Fear of Death or...

[The Hammer]

I have been pondering lately if those such as Spartans and Vikings accepted death on their terms but where afraid of death in other ways, such as disease or accident. Hunt down death on the battle field where they are likely to find him, because otherwise the concept of growing old, frail and a possibly slow and painful death when it's least expected is the alternative.

Is it better to die young fighting or live to fight old age? There is an edda that has Thor wrestle with Old Age and lose.

 

[The Hammer]

I found death far less daunting when I was suicidal, lmao.

I can honestly empathize with that.

 

[stvdv]

Do you see a difference between having a fear of death and dying.

Yes

And/or just being happy with how and who you currently are?

I am happy with "my Path"

Does losing ones fear of death mean loosening the hold on the Self?

No, it means kind of the opposite

If so, what is the self hanging on too, desiring?

Ego (being a sepatate soul)

Is it a conscious desire or something deeper and unconscious?

Both

Would you be ok with dying as you are right now?

Yes

 

[ChristineM]

Do you see a difference between having a fear of death and dying. And/or just being happy with how and who you currently are? (As those that fear death typically have something they're desiring to be or do).

Does losing ones fear of death mean loosening the hold on the Self? If so, what is the self hanging on too, desiring?

Is it a conscious desire or something deeper and unconscious?

Would you be ok with dying as you are right now?

I don't fear death. It happens to all of us and ive considered it as an escape at one time in my life.

Now though, I'd be mightily annoyed if i died before my children fledge the nest.

 

[Hermit Philosopher]

Do you see a difference between having a fear of death and dying. And/or just being happy with how and who you currently are? (As those that fear death typically have something they're desiring to be or do).

Does losing ones fear of death mean loosening the hold on the Self? If so, what is the self hanging on too, desiring?

Is it a conscious desire or something deeper and unconscious?

Would you be ok with dying as you are right now?

As one who has been on my own deathbed a few times, I’d say that the only thing those times have had in common so far, is the sense of serenity that’s come upon me when I’ve been there.

Experience is interpretation and, I suspect that one’s own experience of death, will be much like one’s own experience of life was.

Humbly
Hermit

 

[Mock Turtle]

Do you see a difference between having a fear of death and dying. And/or just being happy with how and who you currently are? (As those that fear death typically have something they're desiring to be or do).

Does losing ones fear of death mean loosening the hold on the Self? If so, what is the self hanging on too, desiring?

Is it a conscious desire or something deeper and unconscious?

Would you be ok with dying as you are right now?

Given that I tend to believe that death is simply the end of life, my thoughts will, like most no doubt who have such views, be more about the manner of one's dying - short and sweet preferably - even if I would rather not die just yet. I've come close to certain death at least twice, have risked my life enough to be reasonably comfortable with such, so probably will accept whatever type of death I have - but given my life, I probably deserve a horrible death.

If there was something after death then I might have cause for worries but even then such doesn't bother me, given my life hasn't always been under my control or volition and I will try to put up a reasonable argument as to why I shouldn't be going to Hell - futile as such might be.

My main regret is in not knowing as to what happens to the human race but hardly anything else as to regrets.

 

[Secret Chief]

everybody

Perhaps you should rephrase that?

 

[SalixIncendium]

Do you see a difference between having a fear of death and dying. And/or just being happy with how and who you currently are? (As those that fear death typically have something they're desiring to be or do).

Everyone dies. In my experience, those that fear death have a profound attachment to the material world.

Does losing ones fear of death mean loosening the hold on the Self? If so, what is the self hanging on too, desiring?

I am the Self. I won't lose what I am. I will lose the body mind complex, but the Self is eternal.

Would you be ok with dying as you are right now?

No. I need to finish typing this post. Okay, now I'm good.

 

[Hermit Philosopher]

I found death far less daunting when I was suicidal, lmao.

Sometimes that can be down to a stronger fear of life than of death.


Humbly
Hermit

 

[Aupmanyav]

Do you see a difference between having a fear of death and dying. And/or just being happy with how and who you currently are? (As those that fear death typically have something they're desiring to be or do).
Does losing ones fear of death mean loosening the hold on the Self? If so, what is the self hanging on too, desiring?
Is it a conscious desire or something deeper and unconscious?
Would you be ok with dying as you are right now?

