Facing Mortality

[Aleksey_aka_al]

Anyway, if you've never had a near death experience or are younger than 25, this thread isn't really for you.

Strangely, I had that feeling much more often prior to 25. With moments of panic like if I was already dying. And my head gone literary hot trying to figure out that which can’t be figured out. These things helped to overcome that: going social, or intimate with someone, or at least turning on some news or a talk show; crossing myself (being an atheist, lol); things you do when you’re hopeless, like actively moving, hitting something or even crying; eating and improving diet.

These days, it is less intense and less imminent. Now, it is like window is closing, which brings disappointment.

Trying to accept god or imagining some miraculous scientific solution (through some unknown exotic physical or mathematical law) never really helped. Thinking about immortality always led me to facing the totality of the world, bringing that hot head. This totality is as frightening and hopeless as the biological death (facing the morning day after day after day and forever), and many scenarios of immortality still showed me death.

Still, if given a chance, I would most probably choose being truely immortal without much hesitation, regardless of that it seems to be an evil trap.

 

[tetley]

evolution gave us a fear of death to keep us alive and religion was the result

I didn't accept Christ because I was afraid of death. I accepted Christ because I was afraid of Hell.

 

[El_Machinae]

Do you really want a world in which the rich and powerful get to stay in power literally forever? Can you imagine if we were still ruled by 16th-century monarchs? No doubt today's people will seem equally antiquated and out of touch in the future.

Sounds like quite a problem. The current 'solution' is for 100,000 people to die every day after a decade of decrepitude and for 25,000 kids to die every day from poverty.

I'm not okay with that being the current solution to the problem, especially considering that it's not even working very well. We need better solutions to the problem you describe anyway. The deaths that I described above weren't voluntary, and sacrificing them to your stated concern isn't the paradigm I operate in.

Battling involuntary death is a worthy cause. And there are other social ills that need addressing. They're all links in the chain. Efforts to dethrone tyrants aren't unappreciated.

 

[Phrossack]

Sounds like quite a problem. The current 'solution' is for 100,000 people to die every day after a decade of decrepitude and for 25,000 kids to die every day from poverty.

I'm not okay with that being the current solution to the problem, especially considering that it's not even working very well. We need better solutions to the problem you describe anyway. The deaths that I described above weren't voluntary, and sacrificing them to your stated concern isn't the paradigm I operate in.

We're not "sacrificing" them. Death is what happens whether we like it or not, and I fear that a lack of natural death will result in tyranny, complete exhaustion of the world's resources, and mass natural mortality being replaced by mass murder.

Why not concentrate on making sure everyone gets to live a reasonably long, healthy, and productive life instead?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Thoughts of death or dying have never bothered me. My non religious, atheistic dad died at 54 and spoke of a near death experience he had prior to his final death. My mother died last year at 100 and was ready to go. Her second husband died two years ago also at 100. I'm not liking what I've seen of the years from 90 to 100. Given a choice, I'd settle for the early 80s. It is fun and somewhat necessary to imagine what may follow, but what I think is most important is to be ready whenever it comes.

 

[caketastydelish]

The nature of my health likely means that I'll die sooner than most, and I have family history on my father's side of the men dying in their 40s. My dad, granddad, great-granddad, great-great-granddad, etc, all died before 48. This isn't the case with my mother's side but I seem to have inherited most of my father's genetic shortcomings so I suspect I have inherited that one too.

Which is all to say that it's probable I've lived 60-70% of my lifespan already at the ripe old age of 24. I would be genuinely surprised if I made it to 40.

I've been aware of existentialism since I was five years old. Since then, it's been a gradually worsening anxiety. With age, knowledge, and wisdom comes a more prevalent fear of what is coming. What waits for me after death terrifies me more than anything else. I care little about the suffering of death, but the question of "What comes next?" is anxiety-inducing. I imagine this is in large part due to being raised in a cult by my parents, but I would hazard a guess that becoming sick so young and just generally being unimpressed with the state of humanity helped all this coalesce into that heart-pounding panic attack extravaganza. Despite all the pain and misery, and subsequent bouts of suicidal ideation, I am awfully attached to consciousness and its continuation, even in the face of the dizzying implications of eternity.

