When I felt my conscious fading away from a heart attack two years ago, I thought "Ah, I guess I die now. Too bad I can't tell my friend to clear the cache as a last joke."
It confirmed I'm not actually afraid to die, just regretting for a moment before the void that I can't witness what'll happen to the world in the future.
If I may ask, were you regretting about the decisions made in past or decisions that you won't see in future and jokes aside, what was the most important thing in that moment, was it about family, (does anything like random-thing-we-worry-about-for-too-long/work/tech/whatever-else even runs through the mind)?
There was also nothing important coming to mind. Family and friends is a small group and I have every bit of confidence they'll do just fine without me. I just hope they'll have a fun party as a final goodbye to me. :-)
Besides, death is the ultimate "What, me worry?" as there is nothing left. Can't even experience the void we enter ( unfortunately because I'd like to experience my brain not thinking about anything at all for once :-p ).
Glad you're still alive. I too find the most melancholy in not knowing - what happens next!
And, FWIW, Jesus with an after-death erection was popular enough a motive to officially get banned by the church: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostentatio_genitalium
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_erection#cite_ref-Steinb...
motif
How did this ever pass an ethics commission?
To be more pragmatic, it’s now pretty common today for people to die and modern medicine brings them back. For practical purposes the person was dead, by some other interpretations they weren’t, if you consider the only “real” death to be the permanent one.
clinical death = heart stops = reversible, depends on circumstances
brain death = irreversible = perma-dead. no one’s ever come back.
legal death = brain dead (not clinical) or court order (missing for X years/etc)
As the person doing the dying you can’t rationalize it as “no worries, it’s just clinical, I’ll be back”. You die, it’s light out, later on, a blink for you, you recover and are told “you were clinically dead”. You experienced death for all intents and purposes because I don’t think there’s a cognitive process that allows you to differentiate the stages. Heck, deep sleep might be how death “feels” like.
Do people fear death (excluding suffering) because of the threshold itself or the FOMO? Missing on what would come next?
For sure when clinical death starts (even if later reversed), some processes kick in that never would otherwise activate, totally agree. The commonality of near-death-experience suggests something very basal.
The cessation of my sensory experience might be a very long time, but from my perspective random chance bringing me back would be instantaneous.
Why not add this to your will:
1. place my body on a pile of dynamite on an Oregon beach, and blow it up (first issue umbrellas to the funeral party.) Or, failing that...
2. Freeze my body in liquid nitrogen, sharpen my head in a giant pencil-sharpener, then drive me into the ground as a fertilizer-spike.
3. Do #2 above, but throw my sharpened body from a plane flying over farmland. Add fletching to my legs to guarantee pointy-end-downwards.
4. Cast my body in a block of solidified transparent polyester resin, then use it as a large tombstone. People visiting can watch the slow decay, until years later it's a me-shaped bubble. (Leave a little drain-channel to prevent explosion from gas pressure.)
5. Once I saw a button-mushroom entirely take over a live eggplant. Do that to my body, but with psilocybe species. Then dry, grind, and smoke me up.
6. "Resomation," but that's too too conventional.
skeleton powder is more apt. Enough of the euphemism!