[ExI] Fear of Death { feelling/thought} Terry

[Kevin Freels]

Fear of death is necessary. If it weren't for the fear of death, no one 
would bother conquering it. Our only concern would be reproduction. Fear 
of death is a basic primal instinct and without it, science never would 
have developed. Many "believers" as you call them do NOT fear death. 
They are more of a problem because this leads to martyrdom and other 
such nonsense. Our ability to see from other's point of view allows us 
to not only fear our own death, but to fear the death of others FOR 
them. This helps to move people beyond selfishness and narcissism.

Fear of death is simple to understand. What I find interesting is our 
enjoyment of things that bring us to the edge of death without killing 
us. Why do we enjoy things like skydiving, roller coasters, fast cars, 
fighting, sports, etc? In all the other animals exposure to fear only 
creates more fear. In us, it seems to be the opposite - that which 
doesn't kill us makes us "bolder".



citta437 at aol.com wrote:
> Thoughts and feelings similar to fear of death arise from narcissistic 
> desire for immortality that evolved in the genetic evolution of the 
> human species. What makes us humans who fear death?
>
> Humans share about 98% DNA with other primates according to the recent 
> study/findings of the scientific method of investigation. The other 2% 
> {a well -developed cortex} makes all the difference between humans and 
> the apes. A well-developed brain in humans have the potentiality to 
> reason, to use technological advancement and a language/scientific 
> method to investigate beliefs of reality, thoughts and memes.
>
> Science is neither a belief nor unbelief. It is a practice of 
> awareness/objectivity using reason/logic in combination of advancing 
> technology to test theories about nature including us. Some humans fear 
> death and some don't depending on how the brain processes behave in 
> spacetime of micro and macro levels of interactions.
>
> Some believers continue to suffer due to fear of pain of aging and 
> death.
>
> Terry
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>