Inevitable Death; Should We Fear Death?

Image courtesy of Justine Lambert/Getty

by Ronald Michael Quijano

What are you most afraid of? Rats? Spiders?  Flying cockroaches - sometimes they assume that they are butterflies - or something to do with heights? Dark? Confined spaces? Whatever it is, surely, all of us have something to be afraid of. Among all those stimuli that might trigger your fear, there is this concept which all of us are a victim. Death. This perhaps is one of the common reasons why we believe in God, hoping for an afterlife. The belief in God is somehow an early attempt of humans to save himself from inevitable death. This is, somehow, evidence of human worshipping himself, constructing a goal of immortality.  Most of us can’t fathom the idea of non-existence. We tend to rely on our hope of a non-evident afterlife. But what does death really mean? For us to understand the concept of death, we must first comprehend the idea of purpose, existence, and meaning. Socrates, a well-known philosopher in ancient Greece, presented his view about the topic when he was sentenced to death for impiety - I can't blame him for questioning the Greek Gods - but remain calm and unafraid. He stated that we couldn’t possibly know if there’s an afterlife or none, but he thought there were only two possibilities, in which either (1) A dreamless sleep, or (2) A passage to another life. Therefore, either way, death is nothing to fear. He suggests cultivating your mind because it is a part of you that will get to keep forever - if there’s an afterlife - and also you can talk a handful of ideas to some philosophers who had just died, talking with unlimited time. If you do that, when the time comes for you to die, you’ll actually see death as a benefit, because you won’t be troubled by bodily things while your mind will be in the top form.

Some religions' view with regards to death is some sort of a reward-punishment system. This might be a huge factor that leads the minority of believers to stick to their beliefs. Take for example the Judeo-Christian concept of an afterlife, wherein your soul’s destination is determined by the things you’ve done while you are alive. The concept of hell in my view is the most disturbing and horrible idea, telling children that they will burn in hell for not doing things that Christianity demands is a form of child abuse, instilling horror and fear in their minds at an early age. It’s pernicious and dangerous when we put it on a grander scale. Hinduism has a different view of death. Reincarnation or rebirth is the fundamental key to the afterlife. Life is a continuous cycle of birth, and your next life is very deterministic under the laws of karma. Until you achieve moksha, that’s the time you free yourself from the continuous suffering (dukkha)  and experience ultimate reality (moksha). Buddhism’s view of death varies from one sect to the other. The purpose and origin of their morality are not based upon death but in life. The teachings of Siddhartha Gautama about morality is based on his experiences, especially when he decided to leave his wealthy and fruitful life to understand the nature of suffering. They perceive the belief in a God or Creator as irrelevant, and they reject it. However, they prove that morality’s basis should be coming from social aspects and self-actualization. Their morality isn’t based upon fear, but rather to a more realistic, applicable, and pragmatic worldview. The view in their afterlife is the same from its root which is Hinduism, the continuous rebirth is guided by the law of karma. These religious perceptions of death are somehow the most effective, and hortative spiel to attract followers and to prevent them from leaving their beliefs and deciding on their own. Their morality is strongly based upon the fear that happened to be superfluous, in which the reason for doing good things is derived from fear. You must not do good things because of your fear in hell or punishment, you should do good things because simply it is the right thing to do. If you fear the destination where you will be in the afterlife, imagine the horror when you are about to die.

Let’s explore what philosophy has to say with regard to death. Epicurus -a philosopher from ancient Greece- stated that “Death is the cessation of the sensation”. Good only feels good when you can feel it. Bad only feels bad when you can feel it, but since death is the cessation of sensation, you don’t have to worry about bad things anymore, even though sensation remains neutral for both sides, you can still view death as nothingness. Materialists believe that you equals your body and nothing else exists but you as a physical state composed of matter. For some, fearing non-existence is not only stupid, but it gets in the way of enjoying life. What’s important is that you are alive, so make those sensations as great as possible, and don’t worry when those sensations are going to stop. You should not fear death because you and death are never present at the same time. So there’s another question we can derive from this. Do we really fear that state of death or the process of death? Maybe what we are really afraid of is missing things out. But why would we fear the things we will never experience in the future? Are we dismayed when we didn’t experience good things that happened in the past? If we can accept the fact that there are good things in the past that we’ve never experienced, why should we feel disappointed by not experiencing good things that will happen in the future? Maybe we are afraid that we cannot spend the time with our loved ones anymore. Zhuang Zhuo - an influential Chinese philosopher who lived around 4th century BC - asks, “Why should we fear the inevitable? He sees death as just another change in a person’s life, the same changes we see and celebrate, that we should see their death as a going away party for a grander journey. We have no assurance if we will ever see them again when the time comes for us to die. It’s selfish to mourn someone’s death, instead, while they are alive, spend the most time with them, and when they are dying, the only thing you should do is to hold them closer.

What about science? Does it have something to say about death? The origin of life is one of the greatest mystery of science. Even though it lies in the abyss of mysteriousness,  we can draw some plausible causes on why life in the universe isn’t impossible. But what about death? The definition of death is, of course, relevant to the definition of life. The question is that, are we really alive? In the level of life’s organization, we can reduce every functionality of everything within the biosphere into a simple function of non-living materials. Based on scientific facts, we can draw an unassailable statement about what will happen when we die. We spend our lives consuming the flora and fauna of this earth. Energy is extracted from these forms of life in a unit of calories, and we need this energy to sustain life and accomplish everyday tasks. When you die, your body stops burning energy, your temperature drops. Now, what will happen to you depends on the disposal of your corpse. If you are cremated, the energy that your body contains will just radiate into space in a form of heat and will be of no use to anybody, that’s why it is highly recommended for your body to be disposed of by burying it into the ground. Bacterias will make the decomposition rate faster. All the molecules of your body, every atom, will be distributed on the soil, absorbed by plants, eaten by animals, and thus the cycle of life continues.  With the law of conservation of mass, energy, and momentum, every part of you will continue to live forever. You came from the universe, and you will also return in its hands. You, me, each of us, we are one with the universe. Neil DeGrasse Tyson - an astrophysicist - states that “The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you”. Maybe it means that we are the ones who must make sense to the world, and to ourselves. The universe is within us, a way for us to understand the cosmos is to first understand ourselves.