From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!floyd!cmcl2!philabs!sdcsvax!sdccsu3!iy47ab Newsgroups: net.philosophy Title: Re: Immortality and fear. Article-I.D.: sdccsu3.312 Posted: Tue Feb 15 16:07:30 1983 Received: Sat Feb 19 03:59:19 1983 References: sdccsu3.302 sdccsu3.303 sdccsu3.305 sdccsu3.311 I think the reason we fear death is that it is an insult to our ego -- no, seriously. It's hard to conceptualize the ending of one's self! It's so hard, and so frustrating, to believe that you could be stopped from being and doing; it's like someone says, very arbitrarily, "Ok, time's up, kaput, that's it" and you don't even get the one phone call. I know it sounds like I'm making light of it, but I'm serious. It's a fear of impotence; a fear that we will be helpless, ineffectual, unable to do all the things we are familiar with. Peter S. Beagle approached the subject very well in one of his novels; he said basically that the reason death is so fearful is that it is unfamiliar, strange, different. And Thornton Wilder said, in our town, 'it's not what I'm used to.' In a way, fear of change and different- ness is the greatest fear of all. Combined with fear of helplessness, this constitutes (for me, anyway) the basic implications behind fear of death. Not afraid to say "not afraid" at the end of a fear-filled letter, Arwen