/lit/ - Literature

>>23253234
>I'm scared of death, therefore everyone else is too
pretty weak

>>23253271
Everyone is though

The biological function of fear is to keep us from dying. The most normal type of fear is fear of death.

>>23253298
I fear woman

>>23253288
What's scary about it? Either it's like sleep, which is not bad, or the journey goes on in some other way, which is fine too. Sure, I hope to live long enough to experience a lot more of the world, but I don't get what's to be feared, unless you really think you'll get roasted in hellfire by an angry God.

>>23253310
The not knowing and pain. Hell as well

>>23253310
It's the fact that you will never wake up for eternity. Even comparing it to sleep feels wrong. As sleep is great, you are conscious. In death you are not.

>>23253271
>>23253310
The fact that you won't experience it is what makes it the worst. Can you imagine that, something inevitable, but something that you will never exoerience. It's like time stopping at that moment.

>>23253310
There seems to be an assumption that the only thing worth fearing are painful conscious experiences, I don't share that intuition.

>>23253312
No pain when you're dead, and hell doesn't seem particularly likely.
>>23253317
You're conscious when you're asleep? Unless you're dreaming, sleep is nothing at all, you fall asleep and then you wake up. Nothing bad about nothingness, nothingness that you don't even experience.
>>23253321
Isn't that a relief? No need to worry about something you'll never experience.

>>23253330
You might also fear painless conscious eternal nothingness, but that doesn't seem likely either, how would a consciousness without contents just float around forever? Can there even be consciousness without contents?

>>23253310
it's nothing, a big nothing. No dreams, nothing. you will be gone, forever and there is no coming back. the certainty of this, the fact that all you do will be for nothing is what makes it so scary to me. it's nothing like sleep, with sleep you know that you will wake up and even if you don't remember them you are dreaming, consciouss. with death it's different. i would prefer to be tortured in hell for all eternity than to just not be at all

>>23253343
I fear being unconscious. I can not imagine it. When I think about sleep I actually always think about the moment just before falling asleep and the moment I wake up. Death doesn't have the waking up part and it's completely alien to me.

I also think a large part is really just biological. My highest objective as an organism is to stay alive, but I realise that this is also not the only view one can have, I'm not saying that your view is based on assumptions and mine is not, we both have our frameworks.

To me the fear of death is just as biological as the pain of cutting a finger. You can try to rationalise it away (and I'm glad it works for you) or you can temporarily suppress it but for me it's always in the background.

>>23253357
>i would prefer to be tortured in hell for all eternity than to just not be at all
This fascinates me. Before your birth, you were not at all. Was that so bad?
>with sleep you know that you will wake up and even if you don't remember them you are dreaming, consciouss
*Before* I fall asleep I assume I'll wake up again, sure, but *while* I sleep, I don't think or assume anything. I rarely remember dreams, it's just nothingness. And if I forget a dream by the time I wake up, I might as well not have dreamed at all.

>>23253234
It's a really pathetic projection.

Since we are on the topic of death, I have recently read some Plato again and Socrates says that everyone who fears death pretends to know something that he doesn't, since noone can know if death is truly bad.
I think this is a pretty weak argument, because we are often afraid when facing uncertain outcomes. If I told you that there is a 10% chance you will get into a car crash tomorrow (let's assume it will not kill you, but it will be very painful) most people would still be afraid, so fear in uncertain situations is normal.

>>23253321
So? If I wont experience it to be afraid of it, and I'm not afraid of it now.. then that determinedly says it's not 'the worst' for me.

>>23253397
t. Socrates

>>23253397
>*Before* I fall asleep I assume I'll wake up again, sure, but *while* I sleep, I don't think or assume anything.
True and when I will be dead (assuming it's nothingness) I will not feel fear but that does not mean that I can't be afraid of it now.

I know we are the topic on death but the point was more about how ‘philosophy is the art of masking inner torments’

>>23253387
The biological fear of death is of course normal, I have that too, if I suddenly saw a lion in my living room, I'd freak out and try to preserve my life - I'm only talking about existential/philosophical fear of death.
>>23253422
>but that does not mean that I can't be afraid of it now.
Sure, I just don't think it's necessary. The way I see it, everything that we're afraid of during life amounts to some conscious painful experience. But if death is really nothingness, it precludes all conscious painful experiences - it's fundamentally unlike anything else we're afraid of.

>>23253409
i agree with you, certainty is always better than uncertainty. Having to face a certainty like death with an uncertain outcome is objectively bad

Sometimes I really just want all of this to end. I don't want to keep wanting and fearing things. I don't want to imagine that there's someplace else where there are rules to follow or more hurdles to overcome and more things to do. Sometimes I really want to forget who I am and all I've done, to stop worrying and thinking and craving. This animal body and this human mind that can't ever have enough are so tiresome.
To think that the moment I die time will just accelerate into the end of everything brings me bitter joy. The end of all evils, the collapse of all empires, the annihilation of suffering it's at hand, nearly at any time I please, really.
It feels like cheating. All these people are keeping me here. They want me to be a fearful and docile animal, they want to sell me a lot of things and they want me to work. It's like they really don't know that I know this wont last forever.
No torture so terrible that won't end, no pain so great it will last forever. No more dragging around in search of pleasure and happiness and love, nothing but going into the box and never coming out.

