25 replies to this topic

[networker]

I guess that death can work in either one of two ways 1) It can sensitize or desensitize someone. It could give someone a greater understanding of life and the people living it, or 2) make one harder, bitter and tougher. More cynical
and less forgiving.
I guess that the first choice would come about by being philosophical, and the
second one as a defense mechanism to deal with the sense of loss.
The ideal place to do a study of this would be in a war zone.
There, one would get a true immediate sense of just how death does affect people.

Adell, on 06 September 2010 - 07:40 AM, said:

Death is a rather powerful thing that affects our lives; it has happened, it does happen and it always will happen. But, we shouldn’t let the fear of death ruin our lives – it’s going to happen, yes, but it shouldn’t be haunting us in our every waking moment that it turns us paranoid of even waking up.

When someone near to us dies, it only makes them ever dearer to us since they are gone forever in the physical and living plain, so I think death is one thing that makes a person special. If everyone were to be immortal, we wouldn’t care about each other as much because we would get tired and worn of each other and it wouldn’t be as significant.

About faith, yes, death affirms faith to us – since we want to believe that there is a future beyond death, after life and such that our doings while we live have an effect on whether we go to a good or bad place for all eternity. But faith also affirms with us the will to go on, to go about our lives, believing that God will only take us at the proper time.

And what I see death to be lastly, it is the unveiling of our true selves. When we live, as we live, we are usually molded differently from what we want ourselves to be to fit in with the rest of society (even a little), but on the brink of death (or even at the death of another) – all those layers are removed and we find out who we really are, we realize what we had valued the most, so on and so forth.

[Soviet Rathe]

One thing you should know is.. we are born to die. the moment we take our first breath we start dieing.
I have had some unsteady feelings about death. sometimes I wish I would just die to get out of things. other times I'm afraid of death. but one thing to keep in mind is that death is silent. most of the time (depending on the type of death) there is no pain, if it's a prolonged death then there might be pain. but what really is pain? I can't really explain it. but have you ever cut yourself. and there be a moment or two where there's no pain. and you have no idea of what just happened until you look at your wound? have you ever passed out, and it felt like you just fell asleep? and even though you fell down when you passed out, you don't hurt until later? that's what I'm talking about. moreso for an experience I had, I had a bike accident. and got a concussion. I could have died. but I have no memory of my injuries accruing. if I had died. it would have been painless. it was only after I got home that I started to suffer LOL.

[web_designer]

Quote

I guess that death can work in either one of two ways 1) It can sensitize or desensitize someone. It could give someone a greater understanding of life and the people living it, or 2) make one harder, bitter and tougher. More cynical
and less forgiving.
I guess that the first choice would come about by being philosophical, and the
second one as a defense mechanism to deal with the sense of loss.
The ideal place to do a study of this would be in a war zone.
There, one would get a true immediate sense of just how death does affect people.

agree with you networker, death may affect people's life in two ways:
either make them more tough and give them more courage to deal with the hard situations in life. or make them more soft and sensitive, and easy to be hurt if anything happened in their life.

and as you said, wars are the best example on that. who lives under such situations, he could be so strong person and could see many incidents in his life and not get hurt or at lest he could forget them easily. or he could be so sensitive or overreact every simple thing happened in his life, and absolutely he can't forget so easily. every simple problem may take months to be solved and erased from his life.

but that doesn't mean there are not straight persons, who can hold the stick from the middle and deal with every single problem according to its own effect and causes. but still death will affect them in a way or another, but they can deal with it and return things to normal.

[webo]

The matter of death is a very important notion, indeed.

One cannot quite put into words what will happen when he dies, unless you have religous beliefs like myself. Personally I believe that when my time does come, I will be judged for and my good/bad deeds accounted for, and with Gods will when I do pass the judgement, forever frolic within the realms of paradise.

I think it is more fear of the unknown. As much as people believe there is or isn't anything after, no one can be 100% sure. Also the fear of leaving loved ones is also a huge factor. But ultimately, I don't think people are scared of dying, they are scared of the part that comes after, the unknown.

