I fear death much like anyone else. In fact, much like most mammals.
Fear of death is a good thing. It keeps I, even us, out of a lot of trouble.
But humans are nothing if not complicated. Society and culture go along with giant brains that can create mental virtual realities that sometimes cause us to lose touch with the world.
Religions have long appealed to people by promising "life after death." The idea of an afterworld or heaven has competed with the idea of reincarnation for at least 2000 years.
People don't like the feeling of fear. That is the whole point. People have good memories, they see people die, and instead of getting on with life they start dwelling on death. Religions calm some people down: they don't feel they need to worry so much about death as long as they follow their religion's rules for getting into heaven.
Yet religions have many negative consequences, including making people gullible about all sorts of issues. Religious contempt for life can even lead to war, as when the Roman Catholic Popes encouraged Europeans to conquer the Middle East in the Crusades, with a promise that anyone who died in the crusade would be admitted to eternal life in heaven.
I fear death, but I don't want to be paralyzed in life by my fear of death. It is one thing to run away from an immediate, life-threatening circumstance, it is another thing to hide from life itself.
The way I figure it is that scientists say the universe is about 13 billion years old. They might change that figure from time to time, but I'll use it here. I was born in the mid-1950's. Before I was born I did not exist, not in any meaningful way. That was being not-alive, which is to say dead.
So I was dead for 13 billion years. And what of it? No big deal. I did not know I was dead. Nothing to worry about.
I am pretty sure I have just about 3 decades of life ahead of me at maximum. After than I will be dead for as long as the universe, or the space-time continuum, continues to exist. I won't be conscious, so I won't know I ever existed.
That is just the way it is for living organisms. We have our time, then we die. The important thing is to have a good time (defining good however you like) while alive.
Just in case you are missing the idea of scale here, reflect on the number one billion, or 1,000,000,000. Few humans live more than 100 years. 10 times one hundred is one thousand. String together a thousand thousands and you have a million. Then string together one thousand millions and you have a billion.
So I am just a meteor burning in the night. My entire life seems long to me, because I am in it, but to the Universe I am pretty close to nothing.
And I am fine with that. When I die other people will continue to live, animals will continue to live, stars will continue to shine. That is life after death. I won't be there. But as long as humanity endures, people like me will be there. Just as I am here now, long after my ancestors have died.
Showing posts with label fear. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fear. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Fearing a Ten or Eleven
If the late Japanese earthquake had been a 8.0 (on the Richter scale), there would have been almost no damage in northern coastal Japan. The sea walls would have stopped the tsunami, saving thousands of people from drowning. The waters would not have washed over the nuclear power plant backup generators, leading to overheating to the edge of catastrophe. But the quake measured in at 9.0, which is 10 times as powerful as 8.0. A Ten would be another 10 times as powerful, or 100 times as powerful as an Eight.
Human fear comes in a lesser variety of magnitudes. The emotional intensity of fear from social embarrassment can be greater than the fear created by a real, potential death situation. Fear guides more human action than most people will admit. Because of our limited emotional range, we tend to exaggerate small risks and minimize larger risks.
Somewhere out there is a Ten. Somewhere out there is an Eleven, even. A scenario of apocalyptic proportions. Strangely, it is hard to prepare for a Ten or Eleven. Hence we have stopped preparing for a nuclear war. If an atomic weapon goes off over a city, survival in that city is purely an accident, and probably an unhappy one.
Instead, depending on our personalities and cultures, we might fear immigrants, germs, vaccinations, foods containing wheat or peanuts, ideas, or a harsh word from some local community member.
Some fear, however, is rational. That is, our emotions and our pragmatic responses line up with real danger pretty well. We avoid hot things and electrified things. Most of us don't drive too fast, most of the time. We don't jump off high spots, and we don't drink from containers marked poison.
Social and economic fears occupy a middling ground that tell us much about a person's character. Some of us think nothing of telling a boss to "take this job and shove it," others never leave a job unless they are fired. Some feel safe dressed conservatively, others go out of their way to dress strangely. Some are savers, some spendthrifts. Mostly these choices are not life endangering, but those who are overly afraid of society can be crippled, while those who are socially fearless may also find themselves friendless.
The recent recession looked like it might develop into a Nine or Ten, but in retrospect it was a warning shot, an Eight. This illustrates the danger of generalization, because the recession affected some Americans (and global citizens) not at all, while for some it was economically catastrophic, resulting in bankruptcy, or even death.
