💾 Archived View for altesq.net › ~evenfire › posts › all-fears-stem-from-death.gmi captured on 2023-04-26 at 13:17:14. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Fear is a natural instinct which protects us from dying, indirectly helping the species survive. Most of us dislike various fears we have or have irrational ones, commonly called phobias.
Fear also shows up in anticipation of something happening. You fear a future event. So not only fear helps us not drive off a rock into the Deep Blue, but also it acts as a catalyst for our brain to start thinking about future events. If you're like me, this can go wrong in many ways. The joys of overthinking.
Coming back to the first point, fear helps us not die. Seems simple enough. But in some situations we override it and it can help us or not. For example, if you ignore your fear of heights, you might see a very nice sunset from a tall mountain or you might fall to your death from an airplane. Rational judgment beforehand is the key.
All other fears are just manifestations of the fear of death. If you don't fear death, and you should have no reasons to as we don't feel anything when we're dead so why fear it (post about that another time), you have no fears. You can't be constrained. This might seem mildly worrying at times, that's why we have a set of morals in place. The Epicureans discussed this exact topic cca. 2300 years ago and they had very interesting discussions, I recommend the read.
We die from the moment we're born. Death is formed of many quantitative changes forming into a qualitative one, most of us observing only the qualitative stage. Understanding all of these is key to acting wise in most situations, not giving in to petty daily annoyances and other negative influences on our happiness in daily life. We're minuscule in a big space. A very big one.
Fear does serve a practical purpose, I don't support ignoring it either. We should observe it, listening to it if it proves valuable at that specific time. It arises subconsciously, even if you don't fear death consciously. Although I believe by internalizing the concepts of death itself, you can limit any type of fear.