Yeah, I see it. I do not fear any. True, the process of death could be inconvenient, but what can one do about it (I could have stopped smoking but I did not)? As for loosing identity/personhood, what else death is?
Of course, I am happy, but happiness and sorrows do not last for ever (I could quote Gita on this, 'like seasons', but I won't).
'Self' is a construction while one lives, lasts till life lasts.
Ready, all packed up.

 

[paradox]

Perhaps you should rephrase that?

Why, you want to die?

 

[RestlessSoul]

If Liz Truss becomes the next prime minister, death would be a blessed release.

Hers, hopefully.

Not that I'm wishing her dead. The whole rotten government would have to die with her, and we're getting into bloody revolution territory there. That would be a tad tricky for a pacifist to justify.

 

[RestlessSoul]

According to Heidegger it is the realization that we will die that drives us to seek fulfillment in life, and I don't think there is any inherent reason why we must loosen the hold of the Self to overcome a fear of death.

Does Heidegger say how to achieve that fulfilment?

 

[Secret Chief]

Hers, hopefully.

Not that I'm wishing her dead. The whole rotten government would have to die with her, and we're getting into bloody revolution territory there. That would be a tad tricky for a pacifist to justify.

I have several opinions which I find difficult to justify.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Sometimes that can be down to a stronger fear of life than of death.


Humbly
Hermit

Yeah, how about there not be such further judgements and I won't announce my own thoughts of that judgement.
When you're suicidal you don't fear life. You become desperate for an escape to suffering and torment. And what is life worth living if that's all it has to offer?

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Does Heidegger say how to achieve that fulfilment?

I don't remember the exact wording he uses and the definitions (they aren't just German words but German words used in unusual and obscure ways), but yes.
Existentialism - Martin Heidegger (1889–1971)
Thus he begins with an analysis of Dasein (literally, "being-there"). But the question emerges, because we are the "ontological" (self-questioning) creatures we are, just who this Dasein is. Thus Heidegger's philosophy becomes a search for authenticity or "own-ness" (Eigentlichkeit), or personal integrity. This search for authenticity will carry us into the now familiar but ever-renewed questions about the nature of the self, and the meaning of life, as well as Heidegger's somewhat morbid central conception of "Being-unto-Death." It will also lead to Heidegger's celebration of tradition and "heritage," the importance of resolutely committing oneself to one's given culture.
What Dasein cannot be is what Descartes called "a thinking thing." But, then, who is Dasein, what is the self? It is, at first, merely the roles that other people cast for me, as their son, their daughter, their student, their sullen playmate, their clever friend. That self, the Das Man self, is a social construction. Their is nothing authentic, nothing that is my own, about it. The authentic self, by contrast, is discovered in profound moments of unique self-recognition, notably, when one faces one's own death. It is not enough to acknowledge that "we are all going to die." That, according to Heidegger, is merely an objective truth and inauthentic. It is one's own death that matters here, and one's "own-ness" thus becomes "Being-unto-Death," facing up in full to one's own mortality.
Authenticity (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Heidegger’s conception of human existence (or, as calls it, Dasein, ‘being-there’) echoes Kierkegaard’s conception of the “self”. Rather than being an object among others, Dasein is a “relation of being” (Seinsverhältnis; Heidegger 1962 [1927]: 12)—a relation that obtains between what one is at any moment and what one can and will be as the temporally extended unfolding of life into a realm of possibilities. To conceive Dasein as relational means that in living out our lives, we always already care: for each of us, our being is always at issue and this is made concrete in the specific actions we undertake and the roles we enact. Over the course of our lives, our identities are always in question: we are always projections into the future, incessantly taking a stand on who we are.

The most familiar conception of “authenticity” comes to us mainly from Heidegger’s Being and Time of 1927. The word we translate as ‘authenticity’ is actually a neologism invented by Heidegger, the word Eigentlichkeit, which comes from an ordinary term, eigentlich, meaning ‘really’ or ‘truly’, but is built on the stem eigen, meaning ‘own’ or ‘proper’. So the word might be more literally translated as ‘ownedness’, or ‘being owned’, or even ‘being one’s own’, implying the idea of owning up to and owning what one is and does (for a stimulating recent interpretation, see McManus 2019). Nevertheless, the word ‘authenticity’ has become closely associated with Heidegger as a result of early translations of Being and Time into English, and was adopted by Sartre and Beauvoir as well as by existentialist therapists and cultural theorists who followed them.[1]

