Malchik Posted December 20, 2003 Share Posted December 20, 2003 I don't think other people are in a position to tell me what I feel. I have never been afraid of death and I have nearly died twice (and not from anything self-administered Acrid.) But if someone pulls a gun on me I'll run like hell because I'm not ready to die yet if it can be avoided. Those who are genuinely afraid of death (thanatophobia) show all sorts of abnormal psychotic symptoms. Acrid you are in the US army I believe. This puts you in situations where death at a much earlier age than average human life span is not unusual. It heightens awareness of mortality and fear of not wanting to die when so much of your life remains to be fulfilled. But as I said before wanting to be alive is not the same as being afraid of death and this is not just semantics. All the examples people are giving are of situations where you can try to save yourself. American gun culture may make you reach for those analogies faster than we would in the UK but most people don't face death that way. They are more likely to be killed in a car accident. If people were really afraid of death they would drive more slowly, drink less, not smoke etc. etc. So I stick to my opinion, most people are afraid of the act of dying rather than the state of being dead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ancalagon Posted December 20, 2003 Share Posted December 20, 2003 Yes, because once you're dead, well...there's nothing you can really do about it. It's how you die, or the knowlledge that one day, you will cease to exist. IMO, I think that many are afraid of death because they fear that no one will remember them, and that they shall pass into anonymity (or something like that). They fear death because they fear that they didn't live their lives to the fullest, and that they have regrets about wha they didn't do; that they didn't leave a legacy behind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmac Posted December 21, 2003 Share Posted December 21, 2003 But you could still be the most renowned human in the world and still fear death, irregardless of your in-life accomplishments. As I mentioned before, humans and all orgamisms have natural, in-born tendencies to perfection. An aspect of that trait is the progression of its own genes, expressed in offspring. If by death it means that the body's vision of perfection is to be disrupted, then it is interpreted as fear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ohGr Posted December 21, 2003 Share Posted December 21, 2003 yeah, when the situation comes by, you will fear for your own life, and no one elses, and you always get this gut feeling, which i was told, is your Adrenalin Glands kicking in, you know how you get those sudden, cat-like reflexes when your in danger, thats those glands starting. so, as acrid said, put in my own words, people may not fear death for now, but when the time comes, youll want to run for your life.Scientific Correction: Adrenaline is an enzyme that increases heart rate, opens the wind passage, dilates the eyes, pumps the lungs faster, and introduces epinephrine into the system. Reflexes have nothing to do with adrenaline, nor are they enhanced by it. Reflexes have to do with the speed of the electrical connection in the nerve cells between the dendrites. It reaches the spinal cord, recieves fight-or-flight instructions, and bounces them back to the area where the sensory stimulation occurred. The muscle in the area will retract towards the body in an attempt to halt the damage to tissue. People may not fear death now, but, without their consent or not, they do. It is hardwired into the primitave brain at birth a tendency toward longevity and perfection. Wether you like it or not, your body will run if your primitave brain deems the threat to be a possibly death-inducing sequence for you. yep, i definantly forgot quite a bit when i was learning the human anatomy in science. as Ancalagon said, "its how you die", thats probably the most important thing, im sure, that most of you would rather die in your sleep than drop dead while watching a movie and eating...food, or get a gun pulled up to you and *blam*, right in your head, my grandma died a few months ago, and she died in her sleep, and from what i could gather before her death, your hearing and sight are wasted, your muscles are useless and all she could do is sit there like a vegetable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ctogher Posted December 22, 2003 Share Posted December 22, 2003 The Dark Side Personal theory has nothing to do with "perfection", fear of the unknown or pain. It has far more to do with indoctrination, cultural or otherwise. Your greatest fear is not that you will cease to exist. It is that you will continue to exist, to experience, and be unable to affect your future. This brings in the issue of self cotrol, awareness, etc. We fear immobility. The religious fear consequence. The saying goes that only those who believe in it will go to hell, (which is why missionaries should be shot on sight). The concept of non-existence has no meaning. Anyone who has been under for an operation will concede this. You cannot fear what you cannot experience. Naa... truth be told, it is our ego which is at the root of it all. We fear being left behind. Being left out. Passed by, excluded for the remainder of time by those in whom we shared life. Another possibility, and the truly scary one, is that you remain aware while your body "returns to dust"...