I think since having become divorced from religion (at least with Christianity, I still find Dharmic spirituality interesting, but I still don’t believe in the supernatural), the idea of death has become a bit more difficult for me.
I tell myself that I am okay with dying, since it’s inevitable, and out of my control, but I think deep down, when I really think about the end of my existence, there is some deep terror there, perhaps related to the fear of the unknown. I can think of all kinds of fantastic quotes about death and finding peace with it, but when I think about what it will feel like to die, it instills great terror within me.
It’s not even a fear of the pain or anything. Just a fear of what may or may not be next. I think part of it too is some sort of fear of missing out. A fear of not getting to see the great things that are to come in this world. A fear of not having the time to learn the innumerable interesting things that there are to learn. So much to learn, and so little time. I think it also has to do with the thought of being forever separated from my loved ones. From my partner. From the person who I share my life with and have created my life with. Imagining being separated from her for an eternity, it brings me to tears.
Interestingly, this is a fear I’ve always had, ever since I was a child. I remember being 4 or 5 years old and asking my dad what happens after death, what death feels like, where my friends will go after death, and remember him becoming almost frustrated with my questioning, because these are obviously answers he doesn’t have and are honestly fairly strange thoughts for a child so young to be pondering.
For some reason, death has always been something on my mind since I was a child, and a very emotional thought at that. I think my brief stint of being religious from early childhood into mid-teen years was an emotional ‘band-aid’ of sorts, but since I’ve come to the conclusion that I truly don’t know what death will feel like or what will happen after death, these thoughts have again started racing through my head, giving me moderate emotional discomfort.
Have any of yourselves come to term with death? How have you managed to find peace with it besides “just don’t think about it”?
I have had periods of time where I thought I had come to terms with death, but recently and often I find myself horrified of the concept that I have already died because it is inevitable. I have had periods of time where I came to an understanding of how temporary and fleeting everything is but when I fall in love with the world again I find my fear of death along with it.
I have lost comrades in violent and upsetting ways, sometimes self-inflicted. I have seen death firsthand so many times and I do not feel any better about it. Where I find the strength to go on I also find the fear of having to give up. I do not think I will come to terms with death and I think I will have to live around it.
As for how you can come to terms with death, I’ve been told the solution is to tie up loose ends. I don’t know how this solution can help someone who doesn’t want to leave.
horrified of the concept that I have already died because it is inevitable
I have a similar thought sometimes but it’s the opposite of horrifying. If anything, it makes me feel like I could achieve anything. What could possibly hold me back if it’s all already written? (I don’t want to give the impression that in trying to live as some kind of superhero—I’m talking very much within the realms of living a rather ordinary life.)
I’ve got a few disjointed thoughts regarding life/death that may help.
Fearing death is a perfectly natural response to living. We have evolved to fear death. It’s there so we strive to live long enough to breed and raise our young. Humans are enlightened beyond only fulfilling our natural instincts but they still linger and this can’t be helped. It’s in our makeup.
They say life is a way for the universe to experience itself. Since you as a human are just one tiny piece of the whole universe, you’re not expected to experience and learn EVERYTHING… Rather you just learn and experience what comes to you naturally which will add to the universes “knowledge pool”.
All matter in the universe has existed since its beginning and will continue to exist until its end. You and all your loved ones are made of this matter. Even in death, your matter still remains in the universe. So while your consciousness might no longer exist, everything that makes up “you” still does… your matter has just rejoined the universe. Your matter shares this space with the master of everyone who has ever existed or who will ever exist. This means you will never be leaving your loved ones behind for eternity, quite the opposite.
I hope some part of my ramblings soothes you somewhat.
Maybe ‘it’s okay to be afraid’ is the answer. Maybe for me, it is that idea of “clinging” to life, and struggling with that. Maybe it is having this image of myself in my head, that when the time comes, I shouldn’t let the emotions overwhelm me, and I should be able to remain stoic and “exit the world with dignity” or something like that.
I currently don’t care about death. It’s going to happen one day or another.
There’s this guy at my (now old) place of work who manages to live every day as if it was his last. For him this means gambling, smoking, not really giving a shit about a lot of things. And he has so much fun doing it. Whenever someone in our group of friends says something about this, his answer is: ‘tomorrow is a certainty for no one. You don’t know what will happen and you very well may be dead a the end of the day’.
