Death

LegacyUser

its all around us, 150,000 die in the space of a few days over a natural disaster
thousands dying in iraq needlessly
people close to me have died and are dying
im finding it very hard to deal with, i cant believe how insignificant we are as a race, that death can come so easily and strike at any moment and the fact that death is the end of everything for that individual, how can people comprehend something like that?
its depressing me a lot lately , i would appreciate any advice or thoughts.

Victor

All I can say is live long and prosper.

simu

Unreg&depressed wrote:

its all around us, 150,000 die in the space of a few days over a natural disaster
thousands dying in iraq needlessly
people close to me have died and are dying
im finding it very hard to deal with, i cant believe how insignificant we are as a race, that death can come so easily and strike at any moment and the fact that death is the end of everything for that individual, how can people comprehend something like that?
its depressing me a lot lately , i would appreciate any advice or thoughts.

Get used to it - time's winged chariot is always hurrying near and those immortaility pills are not coming any time soon etc etc

Focus on the living, of what there is left for you to do before death etc but accept that ultimately, it's all pointless.

Matthewthebig

Death is natural. You have to learn to except that. Live your life don't spend it worrying about it, because that imo is not living.

Miles

It's the cycle of life.

Why don't you look up the numbers of all the people being born? More people were born today than died.

Cheer up, just think about puppies and cushions for awhile.:p

Paddy20

Death is part of life, and Imho it is nothing to be frightened of, our bodies are only meant to be temporary, while your spirit/soul which is the real you, will soar on to a better place.

Life is to be lived, a moment at a time, and follow your own personal heartfelt instincts which should bring you true happiness and acceptance of our earthly passing.

P.

Memnoch

yea you could most certainly take up some blind superstitious belief about the soul and the spirit and what not or sign up to any of the countless religions that will promise you heaven and eternal life as long as you do what you're told. These are the easy ways to deal with death which is a majority of humanity subscribes to them.

Alternatively, you can just try to live your life to the best of your ability and find things to care about that make it meaningful. Either way you have to come terms with in on your own in your own time.

But the first method is defiantely easier. Ignorance IS bliss after all.

neuro-praxis

Then you must be wetting yourself with joy, Memnoch.

elivsvonchiaing

neuro-praxis wrote:

Then you must be wetting yourself with joy, Memnoch.

Absolutetley no knowledge here - but this sounds bitter to me? :eek:

neuro-praxis

I was just being cheeky.

ferdi

this body is only a shell, when it finally cracks the next part of the journey begins....i cant wait.

death rocks!

Ardent

The only thing you are guaranteed in life is that you will die someday. It's a natural occurrance, just like birth is. There's no point worrying about it, just try to be happy and live your life to the fullest.

StupidLikeAFox

Just become an undertaker, at least make some money out of it

WhiteWashMan

elivsvonchiaing wrote:

Absolutetley no knowledge here - but this sounds bitter to me? :eek:

shes one of them funny born again christian types, so she always gets defensive when people slag of any type of organised religion.

as for people dying, well, it happens every second of every day, so youd would probably just better get used to it.
you sound like some first year college student who has just got stoned for the first time and is having an 'arent all flowers beautiful', and 'why cant we all just get along' moment...

as for being insiginficant, well, youre only as insignficant as you want to be.

neuro-praxis

WhiteWashMan wrote:

shes one of them funny born again christian types, so she always gets defensive when people slag of any type of organised religion.

Owch! Straight to the heart!

/me topples over

Kev_ps3

ur alive, so why care?

Sleepy

Think about it Unreg&depressed: From all the evidence we have there is no afterlife or anything similar so you won't know anything about it when you die. Maybe there'll be a split second realisation before the actual moment of "this is it!" or something but that will only be fleeting and then you simply won't exist any more so you won't be able to feel unhappy about the fact you just died.

In "Despatches", Michael Herr talks about the needless death and the horrors he saw in the Vietnam war. He had a very interesting take on death: "the only corpse you can't bare to see... is the only one you'll never have to".

Death simply isn't worth worrying about because when it happens, you won't know that it has. Sure, you can worry about the death of those close to you but again, it's pointless worrying about it because there's very little you can do to change it. You can buy fire-extinguishers and fire-alarms for your house, learn CPR and first aid and try to make sure you're ready for emergency situations so that you can possibly save the life of a loved one but no-one can be 100% prepared for anything in life anyway.

