How Do You Get Over Death?

[Javaman]

I'll tell you in the afterlife.

Look me up when you get there.

[Homeless Nutter]

“The clear awareness of having been born into a losing struggle need not lead one into despair. I do not especially like the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on—only henceforth in my absence. [...] Much more horrible, though, would be the announcement that the party was continuing forever, and that I was forbidden to leave. Whether it was a hellishly bad party or a party that was perfectly heavenly in every respect, the moment that it became eternal and compulsory would be the precise moment that it began to pall.”


― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir

[T.J.]

I try not to think about it since there's no point dwelling over something you can't prevent, unless our technology improves to the point that one can become a cyborg in my lifetime, then I'll probably take that option because... dude, cyborg!

That said, it was never death that bothered me. It was the fear of what came after imbedded into me at a young age that worried me, and once the fear's gone it's more of a relief than anything.

[Pyrrho]

Like others, I'm just pissed I won't get to see what happens to humanity.

On the plus side, you'll miss the inevitable demise of our species via nuclear/chemical war, economic/environmental disaster, or the takeover by A.I.

But I want to see that!




I just hope I don't die before we make first contact.

The thing is, when you are dead, you will not be pissed about it and you will not want to see anything and you will not hope to be alive.  So it will all be perfectly fine, just like the year 1800 was for you.  In 1800, you were not pissed about anything, you did not want to see anything, and you did not hope to be alive.

[Qwraith]

Like others, I'm just pissed I won't get to see what happens to humanity.


But I want to see that!




I just hope I don't die before we make first contact.

The thing is, when you are dead, you will not be pissed about it and you will not want to see anything and you will not hope to be alive.  So it will all be perfectly fine, just like the year 1800 was for you.  In 1800, you were not pissed about anything, you did not want to see anything, and you did not hope to be alive.

Well, sure, but I'm pissed about it now. 

[Longhorn]

Well it's inevitable. Imma get dead even if I refuse to accept it. So there's no point moaning about it

[Pyrrho]

The thing is, when you are dead, you will not be pissed about it and you will not want to see anything and you will not hope to be alive.  So it will all be perfectly fine, just like the year 1800 was for you.  In 1800, you were not pissed about anything, you did not want to see anything, and you did not hope to be alive.

Well, sure, but I'm pissed about it now. 

Why be pissed about something that you will not mind when it happens?

Here is what Epicurus had to say about this:

Accustom yourself to believing that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply the capacity for sensation, and death is the privation of all sentience; therefore a correct understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life a limitless time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly understood that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.

http://www.epicurus.net/en/menoeceus.html

[Pyrrho]

Well it's inevitable. Imma get dead even if I refuse to accept it. So there's no point moaning about it

That is the stoic position.  Here is something Epictetus had to say:

2. Remember that following desire promises the attainment of that of which you are desirous; and aversion promises the avoiding that to which you are averse. However, he who fails to obtain the object of his desire is disappointed, and he who incurs the object of his aversion wretched. If, then, you confine your aversion to those objects only which are contrary to the natural use of your faculties, which you have in your own control, you will never incur anything to which you are averse. But if you are averse to sickness, or death, or poverty, you will be wretched. Remove aversion, then, from all things that are not in our control, and transfer it to things contrary to the nature of what is in our control. But, for the present, totally suppress desire: for, if you desire any of the things which are not in your own control, you must necessarily be disappointed; and of those which are, and which it would be laudable to desire, nothing is yet in your possession. Use only the appropriate actions of pursuit and avoidance; and even these lightly, and with gentleness and reservation. 

http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html


And more specifically about death:

5. Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things. Death, for instance, is not terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death that it is terrible. When therefore we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never attribute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own principles. An uninstructed person will lay the fault of his own bad condition upon others. Someone just starting instruction will lay the fault on himself. Some who is perfectly instructed will place blame neither on others nor on himself. 

http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html


Basically, with something inevitable, like death, you can bitch and moan about it, then die, or you can man up* and get on with your life, then die.  What you cannot choose is to not die.

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*My apologies to the women for the sexist expression.  In this case, it seems a useful expression, as somehow it seems mostly men and boys who whine about this, and not women very often.  I do not recall a single thread about this topic started by a woman, though as I have not read every thread here, that does not mean that none exist, nor can I claim a perfect memory regardless.  Maybe I should start a thread in which people choose between "I am male and upset about death," "I am male and not upset about death," "I am female and upset about death," and "I am female and not upset about death," and see what kind of results we get.

[Spooky]

I am an organism like any other. My goal is to drink as much scotch and have as much sex as I can before I wear out.

Average in my family is ~ 75.

[Qwraith]

Why be pissed about something that you will not mind when it happens?

Because it hasn't happened yet, and I'm allowed to reserve the right to be pissed about things. It's like why be pissed about anything, if you're just gonna die in the end? wut? Look, I want to live forever and experience the breadth and depth of humanity's voyage through the universe. There are so many things we don't understand about the universe and the fact that I know I won't be around to know them is very frustrating.