Now, I’m not saying you should be living life like this. Statistically speaking, if you’re young and relatively healthy, there’s a big chance you will live on for a while. Living life like it is your last day may be counterproductive for your life goals. But the longer I watch my friend live like this, the more I understand his vision and his lack of fear about death. You DON’T know what will happen after life or what your next day will bring. One of my coworkers died recently. He had a random seizure, fell and hit his head against the radiator. He was a healthy 21 year old. His parents found him after a few days after they returned from holiday. Life can be taken away very quickly and without warning.
I know this is a pretty white privileged way of thinking. But at the same time I also get so caught up in politics and making the world a better place that I forget to live a little and worry less. I also don’t want to die without having a bit of fun.
So, I don’t fear death. I have up thinking about what will happen if I die and I focus on the here and now more.
Whenever someone in our group of friends says something about this, his answer is: ‘tomorrow is a certainty for no one. You don’t know what will happen and you very well may be dead a the end of the day’.
I always remember this with the phrase ‘imagine living your life with no vices, you would feel really stupid when you get to your death bed and you die from nothing’
From the Buddhist tradition, I’d say you can use meditation practice to realize for yourself that the notion of a coherent self is an illusion, and you are losing nothing in death. I’d suggest you listen to Revolutionary Left Radio and Shoeless in South Dakota, because Breht has a lot of episodes about Buddhism and stuff. He often tells the story of when his spiritual practice led him to have a crisis where he obsessed about the fact he was going to die, but he eventually realized he was just mourning the human condition.
Edit:
A fear of not having the time to learn the innumerable interesting things that there are to learn.
I found that relatable, and I guess I think you can’t regret anything if you don’t exist. I think it’s good to try and learn as much is you can, but what matters is that you try to affect the world in a net positive way. I’m still trapped in the illusion of self, but theoretically with how your consciousness is constantly changing there is no need to regret anything, just be present with experiences as they come, and try to be good, but in the end it won’t matter.
to realize for yourself that the notion of a coherent self is an illusion, and you are losing nothing in death.
I might have to look into this for some insight because that’s similar to what I was trying to describe.
What is meant by “coherent self”?
You are not the same person from one moment to the next, nor over your lifetime. Your emotions constantly change; your opinions constantly change; you physically constantly change; what does the little baby you once were have in common with you? Genes? You share 99.9% in common with everyone anyway. There’s also a dialectical approach where you say “where does my body end and other things begin?” Even the atoms don’t technically touch each other so, who’s to say that whatever you are sitting on isn’t a part of “you?” Who’s to say the bacteria on/in you is truely a separate entity when they outnumber you ten to one in cells? Who’s to say the plants around you aren’t part of your respiratory system?
How does change in one’s self based on conditions equate to no coherent self? Surely there’s still a continuity.
The most important part of no self is that the ego that talks within your head isn’t actually you, it’s just a process of making sense of things and avoiding being bored. You should check out all the Buddhist stuff from Revleft, but for a quick summary of this topic I’d also suggest this podcast.
This is exactly the kind of mindset I’ve been trying to adopt. Being able to see the deep interconnection in the world and seeing how everything is related in connection and change. Trying to apply it to myself has been difficult. Sometimes it feels like my body/mind fights back against this too, there are times when I’ve felt I’ve made progress on this, but then, somewhere in my brain, for some reason, i feel forced to contemplate specific organs of my body, such as my heart, and how that might feel to go out, and then the anxiety gets going, and then it feels like there’s actually some sharpness in the heart itself, and then I worry about dying and go down that rabbit hole.
coherent self
Is there such thing as an incoherent self? I feel like everything exists except for me, and that “I” am nothing more than an occasionally interrupted stream of sensory input. Especially since I’ve become terminally online and have barely moved, I even feel disconnected from my body and physical surroundings. So much of “my” time is spent online I feel more like a digital ghost than a living thing.
That’s somewhat it, but that’s also alienation. As the computer is basically an extension of your body, it can be an example of your self not being metaphysically reducible to your human cells.
I’m going to put it off for as long as bloody possible! But the idea of dying doesn’t scare me. Perhaps the method. I wouldn’t like it to be drawn out or painful. But I don’t fully understand how anyone can fear death itself. Living for eternity seems scarier. And losing others—that’s another thing entirely.
There’s nothing after, so it doesn’t matter. You won’t be around to regret or ponder it. It doesn’t trouble me to think about death at all. Sometimes I think that I can think this because I’m content that I’m living properly along the way. But then I realise again that even if I died when I wasn’t living properly, to the fullest, I wouldn’t be sentient to care, so even then it wouldn’t matter.
The realisation of what death really is might be the most liberating thought. You’ve got one go at life, it’ll be too brief however long it lasts, so try to make it count and live knowing that your individuality is tangential to being part of history.
I mean, obviously I don’t mean to come off as suicidal but death is the absence of pain, suffering, and work, so I don’t think it’s bad, it’s just letting yourself rest without worrying about the stresses of life. Existence kinda sucks, especially if it were to be prolonged beyond finding meaning in existence. The limitations of existence makes it meaningful. I think I would be the most miserable person on the planet if I had to live eternally.
The limitations of existence makes it meaningful
That is a very good take away.
I was going to answer “I try not to think about it”, but then I saw your last line. Now I have to give an actual answer.
I personally think that death is like before one was born, nothingness. I would say that that belief has helped shape my mentality that you should do everything you want to while you still can. There’s nothing afterwards, so gotta hurry up and live while you’re alive.
None of us is going to live forever, we won’t see how things end up, and maybe that’s for the better. I get the fear of missing out on history, that’s something that can’t be remedied. Just try to imagine the future, remain optimistic, do what you want, find a purpose in life, and you will leave this world peacefully.
Agreed. I feel like the second paragraph you had there, is exactly what i was referring to. I feel like I can say that pretty easily, and do feel like I honestly believe it, but when push comes to shove in a moment of emotional intensity regarding death, that whole thing just crumbles before me and is replaced with “but I don’t want to die”. Some sort of “clinging” to life.
I don’t find the concept too scary - I didn’t feel anything before I was, I have no reason to think it’ll be different when I’m not.
I’ve got people I love and things I need to do here, so I’ll try to be as healthy as possible for as long as possible.
I’ll probably cry and beg to live if it comes violently, but that seems natural.
You’re honestly probably right. Maybe it is having this image of myself in my head, that when the time comes, I shouldn’t let the emotions overwhelm me, and I should be able to remain stoic and “exit the world with dignity” or something like that.
As a person from hindu origin, every religion sucks one way or other. It’s better to deal with bigots and nazis with science and reason. Marxism and scientific socialism is the best medicine for humankind and nature. If there is a god in this universe it is this. Everything else doesn’t matter to us. This cosmos is infinite and is humongous. Who knows how many civilizations are there lurking around and do they believe in God? That we should ask them.
Agreed. I do think the ideas present within Vedanta and Zen Buddhism (the only two that I’ve studied to any extent) do have some really cool ideas that have a lot of overlap with scientific socialism and Marxism. Specifically stuff like Indra’s Net, or anything that stresses that “things aren’t really things, but things are the relationships between things”, if that makes sense. Just the stuff that stresses interconnection and nuance, i find that I can really appreciate and see a lot of crossover with systems science and Marxism. Also, Swami Vivekanda has written some very interesting texts on Socialism based on his time in the USSR, which I found pretty interesting.
I do agree religion isn’t the end all, be all, and i generally have disdain for religion, i do find that those philosophies have a lot to be appreciated, especially when compared to the purely black and white thinking of abrahamic religion.
Well, my fear of death has inspired a couple things in me, both somewhat controversial in their own rights.
One, I refuse to procreate. Never will I sentence another to death by creating a new consciousness.
Two, should I ever die, I want to be cryogenically preserved. I want to keep living, keep making, keep experiencing. The black void of nothingness is the most terrifying thing I can imagine.
Is it individualistic? Self centered? Probably, but that doesn’t make me want it any less. Perhaps it won’t save me as well, it’s entirely possible medical science never advances to the point of resuscitating frozen brains(I only want my upper body, I hope I won’t need the whole thing to keep my consciousness). Even still, at least I will have died with the illusion of hope.
I’m a big advocate of cryonic preservation as well, I think its a matter of when its invented, not if.
I would also hope that in a future socialist society, cryonics and many other life extension techniques would be available to everyone as well.
If that makes you happy, in the theoretical sciences there exist a number of ways to “cheat” death. According to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, it could be that you live on in parallel universes. According to special relativity, you are always alive in a spherical shell expanding from the point of your death at the speed of light. According to the holographic principle in string theory, your entire life could be contained as a projection on the surface of a black hole. According to general relativity, our spacetime could contain (or be modified to contain) closed timelike curves along which the time coordinate is circular and objects are bound to revisit their past existence at some point.