So in short: quit worrying about it, there's no point.

ionapaul

ferdi wrote:

this body is only a shell, when it finally cracks the next part of the journey begins....i cant wait.

death rocks!

I wish I believed this. I hope that when I get old, I will be one of those atheists who get terrified and turn religious. I don't know if I could face the approaching dark...

WhiteWashMan

neuro-praxis wrote:

Owch! Straight to the heart!

/me topples over

but i did mean funny as in humourous, not funny as in 'i have a funny growth on my bottom'.


sometimes though i think more people worry about their death, what the next life will be like, is there a next life and will i have more money in the next life, than actually looking at this life.

that i think is funny peculiar, not funny haha.

cajun_tiger

the only thing in life you know is going to happen is we all die... i've been through deaths by cancer, suicided and old age and the thing is its not ment to be easy and with each and every blow it gets worse...

the only thing i can say to help is live with them in your heart, never let a day go by with out smiling at a memory of at least one of them...

we learn as we grow and it is hard... just talk it through even here to the screen... get it off your chest...

a close friend of mine killed himself not so long back and i still well up when i here his name... even now.....

don't let death get you down to much just try and smile...

xxx

kiffer

Sleepy wrote:

Think about it Unreg&depressed: From all the evidence we have there is no afterlife or anything similar so you won't know anything about it when you die. Maybe there'll be a split second realisation before the actual moment of "this is it!" or something but that will only be fleeting and then you simply won't exist any more so you won't be able to feel unhappy about the fact you just died.

What evidence that there is no afterlife?
sure there's little[zero] evidence that there is one but also sadly little[zero] that there is not.
In fact it does'nt matter if there is or is'nt, as far as i'm conserned.
I never unsderstand why people dont like the "would'nt it be nice if every one was nice" line of thought ... sure, I know it's not going to happen but to be honest it's one of the best things to aim for.
In short try to be nice to people, even jerks, and make sure you're ready to deal with problems as they arise.
Death is depressing and thinking "Oh but they're happy in the afterlife" is a crutch ... but to be honest even people who believe it are saddened by the death of a loved one ... because they're not with us anymore...

Life is for the living, morn the dead and move on. Try to enjoy life as much as possible and spread that joy to others.

Hard thing to say when over 150,000 people died so suddenly, but there's nothing we can do for the dead.
We can however help those that survived. or not ... I mean with no heaven/hell reward/punishment why would people help any one ...
this of course is a stupid question people who dont believe in god/afterlife help each other every day ... and I no lots of "god fearing" a-holes.

no I'm rambling.

in short. be nice. not be cause nice things happen to nice people ... things happen to people. good / bad / whatever things happen to every type of people ... but heay at least if you're a nice helpfull (I dont mean doormat type) person, people(not all, but most) are more likly to help you too.

I'll shut up with my would'nt it be nice if everyone was nice line now.

Sleepy

Kiffer, the facts that we've never identified a part of the body as the soul, that the 21grams attributed to the weight of the soul was disproven, the fact that after we die our bodies decompose and rot away into the ground, the fact that our thought patterns and emotions are no more than pulses of electricity are pretty conclusive proof to me that there's no afterlife because there's nothing left to go anywhere else. Unfortunately, most people don't like to accept cold hard logic because it's exactly that: cold.

You're right though: it would be great if everyone treated each other with respect and helped each other.

Von Manstein

Unreg&depressed wrote:

its all around us, 150,000 die in the space of a few days over a natural disaster
thousands dying in iraq needlessly
people close to me have died and are dying
im finding it very hard to deal with, i cant believe how insignificant we are as a race, that death can come so easily and strike at any moment and the fact that death is the end of everything for that individual, how can people comprehend something like that?
its depressing me a lot lately , i would appreciate any advice or thoughts.

One mortal feels fate's sudden Blow,
Anothers lingering death comes slow;
And what of life they take from thee,
The gods may give to punish me....

Be wise! Drink free, and in so short a space
Do not protracted hopes of life embrace!

Time crumbles things;
everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.

