Death's not a subject I’m really interested in, but I'm reading a little essay on it for my philosophy club. Here are my thoughts on death before I get into that though:
I’ve basically decided that I’m not going to worry about what happens after we die. We’ll all learn eventually. It comes for all of us. Just in case my input actually matters in what the afterlife will be like though, I hope I’ll get to decide what it is when I get there. It would suck if the afterlife depended on what you believed it would be during life, and you chose something like hell or nothingness when you could’ve gotten a better deal by believing it would be freedom of choice.
You don’t need the threat of hell to motivate you to be a good person. The aim to reduce the suffering of the world should be enough.
Something that matters to me more is how to cope with loss. People fear death because they fear the grief that occurs when they lose something they desire, such as their own life or the life of another living being. Then there’s the many figurative deaths in our lives: friendships that end, relationships that end, the physical and mental capabilities of our bodies degrading over time, the loss of paths to take in life due to the finite amount of time we have on earth, and of course, lost objects of sentimental value. These are moments we often don’t have control over that cause us pain. Forming a healthy reaction to these moments is essential for our happiness and living a good life.
There’s no singular answer on how to cope with loss, because the coping mechanisms we use are context dependent on what we lost. From my personal lived experience though, I’ve learned to not judge yourself for what you’ll grieve in life. Emotions like grief unfortunately don’t always express themselves for socially acceptable reasons. This concept in psychology is called disenfranchised grief, defined as “forms of grief that are not acknowledged on a personal or societal level… [where others] take issue with a mourner's expression of grief, or view their loss as insignificant.” (Wikipedia) The concept was coined by Dr. Kenneth J. Doka in his book Disenfranchised Grief: Recognizing Hidden Sorrow. (1989). I remember reading applicable selections from this book when I was dealing with one of his listed forms of disenfranchised grief: deaths among distant, disapproved, or unrecognized relationships.
Anyways, time to read this chapter about death, by Nagel, in his Introduction to Philosophy. Annotations below.
Yes, we really have no idea what nothingness is like post death, if you don’t believe in an afterlife. It is impossible for a live person to experience the world without perceiving it. In order to receive confirmation that death is followed by nothingness, we would have to perceive, comprehend, and conclude we are experiencing nothingness. Can you really call that state nothingness if you are aware enough to confirm its existence?
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In other words, we cannot experience nothingness if the concept of dualism isn’t true. Dualism is the idea that a person has a body and a soul, and that these are distinct entities.
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I really would not like scientists to fuck around with my body after I die to ensure I experience an afterlife, but I can’t control what happens to my body after I die. If there is an afterlife, cool, if not, also cool. Like I said earlier, I’ll deal with it when I get there.
I also, uh, signed up to be an organ donor, so I think I already opted out of this fate.
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How are we supposed to feel about our own deaths? In my eyes, since death doesn’t matter all that much, feel about it in a way that helps you live the life you want. Except, don’t use the threat of death to coerce others into believing what you believe. That’s a dick move.
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Why is society disturbed by the idea of nothingness after death, when we’ve already experienced it before we were born? Well… did we experience nothingness before we were born? Is not remembering the definition of nothingness? That would fit what I said earlier about nothingness being the inability to perceive, comprehend, and conclude. That definition would also mean that people in a coma are already dead…
If this is the definition of nothingness, then we have a reference we can talk about, and so I have a question for nothingness-enjoyers. Are you having fun not remembering what happened before you were born?
Because I’m not. In order for me to enjoy or feel pain from the nothingness I experienced before birth, I’d have to experience it and compare it to the life I have now. But nothingness by definition--by this definition anyways--is the lack of experiencing. And so, I can’t make heads or tails of how I feel about the era before we were born.