Death

[SomeRandom]

I don't fully believe all the votes saying no. Most people faced with death, they might not fear the abstract concept but we have a natural aversion to death either our own or stagnant corpses.

Me personally, I'm afraid of dead things, generally. My own death, thinking about it, not so much fear as a range of other emotions. True fear, is more of pain for me. I'm deathly afraid of intense pain. I don't know if I'm more sensitive to sensations than others but everything always feels intense to me and pain is always freaking unbearable if it's truly being harmed. The only times it's not been for me is when I went into shock or was too concerned with surviving where more serious injury or even death was a real possibility. That aversion to death kicked in.

Maybe fear is the word for that, I don't know. But I think our aversion is on some level a type of fear of death. Otherwise we wouldn't work to stay alive.

You could argue that such aversion is merely instinct. We want to survive so of course we would react negatively to death in some capacity. The fear of the unknown is probably stronger than any fear of death, at least for some people. We like to have security, I guess.

But I do not fear death, nor am I without experience of death. In my family tradition we celebrate it, an end to a life means they will either go onto another life or become one with the One. Such a thing is to be revered, not feared.

 

[MrMrdevincamus]

I don't fear death of the body. To be brutally honest, I fear the lack of faith in God, which leads to the fear of the finality of death. Most Christians would deny loudly and with extreme arrogance they doubt the existence of God! In fact I would wager my house that its impossible to have 100% faith in anything. Me? Just guessing my percentage of doubt is about 99.9 to the hundredth power that God is real and exists. Still there is that freaking smidgen of;
O death, where is your sting? O grave, where is your victory?
1 Corinthians 15:55
Where indeed?

 

[Mark Dohle]

Not sure. I have talked with friends who smoked. When I brought up the question about the increased dangers of lung cancer, they would laugh and say you have to die of something. More than a few smokers that I have known, changed their tune when they actually got the diagnosis. So they did fear death and cancer both.

When someone tells me that they don't fear death, I respect that, but when the time comes it may be a different story. Another thought. Perhaps death can't be feared since it is an event that most of us will be unconscious when it happens. However, as brought up here by more than one person, it is the process of dying that is feared, the slow death of letting go of strength, independence, of the pain etc. that may take years. I guess old age, a state of life I have entered into and already giving me a taste of that. So far I have not succumbed to fear. Also, I don't think to have faith, or not having a belief system matters with the question. Some people seem to not fear death, be they atheist or believers, then people of deep faith are terrified of death just as some atheist are.

Peace
mark

 

[Jesster]

I've faced death too many times now to fear it. Death and I are good buddies by now. It eventually won't have to be a long-distance relationship, but I'm in no hurry.