Of course, just like the search for the holy grail or the philosophers’ stone of the mythological past, these might all turn out either practically infeasible, empirically false, or mathematically contradictory; but it is nice to know - or at least guess with a high probability - that your existence will have left an indelible mark on reality and someone, something in the far future might still find your traces and remember you. In the meantime, perhaps with a bit of black humour considering the topic, I like to close with a quote from Engels’ Anti-Dühring:
Freedom lies not in the dreamt independence from the laws of nature, but in their recognition and in the therein contained opportunity to plan and let them act towards certain purposes.
If you’ve ever stood up too quickly and fainted, you should have an idea of what death is like. Your consciousness and all your senses (including your very understanding of reality) simply fizzle out with a rapid numbing sensation. If you think about it, it shouldn’t have really bothered you all that much during. You just simply cease to exist, more or less. It’s just that with death, you don’t fizzle back into awareness and sensation. Being dead is the easiest possible state of existence. It’s simply dying that’s the hard part. So, I don’t fear death. I fear pain, yes, but not death. The world was here long before I was and got on without me just fine. Now that I’m here, I’m just using this “thing” we experience called life to make it somewhat worth it, since I’ve accepted everything I have and ever will have, I will lose at some point. All I’ve ever known is loss. All I’ve ever known is urban, social and economic decay. I’ve been at war with the imperial core since birth, since I was born into a family with military history and sympathy for capital. As we should know, western military powers condition their soldiers to be fully receptive and vulnerable to arbitrary rule, which was passed onto my abusive household situation. I thought after the hell of being abused at home, having to deal with similar treatment at school, that I would be free of it once I “graduated” into adulthood. I was lorded over and told all my interests and my very dignity were invalid and unworthy of consideration because I didn’t own the house or the land it stood on. I was told tirelessly throughout my upbringing that when I own the house and I pay the bills, I can do what I want and have what I want. A cruel jest, to say the least, because look around at the state of housing in the US. Being at the mercy of chuds from birth, subjected to arbitrary rule, being cheated every time I found a way to cope and always being told it was my fucking fault because I didn’t have the power to enforce my self worth and interests taught me that I never had shit, and never will. It was just full spectrum humiliation. I wanted to own a home and have the security of land that is my safe haven from the worst of the forces of capitalism and reaction, and my whole generation was told, when we came of age, “Sorry, that was a limited time offer, you just missed it. You should’ve read the fine print, unfortunately. Your futures are cancelled. Have a good life, what’s left of it.”
I could go on for days, but I have no reason to fear death simply because all I’ve ever known is war. War at home, war at school, war on TV, in the media, overseas, at work. You name it. Being dead is pure bliss compared to this shit. I just simply don’t want to endure a torturous death, which of course nazis and other rabid far-right elements deliberately want to subject us to. I’m passive about my survival, for the most part. Maybe some of you haven’t had to fight an uphill battle your entire lives from birth, and can find relevant reasons to fear death. The characteristics of everyone’s upbringing differ, so all I can offer is my own analysis based on the singular experience of my own life. My personal development fascinates me, and so does seeing my revenge playing out right now with the collapsing US and remnants of the EU empires. The suffering they’ve put me and my class through will be avenged, and they will eat shit and like it. In the meantime, I’m not seeking my own death. It’s simply that when it comes, I’m at peace with it, because I know my life can be so much worse. I didn’t ask to be here. I didn’t ask to see enough trauma for 100 years compressed into just three decades. However, while I have this, I’m simply going to observe and continue cultivating my skills and interests.
Indeed I have passed out, many times. It’s always a terrible experience, or, incredibly uncomfortable probably. It feels like I’m losing my mind when I’m passing out to be completely honest. It feels almost psychedelic coming out of unconsciousness for me. Excluding anesthesia, more thinking about passing out while getting blood drawn or from heat or something.
I wish the idea of simply fainting from existence was comforting, but historically that phenomenon has always been uncomfortable as hell for me.
Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Indeed, it makes sense the experience can be more troubling in proportion to the level of stress in a given situation. I had not taken this into consideration with my initial response and appreciate the feedback. Everyone handles situations differently. Some individuals are hardened (or numbed) more than others in terms of their emotional response to what is happening.