Famine used to be the big worry of people and governments. Because the history of the United States is largely the history of converting near-wilderness to farmland, famine has not been an issue here. During the Cold War, when officials worried about Atomic War, the U.S. put together a food reserve system (which also helped keep farm commodity prices high). Now there is very little in the way of stored food or production reserves of food in the U.S. Yet almost no one worries about that. People on the West Coast and in China have been hoarding Iodine this last week, but they expect food to be available in the usual places the next time they shop, and for as far as they can see into the future. Because they do it every day, they forget that driving to the supermarket is more dangerous than almost anything else they do.
In the end, we all die. Yet we fear death not just for ourselves, but for our friends and loved ones. We grieve when someone we knows dies; we even grieve for our pets. Yet we must accept death, both our own and for others. To deny death is to deny reality, and that leads to all sorts of problems, including many people being trapped by their fears in religious cults that suck the life out of life.
Most of the risks we run are inherent in where we are born, geographically, economically and culturally. Being born in a refugee camp brings different risks than being born in a mansion of the possessors of the land where the refugees once lived. Most of the world's people are neither refugees nor millionaires. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is famous for saying "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," during the Great Depression, but then again he was from an incredibly wealthy family and had an nice salary as President of the United States on top of that.
We all figure out what is going on as best we can. Calm, wise people can prepare for the Fives, Sixes, and Sevens of life. With an Eight you hope you survive the initial shock, then deal with the hand that is dealt you as best you can. As to Nines, they are rare, and survival is mostly pure luck. When the Tens and Elevens come, one can only hope they are local, not global, and that they are in someone else's locality.
Human fear comes in a lesser variety of magnitudes. The emotional intensity of fear from social embarrassment can be greater than the fear created by a real, potential death situation. Fear guides more human action than most people will admit. Because of our limited emotional range, we tend to exaggerate small risks and minimize larger risks.
Somewhere out there is a Ten. Somewhere out there is an Eleven, even. A scenario of apocalyptic proportions. Strangely, it is hard to prepare for a Ten or Eleven. Hence we have stopped preparing for a nuclear war. If an atomic weapon goes off over a city, survival in that city is purely an accident, and probably an unhappy one.
Instead, depending on our personalities and cultures, we might fear immigrants, germs, vaccinations, foods containing wheat or peanuts, ideas, or a harsh word from some local community member.
Some fear, however, is rational. That is, our emotions and our pragmatic responses line up with real danger pretty well. We avoid hot things and electrified things. Most of us don't drive too fast, most of the time. We don't jump off high spots, and we don't drink from containers marked poison.
Social and economic fears occupy a middling ground that tell us much about a person's character. Some of us think nothing of telling a boss to "take this job and shove it," others never leave a job unless they are fired. Some feel safe dressed conservatively, others go out of their way to dress strangely. Some are savers, some spendthrifts. Mostly these choices are not life endangering, but those who are overly afraid of society can be crippled, while those who are socially fearless may also find themselves friendless.
The recent recession looked like it might develop into a Nine or Ten, but in retrospect it was a warning shot, an Eight. This illustrates the danger of generalization, because the recession affected some Americans (and global citizens) not at all, while for some it was economically catastrophic, resulting in bankruptcy, or even death.
Famine used to be the big worry of people and governments. Because the history of the United States is largely the history of converting near-wilderness to farmland, famine has not been an issue here. During the Cold War, when officials worried about Atomic War, the U.S. put together a food reserve system (which also helped keep farm commodity prices high). Now there is very little in the way of stored food or production reserves of food in the U.S. Yet almost no one worries about that. People on the West Coast and in China have been hoarding Iodine this last week, but they expect food to be available in the usual places the next time they shop, and for as far as they can see into the future. Because they do it every day, they forget that driving to the supermarket is more dangerous than almost anything else they do.
In the end, we all die. Yet we fear death not just for ourselves, but for our friends and loved ones. We grieve when someone we knows dies; we even grieve for our pets. Yet we must accept death, both our own and for others. To deny death is to deny reality, and that leads to all sorts of problems, including many people being trapped by their fears in religious cults that suck the life out of life.
Most of the risks we run are inherent in where we are born, geographically, economically and culturally. Being born in a refugee camp brings different risks than being born in a mansion of the possessors of the land where the refugees once lived. Most of the world's people are neither refugees nor millionaires. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is famous for saying "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," during the Great Depression, but then again he was from an incredibly wealthy family and had an nice salary as President of the United States on top of that.
We all figure out what is going on as best we can. Calm, wise people can prepare for the Fives, Sixes, and Sevens of life. With an Eight you hope you survive the initial shock, then deal with the hand that is dealt you as best you can. As to Nines, they are rare, and survival is mostly pure luck. When the Tens and Elevens come, one can only hope they are local, not global, and that they are in someone else's locality.
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