Forums → WEPR → How do you deal with death?

weeeeel, beloved ones died and i was sad, but i managed to continue living. at a point in my live i wanted to commit suicide because i was the victim of bullies but i got through this phase. im not fearing death, i fear the way how i will die. i prefer to dream a last time and die peacefully without any pain while i sleep.

the true horror about death would be to live forever, seeing everyone that you love die slowly in front of your eyes.

I die. Everybody dies. Chances are, due to my preferable career path, I will make others die. Chances are they will make me die.

Personally death does not scare me, and I am not afraid to die. I just don't deal well with other people dying. I have never been able to accept the death of other people very easily and there have been a lot of people who have died in my life.

As a history fan, i will ask you this:

how its the feeling that no matter what you will do, in like 200-500 year {if not less} no one will know you were exict? even the tallest pyramid or the magnificent statue.
ther is a song, called Ozymandias, who said what its hard for me in this "death" theory.

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
âMy name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!â
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

just found a diffrune version, a better one in my oppinion:

IN Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:â"
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand."â" The City's gone,â"
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,â"and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

â" Horace Smith.

It feels like no one's seriously taken on the challenge of human mortality and grappled with it in a deep way.

There are many ways to express that death isn't something we should fear, but that we should accept and go on. For example, it's death which gives our lives that special value, because it's unique and short. Death and decay also allow new life to thrive.

That doesn't change how you feel about your own death though. But I know that what I'm afraid of is not dieing, it's the thought of nonexistence.
And you know what? On one hand, since I won't be there anymore to deplore my own nonexistence and since I'm not afraid of dieing, there's nothing to be afraid of while you're still alive and no possibility to be afraid after it.
On the other hand, what makes me feel depressed sometimes is imagining nonexistence; which, as an existing consciousness, is pretty stupid. We cannot grasp nonexistence, even less eternal nonexistence, and so it makes no sense to try to imagine it or bother with it; it only makes you sad and won't change your acceptance of it.

So if you want to deal with death, accept it and don't try to imagine the unimaginable.
Xzeno I hope this is more in the sort of answers you look for, but I also kinda agree with communist09, there aren't really possibilities to think deep about death without adding unnecessary cultural or social bias' and connotations about it that don't really matter.

lots of Xbox and a negative attitude to life, if you think of the worst possible outcome to everything then you can't loose.
If it turns out to be the worst possible outcome, then you're not surprised or down hearted.
If it turns out to be better than the worst possible outcome, you become really happy.

A down side to this is that it generally makes you a miserable git.

We cannot grasp nonexistence

just found a diffrune version, a better one in my oppinion:

IN Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:â�"
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand."â�" The City's gone,â�"
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,â�"and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

â�" Horace Smith.

Well, I know I'm going to die, but as you can see, I'm not dead yet, and I hope to not be dead for a while, but when that happens, I guess i'll probably end up taking pills that futuristic people make to give you a painless death. I don't want to live forever >.<

At first I thought this was a thread for if someone you know/love died. Personally, I don't think about myself dying. It's a part of life and wondering about it depresses a person to a void of sadness and the faces for dead people that will never again breath or walk on this earth. You shouldn't think of all the people taken by disease or war or starvation that could have really contributed to the world, but instead are nothing. What would have happened if Abe Lincoln went on being the President, instead of ending up being shot? What would Roosevelt have done with the nuclear bomb in 1945, and with the UN? What would have the millions of people that have died young done for the world, evil or good? Would we have had better leaders? Worse leaders? We'll never know, because they are gone, dead, decomposed and nothing but a part of nature. Death is the great equalizer. Whether your poor or rich, bad or good, no matter what you have done in your life, after your dead, your equals with everyone else that has died. The only thing you can do to ensure your spirit lives on is to leave a legacy that people will remember you for. That can be bad, examples being the Mansons, Jack the Ripper, world-wide terroists. Or good, inventors, inovators, leaders during an era of success, or war heroes. People that haven't really done anything do their course on earth and then leave without causing a ripple, which chances are most of us on this site are going to do. It's the way the human body works, eventually it shuts down, same with every single organic life form on this planet. And once it does, there is no extra life, no chance of coming back, no magic pill, no machine to keep you going. You're done, game over, time's up. You have a set time on this planet, averaging 85 years, and once your body can't sustain itself it shuts down, similar to a machine that overheats or just stops working due to age. But like I said, I don't think about death.

I guess i'll probably end up taking pills that futuristic people make to give you a painless death.

It's a part of life and wondering about it depresses a person to a void of sadness

The thought that death could be just like going into a dreamless sleep scares me deeply. There's nothing I fear more than this kind of death, knowing that there is no reason to be righteous or kind is depressing. I don't like thinking about death, so I don't deal with the thought of knowing that I will die. I don't deal with it I ignore it and repress it. If I truly didn't believe there was some sort of afterlife I don't know what I'd do, it would probably be bad though, or maybe I'd live every moment as though it were my last, and live exuberantly.

The thought that death could be just like going into a dreamless sleep scares me deeply. There's nothing I fear more than this kind of death, knowing that there is no reason to be righteous or kind is depressing. I don't like thinking about death, so I don't deal with the thought of knowing that I will die. I don't deal with it I ignore it and repress it. If I truly didn't believe there was some sort of afterlife I don't know what I'd do, it would probably be bad though, or maybe I'd live every moment as though it were my last, and live exuberantly.