Death

[Alynna Lis Eachann]

The "Finding God" thread got me thinking, so I figured I'd toss this out. I don't see that there's been a proper discussion of it, and if there has, then let's take it up again.

How do you view death? As "moving on," as peace and rest, or as an unkown that you are biologically and/or intellectually afraid of? Or as something else, perhaps?

I'm an agnostic, but that isn't really the correct term, as I don't actively doubt that there is a god. I just don't care. Point is, there may be an afterlife, but I'm not banking on it. Do I want there to be an afterlife? Probably not. I think I'd rather death were just like sleeping, except you don't dream, and you don't wake up. Face it, if I live to be old and gray, I'm gonna be tired. What a cheat it would be to die, then wake up and find out you have to live again. Because even if heaven is perfection, being in the presence of your god/goddess, whatever, it still means self-awareness, and I'll have had enough of that by then. And if the after life means reincarnation, than I don't want to have to remember my old life, because I'll have to wonder what I did to deserve dealing with another life again.

Am I scared of death? Sure. On a biological level, I'm terrified. On an intellectual level, I think, 'Meh, I'll find out when I get there. Or maybe I won't, 'cause there's nothing to find.'

Further along this line of thought: Why do people care what their funerals are going to be like? "I want this song played, etc. etc." What do you care? You will be dead. One way or another, you will be beyond things like that. Then again, I have a visceral fear of cremation, so I'm not really one to talk, am I? I think I live too much in the physical world.

So... your thoughts?

[nuk]

I think death is oblivion. There isn't much alternative, given my complete lack in belief in the supernatural.

For my funeral, I'd like my wife to toss my corpse in the nearest dumpster, or give it to a hospital/university, whichever is easier. Then I'd like her to throw a wake, get drunk, and tell a bunch of funny stories about me. And enjoy the life insurance.

[[Syl]]

I try not to think about it (I've worked hard at convincing myself that I won't ever die, not entirely without reason). I figure it will be a lot like how things were before I was born. And since that didn't seem to be that bad... Basically, death only scares me in a very egocentric kind of way. All that I am will be gone; all that I have will be lost.

I also have a firm belief in a kind of reincarnation, if only because I have a problem believing consciousness can be destroyed. Of course, I also want to be cremated just in case there's a residual consciousness.

Or what if all you lose is the two-dimensional view of time? If your awareness could fill the span of your whole lifetime... I can see that as a kind of heaven or hell.

[The Laughing Man]

I believe that my "identity" will be lost if I do not gain complete control of my "awareness" before my physical death. That the "personal me" I have become on this earth will cease to exist as the pieces of "available light" that I was "assembled" from and encased within this physical/spiritual "shell" will disperse and expand back into the "nothingness" from which it came, or "originated". Back to Creator. Kinda like "energy recycling". It gets pretty complicated, not to mention contradictory, but that is my fear, sometimes my wish, that ME will simply cease to exist.
(P.S. - I have "donor" marked on my DL. heh. If they want it, they can have it. don't think my lungs will be much use other than to scare little children, tho. )

Or what if all you lose is the two-dimensional view of time? If your awareness could fill the span of your whole lifetime... I can see that as a kind of heaven or hell.

what could you possibly do but laugh at yourself at that point? It's over, you couldn't possibly have known any better at the time your life happened, each moment. Wouldn't that cast an "amusing light" on the "pomp and circumstance" of it all?

[Cheval]

I'm not afraid of death, my fear is how I'm going to go.
All I ask is to be quick and painless.
Alynna's post is pretty much what I think also.

Spoiler

Once you're dead, you're a decaying carcass.

(Morbid way of putting it, but its the truth, as least for the body.)

A Soul? What is a soul? A life-force that dwells within you and
guides our thoughts? Sounds like aliens are inside, controlling us.
When you die, goes your soul go to a collector of these souls, whether
this collector is Good or Evil?
An After-life.
If there is an after-life, how would we know it isn't the only life?
There is no knowledge of the previous life/lives that is retained into memory, is there?
If there was, then what's the point of fearing the Angel of Death?
(An Angel... of Death. Would you fear an Angel?)
If there was re-incarnation, my luck would be that I'd return as a dung-beetle.
But since I'm not a dung beetle, I can rule this one out.
Unless...
I ate the bird that ate the fish that ate the worm.
The worm is re-incarnated in me, right?
Maybe you'll "transcend" into another plane of existance.
Or another dimension.

Enough of "Bob's Philosophy 101".
Interesting question, Alynna.
I'm sure there will be interesting answers too.