What does all that mean? I'm not really sure. My personal "What is the point?" perspective (I hesitate to truly consider my beliefs to be nihilism) makes it difficult to assign purpose or meaning to the big picture.

As it stands, I try to focus on what I know I can experience, which is my life. I'm heavily pleasure-oriented and I tend to view obligation and work dimly. Ideally I would like to leave the world a better place. I want to have contributed more than I've taken away by the time the ride is over. Being remembered is not something I want or care about. If my death brings about an eternity of nothingness, I care little about anything involving my "self" beyond having the experience of reality taken from me.

Supposing they make enough improvements in the health field perhaps they could prolong your life.

 

[Synobun]

Supposing they make enough improvements in the health field perhaps they could prolong your life.

There's very little research being done. Likely not in my lifetime. I suspect it will be another 100 to 200 years before science conquers the uphill battle of understanding and repairing mitochondria.

 

[caketastydelish]

Well one can always hope.

 

[Kyriakos]

This thread is for reflecting on our extremely short lives.

On average, men get 75 years and women get 80.
Population pyramids indicate our frailer comrades start dying in their mid-50s with half gone in their mid-70s followed by the rest around 100 years old.
https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2017/

This feeling is usually addressed by religion, but I personally feel that after I die I'll go to where ever I was before I was born.



Back when Cicadas took over a summer, they were so loud is was like having a new species on Earth.
Yet they were silent after only a few weeks.
An extremely mortal feeling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodical_cicadas

People who own hamsters also know how helpless it is when they are born, live, and die of old age after 2.5 years.


Check out these old history pictures.
All those people are gone.
http://www.whizzpast.com/amazing-vintage-3d-photos-industrialized-world/

Same for history books.
I feel like those people in the pages sometimes, and I realize I'm slowly becoming like them, bound to a page every single day.

There was that King of Persia once.
Xerxes stopped on his way to go beat on the Greeks because he felt the same way.





I know the feeling has hit Conan O’Brien.
None of his late night stuff will be remembered even if he is currently famous.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/cultural-icons-popular-today-unknown-tomorrow/


Anyway, if you've never had a near death experience or are younger than 25, this thread isn't really for you.

How do you folks deal when that mortal feeling hits?
More religion?
Brainwash a younger person with your values and turn them into a mini-me?
Paint something?
Get more kids / pets?

I think I'll just stay away from the doom threads for a few months

Xerxes helped his men die far sooner than they would have had

We all will die, one day. And yes, nothing here will matter. Even if one gains everlasting fame (eg as artist or scientist) they will die too and their fame wont be there for them.

Back when i was 20, in the late second year of uni, i recall thinking of this. It seemed that stuff would matter only if one would live again; and at some point recall past life. Of course it is highly unlikely past lives exist.

Some people think they will live on, in a way, through their childrens memory. That is just another type of (confined) fame, as transitory and not lived by the dead as any other type.

I think that the only good about dieing is that we will find out if anything happens. And even if it is the complete end, we will still experience then something we cannot while alive: the end of conciousness.
Maybe it will be unique. Enough of a shock to...ehm...kill you

 

[Hrothbern]

Getting older, 63, my body, my good friend and companion, doing always so much for me, is slowly detoriating.
A decade or so ago I was invited to play with my daughters a volleybal tournament, my old sport, and I behaved still as if I were 20, and the next day, under the shower, stiff and full of bruises (I like diving to the ground to catch a ball). Somewhere 50 that progress of bodily decline, loss of resilience starts getting momentum.
And you start adapting at a higher rate to avoid walking against the growing restrictions. High enough to be aware of it, whether you push it away or not.

