the meaning we give to it ourselves. It's not healthy to avoid the topic of death completely, because it will come back to us eventually and we should be prepared for it at least to some extent, but we should focus on living our lives to the fullest. There's no afterlife, no greater order of things, just a life that we were given by fate and the possibilities it brings. And if use those possibilities wisely, we should be able to look at it later with little regret.

Of course, if chance allows us, but worrying about things completely beyond our control in unhealthy. :)

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