>>23253317
You're not conscious when you're asleep, thougbeit

>>23253234
>one should not forget that philosophy is the art of masking inner torments

-_-

>>23253409
This is not a good refutation. Your car crash analogy proves only that people are afraid of 'bad' experiences, even if they won't necessarily occur. If you accept that death is the 'great unknown', then you admit that you don't know if it is bad or not, and hence it is unlike a car crash. Additionally, Plato argues in the following section that our present life isn't worth clinging on to, forestalling an objection that it is rational to prefer a good to an unknown (which would actually be sound reasoning).

>>23253234
>Some literally whomst told me I'm scared of dying
Wow... Obliterated.

>>23253310
The majority have terrible and insanely painful deaths, check the figures. Unconsciously everyone fears being part of "them"

>>23253625
Yeah just take half a point of the quote you absolute tard

People just looking at this quote and seeing death as the only point , I thought /lit/ was one of the more intelligent boards.

>>23253611
In that post I didn't mean to argue that it's necessarily reasonable to fear death (although that is my position) only that we often fear uncertain outcomes and that fear doesn't imply that we pretend to know it's bad. Death is an unknown and could be good or bad but in my analogy the car ride could also turn out to be good in those 90% of cases where you don't crash.

The quote from the Apology:
"To fear death is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not; for it is to think one knows what one does not know. No man knows whether death may not even turn out to be the greatest blessing for a human being; and yet people fear it as if they knew for certain that is is the greatest of evil."

I fear death despite not knowing if it's bad, so I don't think I pretend to be wise in this regard. I actually think that there is a chance that heaven exists and I might have a chance to enter it, so it really could be a good thing but I'm still afraid because of the uncertainty.

>>23253694
If death cannot be determined to be good or bad, then we are rationally forced to accept it as neutral. My view is that humans only fear uncertainty because this life is so bad; that horrifically bad outcomes are exceedingly more common than exceptionally great ones. However, generalizing this to death does not follow.

>>23253307
woman is literally the way to survive death
pucci can make another smol u. but first u must get yr pen0r in there

>>23253387
If your view is so assumption based, then why choose such negative assumptions that give you existential dread? Also, if your goal in life is to keep living and you don't believe in life after death, then your only hope at success is Elon Musk inventing a simulated after life. Your goal shouldn't be to survive. Survival is the given. You are here. It is up to you to choose what to do with it. Choosing to just stay here as long as possible is self defeating.

People don't fear death but the pain of dying, plus the ego damage of regret and becoming an irrelevant old fart.

>>23253234
I’m sure we do, but philosophy should be more about what we do while we’re living or advising others on life, our death is Gods problem to deal with

>>23253916
My writings insist they should not serve as a gatekeeper of this act, men kill themselves over the uncertainty of women. Giving it a guarantee would at least alleviate some of our anxieties.

>>23253916
Everyone will die in the end, no one will survive. But keep coping, lmao

>>23253234
Kind of a cope, though. And again it's just disingenuous to discourage thought and discourse on such matters, especially from the standpoint of "muh fear".

>>23253234
>shallow soul

>>23253234
the Greeks already said this

>>23253310
>the journey goes on in some other way
you are so terrified, you have to use this as a cope lmao, positing theories about what comes after death is human's biggest way to cope with uncertainty, this is well known to historians and anthropologists

>>23253357
I would prefer to be tortured in hell then to speak up and be saved knowing it was the wrong thing to do.

>>23253234
Who's that, Johnny Cash?

>>23253234
https://youtu.be/qX6NztnPU-4?si=MCiVG1BbjEPQtyi3

>>23253288
I'm not- not of my own death, at least. I'm scared of (dying in) pain, but not of death itself. I'm scared my mother and my brother will die, but only because it would hurt me.

It took a while to get to my not-fear, but it was really cemented in me when I started having epileptic fits- I don't even notice them until I wake up. I assume death is the same.

Yes, I fear death. Yes, I try to find solace in philosophers. Simple as.

>>23253930
>why choose to believe what makes the most sense
facetious cunt.

>>23253397
>This fascinates me. Before your birth, you were not at all. Was that so bad?
No because the inevitability of my being was there from the start.
>I rarely remember dreams, it's just nothingnes
NPC

>>23253234
>implying philosophy readers aren't already "destroyed" to begin with

>>23253288
Not me, I'm built different. I'm just a vessel for consciousness. Nobody fucking owns consciousness. It's a byproduct phenomenon of memory and reflection. It is not pure action so it stakes a false claim to the illusion of meaning in a meaningless void. The meaningless void is the only truth. The gilded baubles (solipsistic thoughts) of conscious beings are of fleeting importance.

If the greater collective were more self aware and also less selfish then they would diminish their stock in such transient juvenile beliefs. Paradoxically I would then become more invested in the potentiality of this collective of conscious being's output. As it stands the selfishness and myopic nature of the individual is an endless resource impeding this development. It is against man's puerile nature to stretch his awareness beyond ephemeral matters. It's a total failure of focus and thus I put no stock in such stock to achieve anything worth praising or mourning. We're going to be splashing about in the kiddie pool of consciousness because the base conditions for establishing a foundation to build from will never be met. Barring of course outside intervention and heavy restructuring which is not outside the realm of possiblity.

Every interaction is a "death". You have to interact with the larger environment which molds, shapes, and scars your vessel. It is our station to be constantly changing and changed by our environment. Why would anyone fear a csssation of this phenomenon when the environment we must be exposed to is so wholly influenced by the eternal wellspring of solipsism, selfishness, and juvenile pollution?

>>23253307
i fear fear. i have phobophobia. now give me free money

>>23253310
>>23253312
>>23253333
>>23255863
didn't you know? we're already in hell
>>23253357
today is your lucky day
>>23253651
you just now realize most people are stupid?