You think about something, and remember something said by someone on it, all still vividly in your memory, and realise more often that that person should by now be well over 90, if still alive. And the list grows. And I say to myself that I should stay focussed on that memory as a matter of fact and not attach the label death to that person.
I meet someone in my current neighborhood while walking the dog, someone who lived a couple of staircases away in the street I grew up. He became a musician. Old memories, talking about old girlfriends. Talking about how we moved on. The subject changing relatively fast to today (and some climate).
I think living is about today and tomorrow. The past may color your position and your views, but should not get hold of you.

I hope to get old enough to slowly embrace death from the feeling that less and less of my capabilities and energy is left, and death comes as just another goodbye of the long row of goodbyes already behind me.
And I hope as well that I am not struck by some sudden death, and I get a period of time where the coming death is so inevitable in my awareness, that the process of acceptance is accelerated, to go through it at that time, to embrace that last phase and journey.
For my own peace and in order to "organise" my goodbyes and help the ones dear to me with it. Not trying to control from the grave how to be remembered, but allowing those relations with others, those other relations to get peace with it.

That's a good enough comfort for me... good enough for now to not bother about my own death.
Still lots to do and many new people to meet.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I will say that while I have long fantasized that technology will allow people to cheat death sooner than later, I actually had not considered the possibility of the ultra rich hording these tools and becoming demigods until I saw Altered Carbon. That was really eye opening. I have to believe we will stop the slide into a hyper oligarchy but who knows with the way things are going.

 

[Leathaface]

I'm 32 now but 12 months ago I was in a critical condition in ICU due to severe pneumonia, I was in ICU for about 18/19 days. The damn diabetes that I have more than likely played a big part in this happening, diabetes lessens your immune system so your resistances aren't are strong; the pneumonia I had was bacterial in nature.

But I keep going. I know I will die one day but I hope to live until i'm at least 55. I'm around 110lbs overweight and i've arthritis in both my knees so I know I need to cop on if I don't want to walking with a walking stick in my mid or late 40's. Plus I heard about how losing a lot of weight can reverse the type 2 version of diabetes, i'd like to know that this is true.

I'm OK with mortality, what will happen will happen. I can remember having an existential crisis when I was around 16 but haven't had any since then (despite being double the age now.) I also believe there's something after death, but i'm not sure what.

 

[Hrothbern]

Plus I heard about how losing a lot of weight can reverse the type 2 version of diabetes, i'd like to know that this is true.

From all that I did read on that topic (quite a lot):
Unless you have a real genetic defect, considering your age, you can most likely reverse diabetes 2, and most certainly greatly reduce the level of it.
Fat tissue, especially abdominal fat tissue, is shifting your hormone balances, some hormonal resistencies, towards diabetes 2.
But just going for a very low caloric diet will not do the job. No need to go lower than 1,500 kcal a day, and IDK your body metrics, but if you are not really small, I would already hesitate to go that much lower than 2000 kcal a day, after half a year or so on 1500 kcal a day. Resetting your hormonal system with a healthy life style, good enough food, slimming not faster than you did build up your weight, a much more natural and stable method. And some life style and eating habits you really have to abandon.

There is a lot of research on that with all kinds of medicins, supplements, more extreme diets, etc... but the only really important thing needed is to tell your body consistently over a long time period what your new life style is, what kind of food and when, and your body will adjust its hormonal balance to that new situation.

IDK what level of education you have, what level of articles I could link in a post. I can gather some.

 

[Broken_Erika]

I'll stick with the tried tested and true method of facing death; Running around in circles while flailing my arms and screaming.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Maybe not the most practical, but the only objective method.

 

[Kyriakos]

" Charon, up on his horse, is taking Digenes (the border protector, from the theme system) to hades,
Along with many others; the human flock is restless,
And he (Charon) holds them tied to his horses' behind; the roaring wind of courage and the ornament of beauty alike,
And as if he wasnt trod over by Charon's foot, it is only Akritas (same spirit of the border defender) who calmly turns to look at the horseman:
' i am Akritas, Charon, (and) i do not go away in time; did you still fail to sense what i am despite touching me back there (during our fighting) at the fields of marble?
I am the indestructible spirit of .Salamis; i brought the sword of the greeks back to the city of seven hills ( Constantinople) ;
I do not perish in tartarus, i only rest a while,
And then return to life again,
And revive entire races"

(Some lyrical poem about Charon, famous locally; notice how Charon there is depicted as a fierce warrior, instead of the crouching hooded sceletal ferryman)

 

[AmazonQueen]

Sounds like quite a problem. The current 'solution' is for 100,000 people to die every day after a decade of decrepitude and for 25,000 kids to die every day from poverty.

