Viti

Last I checked Israel is a First World country...you got a Barnes and Noble or equivalent, right?

Do you want to get better and be happier, or would you rather make excuses and force yourself to tout the existence of an afterlife you don't truly believe in?

emotional

I've ordered books from Amazon before, and they took two months to arrive.

Please don't. I want to get better and be happier in the easiest way possible.

Viti

I am glad to hear it emotional. You have the will and you have the intelligence, you just need to focus them in the right direction I think.

Buddrow_Wilson

And how happy are you with these beliefs? Obviously not too content or we wouldn't be having this conversation. I imagine you will be fearful either way. The root of you fears may not even be related to your spiritual struggles.

Cipher Girl

Hi emotional

I've read some of your words about this fear of death that you have. I think that even if you were to convince yourself that you believe or have faith, you would still have this fear of death. The only way to remove this fear is either through surviving a close encounter with death or to fully face your fear head on. Are you afraid of nonexistance or perhaps a painful death?

It's harder to deal with death without faith in an afterlife, but it can be done. It took me much longer to get over the death of my daughter without faith than other in my family, but apparently nowadays I'm the one who appears to have coped in a better fashion than some of my close family members. Without faith in an afterlife, death is much, much harder to deal with in the short term, but in the long term it is much easier.

But I have a question for you emotional. If one day, you were to lose all of your memories and suffer some personalitity changes due to a brain injury, would you say you are the same person? Or would the old emotional be dead? What defines us? Is it our experiences? Is it our accumulated memories?

Why does this fear of death have such a grip on you? If you live your life in such continual fear, can you say you are really enjoying life? If you avoid doing things because they may be dangerous, then are you really living? Wouldn't it be better to enjoy fewer days full of exciting existance, than a long dull life?

fried beef sandwich

emotional, would it help your fear of death if you recast it in a different, more others-focused light?

One thing that helped me in particular was to remember that whether or not my existence becomes "switched off" or transported to heaven/hell, the one thing that remains true in either scenario is that when I die, I will leave behind a legacy of memories, laughter, and deeds. Thus, while I live my life here, I want it to be a meaningful one, and one that benefits others. That thought helped me enjoy the present instead of fearing an uncertain future.

This last question might be a long shot, but have you ever been so drunk that you passed out or don't remember anything? Was there anything scary during that time? You don't remember, right? But it's not that frightening, really.

"All I remember was taking that last shot of Bacardi, and then I don't remember anything." That's kind of like what full anesthesia is - "Can you count to ten for me?" "One. Two. Th-"

And that's kind of what death is like, at least in my mind

P.S., If debating ever gets too much for you, take a break from it! I can only imagine that constantly debating will make you go mad.

emotional

I'm afraid of non-existence. I'm not nearly afraid of dying, I'm really afraid of being dead.



How can it be done?



That's okay, I accept the rational case for mind-brain dependence. It makes sense: each time a new person is born, a new personality is born - new body, new personality. That doesn't help me cope with fear of death, in fact it only sharpens it.



I wish to heaven I knew. Perhaps because I'm full of myself, and I can't fathom the thought of having my self switched off.

I'm currently not enjoying life. I'm in a waiting period before my studies start in October, and I have practically nothing to do. I don't have any friends in real life.

emotional

No, it wouldn't.



But I don't care about leaving a legacy. All I care is about my self surviving, my self always existing. What good is leaving all that legacy if I won't be able to perceive it? What good is the universe if one day it will all be gone?

Viti

emotional, what do you plan to study? Maybe you can face your fear of death by working to sustain life...cryogenics comes to mind. Some people are working to see if we can "download" ourselves into a computer. Maybe you could go into one of these fields? How about medicine?

You might wish to research transhumanism as a worldview.

emotional

Arabic and Islam. It's now actually not just a plan, since I've already enrolled to those studies. All I have to do is wait until October comes. I can't stand the wait...



Those are sciences. I'm not a scientific type of person.

What's transhumanism?