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shakkara Posted December 22, 2003 Author Share Posted December 22, 2003 First, thanks all for participating in this thread, you are very helpful. perhaps, but if people do not understand things they usually are more interested and less feared toward it and look forward to experiencing new things. is that right or am i just totally confused? :wacko: Well this is one of the reasons why I don't have much of a problem with death. It's just something new, and I'm a very curious person. Just to stray OT a bit, I once was curious enough to put my hand in a high-powered laser beam, well that was quite a rewarding experience, it felt like there was cold water flowing through my entire hand and fortunately I didn't do any serious damage to me. Yes I am one of those wierdos. :D Somtimes people want their life to end prematurly. I see not caring about death and not fearing it for any reason as simply suicidal thinking' date=' I can't fathom it any other way. Survival intinct is in just about any life form, because life forms that didn't have that all died out (even tree's have it, but OT) If you don't get scared (even if you show it or not) that is not normal behaver. I would think inorder to be like that you would have to have a deep will to die. I ran away when somone went to pull a gun on me once (Washington state, whole another story, OT again) Well I was afraid for my life and took mesures to evade possible death. I wasn't a coward for running away, it is called surival. What I feared was all the normal reasons but also the principal of the matter, the fact that I could die to some dumb@ss punks. [/quote']Well but you are referring to instincs now, which is animal behavour. We can make a choise, and not choosing but going into panic mode instead is just primitive behavour IMO. You can just choose to remain calm and attempt to get out of a critical situation alive by using your head. To me the default response is to remain calm though, so I don't even have to make a concious choise anymore. I don't get why you think of me as a suicidal person. Sure right now you are not afraid' date=' but when your in the situation where your life is on the line and you could die any second (no pain), and your still not afraid. So if you had nothing to live for and sombody stuck a lethal injection into your blood stream you would not be afraid? Fear of death does have purpose, it prolongs your life. Yes death is inevitable but premature death isn't.[/quote']Fear does not necessairily prolong your life. We all know about fires breaking out in crowded places and people panicing resulting in much more fatalities and injuries then would have occured if people remained calm and evacuated the place in an orderly fashion. Fear does not have to be the reason why people try to avoid death. Fear is a natural reaction' date=' and it's not about the process of it either. Most sucessful suicides are made by those who want to die so much they over-come the survival instinct with a dark morbid will to die. Survival instinct is in us all so what makes you guys without it? and not wanting to die? Because it dosn't make sense to worry about your life ending perhaps?[/quote']Apparantly I wasn't born with survival instincts, I had mycophobia (fear of mushrooms) instead ^_^, fortunately I got rid of that (by myself, not due to someone else or some treatment or whatever). As a kid you do seem to be getting impregnated with the idea that dying is scary by others, but since I don't listen to whatever other people say without questioning it and they didn't give any reason WHY it would be so scary I wasn't really influenced by that either. It does make sense to worry' date=' there simply isn't anything we can do about it aside from immortality, though that will never happen because for some reason few people actually want to live "forever". But because human nature is so diffrent from mother nature we do think about our mortality, and if you choose not to worry about it then fine we remain just like the rest of the animals, (they fear death but because of instinct and fear of pain and unknown)[/quote']Are you comparing people like me that don't worry about death with animals now? Because the opposite is true. Animals try to avoid death because they fear it and are worried about it. People like me avoid death because it is a choise we make, not because some irrational, primitive instinct tells us to. But tofear being dead that is what I fear' date=' because I don't just take the cards delt to me and play this stupid game, I am not subject to any law that says I must die, if I found a way to be immortal I would do it. Perhaps I see more of a vision, I believe that if a intellegent lifeform continues to exist it would eventually become god-like, in a way the human race is immortal in that as we die we multiply, but a single one of us is worthless. [/quote']Well this has something in common with my own theory, but I don't believe we as a race will achieve that, but rather that we can get to that level as individuals, however that process takes many lifetimes of course. When you don't fear being dead you give up on your worth. Say someone holds a gun to your head and says their going to shoot you' date=' well there is noway to avoid it, so no need to worry about it, just let it happen, oh well. I don't think that way.