I'm not okay with that being the current solution to the problem, especially considering that it's not even working very well. We need better solutions to the problem you describe anyway. The deaths that I described above weren't voluntary, and sacrificing them to your stated concern isn't the paradigm I operate in.

Battling involuntary death is a worthy cause. And there are other social ills that need addressing. They're all links in the chain. Efforts to dethrone tyrants aren't unappreciated.

Lets work on saving the kids that die from entirely preventable reasons, work to eradicate the curable diseases that big pharma isn't interested in because the poor can't pay, do everything we can to give everybody we can a decent 70-80 years before we start working on how the rich can live for ever.

 

[Phrossack]

I will say that while I have long fantasized that technology will allow people to cheat death sooner than later, I actually had not considered the possibility of the ultra rich hording these tools and becoming demigods until I saw Altered Carbon. That was really eye opening. I have to believe we will stop the slide into a hyper oligarchy but who knows with the way things are going.

The nature of society tends towards massing more and more power and wealth until, on rare occasions, the rest of the people gradually or suddenly wrest it back. It's very easy to make money if you already have a lot of money. I don't trust society to wield technology responsibly but we're trapped in the death march of "progress" whether we like it or not, so we must restructure society in such a way that it can survive these changes.

 

[tetley]

Sounds like the majority view is "I'll just leave religion out of it, live my best so long as I'm alive, and hope for the best what comes after."

I'm born again, so...my view is different. I am afraid of dying, yes. But I am MORE afraid of Hell. You may say, "Wait. I thought you believed you were going to Heaven?" That is true, but that doesn't mean I am not afraid. Why lie? The contestants on American Idol shake in their shoes and throw up when they face the judges, and this is so much more than that: you go to Heaven, Hell, the afterlife, or cease to be forever and ever. If ANYTHING about this life can have an impact on the next at all, then our entire lives need to be spent doing that.

So then there's the next thing: "We have no way of knowing whether anything we do now can impact the next life, if any." Which also is true--UNLESS someone, or something, can come back from the next life and tell us. Of course I'm going to say that has already happened, and that is God. But how can you verify scientifically that they are some being from the afterlife? It's all metaphysical, so you can't. You can apply various scientific lines of reasoning, but you cannot apply physical experiments on that which is not physical. That's a bit of a problem. But you can't just give up when something that important hangs in the balance.

Facing mortality leads to the next question: life's purpose. In order for there to be purpose, something out there must exist which transcends this life. Not such as, "I live for my children". That's just life serving other life. That's circular; it still doesn't answer the question of, "what's the purpose of life"? Without that thing larger than life, life is devoid of purpose.

Call me crazy, but my life's purpose is to impact the next. Just as childhood impacts our adulthood, so this life impacts the next. This is all childhood. That life out there--that's adulthood. It's not like I somehow missed out on life's true purpose because of some "fairy tale," since there is no other purpose to miss out on. Life is otherwise devoid of any purpose at all.

BUT--if you wish to shut out all thought of religion or the afterlife--not just from this conversation, but from your life--throw up your hands and say, "We don't know, so let's not even try." And life's purpose indeed is to serve that thing larger than life itself--and you didn't do it--then you missed the ENTIRE point. I don't see how that can not scare you.

 

[Synobun]

Frankly, I don't see a compelling reason to debase myself in fear of eternal damnation. A God that genuinely sees such a judgment as fair is not one I'm interested in serving. I'd rather be kind and generous because I want to be instead of because I'm afraid. If a would-be deity sees that as the ultimate betrayal, that is fine by me.