Why are people afraid of dying?

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
– Epicurus

You’re going to die. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news – wait, that shouldn’t be news to you. You know that. I know that. We’re all going to die. It’s part of life – well, it’s the end of life. Honestly, though, I don’t think anybody really realizes that we’re all going to die, simply because our minds are too stupid to fully comprehend what death is. We can’t possibly fathom the intense ultra-dimension that is death. This is why we make things up, like heaven, hell, and religion as a whole (don’t get me started – this is for another post). We want to know to the unknowable, since humans on a very fundamental level are afraid of the unknown. Nobody knows what happens after you die, and this is what people are afraid of.

Before I give my opinion on this, I want to make it clear that I don’t consider myself an authority on death. I know just as much about death as anybody else who’s alive. Frankly, anybody who claims to know anything about death beyond the science of the biological process is a prick because nobody can possibly know anything about death. All we know is this; death happens to everybody, it can happen after being alive for too long and your heart says “fuck this I’m outta here”, or being hit in the head by pole, or any number of ways. Before this gets too morbid, back to the topic at hand.

Here’s a thought: what if, after you die, nothing happens? No, I don’t mean an eternity of Seinfeld episodes on loop (ha). I mean absolute nothingness. It’s an interesting thought, and also what I would consider the case. There is simply no reason to believe that anything does happen after you die. The only reason this has been proposed is because people want to believe something happens after life. People want to have tangible answers to these impossible questions, and many people aren’t satisfied with “nothing”. Fair enough – nothing doesn’t sound too exciting. People would rather have farfetched stories and adventures and living on clouds playing harps and prancing around and all this heaven nonsense. And people would like to think that bad people won’t be there, so they’ll burn for all eternity in the depths of the underworld.

The primary reason why people make these things up is because as a whole our species is afraid of nothing. Our minds can’t understand it. We can’t even begin to fathom the complexities of nothing. Try to picture in your mind right now “nothing”. I bet you’re thinking of a big, empty white space. Or a black space. Sorry – that’s something. Nothing has no colour, no shade. No temperature. There’s no feeling in nothing. Nothing has no consciousness and no perception. This is why we can’t even begin to imagine it.

So what is there to fear in nothing? Honestly, and I hate to overuse the word, but nothing. When you die there is no consequence, and there is no further experience. When you die, you descend (or ascend) into nothingness. Some people find that boring or mundane, or even scary as there is then nothingness for eternity – but the fact is there is also no experience. Boredom after death would require a conscious self, which simply is not the case. You no longer exist. To cease existing means no mind and by extension no consciousness. When you die, you become nothing.

See? Not so much of a bummer, I hope. The sun will explode in a billion years, anyway. Have a nice day.

Here’s Alan Watts, one of the wisest men of the past 100 years, talking about why I’m right: