The fear of death

[Ben]

Hi Mike

How so?

I can't speak directly for Pink, but as I said above I see a lot of "craving for non-being", using drugs such as alcohol, entertainment, and various other activities, to "escape" from life.

Metta
Mike

Do you really think those behavurs are symptomatic of annihilationism? Personally, I tend to think that the vast majority of humanity engage in various sensual entertainments to escape their experience of dukkha. However, from what I've observed of modern western culture, it appears to be dominated by eternalism view through the mass-delusions of thinking one is going to live forever and invincible: (it [demise of your choice] won't happen to me). I would even suggest that some suicides are committed on the presumption that what comes next must be better than this life.
Sorry for the ramblings... I've been doing some research and cogitating as the result of an invitation to speak to our year 10s (age 15-16) on the 'Buddhist' perspective on death and dying.
metta

Ben

[mikenz66]

Do you really think those behavurs are symptomatic of annihilationism? Personally, I tend to think that the vast majority of humanity engage in various sensual entertainments to escape their experience of dukkha. ...

Yes, that's what I meant. Escape. I didn't mean they wanted to drink themselves to death, just drink themselves into forgetting for a while... Or escape via various other self-destructive actions (I certainly notice that in myself from time to time...).

And, of course, as you point out, that's just one side of "modern problems", but I thought it was helpful to reflect on what "craving for non-being" could encompass in addition to simple suicide...

Mike

[Ben]

Absolutely.
Thanks for the clarification!
metta

Ben

[alex jansen]

Interesting views. I haven't met a suicide bomber or anyone who wants to be euthanized but I've met plenty of people who say, "Well, we all die of something sooner or later so... down the hatch!" before they down a fugu (poisonous blowfish) sashimi or for that matter, clean out a pack of ciggies a day.

While they may be joking, some people seem almost resigned to death when they feed addiction and that includes adrenaline junkies. Had a friend who loved base jumping because it made him feel "alive." He had a broken leg to vouch for it. You might have seen the bumper stickers, "Give me <your choice of thrill> or give me death!" Strange, this penchant to tempt death as a means of feeling alive.

[BlackBird]

We have a lot of suicides here in Dunedin.

When I was at highschool there was maybe 3 or 4 people that I knew personally who committed sucide, one in particular is etched into my mind: A friend from primary school (who went to my high school) went down a bad path, got obsessed with World War 2 and assault rifles and the likes. In a fit of rage one day, after arguing with his father, he got his father's gun and shot him dead, then turned the gun on himself.

That intoxication with permanence had vanished with that friend of mine. After that, Avici was no longer a concept, it all become quite a real contemplation. I think it was soon after this actually that I really knew for sure I wanted to be a monk.

[pink_trike]

Modern civilization is intoxicated with an unconscious death wish.

How so?

For individuals, there is a strong connection between engaging in self-destructive behavior and an elevated risk of suicide that is a manifestation of an unconscious psychological nihilism that amounts to "in a meaningless life, life has no more value than death...in fact, death would be preferable to life".

Imo, the same applies to our modern culture which is clearly engaging in self-destructive behavior, worships death, and has a extreme elevated risk of self-induced annihilation...a manifestation of an unconscious collective nihilism that amounts to 'in a meaningless world, life has no more value than death...in fact, death would be preferable to life". The Theist version would be "in a meaningless world, life has no more value than death...in fact, death/Heaven would be preferable to life". "Heaven" is aversion to life and a craving for un.be.ing. So is our culture's addictive consumer lifestyle

We're surrounded by the overwhelming evidence that modern culture values death more than life...we create the conditions in every moment for wholesale death and annihilation in order to feed our hungers and fight the ghosts of our fears. We in.toxic.ate ourselves and all of life in an attempt to escape it. No culture that values life would do this. Only a people who value death would devalue and pervert life to the extremes that we have in our modern culture.

[Cittasanto]

Modern civilization is intoxicated with an unconscious death wish.

How so? There are more Theists on the planet than any other kind of philosophical belief so I would say most people like the eternal life wish than anything else

Their is a belief in christianity and in Islam that anyone who goes to hell is not there for eternity, but when judgement day comes all those in hell are wiped out from exstance, namey anihilistic view, a similar belief is found in the Jewish faith.
also found in the bible is a fixed number who will enter heaven (160,000 I think).

The belef tat there is an eternal life maybe more prevelant, but the hope that they will eter that life is a hope, not a fact, Seuicidbombers may think it is a fact for martyres so they martyr themselves but that isn't qute the same as the standard undertanding of the consequences of seuicide in the Abrhamic faiths.

but I know of no survay which states the faith of thse who comit seuicide or there after life beliefs.

[sundara]

We fear death but what resonated in me was a quote saying that life is darkened by aging and smothered by death. The reason we fear death as Buddha said is because of being attached to sensual pleasures, to the body, to have done evil things and not realising liberation.

[pink_trike]

I think the fear of death arises from never having been awake to life.