Dealing with the concept of death...

[gatorpower]

This is my first post, but I have lurked here since the summer.

Some background.  I grew up in a very religious (Christian) home, so that was the bias I worked with for the past 30+ years of my life and I always gave it the benefit of the doubt.  About 7-8 years ago, I started to realize that things like 'god', 'soul', 'transmission of sins' and either 'heaven' or 'hell' did not really make sense.  They all seemed like an extra 'invented' layer of gimmickry to quell the anxiety of death and aging.  And they're quiet effective at this too, btw.  So much so that when I started my progression from Christian > Agnostic Christian > Agnostic > Agnostic Atheist, the stress has continued to build up tremendously.

I am resigned to the fact that all human-created religions are not only made-up "guesswork", but they are so completely egotistical that one can almost dismiss them simply on the grounds that their authors were deliberately avoiding any truth.  If there is a 'god' then, he certainly was never concerned with making himself known to us.  If he does not care about us in life, he would almost certainly not care about us in death either.  So there would be no desire to preserve our person.  When you die... it's over.

I have accepted that concept.  It's much harder to accept the consequences of that concept.

I know that wanting to live forever is narcissistic.  I know that after I die, my being will be gone, expired, annihilated, extinct, not-conscious, but at the same time, thinking about it makes me almost inconsolable.  My grandparents, my parents, my siblings, my friends... they will just vanish as though their lives never happened and all the pain, loneliness and hurt that defined parts of their lives; defined parts of my life, will simply amount to pointless suffering.  Everything I love, need, work for, dream of... it's almost irrelevant.  It is irrelevant.  And if I screw up my life, ruin my marriage, have my kids hate me, incur any anguishing regret that I can not forget or forgive myself of, there is no redemption from that.

I was thinking last week that I should enjoy each moment, that each day is my legacy.  And while I don't get points for improving myself or doing the right thing, that I should find contentment in doing those things anyway.  And its hard to think on that level.  I am simply not mature enough to, imo.  I just find myself just creating more gimmicks to quell the anxiety of death and aging instead of accepting reality for what it is.  I may not have created a 'god', but I create cheap tricks to fool myself into being happy or stop being afraid.

So part of me says, this does not matter: create all the gimmicks you need, but to me that is a dishonesty I would never feel satisfied doing.  Why reject a 'god' and then throw myself into a billion other lies.  Is there anyway to be happy and accept death without mental gymnastics or catch-phrases you find in self-help books?  I want to live an honest life where I am truly at peace and not simply burying fear and regret.  Has anyone here done that?

[AtheistGimp]

I think this was an excellent way to state what so many people have trouble putting into words.  I don't trick myself into being happy, rather I think about life as a precious amount of time only made really special by the fact that it is extremely limited not only by our own longevity, but by the ones we loves as well.  Our precarious position in the world is what makes it special, and our knowledge that this is it, makes it even more important to spend our time wisely!

[Ultima22689]

Death? What is this death you speak of? I'll have a prosthetic body in 20-40 years. VIVA LA HUMAN RACE!!!

Seriously though, what do you think of all the transhumanists that are confident that natural age is going to be a thing of the past within the next decade or so?

[gatorpower]

Seriously though, what do you think of all the transhumanists that are confident that natural age is going to be a thing of the past within the next decade or so?

I would say those people are unrealistic.

Human beings have come an extremely long way just in the past 100 years, but we have entered an new era where funding for research is slowing to a trickle.   One of my friends has been researching the BRCA2 gene (breast cancer) at a major university for the past couple years as a part of her PhD program.  Read that again if you like, cancer research.  The amount of money available to these departments is decreasing significantly very year.  In some cases, they're forced to use equipment that's 10-15 years old or reduce the number of graduate students (i.e. potential noble prize winning scientists).

State governments, in the US, are absolutely slashing the amount of money they're giving to education.   In some states, like Louisiana, they're cutting education grants and endowments by 73%.  Even if research went at it's 'normal' pace, when you blend science, medicine and patients, you need primary and secondary studies to closely monitor it's effectiveness.  These experimental studies can be 10-20 years long, cost billions of dollars and get stalemated by politics.  Did someone say stem-cell research?

And absolutely NO ONE shares notes and/or discoveries until they reach a stage where they can make money off the application of their research.  The University of Brussels of not going to spend $130M on heart research to have some guy in Perth, Australia, patent a product off and make all the money from their hard work.  There is a horribly-kept secret in research & development suggesting that we have learned amazing things that no one in our generation will read about until they figure out a way to make money off it.  And this wouldn't be as much a concern if our goverments weren't turning scientists into beggars.

Sorry for the rant... but yes, as long as the climate stays the way it is, we won't see any of those dreams for another 100-150 years unless we have a break-thru in computing that makes it extremely cheap to do any amount of research.

[Asmodean]

You know, the weird thing is that I've never, as I can remember had, any problem with the notion of one day no longer existing. It's like... When it's over, it's over. But I'm alive here, today and maybe if the chance goes my way, I will still be alive tomorrow.

[ablprop]

Hi Gatorpower,

That was a powerful post. I guess part of the point of atheism is that there is no and can be no philosophy that everyone "should" adopt. But maybe that's part of the answer. Here is my philosophy. If it helps you, I'm gratified.

You are a miracle. Not in the supernatural sense. In a better sense. If god did exist, you'd be much less a miracle.

But god doesn't exist, and you do. You are an incredibly unlikely result of billions of years of evolution. Every one of your ancestors survived long enough to mate at least once. And now, after all those successful rolls of the dice, here you are, a conscious bit of matter, molecules contemplating molecules. You are a way for the universe to know itself.

And here's the thing. You decide what it means. Think of the power in that statement! You get to decide. In the entire history of the universe, think how rare that is! For this short time, you have the ability to create your own meaning.