I have always felt like a highly sensitive person in general. I know there’s a lot of pop-psych stuff around that term, but I’ve really always felt that way. Getting into a verbal altercation with someone, including family has always rattled me inside, makes me feel all fucked up. Same with seeing something highly sad, It’s hard for me not to just be incredibly sad, such as weeping, versus being able to contain it. Same with anger, and so on.
In terms of afterlives I think it’s best to be agnostic. Maybe a will be reincarnated as someone feeling the affects of my karma, maybe not. I don’t think hell exists because that’s kind of evil and arbitrary to lump someone who wasn’t good enough with someone who was the worst person ever. It’s absurd that everyone who hadn’t heard of a religion is damned to eternal suffering.Though, there are some Christian groups that think Jesus abolished hell and now there’s just heaven. It also could be that they are just states of mind, maybe the Buddhist heavenly and hellish realms are also states of mind. However, we can’t know everything, so whether there’s an afterlife, we’re stuck in a Bergsonian loop, or there’s a void, it’s good to do good things and try to affect the world positively. If there is a heaven a dedicated communist is going there.
In terms of afterlife, I would say I’m agnostic. When i say I have appreciation for the Dharmic religions, I don’t mean that I believe in the supernatural aspects of those religions, more that I appreciate the philosophical undertones present within them. Specifically stuff like Indra’s Net, or anything that stresses that “things aren’t really things, but things are the relationships between things”, if that makes sense. Just the stuff that stresses interconnection and nuance, i find that I can really appreciate and see a lot of crossover with systems science and Marxism. Also, Swami Vivekanda has written some very interesting texts on Socialism based on his time in the USSR, which I found pretty interesting.
I do agree religion isn’t the end all, be all, and i generally have disdain for religion, i do find that those philosophies have a lot to be appreciated, especially when compared to the purely black and white thinking of abrahamic religion.
Basically same. I’m reminded of some very good episodes of revleft on how Buddhism and Marxism can complement each other.
Any specific ones i should check out?
From shoeless in South Dakota: ‘shoeless in samsara,’ (talks about death) and ‘death anxiety and overcoming life’s tragedies’ (warning: long and random, you your choice whether to)
From Revolutionary left radio: ‘dialectics & liberation: insights from Buddhism and Marxism,’ ‘zen Buddhism and social transformation,’ ‘Hegelian dialectics: contradiction, Marxism, & the Freudian unconscious,’ the whole ‘dialectics deep dive series’ (long), ‘Karmic law and mutual aid: insights from Buddhism and anarchism’…
Honestly, every time I go through the revleft backlog there are many more I want to listen to, so I suggest you do that if you finish all of these and want more. (Btw I didn’t link anything because there are too many podcast apps and I didn’t want to assume anything).
I figure I am going to die one day but also I don’t want to die yet so I’m gonna try to not die… I do fear death but that fear is to remind me I’m not ready to die yet. On the other hand I know it will happen eventually so when the time comes and I know there no real chance or reason to fight it anymore then I figure I will let that at fear go. At least that’s what I say now. Not sure how it’ll play out when the time comes.
Maybe for me, it is that idea of “clinging” to life, and struggling with that.
I’m going to answer more generally first: I’m not sure it would really be healthy to. That you are attached to others and cherish your time with them seems healthy to me. If this fear is paralyzing you in some way, I could see reason to be concerned and perhaps urge you to seek out a professional to talk to if at all possible. But if it’s just that it occasionally bothers you, that seems pretty human to me.
More specifically: As you do mention some preoccupation with it that you view as abnormal and seem to want to know more about it, I would ask you to consider… is it that you feel you need to understand death so you can cope with it? Is it a knowledge gap? A curiosity thing? If you are someone who wants to be as informed as you possibly can so you can face something, then you may have to either accept it’s the one thing about life you will never really know until it happens, or it may help to explore fantasy stories and different religious takes on it to feed your desire to understand it better (if that does apply). Though you can’t know, you could get a clearer picture of how human beings tend to view death and what they do about it, dissecting it on a cultural and materialist level, so you can sort of “zoom out” a little.
Another element to consider is, would you consider these thoughts intrusive and obsessive? Because if they are, it may help to practice welcoming them in, rather than trying to push them away (if that is something you think you are doing). Similar to anxiety spirals and being anxious about being anxious, becoming upset about the nature of an intrusive thought can make it worse. (Disclaimer here: I’m not a professional, just going off of what I know from personal research.)