Mortality
Posted by DangerousReward1411@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 43 comments
Real quick and simple one. How many here have made peace with their own mortality? If so, what was the process like?
Not trying to be a doomer or fear-monger, as I do believe in individual/group action being the ultimate power. However, I believe as time progresses along the next few decades we are going to likely see collateral damage and there is a likelihood that we ourselves get swept up in it.
I think we can agree that this particular chapter of transition is unraveling, and that these colossal events are rarely ever quiet. Especially with the increased risks of both disease and death from all the risks associated with climate change (which Europe is getting a taste of right now!), the risks are now higher than ever and likely to increase as we head into the 30s and 40s.
Again, not trying to be overly nihilistic and would like to just hear some perspective on the issue. Open to all perspectives, even the niche ones. Hope this can serve as a resource for those out there with worries regarding this!
rockb0tt0m_99@reddit
There's no need to fear death. That's like worrying about the rain. It's the door out of THIS! Who in their right mind would be afraid of leaving a place where they have to pay to exist? What are you going to miss? Capitalism? War? Racism? Slavery? Collapsing food and water systems?
J_House1999@reddit
Is there anyone in your life whom you love?
rockb0tt0m_99@reddit
What are you calling 'love?' I've learned that what a human wants to call 'love' is actually utilitarianism coated with sugar. That or some transaction. And if someone wants to attach certain feelings and emotions to those things and call it 'love', so be it.
For me, detachment and reading life through the lens of reality have been very liberating for me. There's nothing here to lose. If you feel differently about your life, so be it. We're different people.
J_House1999@reddit
Man I’m sorry you experience life so cynically. I hope you come around, but you’re right. We’re different people, I won’t judge you.
rockb0tt0m_99@reddit
lol. Well, thanks (I guess) for not judging. Some will call it cynical. I don't think I'm too cynical. I'm just real about what I see and my experience. Sure, I've had a lot of beautiful experiences in this life. However, I also have to be real about this life and human nature.
So, I don't need to come around anywhere. I'm on the road home and couldn't be happier.
pseudo-segfault@reddit
What am I going to miss? How about the many things that make life worth living?
rockb0tt0m_99@reddit
Delusions? Copes? Fear? What are we talking about here?
PhotographUsed1255@reddit
I have never feared death. I'm almost 60 and the thought of dissolving back into the Earth/Universe turns me on so much and always has. I never fit into this world/economy/political system, even as a child, so I don't feel attached to living in it. I didn't aspire to having stuff, owning stuff, achieving, etc. I love doing little and spending my days living at a slow pace and making just enough money to survive. I do my best to keep going without participating much in the economy. When it's time to go, I will have a smile on my face. I mostly grieve for wildlife, not for humanity.
summercookiess@reddit
why do you mostly grieve for wildlife and not humanity? Aren't there some parts of humanity that should get some mourning?
degoba@reddit
Fuckin A. Im in my 40s and really starting to vibe with that mentality. Give me good dogs and wild places to roam.
03263@reddit
Same
Subject-Hedgehog6278@reddit
I am fully at peace with my mortality. My fear is suffering to death, not death itself. The process for me was just one of becoming aware that life is a gift that’s temporary for everyone. I’ve watched family and friends pass from various causes and learned to appreciate and live in the moment because no one has a guaranteed tomorrow. I have learned that my worrying about myself dying or suffering does nothing but poison the gift of my present. Worrying is not protecting me or helping me in any way, it’s inviting fear. My acceptance is not specifically related to collapse, there’s tons of ways people get taken out. I will die somehow someday, just like everyone. And I quelled my fears about getting terminal cancer or whatever and withering away slowly in pain by deciding I’m just not gonna do that. A terminal cancer diagnosis for me means I’m having a party on a cliff top before jumping off it for a quick clean death before anyone has to take care of me. And having made that decision actually brings me peace in my present!
TheArcticFox444@reddit
I've clinically suffered three full-stop cardiac arrests...once during an EP (electrophysiology) study so it was a medical fact. As a result, I have no fear of death. Been there, done that!