Yes, you will die. I will die, too. But it's only because, for a short time, we got to live. I think it's a fair trade.

[Thumpalumpacus]

The big problem with "eternalists" is that they forget that people still like to screw, and often without BC of any kind, which results in a rise in population -- unless they're comfortable with poor folk relegated to death while the rich have access to millennial lives.  Now, one can either provide the children of such liaisons with the same care (and thus swelling the population forever) or one can take the responsibility for deciding which child gets to live, and which gets to die.  Down one path leads ecological catastrophe; down the other, the potential for plutocracy.

Death is not a bad thing.  After all, part of the meaning of a sentence is provided by the period at the end.  I submit that this drive -- to chase eternal life -- is, like religion, fueled by a fear of death.  If one criticizes religion for this motivation, one ought not avail oneself of it.

[gatorpower]

You know, the weird thing is that I've never, as I can remember had, any problem with the notion of one day no longer existing. It's like... When it's over, it's over. But I'm alive here, today and maybe if the chance goes my way, I will still be alive tomorrow.

I never did either until the past few years.  In fact, I distinctly remember being 24 or 25, sitting in my bed one night thinking, “I really feel sorry for those people who can not at least be content with their life.”  It was one of those benchmark moments in life, where I felt I had finally graduated into something.  It was the realization that I was not anxious about my future as I had been in high school.  At the time, I was a couple years removed from college, had a crappy job, no girlfriend & could barely save for the future, but at the same time, I was happy.  I was happy to come home exhausted and unappreciated, sit in front of the television for 60-90 minutes, catch up with acquaintances on chat or email and then go to sleep.

I mean, I was not always happy.  I remember being depressed a lot in college, due to the stress of the classes, the seemingly high turnover of friends every few months and the huge adjustment in lifestyle, but I was generally happy-go-lucky.  I knew if someone stormed off angry with me that I didn't have to 'fix' it immediately, which is the better strategy anyway, and could wait until we were both strong enough to handle our differences like adults.  Sometimes years would pass before I reconnected with someone.  I adopted the same kind of blueprint with everything.  There was no urgency in my youth.

I suppose that while I have always felt an undercurrent of doom & gloom with death, thoughts that would hit me occasionally as my mind staggered into sleep, the ‘persuasive argument’ came as I ended a relationship with someone I had known for years.  It forced me to start considering the possibility that I would never see this person again.  I thought, “I'm not going to run into this person on the way around campus, or work or in the neighborhood.”  This thing that I had built over many years; it chilled me to think that I would be on my deathbed, wondering, “whatever happened to them?”

Of course, when I see a problem like this, I have to dissect it completely.  The process kept pealing away layers of fear until I reached the conclusion that the elemental forces in the universe, gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear force, et al.assembles the matter we see, but it does not care what that matter does. The conditions that gave rise life are the same ones that give rise to battery acid, black holes and igneous rock.  I always felt that a frogs purpose, for instance, was it's nature; the instincts expressed by the interaction of its DNA to the other chemicals found in its cells.

Is the purpose of a program to execute its code?  When its author is nothing more than natural selection acting on random mutations, then it's purpose is no more compelling than a rock face shielding a mud bank against the driving wind.  It exists simply because it was allowed to exist.  It simply has no great conflict with its environment.  A frog can do whatever the hell it wants.

...but I realize I have an expiration date.  The frog doesn't.  The rock face doesn't.  It almost seems cruel.  The atoms that make up my body churned white hot in the belly of a star billions of years ago, passed through countless creatures on its way to me and eventually will decay into radio waves billions and billions of years into the future, but while they're with me, I just want to find peace.

It's not that I want to think about it anymore.  It's just that until I 'solve' it, my brain won't let me move past it.

[gatorpower]

But god doesn't exist, and you do.

I loved how you phrased your post, especially that part.  Thanks.

[The Magic Pudding]

I know that wanting to live forever is narcissistic.

What genius came up with this idea?
Did he get a grant that should have gone to some one doing something conceivably useful?
I would like to see Ultima gets his live forever tech working.
Just waking up for a decade every millennia would be interesting.
If this interests you Ultima has a $50 a month plan that puts you at the head of the list.
It is good value, I get regular diagrams, graphs and a chart counting down the days till cyber me is born.

I know that after I die, my being will be gone, expired, annihilated, extinct, not-conscious, but at the same time, thinking about it makes me almost inconsolable.

I don't give death much thought any more, I assume I'll just cease to exist.
Is apathy a trick?
I could probably teach it to you, but I couldn't be bothered.

[ablprop]

It's not that I want to think about it anymore.  It's just that until I 'solve' it, my brain won't let me move past it.

Joseph Campbell said that we're not looking for the meaning of life, but rather for the experience of being alive. I believe that part of that experience is knowing and understanding your own death. Yes, it's tragic, horrible, and stupid (who designed this system?), but the fact that we can recognize our mortality, contemplate it, and rage against it (thank you Dylan Thomas) makes it somehow sweet.

I like to think about the crucial scene in Macbeth, when he realizes he is going to die, knows that the universe has conspired against him, tricked him, turned him into a monster, he has his one great moment of clarity. After his "tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing" silliness, he finally reverses, finds his identity, finds his essential being, and says,

"I will not yield"

Yes, he dies. But before he dies he becomes an "I" again. And that is his triumph.

[madness]

I'll admit to being 'terrified' of death.  It's creepy to think of no longer existing.  I don't think the human mind is really capable of grasping it.  But that doesn't cause me to go running to some religion that pats me on the head and says I can go to heaven if I'm a good girl.  Perhaps it's because I never believed in an afterlife that makes it so I don't grasp for one