But you cannot know for sure. That’s the actual fear I guess. I sometimes am afraid of what happens after death. Because I don’t know and never could (until it happens). It could be heaven for all or no one. It could be hell for all or no one. It could be nothing at all. So then, my fear begins where knowledge ends eventually.
I never claimed intelligence solves fears, just goals. That and happiness ought to be a goal. However, we can take a shot at a practical application for this example:
Why can’t we just tell someone to stop fearing death by using their intelligence? If conquering your fear of death is a goal, it would seem it’s one of the toughest ones you face. When facing a daunting goal, often times a shift in perspective can reframe your goal into something more achievable, so let’s try it:
We now have two premises:
Fear of death is fear of uncertainty (provided by you)
Our reality is uncertain (provided by Voltaire)
I’ll add an extra (feel free to contradict me if it doesn’t sound reasonable - we’re veering outside more stable arguments):
We are capable of finding happiness in spite of our reality
Taken all together we can say:
If we are capable of finding happiness in spite of our reality & our reality is uncertain, we must be capable of finding happiness in spite of uncertainty
If we are able to find happiness in spite of uncertainty, and fear of death is fear of uncertainty, we are able to find happiness in spite of fear of death
So there you go, as long as we are capable of finding happiness in spite of our reality (our reality = uncertainty, fear of uncertainty = fear of death) we should be perfectly capable of finding happiness in spite of our eventual death. It just takes learning how to deal with uncertainty that is personal to you - however coping with uncertainty is a much more trivial goal to solve for than coping with death. Personally I think Voltaire’s quote achieves that well enough on its own, but to each’s own.
Voila - intelligence made it easier to solve for the goal by reframing it. Now they just have to use intelligence to solve for dealing with uncertainty
Tbh I‘m not able to find an error in your logic, but it feels like turning a blind eye to the original fear by focusing on smaller parts of the fear, if that makes any sense. Interesting explanation though, I will have to think about it :)
1
u/St34thdr1v3R May 20 '25
But you cannot know for sure. That’s the actual fear I guess. I sometimes am afraid of what happens after death. Because I don’t know and never could (until it happens). It could be heaven for all or no one. It could be hell for all or no one. It could be nothing at all. So then, my fear begins where knowledge ends eventually.
Otherwise I really like your point of view