dont be afraid, by sammyshmibble

What is the basis for fearing death? For the average death-fearing individual, it often originates in the pretentious assumption that death will be a negative experience. What is this presumption based upon? What reason is there to assume that the death state is so horrible that it should be feared more intensely than most anything else? In Aristotle’s Apology, Socrates makes clear that he does not fear death due to his reason that he has no knowledge of what the state entails and consequently cannot fairly assume that it is unpleasant. His reasoning is sound in that it brings to surface the flimsy nature of the rationale behind the conventional attitude towards death. Accordingly, once this poorly substantiated foundation is analyzed and deconstructed, it becomes relatively easy to understand why philosophically death might not be a state to be feared at all.
Fear of death may initially be fueled by its innately mysterious and unknown nature; for many it is common to fear that about which they have little knowledge. However, seemingly paradoxically, in reality it is that lack of knowledge about death which should remove most of the ungrounded apprehension surrounding it. Although the average person may, when questioned, admit that he really has little solid information about the nature of the death experience (or lack thereof), he may still be likely harboring a variety of assumptions.
As mentioned, from our viewpoints as living human beings, we know concretely virtually nothing about the characteristics of the death experience. Because we are unable to communicate with those who have died as well as unable to return from the death state, we have no way of retrieving knowledge of what the experience holds. Those who do “know” what the experience is like have no way of reporting that to us. Based on religious texts or other such foundations, some may come to believe that there will be an afterlife that, as far as they can conceive, will share at least some similarities to their current lives. Specifically, they may believe that they will still maintain their current personal identity, memories or relationships once they are in this afterlife. Others may believe in a different sort of continued form of life such as reincarnation. For these individuals, fear of death may be reduced due to confidence in a somewhat clear vision of their futures after they die. However, some may cling to such comforting afterlife theories simply because they are so afraid of death. Alternately, there are those who feel there is no good reason to believe in the traditional afterlife. They may perceive death as a complete annihilation of consciousness or they may admit that they do not know the characteristics of the death experience nor care to assume its nature.
Socrates argument that there is no compelling reason to fear death because of our lack of knowledge about the experience indirectly hints that the focus on death and the fear of it should be greatly reduced in the mind of mankind. Focusing on the afterlife can detract from attending to the present. Consequently, distracting oneself from the present via any degree of preoccupation with death can result in a devaluing of the vitality and worth of the immediate living experience. If one is afraid of death because it signals an ending, he may believe that his time is limited, running out, and that he is not utilizing it as effectively as he can. He may try to fight the inevitable death, allowing the fight to consume a disproportionate amount of his time instead of accepting the fact and fully embracing his present life. Life should not be viewed as a rapidly ticking time bomb with death as the destructive explosion. Although death is an end to current experience as far as we understand it, we know nothing further than that and cannot assume that it will be negative.
Also mentioned by Socrates was the provocative notion that complete annihilation of personal consciousness could possibly be beneficial. Initially, the thought of living indefinitely may appeal to those who feel pressured by an ever ticking imaginary clock. Because they perceive their prospective seventy to one hundred years of existence as much too limiting, they may excitedly, yet oftentimes naively, latch onto or fantasize about the idea of immortality. However, because we do not have experience with immortality nor even with special cases of unusually long life, we cannot really conceive what immortality would be like. How do we know that we will not eventually tire of life on earth or grow numb to its wonders and pleasures? With that in mind, Socrates’ prospect of annihilation of the personal consciousness as beneficial may provide a welcome cure to what could possibly a lagging, even eventually torturous experience. And although we cannot assume that immortality would be torturous or even negative, it is reasonable and responsible to consider its possible multiple facets.
The thought of complete annihilation of the consciousness may be incite fear in and of itself. Because, from our vantage point, we are accustomed to being in a state of consciousness (except for when we sleep) the thought of indefinitely leaving it seems cold and frightening. However, if annihilation of consciousness is the all that death contains, than really there is no reason to fear such an extinction. Specifically, because we will be unconscious in death, we will be entirely unaware of it; we will never really know it or at least not in the way we currently know things while in consciousness. To state the point even more simply, it may very well be said that it is unreasonable to fear something that we will never experience. Now, even though death has been referred to as “the death experience,” were annihilation of the consciousness to occur, death would essentially be the antithesis of experience. We will only ever know death from our living, conscious perspective and never while actually involved in it. Does one usually fear things that may happen to him in his life that he will never really experience such as unperceived microscopic organisms living on the surface of his body or unknown to him acts of murder or war occurring in far away places? Generally, such fears are not existent. Although it may seem ridiculous at first the notion that fear of death is irrational because death will never be truly experienced, when the actual definition and nature of “experience” is considered, it then makes a considerable amount of sense.
From the living human’s vantage point, there is no reason to fear death because the state (unless you consider hypothetical religious explanations) is completely removed from our current experience as we know it. Unlike with other states we perceive as horrible such as being tortured or sick, we can only conceive of death while we are not dead. Once dead we will no longer be able to even consider, let alone fear, death in any manner. Essentially, to fear death is to fear nothingness and this trails back to the initial argument that death is generally feared because it is unknown. All we can assume we know about death is nothing, or at least that it is nothing. Consequently, our fears may better be spent on thoughts of experiences or entities we actually do have the capacity to consciously endure.