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Notes on Mortality:

https://www.ft.com/content/a57c054e-1f66-11e5-ab0f-6bb9974f25d0 , Financial Times , July 3 2015, Antonia Macaro

.Philosophers have tried to cure us of our fear of death for thousands of years. Wittgenstein famously said that “death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death”. According to Epicurus, we shouldn’t fear death; it is a state just like the time before we were born.  

.Our fear of death is too fundamental to be displaced by rational thought. In a way that’s how it should be, as it seems beneficial from an evolutionary point of view to fear our own destruction; without it, we probably wouldn’t still be around as a species.

.Thoughts of transcendence can provide comfort. If you believe in the existence of a soul that lasts, you may be less troubled by death anxiety, as the end is then not annihilation but only an end in this particular form. If we don’t have such beliefs, however, this comfort is not available to us.

.The main point is to acknowledge the reality of death in order to avoid resorting to denial, wasting our life in pursuit of things that have no real value except that they distract us from thoughts of the ultimate. Living with an awareness of death doesn’t have to imply gloomily dwelling on it all the time, or defiantly throwing ourselves into danger.

.Our job, once we are death-aware, is simply to appreciate life as much as possible. Immersing ourselves in nature or creative activities, cherishing the people we love are among the ways of doing this, even if equanimity about death proves to be beyond our reach.  

.Certainly we have no reason to fear being dead since, as Epicurus so pithily put it, “When we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.” But for me he misses the point. It’s not fear of death that makes me reluctant to receive it, it’s love of being alive. Much as we can come to accept death, it is too much to ask us to be happy about it.

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