I still, however, fear dying...the process that leads to death. In that respect, I envy animals that can be humanely euthanized to end their suffering. I don't understand why people can have more compassion for an animal yet think humans have no right to that same level of compassion.
Sir_Troutface@reddit
Do you remember anything post death? Any NDEs?
TheArcticFox444@reddit
Post death...there was no awareness at all.
Sir_Troutface@reddit
Near death experiences. Some people enter alternate realities and claim they seem more real than ours, most don’t want to return here. Some people meet others there that they didn’t even know had died in our world until they returned. It’s pretty freaky when you research it. There’s a good audiobook on Spotify if you’re interested. https://open.spotify.com/show/11dVIh0zN2teltPtAPdrmc?si=AtPO6GwRSj-oKlUB3xxAmg
TheArcticFox444@reddit
NDE thank you for the explanation...so many "initialled" tags these days.
I have heard of them. Aren't they explained by the brain hallucinating as it dies from lack of oxygen?
The brain is an amazing organ. My field is behavior, hence I have a certain knowledge about the brain and what it can get up to without our awareness.
As a survivor of SCD (here's another "tag": Sudden Cardiac Death) I can only speak of my own experience of "no awareness." Perhaps the stoppage of my heart wasn't long enough for oxygen deprivation to have an effect. SCD survival is pretty rare even in a hospital setting.
gnostic_savage@reddit
No, they aren't explained by the brain hallucinating. Medicine is not only science, it may be the most complex science of all, because biological organisms vary so widely in their responses to disease and treatments. Physicians, who must have advanced educations that are the equivalent of a PhD, and must also have residencies, and must also have additional education beyond residency for any specialty certifications, have the most strenuous science educations that exist.
It is physicians who have documented and studied NDEs from the beginning, Raymond Moody, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Bruce Greyson, all psychiatrists, and these days Jeffrey Long, a practicing radiation oncologist. I think psychiatrists, especially, understand the difference between hallucinations and what are experiences for which our model of a material based reality doesn't have an explanation.
Several physicists have come to the same conclusion, including Tom Campbell, PhD, author of My Big TOE. Pew Research Center conducted a poll among scientists in 2009. " According to the poll, just over half of scientists (51%) believe in some form of deity or higher power; specifically, 33% of scientists say they believe in God, while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power."
So, no, the belief that such experiences are hallucinations is far from settled among the best science experts we have, except within the minds of individuals.
MissApocalypse2021@reddit
I'm terrified of my kids meeting an untimely death, or that their lives will become intolerable due to stupid peoples' decisions. Me? I've been lucky, and unlucky, and have had tons of adventures, and don't regret much. It's all borrowed time now, and I'm gonna have as good a time of it as I can.
dazzlingshining@reddit
I feel like many of u are here because you are panicking about collapse? Haha
But genuine idea of collapse cheers me up
old-legs-623@reddit
I think a lot of us are here because we like truth, which ain't what we're being told by TPTB.
dazzlingshining@reddit
Am sorry I want to write more..but I understand
thismightaswellhappe@reddit
Working on it. The issue isn't so much the 'being dead' so much as the dying part. I've had the experience of what I can only describe as "mortal terror," where something is wrong and your body goes into preserve-at-all-cost mode, it's very animal instinct. I don't know if there's any way to get past that tbh. So I'm actually trying to make peace with the feeling that I'll likely be scared and in pain, maybe, and it might just suck.
But the ultimate fate of literally every organism is to die. So I'd prefer to just face it head on, and, you know. Accept it. It's hard though.
EmmetOtterXmas@reddit
If you’re willing to share, was your experience like a personal health incident or something else?
thismightaswellhappe@reddit
Anyway imagine feeling that kind of physical horror and pain and not being able to do anything about it. Knowing something is wrong but not being able to fix it. If I'd been outside without a vehicle for example. that's what I mean when I anticipate feelings of fear and pain when facing my death. Don't know that I will, but I could imagine it happening. Every alarm in your brain and body screaming at you but not being able to do anything to fix it. Feeling things shutting down around you, trapped in a collapsing house.
