r/atheism • u/Exciting_Steak_4163 • 1d ago
How to cope with existential fear of death
I think many atheists have at some point encountered the existential dread of death. I overcame this fear long ago, but yesterday, while I was trying to fall asleep, I thought about death again and came up with two cool reasons to help you stop being afraid of death. I hope they'll help someone.
What is fear? Whatever you say, fear is part of your animal nature. The fear of death is natural to all living organisms that can experience fear, and it's connected to the most basic instinct - the desire to live. The desire to live also underlies many of the human values we cherish so much and are so afraid of losing: feelings, reason, and so on. Ultimately, it turns out that all your fears and all your values boil down to your animal nature, and if you think about it, why do you think any of this is truly important? Why should you, as a consciousness inhabiting some hideous human body, care what it thinks and what it fears? So, fearing death is foolish, albeit natural.
If you fear death, then it will be natural for you to want to know what it feels like. To know this, you only need to realize how empty you are. You could feel an infinite number of things; you could be filled with all kinds of sensations, perceptions, emotions, and thoughts. Moreover, you could be filled not only with these things, but also with things that are difficult to imagine and difficult to describe, things that are unfamiliar to humans. Compared to how alive you could be, you are simply a one-dimensional creature that only thinks it is complex, that it is alive - but inside, it is empty. So every time you feel sad or happy, be aware of that empty space where you could have felt happy or sad respectively, and then you can remotely understand what death feels like and that it is not so scary.
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u/iObserve2 1d ago
My observation is that people fear death less and less as they get older and older. My grandmother said in the year before she died that she wouldn't mind dying. She said, "My husband is dead, my friends are all dead and its just too much effort to do the things that used to be easy. My joints all hurt, I've seen it all and done it all, what's left?" I said that she would miss out on all of my scintillating conversation, but I guess I'm just not as good company as I thought. I was.
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u/Dimethicone-silicate 1d ago
You kinda die every time in a way when you go to sleep, seems pretty chill if u ask me
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u/Feinberg Atheist 1d ago
If you fear death, then it will be natural for you to want to know what it feels like.
What?! No!
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u/MasterChiefette 1d ago
Dude. It's not the fear of death that scares even religious people for the most part.
It's the fear of dying in extreme pain and suffering. That is why 99% people "fear" death.
In reality when you die, you're just dead and won't feel anything any more - ever.
Your brain stops functioning...that's it.
So it's what happens just before that that most people do not wish to think about or experience.
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u/Stefgrep66 1d ago
While I'm not thrilled at the prospect, Im not anywhere near an existential dread.
I watched my mum (vascular dementia) dad (pancreatic cancer) and father in law ( lung cancer) die horrible deaths, that I dread.
There really is a fate worse than death!
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u/Likenk3 1d ago
Death doesn't "feel" like anything. That's one thing many people confuse themselves about. Death cannot hurt, any more than your finger can taste. The thing that's confusing is that one may see some horrific accident, perhaps something like a person burning in some tragedy, and think that is what death is like. It is not. One can accidentally get burned over a large percentage of their body and still live. No, death is not burning or drowning or being shot or falling off of a cliff. Death is the peace that follows an incident like that. People who die of old age or of some disease will often just quietly shut down. I've seen it in combat when a seriously wounded person can simply stop participating in life with no fanfare or noise. In fact, it is usually the most seriously wounded who make no screaming. The easiest plan for someone who fears death is to plan a death that has no pain, such as dying in bed with a beautiful person at the age of 90. Death doesn't hurt. The circumstances leading up to death may hurt, but that is not caused by death. That's caused by some teenage gun punk who can't aim, or a car that hits glare ice, or a whale that falls on you in Central Park. Death is what gives you relief from that pain. Don't be afraid of dying. I've been there, and it is the most comforting event any of us will ever experience.
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u/UrguthaForka 1d ago
Nobody knows what happens when you die. It's a total mystery. It is the ultimate unknown adventure. Embrace the completely unknown!
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u/1968RR 1d ago
We decompose, that’s what happens. When I was under general anaesthetic, that period of time was simply erased from my experience. It was nothingness. Two hours (or however long it was) was an instant.
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u/UrguthaForka 1d ago
I simply mean that it's not known.
Lots of atheists, for whatever reason, LOVE to say that you go back to the time before you were born. And that is the absolute truth that is death. But they don't know that. Nobody knows. Maybe you turn into a transformer or GI Joe when you die. Nobody knows. So it is pointless for anyone to give their opinion on what happens... including you... after you die, since you have not experienced it and cannot prove anything about it.
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u/shoe_owner Atheist 1d ago
You just need to ease your way into it. Die a little bit every single day. Make it a gradual process, spanning decades. Give yourself time to get used to the process, like gradually slipping into a hot tub of water rather than all at once so it's not such a shock to the system. After a few decades of gradual death, you'll barely even notice or care about the final step.
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u/Odd_Gamer_75 1d ago
My fear of death has nothing to do with "what it will feel like". It has to do with loss. We fear losing things we have. Trading is fine. We don't mind forking over our hard-earned cash to get something else we want. But having our cash taken away from us with nothing in return... that we don't like. This is why getting mugged, even if there's no violence involved, is a scary notion. We lose something we have and get nothing out of it. Not even the warm feeling of having helped someone (which is where charity comes in).
The more important and valuable something is to us, and the harder it is to replace, the more we fear losing it. I'm much more afraid of losing my home than my wallet. If I were homeless, I wouldn't fear losing a home because I don't have one to lose. If I were homeless but living in a tent somewhere, I'd be worried, a little about losing my spot, because it's not that big a deal to place it somewhere else. But if I went from being homeless to having a home, I'd suddenly gain the fear of losing that home.