I recommend u try the following webpage to see other ppls views on death...
It's been quite a popular topic down through the ages

http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/death/

CathyMoran

All that you can do is live every moment to its fullest - life is about living. Try and ensure that you have no regrets. I believe that you should always be nice to people, not let rows last and if you can help someone by going the extra mile do that. Death is tough on the surviving relatives/friends not the dead person as they have left this world.

The_Conductor

CathyMoran wrote:

All that you can do is live every moment to its fullest - life is about living. Try and ensure that you have no regrets. I believe that you should always be nice to people, not let rows last and if you can help someone by going the extra mile do that. Death is tough on the surviving relatives/friends not the dead person as they have left this world.

I agree totally.
Life is about a celebration of the small things- opening your eyes and really seeing the world around you. Life is for living and experiencing- but above all else is a celebration just of being. All too often we are too busy "living" life to really appreciate life for the sake of life. In our hectic humdrum of life, we can loose track of the meaning of life, a meaning unique to each and every person. Life is for living and appreciating all the small things that happen around us, at all times keeping in mind that we only have a limited time on this planet and at all times hoping that when eventually our time is up- that our one hope will be to have no regrets. Life is for living, and appreciating. Its difficult to accept that death has a part to play, but inevitably it does. Death, the ultimate foe, is all too often pondered on by people- when they should instead be celebrating life and life's happy memories, though it can be difficult to be thankful for the short time we have had with people, and instead have a bitterness, far more than a sadness, that they have been taken away from us.

Live life to the full, take joy in the little things- and have no regrets.

S.

elivsvonchiaing

"The Lord Shri Krishna said: "Why grieve for those whom no grief is due, and yet profess wisdom? The wise grieve neither for the dead or living. There was never a time when I was not, nor thou, nor these princes were, there will never be a time when we shall cease to be.

As the soul experiences in this body, infancy, youth and old age, so finally it passes into another; the wise have no delusion about this....


...The spirit that pervades all that we see is imperishable. Nothing can destroy the spirit"" - From Ch 2 of the Bhagavad Gita as translated by Shri Purohit Swami and W.B. Yeats.

Not that I believe this or anything... but I do find it inspirational. Think I'd want this read at my funeral tbh!

LegacyUser

I Could Rant about my athiest beliefs and why they nock religion down but athesism is a state of mind achieved by unsatifaction with religion and profound understanding of nature and one's self so thats that. I have a story that may help
im 20 now by the way but when i was 10 or 11 my granny died and i started to think about death seriously at this time i was a catholic the way my parents raised me. i sat in a cold sweat every night for a week s*hitting a brick in fear of not waking up. i really mean this i was so f*ucking scared i was just frozen cold. at around 6am on the last day my dad came in and asked what was wrong i was pale as a ghost and really really tired i told him my delima and he told me what i needed to hear "thats the key point what i needed to here" now i dont know for sure if you were serious about your question but death dose scare us all at some point. and believe me i had my time with it. now the answer my dad gave me was "look around you some one must have made all we see and this is god and youll go to heven when u die. blah blah blah now this worked i slept sound sence but in the years to come i lost my religion but i still dont fear death why?
diying can be a painfull process but for most its not and either way there is only so much pain the mind can withstand with out shutting down. so the diying part is not a major worry i mean dose it really "terify" you the idea of getting a blow to the head --well no it dosent because humans cant remember emotions so thats that. now as for diying you will be dead you wont be alert to feel afriad you can go to any afterlife you want but the truth is you will not be present when death comes hence its called death.

so all u need to worrie about is yes the "pain" of diying and to be honest this will be the least of you concerns thats why most relatives have clamed there loved ones died in a state of bliss."a nice death"

So the moral of the story is what every it takes to ease your mind be it religion athesim or counting sheep jumping a fence do this.
but do not wast a simgle moment worring about an event you will neither feel or care about.


+the final word when you get to 80 if you live that long you will be so sick of living part of you will want to die thats just life -- now if u do decide to take up religion please do the following
dont support the catholic church ever they need to appoligise for every single kid that got beat and raped and murdered by them + all the women they burned at the stake for being witches + for supporting the nazis and supporting the first brittish envasion of ireland + countless other actions i havent time to list them all. ok just stay away from religious orgainsations you can believe in god if you life just dont support religions it just give dumb people too much money and power.

