Why do people fear death?

Question

Look, I don't really get this one. The only death I fear is a meaningless one. I would rather die at 30 for something I believe in than die at 103 in a nursing home. Am I alone on this one? what does everyone think?

Answer 1

I'm torn on this one. I think what you fear is death after a meaningless life. I completely agree with dying for something you believe in; but one can die at 30 after living a meaningless life, and one can die at 103 after many a successful venture. And this is what I fear most about death: not living to see all the successful ventures of life.
And I don't believe in the afterlife, this is all we get. And if it really does exist, I'm not going to heaven anyway.

Answer 2

Humans have feared the unknown as long as there have been humans.

Imagine what it was like to be one of the first humans that had cognition of what was around them. The entire world would have been the unknown. There would have been many fears. Now imagine that they see the death and are aware of the first death of a human. No longer breathing, moving, nothing.

Fear is the natural instinct for the preservation of life. It's ingrained in our genes, it's the nervous systems way of protecting itself from danger.

Wanting to die with a legacy is a longing to have been known for something other than just exsisting along with everyone else. We all long to be remembered for other than just breathing in and out everyday. We won't all die in a glory situation, but we all would like someone to say that we were a great person and that we had meaning and were loved and admired.

Answer 3

I'd rather die peacefully in my sleep at a ripe old age if I'm being honest. Of course if I had to I would risk or sacrifice my life to save my loved ones. I don't fear death but I'm not welcoming it with open arms either. I fear the deaths of those I love more than my own. The person that dies has no worries. It's the ones that are left behind that suffer the loss.

Answer 4

All our characteristics are the result of evolution- and most are designed to help us survive in a small tribe- this is how humans and their immediate ancestors have spent the last few million years. So we have some characteristics that are strange when placed in the current context of how we live: advanced, safe societies of millions of people.

We fear death in an immediate way- even if one feels there is nothing to live for, one will still jump out of the path of a speeding car, of feel scared looking over the edge of a cliff.

Not fearing THE IDEA of death is a different matter altogether: this derives from a lack of purpose, and also have neurological causes, such as serotonin imbalance. In the wild, we probably didn;t have much opportunity to feel a lack of purpose- we were too busy finding food, avoiding predators, and trying to reproduce and keep the kids alive before we ourselves died (in our early 30s if we lasted a long time).

We need purpose which is why religion (whether its churches, astrology, crystals or whatever) is so successful. Perhaps in modern times we have the luxury of time to spare, safety and an intimate knowledge of how evil/stupid human beings are. With access to this knowledge, its only natural to think that good deeds are lost in an ocean of human frailty.

A psychologist would say we have an ego that forces us to fear the idea that our lives are ultimately pointless- we can't stand, and often can't even face, the suggestion that our existence is transitory and one day nobody will know or care that we ever lived. The smarter you are, the more you understand how much of our perceptions are just delusions and tricks of the mind, planted in us by our ancestors without their even trying- just by natural selection and life itself. This can makes things very hard, and explains why most animals get on fine with small brains.

Eventually, you have kids and you live for them, and that distracts you from all of the above- or so I'm told.

Answer 5

People fear uncertainty that brings the feeling of insecurity. If everyone is promise a place in heaven 100% no matter what have you done, do you think people will fear death. No one is certain what happens after death and this make many fearful.

Answer 6

Yes, because it is the unknown and many want to know to feel secure. Personally, I don't fear death, I fear dying. I don't like pain. I'm sure a lot of people don't want to die either, their opinion on actual death? I don't know.

Answer 7

I fear death because of what is after it. Will i just not exist? Is there Heaven?
Is there a Hell?
I am afraid of not being, and the only way to find out is dying. And if there is some after life, what should I expect from it? Will it be good?

Answer 8

As a hospice nurse, I learned that people do not fear death as much as they fear finding out that they have lived a wasted, meaningless life and have no time left to rectify. "Fear of death" is actually the astonishing realization that one's Life is precious.

Answer 9

Fear. No one knows what happens if anything after death and that scares people. I agree that if you give your life meaning then there is little to fear, but the average person fears what they do not understand. That's just human nature.

Answer 10

I think we are afraid of the unknown, also the pain that we might suffer, if we could just lie down and go to sleep with no thoughts of an afterlife, then I don't think we would be so afraid of it.

Most people think religion eases the fear of death. But studies have found that’s not necessarily true.

Although very religious people fear death the least, studies suggest, total unbelievers take second place for ability to take their mortality in stride. The worst death anxieties haunt those who lie somewhere in between those extremes—who are a little religious.

For some of those in the unlucky category of “moderately religious,” the study’s authors found, the explanation may be grimly straightforward. They’re afraid of punishment in the afterlife, such as going to hell.

Many of these people believe in a God, but don’t go to church, pray or otherwise follow through much on that belief. This may “raise the specter of punishment after death without hope for salvation
Fear of death “was particularly characteristic of individuals whose belief in a rewarding afterlife was not matched by their other religious beliefs and practices,.
Divine punishment may be a less troublesome prospect to strongly religious people, who tend to be more confident of their merit. Atheists don’t worry about it for obvious reasons.

Another reason some slightly religious people fear death more may be that they sometimes question whether an afterlife exists at all.
Such doubts might not plague more hard-core believers. And atheists may cope by focusing on ways to achieve at least a “symbolic immortality,” such as through children or creative works.
In their study, they surveyed 155 people in their late 60s or 70s who were born in Berkeley, Calif. Their findings replicated, among elderly people, the results of past studies with younger people showing that the moderately religious fear death the most.

They also found that strongly religious people feared death the least. The least religious were in between, but slightly closer to the moderately religious.
Another finding from their study was that, at least for some people, fear of the dying process itself seems to lessens with age. People in their mid-70s who had experienced more illness and bereavement, perhaps paradoxically, were found to fear death less than those in their late 60s.