[/quote']Maybe smiling does give you a small chance of survival. yeah' date=' when the situation comes by, you will fear for your own life, and no one elses, and you always get this gut feeling, which i was told, is your [i']Adrenalin Glands[/i] kicking in, you know how you get those sudden, cat-like reflexes when your in danger, thats those glands starting.ive had moments where i was so scared i hid for hours, i remember one time my dad thought i swore, so he told me off, then i mumbled something, he got angrier, then i started to talk back and he started to hit me, from what my mum told me he went downstairs to get something to hit me with, when i found out, i ran to the front door, unlocked the door, locked it, locked the other doors, and ran, my parents were stuck in the house for 2 days while the police found me in resevoir, and i live in bulleen (australia, melbourne) so thats pretty far, but at the time of getting hit, i could tell i was going to end up in hospital, because it has happened before, and now, from that day, i never sleep when my dad is home, but my point is, at the time of running away, and getting hit, you get those feelings, like your in danger, which causes to ignore fatigue, pain, everything else, and run, ive had other moments like falling down stairs and i always manage to land on my side, or my feet, without any damage, except a little carpet burn. You should alert the authorities about your mistreatment. so' date=' as acrid said, put in my own words, people may not fear death for now, but when the time comes, youll want to run for your life.[/quote']People may not fear death now' date=' but, without their consent or not, they do. It is hardwired into the primitave brain at birth a tendency toward longevity and perfection. Wether you like it or not, your body will run if your primitave brain deems the threat to be a possibly death-inducing sequence for you.[/quote']If you have read our other posts you would have seen that we already have been in life-threatening situations, yet felt nothing. Yes' date=' because once you're dead, well...there's nothing you can really do about it. It's how you die, or the knowlledge that one day, you will cease to exist. IMO, I think that many are afraid of death because they fear that no one will remember them, and that they shall pass into anonymity (or something like that). They fear death because they fear that they didn't live their lives to the fullest, and that they have regrets about wha they didn't do; that they didn't leave a legacy behind.[/quote']Well passing out of all knowledge is inevitable in a linear form of existance ;) yep' date=' i definantly forgot quite a bit when i was learning the human anatomy in science.[/quote']Heheheheh I forgive you :P as Ancalagon said' date=' "its how you die", thats probably the most important thing, im sure, that most of you would rather die in your sleep than drop dead while watching a movie and eating...food, or get a gun pulled up to you and *blam*, right in your head.[/quote']Eww... dying in my sleep would be so boring. my grandma died a few months ago' date=' and she died in her sleep, and from what i could gather before her death, your hearing and sight are wasted, your muscles are useless and all she could do is sit there like a vegetable.[/quote']My condolances. The Dark Side Personal theory has nothing to do with "perfection"' date=' fear of the unknown or pain. It has far more to do with indoctrination, cultural or otherwise. Your greatest fear is not that you will cease to exist. It is that you will continue to exist, to experience, and be unable to affect your future. This brings in the issue of self cotrol, awareness, etc. We fear immobility. The religious fear consequence. The saying goes that only those who believe in it will go to hell, (which is why missionaries should be shot on sight).[/quote']The fact that you bring up indoctrination is interesting. For some reason humans seem to copy certain aspects of their behavour from other people. Maybe some people fear death because other people seem to do that as well. The concept of non-existence has no meaning. Anyone who has been under for an operation will concede this. You cannot fear what you cannot experience.Exactly' date=' that's why this argument puzzles me too. Naa... truth be told' date=' it is our ego which is at the root of it all. We fear being left behind. Being left out. Passed by, excluded for the remainder of time by those in whom we shared life. [/quote']Fortunately I'm a loner. Another possibility' date=' and the truly scary one, is that you remain aware while your body "returns to dust"...... [/quote']Hmm perhaps that's why I absolutely hate to have a funeral. I much rather die in a way that doesn't leave much of a corpse behind. Failing that they just should get rid of my remains as quickly as possible. Ok, I think that concludes my m-m-monsterquote, back to you Bob! :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smashy Posted December 22, 2003 Share Posted December 22, 2003 Wether we like it or not we are creatures oh habit and instinct, in my opinion "fear" in meerly an augmentation of instinct, and no liveing creature can over come its instinct for any prolonged period of time. The will to live as some people desctibe it is a natural reaction to an outside influences that atempt to interfear with a being's natural dives to feed, procreate, defend its young, etc. in the end fear is meerly a defensive instinctual reaction to would be preditors, competirors rivals, etc. Now finaly is this all fact? absolutely NOT! these are meerly my veiw on this topic, and in conclusion plese be my guest to consider and ponder my prespective on our fear of death. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ohGr Posted December 23, 2003 Share Posted December 23, 2003 You should alert the authorities about your mistreatment. the police dont like to get involved with family "issues" here in australia, so theres nothing i can do untill i finish year 12 and get a job Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
evp Posted December 24, 2003 Share Posted December 24, 2003 The eternal sleep, hmm i think a lot of people is ready to die the day they die... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt Sibling Posted December 24, 2003 Share Posted December 24, 2003 I don't fear death. Having seen it many times. I think most people fear the method of death, not the actual death. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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