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Conscious thought, experience, and the inevitable.
#1
Conscious thought, experience, and the inevitable.
Well one thing I have ever thought about and ruminated over as a methodist who has fallen from grace and faith is the concept of death, experience, and conscious thought. I don't think there's a man or woman alive who hasn't considered it in some way. Well. Some consider it.

I obsess over it.

Sometimes when I consider it, it does nothing. I am thinking about it now, and at least for now, it isn't a particularly alarming concept.

Hup. Wait. Nope, the panic button's been hit.

You see, I am not just fearful of death. I am outright fucking terrified of it. I revel in the delights of experience and of the joy of simply being. Sensory input is a delightful thing to me; simple things like the smell of food or flowers, the subtle variations in flavor, the subtle buzz of a drag of smoke from a cigarette, the sensory-warping blanket of THC. The sound of music pulsing in a nightclub, the close press of dancing bodies and just letting yourself go and not caring, about not giving a fuck, the outright stupid-happy feeling of being perfectly drunk, the feel of a soft blanket...

Talking with friends. Reading. Looking at porn. Looking at artwork. Look at pornographic artwork. Talking with friends and reading comments on a piece of pornographic artwork. Just sitting back and watching a movie, playing video games.

Some people feel the need to ceaselessly pursue wealth and "success" as a means to validate their lives. That all right there is all the validation I need. Anything else is just a bonus.

And so, death terrifies me. The thought of any kind of it. Especially a painful one, where my last few thoughts, the last moments of my existence before annihilation, are not of happy reflection but of despair and agony and terror. Whenever I shower, I dread doing so, not because I dislike being clean, quite the opposite. No, I dread doing so because of the inevitable introspective thinking, and the rumination on death. I love the fact that I have thought...that I am alive. I love conscious thought. I don't know what life was like when I was a newborn and have no memories...but when I begin to think of it, I realize there was a blankness. Fuzzy hazes permeate back even to when I was four or so. I can hardly remember those days, much less before that time. My father, I cannot remember any details of his face the last time he picked me up before he went off to fight and inevitably die in Iraq during Operation: Desert Storm. There is a blurry haze and some indistinct outlines. That is all.

I begin to consider death. I try to imagine what it is like. At first in my mind I picture...darkness. Silence. Numbness. But then I realize that even then, darkness is something you perceive. And so is silence. And numbness. You can understand that those things are something you can understand as being the result of absence of something else. So you CANNOT "feel" numbness, "see" darkness, "hear" silence... Those elements are gone. There is a void. No sensory input. No identity. No awareness. No conscious. Simply...nothing. I will obviously feel no fear, no pain at this point...but neither will I feel anything else. Who I am...will cease to be. I will enter the void, and never even be aware of when it comes over me.

When that day comes, of course...there will be nothing. I cannot be sad when I am dead. Because I will be dead. Nor angry or happy or anything.

The prospect of this...the prospect of absolute nothing-ness...

It scares the fuck out of me. And every story, movie, and platitude I hear about immortality and how it would be so bad and how life would become boring, I call bullshit on...because they're written from the perspectives of mortals.

An eternity of forever feeling? Of forever experiencing? Of forever being able to feel the soft skin of a lover beneath my fingertips, of forever being able to experience happiness and joy, sadness and pain as they may come? Or absolute nothingness.

Give me the eternity. Please, fuck, give me the eternity, I beg of you; an eternity of experience is infinitely more enticing than an abrupt end and everything I've done and everything I've experienced meaning absolutely nothing and fading forever into nothingness.

But...religion promises me this. It promises me eternities, either of agony, or...well, no idea what the alternative is; supposedly the great pleasures of contemplating the suffering of the damned and shit like that. With this abject terror of death on my mind, one would think I would be a believer, right? False comforts are, at least, comforts, yeah? Except, you can't believe someone when they've lied to you a dozen times. You can't watch the sex tape your lover took of them fucking someone else and go "this did not happen" and actually believe the words you speak unless you're just in denial. So I cannot turn to religion, because religion is a liar, and even if I WANTED to believe, at this point, I could not.

I keep hoping science will find a way to instill immortality, like via prosthetic bodies or something but, how would they? They can hardly research stem cell applications for diseases without the idiotic religious masses getting in a "moral uproar," as if they know a thing about morality anyways... Much less designing immortality.

*sighs* Truth be told I don't even know why I'm posting this. Writing this out hasn't made me feel better. And I didn't suspect it would, either. I guess I'm just wondering if anyone else ever feels this way, or has ever given his as much obsessive thought as I have.
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#2
RE: Conscious thought, experience, and the inevitable.
You're not alone. I've had a fear of death since I was 7, and even now I awake in cold sweats.

Its not as bad anymore now I am in my thirties, but I used to wake up wanting to cry when I was younger.

Life is falling off a cliff, a sudden rush of emotions and a hard rocky oblivion hurtling at full speed. Its only natural to focus on the ground rushing towards you.

I bet you feel better now! lol.

But the point is, what could be more exhilarating than the fall. The alternative was oblivion or fall. So take the jump, the fall, admire the sun, and ocean as you fall. You will always glance at the rushing ground, but its ugly, and cold. Each time you do so, you are wasting the moments of this incredible moment in the history of the universe. You.

