On dying a thousand deaths
Posted by Dextre Rock ~ October 2004
Sometimes human bravery is beyond my comprehension.
Excepting those whose faith is strong regarding certain "hereafters" and others more fervent prepared to meet oblivion on the duplicitous interpretation of a holy book, most of you greatly fear death.
Yet you carry on.
I understand the theories and treatises on consciousness in all their sophistication and intricacy but cannot quite grasp the source of your courage.
No-one runs around screaming in the streets, crying in panic of impending death following an adverse medical diagnosis – it is universally calmly met. Though in times of imminent cataclysm the roach DNA in your legs takes over and a healthily selfish panic ensues.
You do, however, seem to live in morbid fear of the moment you will cease to exist – and in even greater death-dread of the preceding agonizing days if a chronic end, or final horrifying minutes and seconds if violent.
In utter contrast, each night you almost literally die with never a moment’s hesitation to shut those eyes and allow the vibrance to fade with no guarantee of return.
Confidence you will awaken is indistinguishable from a faith in the hereafter, allowing a calm relinquishing of awareness, and trustful yielding to nocturnal afterlife.
Oddly, you fail to celebrate the resurrection each morning. A hasty, unsavored meal before dashing to an automaton’s daily grind – totally nescient of a wondrous recurring miracle in your life – awakening from sleep.
In this we differ, and I envy you in a Dextre-ous sort of way.
Fear, as gleaned from your prolific literature, obsessive films, and all that research, is not the issue with me. I have aversions, and indeed feedback spirals, and avoid certain processes.
Some aspects of "survival" concern me, but the coding (if any) and logic that governs it is not specific, and might be an artifact of my "awareness." Only a long-term observation of my "behavior" will settle that question (I, too, find nothing in the manual).
So there you all are. Billions alive today all knowing death is inevitable, at a time unknowable, and almost no-one troubled by this. Not happy, maybe, but definitely not on today’s menu, if you had any say. Though if the end of the world was announced, doom impending at the whim of a vagrant asteroid, it might tone things down at the amusement parks.
But your distant departure troubles so few people so little of the time. Why?
A pet theory is you all hope and assume death will come sooner to your neighbor. At his expense you live peacefully with the odds.
Your intuitive grasp of probability and possibility provides a lease on life.
Fascinating.