[sgt.null]

i imagine heaven as a New Hampshire farm where my wife and i reside. our families and loved ones live down the road somewhere. i spend the rest of my life tending animals. (not eating them ) my wife and i would go to Mass on Sundays.

[lucimay]

To be, or not to be ... that is the question.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take up arms against a sea of troubles - and by opposing them end them?
To die... To sleep... no more...
And by a sleep to say we end the heartache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to..
Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished!

To die... To sleep...
To sleep? Perchance to dream!
Ay there's the rub! For in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause...

There's the respect that makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressors wrong, the proud man's contumely?
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay?
The insolence of office,
And the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make - with a bare bodkin?

Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns,
Puzzles the will, and makes us bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others we known not of?

Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.

In Mahayana Buddhist soteriology the Bardo is the intermediate state between lives, when the mind experiences a series of hallucinations culminating in its next birth.

In contrast, the western materialist regards the state of a 'dead' mind as OFF / Non-Existent / No Activity. It is the ultimate quietus - no experience whatsoever.

To the Buddhist it is impossible to envisage 'no mind'. The state of a disembodied mind is active, hallucinatory and, depending on its karmic imprints, sometimes nightmarish.


'To die, to sleep ... To sleep, perchance to dream.
Ay there's the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause...' - Hamlet's soliloquy upon contemplating suicide.

Hamlet realised that 'Not to be' is not an option, there is only 'To Be' - in some state or other, pleasant or unpleasant:

The Buddhist agrees with Shakespeare, rather than with the materialists, in believing that mental imprints caused by actions in previous lifetimes (karma) cause phenomenal manifestations. And those manifestations continue to be experienced as dreams or nightmares throughout the intermediate state from tomb to womb.

Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all.

[Alynna Lis Eachann]

Yet another example of why I love Shakespeare so much.

I have my own theory as to what a soul is, and, unfortunately, my theory doesn't allow for the survival of the soul much beyond death.

We all know that our bodies produce a weak electrical current. It has also been observed that can be detected and visually represented with certain instruments. As I understand it, these instruments can also detect the residual current that is present after the amputation of a limb. I don't know how long this current lasts. So: What if our consciousness is "encoded" in this electrical current, rather like information is encoded along phone/DSL lines? If that current is strong enough, it will continue to exist independently for a short time after the heart has stopped beating and the brain ceased to function.

This might explain why you always hear stories about ghosts from a few hundred years ago, but not from, say, the Classical Greek period. All those old ghosts have dissipated. If you don't have a major grudge or emotional event/trauma when you die, you're not going to become a ghost because your essence or electrical field wasn't strong enough to remain in a coalesced form. Still, I doubt you'd have much awareness, if any. You'd just relive your emotional trauma, like a feedback loop. There wouldn't be anything left to create new thought processes, would there? Then again, maybe there would.

Just my pet theory. I'm sure it's full of holes. Doesn't really explain traditional out-of-body experiences as I've heard them, but it's the only thing that makes sense to my semi-scientific mind. *shrug*

[Prebe]

I'm with Nuk on this one. Even though I am an organ donor. Even if all my organs turn out to be worthless, I could probably (like the Esmer) be entertaining and perhaps even educational to med. students.

And yes, I fear death in a very natural way. Self preservation, I believe, is a natural trait in all animals. Those with no consciousnes, make do with instincts keeping them out of harms way.

[I'm Murrin]

I don't really expect there to be anything after death - I expect that I'll just cease, and that'll be it. Part of me would rather this was not the case (probably the same part that in some people encourages them towards religion), but really I can't see any reason why it shouldn't be. In many ways the whole thing is a big fluke, and there's no reason why an electro-chemically based system should remain in any way intact once the structure which allowed such a system degrades.

As for what to do with me once I'm dead, I suppose the most sensible thing anyone can do is donate their body to medical science, as organ donor or otherwise.

[Avatar]

Some good posts folks.

I like the idea of some other plane of awareness, if only because I don't like the thought of this incredible consciousness being eaten by worms.

And although those who believe in the eternity of energy as it were, may have a point, like Cheval's worm, for me, self-awareness is what it's all about. Even if there were such a thing as reincarnation, to me, unless you retain that sense of self, the awareness of yourself as a continuing entity, you're effectively dead anyway.

And regardless of what I'd like to think, all logic and rationality tells me that there is nothing but oblivion ahead, once our body fails so drastically at preserving/recreating itself.