Lafortezza

WhiteWashMan wrote:

'i have a funny growth on my bottom'.

Go see a doctor. This is not a medical board.

Zombienosh

In the words of the great Type o Negative........Everything Dies, sad? but true.
there are no magic words to help you come to terms with this fact, if you're a religious man pray or something. If not, then why be surprised at this sudden realisation?

Victor

Kiffer, good point. We help one another (on an individual, family, community, societal, national and global scale) in part because, one day, we may need help. And whether it's a big thing or a little thing, we can all (well most of us) understand "what if it was me?"

God ha ha wrote:

dont support the catholic church

Whoa!!! Less with the prosletysing. Those points have nothing to do with the topic.

ferdi

Sleepy wrote:

Kiffer, the facts that we've never identified a part of the body as the soul, that the 21grams attributed to the weight of the soul was disproven, the fact that after we die our bodies decompose and rot away into the ground, the fact that our thought patterns and emotions are no more than pulses of electricity are pretty conclusive proof to me that there's no afterlife because there's nothing left to go anywhere else. Unfortunately, most people don't like to accept cold hard logic because it's exactly that: cold.

agreed, however there is more to us than a body. and if there is such a thing as a soul, it wouldnt be a body part :rolleyes:

kiffer

ferdi wrote:

agreed, however there is more to us than a body. and if there is such a thing as a soul, it wouldnt be a body part :rolleyes:

I really hate the 21 grams thing.
I you ask someone where does the mind exist they might say, "in the brain, as electical signals"
How much does the mind weigh? the brain has a mass of, say, 1kg, but the mind does'nt have a mass. it's an emergant property of the signals.
so the fact that the body does'nt loose 21g (as people once said) when you die, does not mean there is no such thing as soul ... it also does not mean there is one either.

An empty HardDrive has a mass, it has the same mass when full of data. sticking it on a scales cant tell you whats on it. any more than it would with a person.

Some one mentioned that people cant remember emotions ... that's not true ... is it?
I "recall" emotions all the time ... you hear a song and it reminds you of an event, and often triggers an emotion along wiht it. same with smells.
If I'm activly thinking about some thing I want to remember an event and remember that i was have X emotion at the time but dont really feel it ... but some times as in the cases when a memory is triggered by smell or sound, unbidden, I feel the emotion linked to smell/event/memory.

off topic now ...
so in a vain atempt to stay on topic.
We fear our death because it's an unknown, a "believer" might have douts about where they're gonig, or if there is an afterlife at all.
a non-believer, might just be scaried of the idea of just not existing.

I'm allways amazed how strongly people push their point about such unproveable things ...

please note I use the words prove / proveable / unproveable to mean test/testable/untestable.


God exist, god does'nt exist,
The after life exist/ does'nt exist.
Who cares? what differance does it make in the here and now?

ferdi

kiffer wrote:

what differance does it make in the here and now?

a very large difference I would have thought!

if there is no heaven/hell then we can do as we please, but if there is we have to be 'good' to avoid the flaming pits of hell.

the point is not weather or not it would make a dfference but rather that we can (and must) never know therefore it should make no difference in the here and now.

but the human condition being what it is....we cant help but wonder...and as such worry

elivsvonchiaing

kiffer wrote:

God exist, god does'nt exist,
The after life exist/ does'nt exist.
Who cares? what differance does it make in the here and now?

The difference is not appreciable in our own lives - think its whether other species inherit the Earth tbh. The behaviour of each and everyone of us makes a difference imho! Check this out: http:\\www.tzuchi.org

Calibos

ferdi wrote:

if there is no heaven/hell then we can do as we please, but if there is we have to be 'good' to avoid the flaming pits of hell.

God (no pun intended!), I hate when that one is trotted out.

"Well if there is no God or Heavenly reward or Hellish punishment, whats to stop me from doing anything I want like murdering or raping or stealing"

Well I would hope that morals and the knowledge that murdering and raping and stealing would be wrong might stop you committing these acts even without fear of Godly reprisal.

"Aha! but how do you know committing these acts are wrong, who gave you this sense of right and wrong...these morals. They were a gift from God of course!"

