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heskey30 t1_iz3iy41 wrote

Reply to comment by EdHerzriesig in How Death Can Help Us Live: a philosophical approach to the problem of death by simsquatched

Why? As living animals it's our prime directive to stay alive even if it's eventually a losing battle. What kind of enlightenment do you think we'll achieve by going against our nature? I suspect all we get out of it is the possibility of suicidal ideation.

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EdHerzriesig t1_iz3sjv4 wrote

Your nature and my nature is to die at some time. It's not going against the nature of what is human to accept death as an integral part of existence.

I do not see how this would promote suicidal ideation. If anything then I'd suspect the opposite. A closer relationship to death might make us more content and relaxed with our own humanity.

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heskey30 t1_iz3uvxf wrote

This sounds like dogma to me. I haven't heard a concrete reason that death being inevitable implies we should accept it.

There are plenty of reasons why we shouldn't. It's not in the nature of a living being to accept death because living beings are driven by survival and reproduction and death is the opposite of that. From the moment we come into this world, our bodies scream at us to avoid death. It makes surrounding people unhappy. It means the destruction of memories, personalities, and abilities in the dying person. How does accepting it benefit us? How does it grant wisdom?

Everyone who isn't a child knows we're going to die, and we shouldn't try to hide that fact because that would be lying - but the pervading culture that we should make peace with death or pretend we think it's a good thing in an abstract way seems like it can only do harm.

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EdHerzriesig t1_iz465rf wrote

I am more of the opposite understanding. However, feel free to agonize over your mortality by trying to solve it as a problem. If transhumanism is your thing and you think that imortality would solve your problem with death then by all means, although I personally would rather put my energy into something else. Death dosen't only have to tragic or sad just as life dosen't have to be tragic and sad.

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VitriolicViolet t1_izc933l wrote

this.

why bother wasting life on death? far too many people on this sub have an irrational focus on and fear of dying.

if any given problem is inevitable and unaddressable why waste energy on it?

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VitriolicViolet t1_izc8w0j wrote

why?

its just death, never understood why it bothers people so much.

everything ends, literally everything.

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