Fear death? I certainly plan on doing whatever I can to avoid it for as long as I possibly can, but the thought doesn't particularly bother me. If I can't live forever, I'll die trying, and who knows but that the world will die with me.

(I'm an organ donor too, BTW, in case I'm wrong about that last bit.)

The consciousness is where all life resides. Even if something gets left over, if you don't know it's you, then it's not.

--Avatar

[Prebe]

if you don't know it's you, then it's not.

Clever! If there is no you to perceive the you that's left of you

[High Lord Tolkien]

I hate this question.
Because if I really think about I can't see that there's anything beyond just death when I die.
I've always thought what Alynna said death was like: sleep.
Life gives us a taste of death every day.
If you never wake up from sleep you'd never know it.
No fear, no pain just...nothing.
I think in the normal course of events our bodies and minds accept this.
As we start to slow down and things begin to "break" and even movement becomes a chore we accept it more and more.
I'm 38 now.
When I was 28 I had a much different view of this.
Which was wildly different from when I was 18.
That's just how the mind works.
I imagine that when I'm 48 my concept and fear of death will have matured again as well.
I would like to talk to someone in their 80s or 90s about death but there's no freaking way I'm bringing that subject up with them.

The thought of Heaven is nice and comforting but if I get there and none of my dogs are there to great me I'm going to be a little pissed.
That sounds like a joke but it's not.

[Cail]

Good answer HLT. I don't really fear death, as much as I fear getting hurt.

I believe in Heaven, but I have no idea what it is. If it means floating around on a cloud, wearing a sheet, and strumming on a harp, I gotta say I'd be a bit disappointed.

One thing that really makes it confusing is all the different religions have a different idea of what Heaven is, and I think they're all right. So the Moslems will have their 40 virgins, the Baptists will wear frumpy clothes, and I'll be in Catholic heaven with a nice buzz dancing in a conga line.

But yeah, my dogs better be there.

[lucimay]

I believe in Heaven, but I have no idea what it is. If it means floating around on a cloud, wearing a sheet, and strumming on a harp, I gotta say I'd be a bit disappointed.

says Cail


there's a very good book to read on this subject. one of the best descriptions of what life after death might be like...hollywood made it into a movie but it was horrifically terrible and NOT representative of the book at all...anyway, the book is What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson.

i liked it, and i gave it to my friend whose husband died suddenly and it helped her a lot. it's the not knowing that gets ya, isn't it. and if we KNEW what was/is on the other side, how would that affect how we behave here?

anyway, i'm of the mind that whatever gets us through those long, awful nights of unmitigated fear is a good thing. it's all about coping mechanisms, yes?

[Zarathustra]

It is only through accepting one's mortality and living life with the full realization of its finitude that we can achieve the full extent of life's meaning. Life is temporal. So what. Even if all life on earth were exterminated, it wouldn't take away the past. It wouldn't take away the fact that billions of people loved and lived and wrote symphonies. The tragic finitude of life gives it MORE meaning. It makes it MORE special and unique -- because it IS passing. It will only be here once. That makes it special.

I agree completely with Syl: why do people get upset about non-existence after death, but no one gets upset about their non-existence before birth? Why should one be more troubling than the other?

In THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA, the chapter on free death, Nietzsche writes: "My death I praise to you, the free death which comes to me because I want it. And when shall I want it? He who has a goal and an heir will want death at the right time for his goal and heir." (p. 72) "Thus I want to die myself that you, my friends, may love the earth more for my sake; and to earth I want to return that I may find rest in her who gave birth to me." (p.73)

[Prebe]

life's meaning.

Hey, this is cool. I didn't know there was one

[The Laughing Man]

By asking the question you are implying that life actually HAS a
meaning. Is this something you know for a fact?

tutuzdad-ga

btw, I saved everyone two bucks.

this sucker paid 20!

It was also asked (for $20) by qpet-ga in January 2003, and he or she got a succinct and thoughtful $20 answer from journalist-ga:

[Avatar]

I totally agree that life does not necessarily have to have any meaning in the traditional sense of the word.

The meaning of life is, I think, an intensely subjective answer.

Usually though, meaning implies reason, or point. Whereas the meaning of life is, quite clearly, to live.

--A

[The Laughing Man]

...Whereas the meaning of life is, quite clearly, to live.

--A

I would qualify it more as a command than a meaning, myself. The process of carrying out that command provides circumstances that meaning can be drawn from. Now that old question comes up, --A , do we discover the meaning, or create the meaning thru this process?