• Jack Cummins
    5.3k

    I am just saying in response to you that the healthcare I worked in was not private at all. The whole emphasis was on critical analysis of any deaths that did occur was mainly connected to managers' fear of the Care Commission inspections. The Care Commission reports were essential for funding.
    Now, the Care Commission are floundering with Covid_19, but is it surprising that fear of death is subservient to money. Fear of death is abounding while austere measures are being taken in other aspects of society. Death may be quickened through poverty and homelessness.
  • Kenosha Kid
    3.2k
    is it surprising that fear of death is subservient to moneyJack Cummins

    That's fear of someone else's death, though. Different kettle of fish. Rather money is the anti-death insofar as those who have the most live the longest as a rule, but while it wins many battles, it always loses the war.

    Death may be quickened through poverty and homelessness.Jack Cummins

    It certainly is.
  • Valentinus
    1.6k

    Fear comes with the equipment. You are alive because of all the ways fear stopped you from from doing life ending stuff. Your ancestors honed this package down to you to on a cellular level. Each one of us is dangerous because of processes one cannot escape regardless of luck of birth or station in life.

    Where there is a greater degree of freedom is the matter of expectation in life. Each day we wake up is not death. Whatever we make of that won't matter to what won't be there to witness when we are gone.

    So, a lot of the anxiety about death involves agonizing about what we cannot witness. And that flashlight is its own thing, whichever way you want to point the thing.

    We all want comfort. But how and whether that happens or not is, by definition, something we cannot give ourselves.
  • Jack Cummins
    5.3k

    I agree that ,'Each day we wake up is not death' and in most cases it comes as a great relief. Our ancestors and each of us strive, probably instinctual, to stay alive.
    Having created this strand I have to admit that I am afraid of death, but I am not sure that it is my biggest fear. I have plenty and I think the top one is becoming blind. But generally one interrelated question is whether death or a life which is truly unbearable. We can descend into our own hellish depths but while alive, in most cases we have some freedom to change outer and inner reality and overcome fear itself.
  • Valentinus
    1.6k

    I am disturbed by my impending demise too. I agree we have some degrees of freedom to live with it or not. In saying we cannot comfort ourselves, I did not mean we could not look for it elsewhere. It is up to a person to try to find happiness but that one cannot give it to oneself through some kind of alchemy.

    You might be interested in Unamuno's Tragic Sense of Life. He focuses upon the desire for a life rather than the fear of it ending. There are great passages of anger at the situation in the book. Noted as a response to your response that many different emotions are involved.

    For myself, I am interested in how the fear of something i won't experience relates to moments I will. When I am afraid of doing things wrong at work, I have to start and keep working despite those feelings. The expectation of death is not that sort of adaptation. To respond the same way would be to hurry things up.

    Slowing down experience is at least a protest to the inevitable.
  • Jack Cummins
    5.3k
    I will try to have a read of Unamuno at some point. But sometimes I try not to dwell on fears too much, as if I get too negative I find it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I had difficulties at work in the last few years and I don't think my own anxieties helped. But of course I don't think denial helps so getting the right balance is important.
    If I wish to switch off I like on my bed, listening to music. Sometimes I take my books and go out, finding corners to read my books. However, I do try to immerse myself in creative acts, art and writing, to try to transcend fear and make the best of life, which is a kind of alchemy.
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