EmmetOtterXmas@reddit
Thanks for sharing, and sorry to hear about your experience. Hope things are going better for you now.
thismightaswellhappe@reddit
Nothing special, was sleeping in my car during winter (homeless) and had it shut off to save gas. I was not in any way prepared for the cold and I woke with the feeling of something being really, profoundly wrong with my body. It's hard to explain, this is what I mean by an animal feeling. It's a terror of mortality that has no words at all, just a horror of something being wrong in a way that it's deeply dangerous and harmful. I turned the car on and ran the heat. I had to do this several times during the night. I didn't die or even suffer long term damage, but I had a phobia of cold for a long time after that.
I understand now how people can die of exposure. Fortunately I was able to do something about the situation. But it left an impression and helped me see how my body and brain can react to dangerous conditions. When your body knows something is really really wrong it will grab you by the cerebellum and shake you. Hard.
No-Alternative6566@reddit
Im not afraid of dying, its just that I would rather not be there when it happens...
Effective-Ebb-2805@reddit
That is precisely why God invented heroin.
selfasorganism@reddit
Reddit is generally very atheistic in outlook, but it’s worth mentioning how uncommon that view was for all of our history. I think it’s easy to take ourselves too seriously and not allow speculation and simply admit we don’t know as much as we think.
For me, I’ve been very interested in worldviews from the ancient past and the similarities between them.
What is materially true? We are reincarnations of energy and matter from the food we eat. Energy from the sun gets captured by Earth through photosynthesis and ends up in all of our relatives (all of life). It’s happening all the time, every second. When you die the cycle continues just as it always has.
What is this conscious experience we have that has a sense of continuity? Whatever it is, it’s probably the same sort of thing all other life has, although to different degrees depending on their evolutionary history. That thing, I would argue, is a piece of the universal Nous that desires a knowledge of itself through your current incarnation. That thing cannot die because it was never born and it continues forever.
I enjoy reading the works of Plato, the Corpus Hermeticum, Plotinus, Iamblichus and others who have philosophical and spiritual avenues for discovering the gnosis of eternal, unchanging things that transcend this material world.
Not everyone’s thing, but had to add a comment to help even it out 😅
morphemass@reddit
For myself ... I've made peace with it; honestly I'm a bit amazed to still be around given my shenanigans.
For others though ... my grown up children, the very young of today ... they didn't sign up for this. Hell neither did I but at least most of my life has been in a 'normal' climate with a 'normal' economy. I spent the majority of it, sadly, trying to do the 'normal' thing because I was ~~told~~ lied to that climate change was on the very distant horizon and it was all under control.
For younger people today ... what exactly is the point? A slow collapse is unavoidable over the next 25 years. The bumps will be more frequent, the carrot looks increasingly unpalatable, a pension is likely to be a mythical thing of the past.
In order to be okay with death I think you must have at least have had the opportunity for a good life. Some still will but for the many, the world will grow increasingly dystopian with an absence of hope.
adamsoutofideas@reddit
I am life, as much as the tree outside my window, the grass, the spider in the corner of my room using me as bait. We are all part of the living fabric of the earth. When I die, the fabric will shrink to a meaningless extent, but it will shrink, just like it's halved since 1970. What makes me rare is that im a self aware portion of the cancer that consumes the rest of the living whole. As such, I do everything I can to limit the cost of my time here to the rest of the living world and its future and im very comfortable with how little damage I've done compared to most. I've spent my life trying to be a force of good in the world of people and as close to neutral to the rest of the world as a person can be and still exist as a member of society.
I dont envy anything born into the world I will leave behind but it is a unique experience to live at the end. Living to experience sudden planetary change that leads to mass extinction (mine included). I wish I had a lifetime of working with the rest of you on attempting to repair the harm that created this situation, even if there was never any chance of avoiding the outcome... but we didn't do that, so instead I do my best with the time I have as a part of the cancer with a voice and understanding to say STOP, as loud as I can and in a different way than I've seen other people try.