Sorry, I came over poetic for a moment. I shall get my militant abuse gloves back on in a moment.
Self-authenticating private evidence is useless, because it is indistinguishable from the illusion of it. ― Kel, Kelosophy Blog

If you’re going to watch tele, you should watch Scooby Doo. That show was so cool because every time there’s a church with a ghoul, or a ghost in a school. They looked beneath the mask and what was inside?
The f**king janitor or the dude who runs the waterslide. Throughout history every mystery. Ever solved has turned out to be. Not Magic.
― Tim Minchin, Storm
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#3
RE: Conscious thought, experience, and the inevitable.
I remember the first time I realised I was going to eventually die and never return again was when I was around 6. I began weeping at the realisation that life isn't forever.

Now that I'm older I've again come to terms that I will eventually die and never exist again. I realised heaven doesn't exist.

It is in our nature to want to survive and therefore when faced with death we will do anything to avoid it. This clearly applies to animals when they experience pain and react to avoid it any further, or when prey is getting hunted down and they instinctively try and escape. I think as rational beings we have become aware that our eternal predator is time. Therefore it's only normal to get worried about death, because our developed brains together with instinct makes us want to find a solution to this. Hence, religion.

Personally, I have too much on my plate to even begin to ponder about my death through (hopefully) natural means. Make the most of now!!
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it" ~ Aristotle
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#4
RE: Conscious thought, experience, and the inevitable.
I'm not sure whether or not I fear death anymore personally. You'll never even know you were alive, it'll be as if you never existed which is mind boggling in itself. One thing I used to hope for was Transhumanism, although the technologies required for this would be decades away and would be very expensive I'm sure.
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#5
RE: Conscious thought, experience, and the inevitable.
I've been obsessed with my own death since I was 6 or 7 years old. I used to lay up at night trying to comprehend what exactly death felt like and what it entails. It went on like that until I was 15 when my depression started(depression is the strongest cure for fear of death) and I no longer feared death. In fact I welcomed it with open arms, and at one point I got so desperate that I attempted to bring about my death on my own.

Now that I have my depression mostly under control, I still don't have that fear of death, but sometimes when I think about it I start feeling apprehensive. Now I just worry about the act of dying and not the actual state of death. The nothingness will be my comfort.

One thing that helped me rationalize my fear of death was to admit that it is an inevitability and to simply prepare myself mentally for it.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell
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#6
RE: Conscious thought, experience, and the inevitable.
(April 18, 2012 at 8:47 am)Faith No More Wrote: Now I just worry about the act of dying and not the actual state of death. The nothingness will be my comfort.

One thing that helped me rationalize my fear of death was to admit that it is an inevitability and to simply prepare myself mentally for it.

I'm similar I wouldn't want a painful death. But in the end seems I won't much care once I've popped my clogs and its going to happen sooner or later it doesn't bother me. I just get on with what I'm doing and hope that I can enjoy as much of my existence as I get a chance to.
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#7
RE: Conscious thought, experience, and the inevitable.
I used to fear death but I don't as much anymore.

It is a useful survival instinct for us organisms to have. It is the primary binding principle behind all evolution. Survival. It is written into our DNA.

Humans are rational and understand that death is inevitable and inescapable and final. Resist, ignore, or try to escape it as we may it finds all of us just the same. It reduces the most powerful and most powerless among us to the same end.

Heidegger calls life Being unto Nothingness. Kierkegaard spoke of Sickness unto Death. They were speaking of the feeling of finiteness. The fact that each human has an end that is always growing nearer. That all feelings, thoughts, works, and things face the certitude of annihilation.

Religion is consoling in this respect. It provides hope of escaping from annihilation and nothingness. To placate oneself with falsehoods is tantamount to dishonesty, weakness and bad faith.

Fear clouds our ability to think rationally. I know that I am a Being unto Nothingness. That I face that eventual fate and that there is nothing I can do about it. It is final and binding and inevitable. So all I can work to do is face that thought with serenity and acceptance. Life is meaningless and finite but that does not mean that all things mean nothing. They matter while we are alive. One can live in fear or one can work to overcome that fear. I choose to not be afraid.
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." -Friedrich Nietzsche

"All thinking men are atheists." -Ernest Hemmingway

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." -Voltaire
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#8
RE: Conscious thought, experience, and the inevitable.
You feel like wanting eternity now, but that may not be the case once you actually have it. It is because of your limited temporal existence that everything that holds value to you holds any value. Once you have eternal life, those things would no longer hold any value.

No, I'm not saying that if someone grants you eternal life right now, you'd stop enjoying life right away. I'm saying that the longer you live, the more you'll start getting bored of things you love now. Maybe in a thousand years, you really would be bored of life itself. This article here gives plenty of reasons why you should not wish for immortality.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18708_5-r...death.html

Another reason you are afraid of dying is because you cannot conceive your non-existence. You use phrases like "I'd enter the void" or "I'd be in nothingness", because you imagine how your ego would cease to exist. You get what the idea means theoretically, but you haven't integrated it with your concept of existence. Once you do that, you won't stop being terrified of death, but you will realize that as long as it doesn't come before its time, you can expect a future where you would no longer be terrified of it.

The best thing to wish for here, in my opinion, is not immortality, but wishful-death. That means that you get to live as long as you want and when you want to die, you die.
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