Heidegger’s conception of ownedness as the most fully realized human form of life emerges from his view of what it is to be a human being. This conception of human Dasein echoes Kierkegaard’s description of a “self”. On Heidegger’s account, Dasein is not a type of object among others in the totality of what is on hand in the universe. Instead, human being is a “relation of being”, a relation that obtains between what one is at any moment (the immediacy of the concrete present as it has evolved) and what one can and will be as the temporally extended unfolding or happening of life into an open realm of possibilities. To say that human being is a relation is to say that, in living out our lives, we always care about who and what we are. Heidegger expresses this by saying that, for each of us, our being (what our lives will amount to overall) is always at issue. This “being at stake” or “being in question for oneself” is made concrete in the specific stands we take—that is, in the roles we enact—over the course of our lives. It is because our being (our identity) is in question for us that we are always taking a stand on who we are. Since the German word for ‘understanding’, Verstehen, is etymologically derived from the idea of ‘taking a stand’, Heidegger can call the projection into the future by which we shape our identity ‘understanding’. And because any stand one takes is inescapably “being-in-the-world”, understanding carries with it some degree of competence in coping with the world around us. An understanding of being in general is therefore built into human agency.

To the extent that all our actions contribute to realizing an overarching project or set of projects, our active lives can be seen as embodying a life-project of some sort. On Heidegger’s view, we exist for the sake of ourselves: enacting roles and expressing character traits contribute to realizing some image of what it is to be human in our own cases. Existence has a directedness or purposiveness that imparts a degree of connection to our life stories. For the most part, having such a life-plan requires very little conscious formulation of goals or deliberation about means. It results from our competence in being members of a historical culture that we have mastered to a great extent in growing up into a shared world. This tacit “pre-understanding” makes possible our familiar dwelling with things and others in the familiar, everyday world.

Heidegger holds that all possibilities of concrete understanding and action are made possible by a background of shared practices opened up by the social context in which we find ourselves, by what he calls the ‘They’ (das Man). Far from it being the case that social existence is something alien to and opposed to our humanity, Heidegger holds that we are always essentially and inescapably social beings. As he says,

 

[Windwalker]

Do you see a difference between having a fear of death and dying. And/or just being happy with how and who you currently are?

As human beings we face two deaths. The death of our physical bodies, and the death of who we see ourselves as, the "self". It's the latter that creates for most humans that existential dread, the state of non-being. Just having the body die is one thing. "I" am no more, is another.

As far as just being happy, having that existential dread always lying in wait at the door, does not mean that people live miserable lives. We may find many great pleasures in life and lead fulfilling lives, but that dread is still there, pushed as far out of mind as we may push it. It lays in the shadows for us.

And so when someone has an existential crisis for instance, that is when they may come more or less face to face with that fear. The Awakening experience, typically comes after confronting that underlying Abyss of non-being.

Does losing ones fear of death mean loosening the hold on the Self? If so, what is the self hanging on too, desiring?

Realizing the Self, the true nature of who and what we are beyond the ego-self, is what releases us from that fear. The small self, the ego-self is cling to finding meaning against non-meaning, or non-being. It thinks its identity is who and what we are, and thus it must be preserved at all costs.

Hence, clinging and desiring for the ego, is what creates suffering. We hope to find the true Self, through the ego. The ego seeking and desiring is still the ego. It's when that's all surrendered and let go off, that release and freedom from suffering occurs.

Is it a conscious desire or something deeper and unconscious?

It's deeper in the unconscious mind, yet still present like a fear behind the door always lying in wait. It's like a background hum, constantly there. "One day, I shall be no more", that ego-self shall cease to be.

Would you be ok with dying as you are right now?

Yes. That is not to say that I would not prefer to keep living for now.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Do you see a difference between having a fear of death and dying. And/or just being happy with how and who you currently are? (As those that fear death typically have something they're desiring to be or do).

Does losing ones fear of death mean loosening the hold on the Self? If so, what is the self hanging on too, desiring?

Is it a conscious desire or something deeper and unconscious?

Would you be ok with dying as you are right now?

I'd be OK. I learned that when I had my heart attack in 2017.

There was apprehension naturally, more from the factor of the unknowable, but far from any all out fear of dying.

It's due to the fact I was born in the first place and the odds are squarely at 1:?.

I think the ego self dies forever, but not what turns on the 'lights' so to speak. Those lights flicker all the time so I'm fine when the reaper comes for a collection, and not a consultation.

Basically if it happened once, there's no reason it can't happen again.