It's almost a funny question. It makes me picture death sitting on a therapists couch working through their own fear of death.
Anyways, here we are until we aren't. Life is beautiful. All of it is precious, but its end isn't a tragedy. Plant some seeds if youre feeling too ragged
NihiloZero@reddit
Human mortality, on a personalized individual basis, hasn't really changed much in recent decades/centuries. The perspectives of Marcus Aurelius, Camus, Tolstoy and the like... are still as relevant as ever.
The big change, as I see it, is that humanity as a whole has started undermining itself like never before. It's a terrible shame to watch the foundations of life and civilization collapse in real time.
I never had a chance, but I can't help feeling that humanity itself might have stood a chance at one point. If we had collectively made better decisions we probably could have survived longer as a species. And we wouldn't have destroyed so many other species on the way. That's the saddest shame of it all.
sylvansojourner@reddit
I’m not afraid of death, I’m afraid of how my path to death might look. How much will I suffer? How much tragedy and death might I witness around me in a collapsing ecosystem and civilization?
To answer your question on how I came to peace with death, I overdosed on bad ecstasy when I was a teenager and was in and out of consciousness. I thought I was dying. When the moment came where I had to face the inevitable, I actually felt quite peaceful about it. Ever since then I’m not afraid to go.
WingsOfTin@reddit
You were "dead" for billions of years before you lived. It will be like that. It wasn't so bad, right? How cool that you got to experience consciousness for any length of time. Even if life has been really cruel, I'm sure we've all at least once been bowled over by something really beautiful or touching. I'm happy I existed so that I could pet a cat and see moonlight sparkling on the ocean. I'm glad I got to visit consciousness for some time, and I'm glad that it will end "soon". I don't honestly like being alive that much, but it's fine for now!
sapiensane@reddit
I don't fear being dead, any more than I remember before I was born. Epictetus put it best, something like "Where I am, death is not, and where death is, I am not."
I absolutely fear the pain of being here after the deaths of people I care about though.
loudhalgren@reddit
Yes. LSD.
Jim-Jones@reddit
What's up with Japan's falling birth rate? Why doesn't that figure into mortality ideas?
alwaysmilesdeep@reddit
Global birth rate is in extreme decline.
We just dont like to talk about it. One of the supposed reasons they are outlawing abortion, they will not have enough slaves if something doesn't change quick.
astilba120@reddit
I have been around death, since the age of 15, witnessed it. Working as a healthcare assistant, I have been there when the last breath is drawn. I will enter the phase of dying sooner than later. I have no intention of fighting for life when my time comes, but the body will try, it always does, in all forms of life, a dying tree will cling, and still sprout leaves in its season, many animals will cling through pain and mortal wounds, and we assist it, if we can, with euthanasia. I believe I have a soul. Where it goes and what it will experience is anyone"s question. I would like to have some control over it, meaning, I would like to be comfortable and just tired, and pain free. Maybe I will have that, or maybe I will not. I grow plants and harvest the parts that are known to cause sedation and sleep, I dry the roots and leaves and seed pods to be used if I have to, not to rush the inevitable,, but to assure an easy passing. I think the best death is when it comes when one is truly weary of life, not due to mental depression or fear, but like an old horse lays down in the field, or an old hen puffs up and goes to sleep forever, in a sunny and warm spot. I will not die with a gun in my hand protecting whatever it is I have prepped for survival, no, I will not try to gasp my way through a bio attack or radiation poisoning, or battle zombies. My gardens are rich with food for storage, but I also grow skullcap, valerian, and, of course, poppies.
boomaDooma@reddit
I stopped fearing death when I became an atheist.
That-Advance-9619@reddit
I won't miss the world and the world won't miss me, so couldn't care less.
If there is a generation after mine, they will be even worse off.
MostlyDisappointing@reddit
When the going gets tough I'll get going. The future is going to be a long unpredictable series of survival hurdles and I have no desire to suffer.
I doubt I'll be hanging around to see the 2040s. If the global governments don't effectively manage the famine next year I suspect many of us ain't seeing the 30s.