Diegetics

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You can kill me but you can't eat me. I was born dyin'.

I am not sure I agree with any of this. I do not share the opinion that fear is something that need disappear. I am not sure that death is something that needs be accepted. Maybe I am wrong, but I am not certain that death is a necessary consequence of life at all. People keep telling me this. They come up with a moral cosmology around this notion. They claim that it is through our mortality that we are inspired to act or find meaning in the universe at all. I am not sure that this isn't purely superstitious dogma passed down through generations of life lived nastily, brutishly and short.

There is obviously the irrational terror and worry where we spin the wheels in our minds to no good purpose, like pressing the clutch in while revving the gas. And sometimes it locks us up like pressing the brake while revving the gas. But the fear of death is not always that. The fear of death is instructive, it keeps us from walking off of a ledge, it keeps our foot off of the gas pedal on a winding mountain road. Death is all around us. As it is said, the path is narrow. But I am not certain that death is a necessary consequence of life.

And if it is, what does it matter if I accept it or not?

Fear is the mind killer. You see the negatives of it, but don't accept that transcending that fear through the only viable method ie acceptance available. Do you think you can "manage" mortal terror without some degree of acceptance? So far, the failure rate of life has been 100% except for that one Jewish hippie.

I fully expect that within the lifetime of my children the concept of death as cellular malfunction will be well established, and mostly cured. But armed bears happen. Falling satellites happen. Chicken drumsticks happen ( the Momma Cass option). We are human. If we live longer, we will become better at killing.

Nobody is putting Thanatos out of a job. He's union.

I lived without fear or a sense of my mortality until, I don't know 39 or so. Then something changed. It could be an age thing.

Oddly with all the people I saw die (I would say no higher or lower number than average) it just didn't hit me. Then one day it did. Don't know why.

Age wise I may be closer to death than most of you, and I haven't yet been able to cope with the idea. My main objection to death is not being around to see all the marvellous things which are bound to happen in the future, from science to space travel to contact with aliens to... But some of the alternatives worry me as well. Imagine there is reincarnation and I come back with a 90 IQ, or a Republican, or both...

The general concept of accepting death to remove fear is old, perhaps ancient. All that samurai/Hagakure stuff is based on it, and it has earlier precedents in Eastern religions. Arguably people fear pain more than death (see Paths of Glory), but in either case facing and therefore inuring yourself to something is logical.

Anybody planning to live forever is going in the opposite direction, embracing fantasy to avoid the same fear.

1) Yes. This is more what I was referring to.
2) This would ultimately change the playing field. Accepting death would not be an important part of a lifespan that has no upper limit.

You want to come to terms with your mortality? Ride a motorcycle for a few years as sole/ primary mode of transport. Day/ night/wet /dry/snowing. You will confront death on an hourly basis. I have been convinced I was participating in my final thoughts so many times I stopped counting.

You know you've seen your life flash before your eyes a lot when you find yourself in the middle of the review again, hoping for a fast forward button to get it over. There is a particular quality to bikers that makes them extreme. You generally won't cow a 1%er by threatening his life or attempting to take it. Hell, I've seen them not even notice.

The booze helps.

Fear is programmed into our biology, and definitely has its uses when it works and when it helps us to avoid danger that we can avoid. However it is more than useless when it persists in spite of its futility, since it then clouds the mind with demons of our own making, and characteristically propels us humans to employ our minds to feed divisive and delusional symbols and ideologies to soothe our persistent anxieties.

Death is a sensitive subject for people since it tends to be intertwined with the traumas and losses of their lives. People will contemplate what they can, and it is not my intention to disturb. Still, our survival from our conception to our end entirely depends upon the deaths of other living things that we must consume to live. We derive our very existence from our dance with death, by this bargain every living creature has thrust upon them at birth, and that is just how it is. We live by the grace of death, in each instant of ending and becoming, so to somehow consider ourselves as an exception to this ever present and inclusive process I would find very difficult to appreciate. Still, what is anticipated by thought rather than actually experienced in the moment will remain uncertain though, since thought is confined to its accustomed activity of developing assorted options and possibilities while operating upon the contents of memory.

I have witnessed, experienced, and participated in death as well as approached its dark precipice a number of times in my life. I do not require superstitious dogma and tradition to instruct me in these matters. Arguably, those experiences remain as only memories now for me that my busy mind can attend to in her usual fashion in spite of and as a consequence of my desire to simply forget them. I have learnt to be compassionate to my mind however - she is only trying to grasp, compare, and explain to help me to gain peace in the face of my unwanted and disturbing recollections even though her exercise is a completely futile one. I have found peace through understanding, accepting, and having benevolence for her nature, and not by indulging her well intentioned vanities.
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The fear of death in a manner of speaking, is that you can't save your accomplishments. Everything you've patiently developed and created of yourself through discipline, hard work, even inspiration, is erased - set to zero. You don't even exist in memory. That's just noise in someone else's brain, you are nothing. Set to zero, each and every time. Without an extension of being or self beyond this timeframe, what's the point of anything?.......

Fear of death is twofold. One, is that you apparently come from nowhere and eventually go away without a trace, so can you really ever say you were even here in the first place? Second, the thing you call your life is only a lie........