tronvillain

Zar:
Ah, but I didn't say that people couldn't be afraid of dying - I simply said that they aren't capable of being afraid of being dead.

bob

SecretAgentNinja: if you think about it, barking dogs and homework are actually quite nice put in relation to death--in a zen sort of way.

I used to live on the cruch (no offense) that "if I make a difference then I'll be ok when I die." The reason why I dont (entirely) believe this anymor is because of a quote I once heard: something about 'one who dies and leaves much behind still dies.'

I realize I cannot imagine non-existance, for I was trying to paint an extremely vague relationship between non-existing and eternal sleep.

If you do not fear your pre-existance, why should you fear your post-? Simple: you're done with your pre-existance and dont remember; how can you fear it? You CAN, however, fear what is to be--and that is _nothing_.

I just find it ironic that I have lived in this consciousness for so long and have become accustomed to it so much, that without it I am nothing. If death is, and likely it is, like being 'not born yet', or in other words is like beofre you were born, then that is really scary.

Before you were born ther was nothing, you have no memories of it (obviously) and thus to you it did not exist. Hell, I cant even remember myself as a baby.

I do believe it is just a scary thought to ponder non-existance.

tronvillain

Sounds like the No Fear shirt, "He who dies with the most toys still dies."

Zar

Yes, I suppose there is a difference. I thought you had crossed over to the former, rather than the latter.

Neophyte

"Where death is, I am not. Where I am, death is not. So why should I be afraid of death?" -- some famous person.

bob

No yet at least... but your time will come.

Theophage

I'm sorry, Bob, but I just can't get into the whole "death scares me" thing.

Am I afraid of getting hurt? Yes, and I will probably go to great lengths to avoid being maimed or suffer pain. But death itself? I won't even know when it has happened.

I guess I simply don't attach an emotional significance to it. It's like I know that the sun will envelop the Earth in about 5 billion years killing everything, but that is just a fact I know, I don't feel any sort of emotion from it. I know that I will be dead one day, but it is simply a fact I have learned, it doesn't really cause any emotional reaction in me.

Maybe that's just me...

Daniel "Theophage" Clark

Ongoing Lucidity

You sir worry too much about something which is really nothing at all. The reason you all cannot imagine non existence is because there is no such thing. (as strange and contridictory as it is to say there is no such thing as non existence, I have just created non existence by defining it!) But anyway at the primary point of everything there is only the whole, which is everything that is. We, collectively are a part of this whole, and, despite our perception and seperateness of things, we will always belong to it.


Also I'll follow the trend and put another famous quote in as well.

"There's no such thing as death; life is just a dream within the imagination of ourselves" -Bill Hicks

Ierrellus

As for me, oblivion of personality is a reward. I believe I live for a single human purpose--to get relationships right. Inasmuch as I accomplish this, I have no need for an afterlife based on presumptions of extended personality. I have no arrogant desire to extend myself for reward or punishment.

I know my genes will flow through my children. I know that, after stupid burial confinements, my flesh can grow new life as plants, the bottom of the food chain. Meet me in the afterlife as a part of new life!

Ierrellus

dostf

bob:

Here are a few thoughts on this matter.

What I will define as our "reasonable mind" is limited in solving this type of question. It always will try to format, compartmentalize, and organize our thinking and understandings. For example we were born-we lived-we died. It always sees thing as connected to or compared to something else- often our own understandings and experiences.
In one way the idea of death can be said to be understood by its opposite life. However, we know through science that all matter is constantly changing through movement at the atomic level. From this we could say all matter is alive at some level(intelligent or not). Therefore if all things have life of some kind, its opposite death does not exist, nor does life for that matter. Example we know the colour black in comparison to the colour white. If all colours are black, we would not understand the "whiteness" or "blackness" of something.
The idea of existence to non existence.
Again the reasonable mind formulates "we once were and then we aren't" it cannot break its limatations in thinking in this way.
I state that our ideas of our own existance are rooted in the ideas we have about ourselves. The diffences between you and I are imposed on each of our upbringing, experiences, knowledge etc. We often define ourselves as such-by gender , race,profession etc. This "self" is not real, it does not exist.
On a scientific note, we know that the brain is constantly emitting waves. For those that do not "live truth"-separate discussion- it is my contention that whatever thought they have at the moment of bodily death continues on as this "wave" although not permanently. Please note that I cannot "prove" this statement as I have not lived it, this explanation was offered to me by a friend I trust implicitely while discussing this question.