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