Eh No! We evolved these instincts of fairplay and right and wrong. You can see parallels of 'morals' within the animal kingdom today. There was a documentary explaining an experiment with monkies where if a monkey performed a task it was given a reward of a piece of celery. It was quite happy with its celery and continued to perform the task again and again to get more celery. Then the monkey in the second cage which was visible to the first was given the same task to perform but this second monkey got a piece of banana as its reward every time. Basically the first monkey on seeing this then refused to continue to perform its task upon seeing the second monkey getting a better reward than him, even though he was quite happy with gewtting celery up till that point. He basically went off in a huff.

ie. Thats not fair, he's getting a better reward than me for the same task. Not Fair. A monkey with a sense of fair play!!

Zaphod B

Personally I think it's sad that people think we need to be 'good' to get into heaven or avoid doing unpleasant things to others in order to avoid hell. That way it's reduced to a 'means to an end', just like the logic that says you should give to charity primarily because it makes you feel good rather than because you actually care whether people benefit. While I won't discount the possibility of some kind of existence after death (because let's face it, I wouldn't be able to prove either side of that argument), I don't for one second believe in hell or any other place of punishment for bad things done during one's liftetime. Yet miraculously I have so far avoiding murdering, raping or mugging anyone. Some might say that subconsciously it's only fear of the reprisal, either by temporal or spiritual powers, that stops me from doing these things. And I might stick my fist in my mouth and gnaw my arm off in desperation at the sheer horrible cynicism of that outlook.

As for death, I understand where you (original poster) are coming from - when you lack the necessary certainty (read smugness) allowed by complete faith in either science or religion, death can really get to you - you can do whatever you like but you'll never prevent it, and you can think as long and hard as possible but you'll never understand it - it's helplessness in its purest form. I can only agree with most of the above posts - since you can't do anything about it, just get on with your life! Put it this way; the longer you spend thinking about death, the less time you have to live.

Sleepy

kiffer wrote:

I really hate the 21 grams thing.
I you ask someone where does the mind exist they might say, "in the brain, as electical signals"
How much does the mind weigh? the brain has a mass of, say, 1kg, but the mind does'nt have a mass. it's an emergant property of the signals.
so the fact that the body does'nt loose 21g (as people once said) when you die, does not mean there is no such thing as soul ... it also does not mean there is one either.

An empty HardDrive has a mass, it has the same mass when full of data. sticking it on a scales cant tell you whats on it. any more than it would with a person.

Some one mentioned that people cant remember emotions ... that's not true ... is it?
I "recall" emotions all the time ... you hear a song and it reminds you of an event, and often triggers an emotion along wiht it. same with smells.
If I'm activly thinking about some thing I want to remember an event and remember that i was have X emotion at the time but dont really feel it ... but some times as in the cases when a memory is triggered by smell or sound, unbidden, I feel the emotion linked to smell/event/memory.

off topic now ...
so in a vain atempt to stay on topic.
We fear our death because it's an unknown, a "believer" might have douts about where they're gonig, or if there is an afterlife at all.
a non-believer, might just be scaried of the idea of just not existing.

I'm allways amazed how strongly people push their point about such unproveable things ...

please note I use the words prove / proveable / unproveable to mean test/testable/untestable.


God exist, god does'nt exist,
The after life exist/ does'nt exist.
Who cares? what differance does it make in the here and now?

So the soul is magnetism now? :rolleyes: We're just meat, bones and electricity. Deal with it people.

ferdi

eh, calibos - thats not my opinion, i'm just pointing out that that is the axe some people still grind.

Calibos

I perhaps didn't make it clear in my post but I knew you weren't. I was expanding on that part of your point. The differance a 'Yeah' in my post would have made!

ie. ......Yeah! I hate when that one is trotted out.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Stark

Unreg&depressed wrote:

its all around us, 150,000 die in the space of a few days over a natural disaster
thousands dying in iraq needlessly
people close to me have died and are dying
im finding it very hard to deal with, i cant believe how insignificant we are as a race, that death can come so easily and strike at any moment and the fact that death is the end of everything for that individual, how can people comprehend something like that?
its depressing me a lot lately , i would appreciate any advice or thoughts.

Try focusing more on spirituality. Many religions require you to delude yourself, but if you research a genuine spiritual path for yourself you'll feel much more convinced of something more after the grave.