I don’t fear death, it is natural. I fear the suffering society will put me through when I’m old and ill, because they can’t cope with death.
It’s good we are starting to develop dignified death laws. With the world population as it is, more people will die in the next decade than any other in history (even the plagues). Just looking at population graphs, 1B might die between 2050 and 2060. Much suffering can be avoided.
My SO worked at a nursing home which had several elderly with dementia cry out they just wanted to die all day long, day after day.
Yet they got their flu shots and got treated for any infections they might get. This went on for the two years my SO worked there.
My dad had cancer that spread to his lungs, and then he got pneumonia. The day after being hospitalized, he asked the doctor if it was a chance he'd ever get home and they admitted that no, that was not very likely. Later that day he asked them to turn off the oxygen, which they did after confirming his wish. He passed peacefully a few hours later.
I was so glad he was given the opportunity to make his choice, and that the doctors respected it.
Sure, I lost some months with my dad, but he'd be in a hospital bed struggling to breathe. I hope I get to make a similar choice when that time comes.
My 85yo dad just spent 3 weeks in a nursing home because he had a digestive issue that weakened him. The stay made his mental and physical health very much worse. He didn't get enough sleep in there (lots of noise all night) and the food was abysmal - he already had problems with sarcopenia and they weren't feeding him nearly enough protein. I'd call him up or visit and he seemed to be having trouble separating his dreams from reality - he was hallucinating which isn't something that was happening before. At the 21 day point they released him (due to medicare limits) and I took him home to his house and stayed with him for 2 weeks making sure he had good food, good sleep and some sun every day. By the end of those 2 weeks he was remarkably better and I was able to leave him on his own. Nursing facilities are necessary for some, but for many they're making their problems much worse.
That’s not necessarily a choice that the nursing home can make. Many families struggle with letting a loved one go. Up to a few years ago, I was meeting with an obviously struggling 101yo weekly, and the family refused hospice despite it being covered by Medicare. The family equated hospice with actively killing someone.
And on the other side of the coin I worked at a nursing home where some guy who was in pretty bad shape and had maybe a month or so left had a DNR, keeled over, got R'd because poor process (to the great annoyance of the family), did a lap around the hospital, came back to the nursing home and months later walked out, on his own, with a cane. IDK how long he lived after that but the point stands.
People are different. For example, my fear of death is in the from existential dread. It's an occasional thing.
We should probably try harder to make people healthier in general. Much of the frailty of the elderly can be avoided with rigorous exercise. Maybe heart disease and dementia doesn't have to be your fate. I don't know how much longer people will be able to live if they optimize the hell out of their biomarkers.
But I do know...I don't want to be in pain and frail when I die. The best way to do that is making health my priority.
There's also the possibility that you can suffer from a long series of health conditions causing you a very reduced quality of life over a long period of time, have a stroke, and become bedridden. Perosnally I'd rather be healthy up until that particular time comes (if it indeed comes for me)
without disputing that there exists an optimal diet/exercise regiment for longevity and health, i very much doubt that we at present have a clue what it is. every day new science and medical evidence overturns old, and reproducibility fails.
optimizing diet and rigorous exercise comes at some cost in the form of time spent in your precious youth. so you sacrifice youthtime for a chance at a longer better old age. each hour of exercise does not make you live an hour longer, so you are net negative from the get-go. (if you love exercise, it's not a loss, but in that case you would do it anyway even if it shortened your life because you love it, no need to spend time extolling its virtues)
i optimize for doing what i love to do all the time.
> optimizing diet and rigorous exercise comes at some cost in the form of time spent in your precious youth. so you sacrifice youthtime for a chance at a longer better old age. each hour of exercise does not make you live an hour longer, so you are net negative from the get-go.
Pretty much all science on exercise's impact on both physical and health can be loosely summarized by "doing anything, anything at all is likely to have significant short and long term benefits". Similarly, nutrition can be summarised as "try eat a balanced diet, but at the very least just avoid hyper UPF, and don't eat red meat every day". You might decide that's worth it, but "walk your kids/dog/partner/self twice a day and only eat red meat on the weekends" is probably enough to make a significant impact for a very significant number of people.
Even if they don't enjoy working out, most people would probably enjoy living in a strong, healthy, good looking body. The hour of exercise makes every future hour of life slightly better, even in the short term (within a couple months of effort). Following pretty much any strength training program will also do a pretty good job even if it's not an optimal routine.
Such a wrong mindset... but you do you, don't complain later when inevitable comes, its not like there haven't been hundreds of millions of folks who made similar life decisions and we can easily see what it leads to (or doesn't).
One example out of sea of examples - climbing. Indoor, outdoor, bouldering, long walls, doesn't matter. Its an amazing activity, every single person I know is doing it at least occasionally becomes much happier during&after a session. Massive health benefits could be just a side effect and it would most probably still be the best and most memorable thing you did on that day.
