Every time I try to rationalize death I hit a wall where the rationalization process can't go further.
What scares us from death is thinking that we would still have some form of consciousness where we would regret everything that was wrong with our lives, like saying "all my life struggles and efforts to be happy just to end up like this"? When we learn that someone has died you think that; a friend of yours that was studying and working really hard to have a good life in future years suddenly stops living, you see all that wasted potential and it scares you that the same thing can happen to you.
But surely in practice that won't happen, you die and that's it, no regrets. The problem is we can't shake off that feeling by rationalizing it, or at least I can't, and the fear will always be there.
mikKiske t1_iz29eeo wrote
Reply to How Death Can Help Us Live: a philosophical approach to the problem of death by simsquatched
Every time I try to rationalize death I hit a wall where the rationalization process can't go further.
What scares us from death is thinking that we would still have some form of consciousness where we would regret everything that was wrong with our lives, like saying "all my life struggles and efforts to be happy just to end up like this"? When we learn that someone has died you think that; a friend of yours that was studying and working really hard to have a good life in future years suddenly stops living, you see all that wasted potential and it scares you that the same thing can happen to you.
But surely in practice that won't happen, you die and that's it, no regrets. The problem is we can't shake off that feeling by rationalizing it, or at least I can't, and the fear will always be there.