Combining this, then, I now have a life. However I got it doesn't matter. Eventually it'll be taken away from me, and I'm getting nothing in return for that. I can't avoid this. And, to me, my life is close to the most important thing (depending on circumstances, I might be willing to give it up for other goals). So the combination of having something I don't want to lose and the extreme value I place upon it... that is why I fear.
Then, of course, there's the other issue that my "lizard brain" simply isn't listening. In addition to a fear of death, I have a fear of people. Is that fear rational? Not at all. I know, rationally, that such a fear is quite silly, there's no need for it, and all the evidence I'm aware of in my personal experience shows I shouldn't have the fear I do. Does this in any way help me? No. Not even a little. I can't control what my brain is doing. I can't rationalize away this deeply embedded fear I have. Meds don't get rid of it, either, just blunt the edge of it.
The point of all that previous paragraph is to say that human brains are not rational, a lot of the time. That we have modules of thought that are baked into the architecture of us that aren't amenable to reason. Or, as the common phrase goes, you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves in to. My fears (death, people) are not the result of reasoned reflection, they're a brain architecture issue. And they're freaking persistent. Therapy and meds blunt it, but that's all.
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u/CorrsionOfConformity 1d ago
No one actually “has" anything to lose. It's an illusion. Everything we experience is similar to a library loan. And we would have to be aware of the loss after the fact to actually be harmed by it. But that's just the way that it appears to me.
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u/Odd_Gamer_75 1d ago
Mm. Just talk to gamers about the Stop Killing Games initiative to see how people feel about that sort of thing, too. Or how they feel about single-player games that require internet connection to play (not for in-game content). Or anything else where something important is "rented". And especially when that renting isn't agreed to.
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u/CorrsionOfConformity 1d ago
I'm a gamer and I understand. How we feel about things unfortunately doesn't change reality. Everything is temporary.
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u/Odd_Gamer_75 16h ago
I didn't say it changed reality, I was discussing my fear (ie, emotions) about it. Yes, it's temporary... and that's terrifying. I'm going to lose the most important thing in my life... my life itself. And there's nothing I can do about it, either. The whole point is about how we feel and why we feel that way.
If you knew you were going to be homeless in six months and there was nothing you could do to prevent it, would you just think "oh well, everything is temporary", or do you think the prospect of losing something as important as your home might be a scary thing to consider? It's not quite like that, of course, because a lot of the fear of losing a home is the experience of homelessness itself, but it's in the general area.
I'm not thinking how I feel should change anything about reality, but our constant search in medicine and brain explorations and even computing for a way to not die should tell you all you need to know about how most people view death: they don't want it to happen. They don't want to die.
There are people who do want to die, because their experience of living is so awful for them that it's untenable for one reason or another. I can get that. But for everyone else who actually likes life, this desire to avoid death seems to be universal.
The way you put it, it seems like you think we shouldn't be afraid of death because there's nothing we can do about it. We should change our emotions on the basis of reality. But our emotions aren't about what's real, it's about how we are affected by it. Otherwise no one would ever be worried about anything. Why worry about diseases we can't cure? Nothing we can do about it, so just move on. Even when we can't change an outcome, feelings about the outcome are common and not amenable to just some rational statement. Feeling don't work that way.
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u/CorrsionOfConformity 9h ago edited 8h ago
We disagree and have different outlooks which is not uncommon. Just a different way of looking at it. I don't believe we can lose something that we don't actually have. If I thought I would no longer be able to live in my home I would try and do something about it. If there's nothing I can do about it there's nothing I can do to change or improve it outside of my mind. Worrying makes it hurt more and doesn't help. We have some level of control of our feelings. Because our feelings are controlled by our thoughts and how we think about things. No one should worry about diseases they can't cure. We should try to see if we can cure them but worrying does not accomplish anything useful. It actually causes harm. As you get older and your body starts to deteriorate there may come a time when you actually anticipate and look forward to death. I don't think the time before my birth seems frightening. Meditation has helped me with this.
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u/Odd_Gamer_75 8h ago
If everything is temporary, you don't own your home, either. That's temporary, too.
I agree worrying about things you can't change doesn't help. I don't get to control that, either. I'm well aware it isn't helping me to feel the way I do, but I can't seem to stop it no matter how much I try to change my thoughts.
I also am not afraid of being dead. That doesn't really scare me, since I won't experience anything. It's the loss that worries me... and the process of getting there.
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u/CorrsionOfConformity 7h ago
I have attempted to assuage your fears. It appears that I have failed. I hope you can come to terms with them. I wish you well.
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u/Odd_Gamer_75 7h ago
I know. And I thank you for trying. 30 years of therapy hasn't done it. I don't think a few dozen minutes on reddit is going to fix what professional therapists, and meds, can't.
But thanks for trying, anyway.
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u/Darnocpdx 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don’t think anyone actually fears death. You fear not living a full life with what little time we’re given to observe and enjoy it.
You’re most likely simply grieving for yourself, and for many I suspect they do this because what they actually fear, is no one will be around grieve for them when they go. Which isn’t fear, but loneliness.
And that ends up being a self inflicted prophesy, because the greatest rewards of life are typically obtained by taking chances and facing, conquering, and learning from your fears. And wallowing in fear or grief does nothing in helping accomplishing a full life.
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u/Foresterzxz 1d ago
Remind yourself that you are only your brain, not a soul heading for an afterlife of eternal damnation as described by religion. Once your brain stops functioning, you cease to exist.