Plus people in community are generally very positive, welcoming, helpful and happy to talk to. Its sort of sport that changes you in many ways for the better (healthier, happier, better life perspective and so on). How much time it takes is sort of irrelevant, ie coming and commenting here costs you probably more time than continuous amateur climbing career would do.
Change climbing for many other sports and it would still be true.
It's curious how many athletic people fit this stereotype: they can't fathom that someone might not be like them.
For a great many of us climbing is utterly terrifying. Yeah, tried it. Yeah, aware that the belay rope is there. No, it still sucks and no extra happiness is anywhere to be found except happiness that it's over.
But more importantly the athletic people underestimate just how bad unathletic people are at exercise and just how much effort even something basic is for them.
Most people could not do the basic bouldering you are about to suggest to counter my point above: they don't have the arm strength. Building that strength would take at least 6 months of a dedicated workout program and a cure for whatever psychological issues are affecting their diet. Most will never get there and suggesting to them that they can sound like "just perform a magic ritual". Oh, and after 6 months of doing the impossible their achievement is "you can do the noob bouldering". Underwhelming to say the least.
But to you exercise is easy and fun and the opposite is inconceivable. And if we dare speak up - we'll be told we are our perspective, attitude, and indeed our very life experience are invalid and wrong. Go on, hit that downvote.
You don't need to be an athlete to experience physiological gains in health. Your health improves almost immediately no matter what exercise you start doing.
I don't get how people can't be kinda freaked out by the universe subjectively fast-forwarding to its end, to occur at any time between this second and a few decades from now.
Worse you won't see how it ends! I recently read a novel (this is a massive spoiler so I am not naming it) that drove this point home extremely well and has me thinking about it all the time since I read it. The book built up a number of enticing storylines. A huge mystery, various characters had struggles we wanted to learn about. However, the book resolves almost none of this because the protagonist dies and we just never find out. That's what death is. There is no debriefing. You don't find out how life continues for your loved ones you leave behind. You don't find out who wins the next election. You don't find out how your favorite tv show wraps up or what other movies your favorite director makes. You don't find out if faster-than-light travel will be achieved, if we'll one day inhabit Mars or if quantum computers breaking RSA will cause havoc. It just en
This is highly dependent on one's own belief system and theology, because beyond a certain point, we literally can't prove what happens to a human mind when the body dies, the existence or non-existence of a soul, etc.
Believe or disbelieve whatever you like, go on about a God of the Gaps, but that's why they talk about people's religious "faith."
Of course we don't know everything and shouldn't care about everything. However, we have lots of things we care about for good and less good reasons. It's natural and good to care about your friends and family or even your country and maybe the future of humanity. We need to make decisions based on these factors. While we stop being able to influence outcomes, it would IMO be odd to simply not care what happens after.
What purpose would be served by freaking out? Would freaking out somehow help me to avoid death? Or at least prolong my life? Freaking out in fact shortens my (useful) life because now I've wasted time in some state of agitation that could have been better spent doing virtually anything else.
Hoping I get to see my grandkids. Hell, even see them start to marry off, come to that. But I'll spend what time I've got trying to enjoy the things that are here, now. You should do the same.
Being "natural" doesnt mean anything on relation to fear. Being eaten alive by lions is 100% natural too. Death is inevitable. So there is little to gain from being too afraid of it, but i would never suggest that anyone not fear the unknown. That fear is what has kept us alive and evolving. The fear is natural.
I think death being natural lends a lot of credence to the idea that it’s normal — as normal as life.
And I’d say most people probably don’t fear death or non-existence itself, but rather the process of dying (suffering, stress, pain, shame, loss of agency, the grief inflicted on others, etc). In palliative care settings, where the process of dying is well-managed (physically, emotionally, spiritually), people don’t seem to be that afraid. Many make peace. Or at least that’s the image painted by popular science articles on the matter. And speaking for myself, N=1 and all, I really do fear the process only, and not the conclusion.
That’s why I think dignified death laws for these settings are important. And why I say I fear what society will put me through when it’s my time, if such laws aren’t passed.
I am concerned in general about me living past my health-span. It’s a new concern for many, as medicine traditionally focused on prolonging lifespan. But now people are talking about how full of suffering life is when one doesn’t have whatever minimum of health they deem required to live, but are kept alive anyways. Sometimes agains their wishes. It’s just a macabre prolongation of the process of dying — something that really is scary.
Or that’s what I’m afraid of, anyways. But I understand it’s a difficult and somewhat taboo topic in society, so apols if it offends.
> now people are talking about how full of suffering life is when one doesn’t have whatever minimum of health they deem required to live, but are kept alive anyways
This is more a social anxiety than reflection of reality. To the extent we’re prolonging suffering, it’s on the order of weeks, maybe months. Not years.
Most people fear death. That’s natural. Some of us, due to being stupid, depressed or possibly enlightened, don’t. But these fears evolved for obvious reasons.
I disagree. There is increasing conversation in the medical community[0] about living past one’s health-span for years.
While fear of death is widely considered universal, many people (for various reasons) fear death significantly less than others[1]. Fear of death levels appear to generally stabilize to low past 60 years of age. Many philosophies reject the fear of death, including some of our very popular religions. Only about half of terminally ill patients feel clinically significant death anxiety[2]. It is normal to not fear death without being depressed, enlightened, or stupid.
I think it’s not so black and white as evolutionary psychology might suggest.
> increasing conversation in the medical community[0] about living past one’s health-span for years
Sure. This doesn't reflect the popular discourse, which is more concerned with fantastical edge cases.
> fear death significantly less than others
Totally agree.
> Only about half of terminally ill patients feel clinically significant death anxiety
Massive difference between death anxiety, which crosses into dreadful anticipation of a future state, and fear, which is more of a present concern. I fear getting hit by a car. I'm not really concerned with it most of the time. (And when I am, it's fleeting and limmited.)
When you say fearing death, I think you mean obsessing over death. That, I agree, is unhealthy. Fear, more generally, is an unpleasantness that results from dangers or threats. Death is very clearly a danger and threat. Contemplating it doesn't need to be uncomfortable. But it's dedidedly unnatural, if alluring, to consider one's own death monotonoically. (For what it's worth, this is closer to my experience. But I also know I have a high risk tolerance, and have to consciously keep an eye on that.)
Quality of life is often gone long before there is any imminant chance of death. Chronic pain, loss of mobility, memory, visikn, and hearing deteriorating. Drugs and all their side effects.
There is a very large gradient. Even all of those symptoms, while lower quality of life than when they were in their prime, are a far cry from being in a hospital/nursing home, with random people poking needles into you all the time, and that is a best case scenario.
I know from seeing my grandparents, who lived into upper 90s. At home, they were still happy. Being poked and prodded in a hospital is a material step down in quality of life. On top of that, imagine having a breathing tube/catheter/etc.
"If the tiger attempts to eat you, remember that you yourself are simply composed of atoms, and it is simply attempting to rearrange some of them for you."
Fear of death can be healthy (esp when one is young)! That said, courage is the first virtue, don't pay attention to people who complain about its signalling
This sort of utilitarian "unit of suffering" metric has never made much sense to me. 1B people die in a given decade, each perceives or experiences some amount of suffering, so we have say 2B units of suffering, 2 units per person on average.
Is anything better or worse if 2B people die instead of 1B with the same aggregate amount of suffering? Average suffering reduced by half! What about 100,000 people instead of 1B? Those people presumably die horrific, painful, suffering deaths but now there a lot more people alive. Is that better or worse?
Classical Utilitarianism (Bentham, Mill) is about maximizing overall well-being (or happiness), not just minimizing suffering as a number. It's not just math with units, it's about the quality and context of experiences too.
There's also average utilitarianism which says: maximize the average happiness per person.
> I don’t fear death, it is natural. I fear the suffering society will put me through when I’m old and ill, because they can’t cope with death.
Assisted death--one with dignity--is rare recent development about which I'm genuinely and wholeheartedly happy.
What unsettles me--as rational as I think I'm--is the thought of being born again (duh!). I lead a very comfortable life, but far from "perfect". I can say I'm content. What are the odds that I'll be content in my next life? How likely is it that I'll be born in the right country, to good parents, follow the right religion, and have a brain wired in the right way to make a decent living? I'm not hopeful. So, I've "decided" that I want to be a rock in all my next lives. No emotions, no feelings, no struggle, no pain, no indignation. Just a fricking rock.
I agree with your take. Very long story, while my family doesn't talk about feelings, we're pretty good at talking about end of life.
Separately, some years ago spent a good amount of time listening to what Atul Gawande thought about medicine and doctors and dying. He wrote Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End and there's a Frontline documentary (Being Mortal) about his experience and his book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQhI3Jb7vMg. I've not yet read the book.
I think you do fear death, given that you plan to live until it is physically impossible for you to do so painlessly. If you don't fear death, an easy and reliable way to avoid suffering in your old age is to painlessly commit suicide right now. But be aware that we treat people who don't express a preference for staying alive as having a serious mental illness worth locking them up for.
Fear of death is not just natural, it is the most fundamental instinct of any creature besides reproduction. Those who don't have it, don't last long. Perhaps society's attitudes towards it could profitably be improved, but don't make out like it's an irrational personality flaw.
You can’t honestly say you don’t fear death until you face it directly. Tell someone they’ll be executed tomorrow, then ask if they fear death, some people lose their minds when told they’re terminally ill. It’s not as simple as just saying, “I don’t fear death.”
Overworked nurses and suicide booth technicians on night shift will greatly dampen this utopia where dignified death isn’t usurped by lower-cost-at-all-costs reality.
It’s good we are starting to develop dignified death laws. With the world population as it is, more people will die in the next decade than any other in history (even the plagues). Just looking at population graphs, 1B might die between 2050 and 2060. Much suffering can be avoided.