[mandla]

Wow, you know i never looked at death as a part of life before, I always looked at death as a huge mystery and sometimes i admit it scared the heck out of me.

I knwo we have scientists and all and they probably working on death thories as we speak to know exactly what goes on in the after life but no one has really come up with anything that makes the remotest of sense save for the sure thing we have now that after death there is nothing. I assume saying that will probably make some other people uncomfortable and all but in my sense of seeing I have an open mind and have listened to different near death experiences that people claim to have been in and the whole thing where people die and later come back to life. None of them really have a single experience. They all have these similarly bizzare experiences which normally include a white light at the end of the tunnel especially people of christian background. But I believe that fear of death is one of the things that though some threads have said Death should not be the reason for us to be good you find that it is actually one of the greatest factors affecting the behaviour of persons. Most people who have been bad when faced with certain death usually mend their ways and become good. I have not done a survey so this in my book may be based on the 50 documentaries I have seen throughout my life if the even reach 50, where they go behind bars and talk to death row inmates. Most of them claim to be born again christians and are ready to embrace death as their destiny. Its as if they want to make sure they are squeeky clean for the next stage after death which in this case would be heaven seeing as they are of christian faith. Instead of being good in their life they had no motivation and were bad people or rather did bad judgements and actions which landed them on death row. But once faced with certain death they decided it was time to change and mend their ways and be good people. In this case i mean good people in terms of becoming a devout christian and whatever that encompasses in the eyes of GOD.

Now I ask myself would people be good if they were fully aware of their dying date. If it was certain that we all lived to 49 would we be better people or would we want to take advantage of the Bible and the salvation clause. Be bad people then when we closer to dying we get redeemed and saved so that by the time we die we are clean and saved and ready to go to hevean. I have seen cancer patients change their lives for better because they have been diagnosed terminal. Is death the reason many people beging to appreciate the value of life. This actually has me wondering.

In Networker's posto he/she mentioned this...

Quote

I guess that death can work in either one of two ways 1) It can sensitize or desensitize someone. It could give someone a greater understanding of life and the people living it, or 2) make one harder, bitter and tougher.

this is so true because as you see from the above points i raised in the case of death rown and cancer inmates it sort of changes things for the better. But it makes me wonder if the people would remain changed for the better if the hold of death was over thrown. E.g if on a technicality the death row inmate was given a pardon. Would they go out and think yeah Im not dying no more so it back to my old ways a until I get a heads up on my new dying date.

then there are people who realise death is knocking on their door and feel like they dont deserve to be on deaths door because they never did anything to deserve death. for example I read in the papers about 3 years ago about a Spanish guy who was infected with HIV by his philandering girlfriend. She had cheated on him with some american tourists because they would give her lots of money and his mistress was basically smitten with american party goers in the area of spain they lived in. After a while the guy found out and long story short in the end found out he had caught HIV from her (he claimed to have only slept with her as he was a virgin when they met. We assume this is true for the story's sake.) Because he blames tourists fo messing up his life and robbing him of life because they infected his GF and she eventually gave it to him he felt so much anger or whatever it was that he wanted revenge and as a result started having strings of no strings attached unprotected sex with tourist girls. He would go to beach and crawl the nite clubs having unprotected sex with american and british tourist girls with the hope of infecting them with the desease. This is a case where death has made someone bitter and evil. I cant remeber how he got caught and how the story came to light but I remeber it was a massive thing in UK with papers going into a media frenzy over the story, until he was caught and sentenced to 3 life sentences by a spanish court.

Death is another thing, but whether we embrace it or fear or accept it. Death is inevitable

[ritu]

Death is something I have seen ruining the happiness of my family. My father had a massive cardiac arrest and I helplessly saw him die in my arms. Taking him to the hospital couldn't be of any help.So, what death can result in is a new view towards life.After losing dad I actually came forward to share the responsibilities of the house,being the eldest child and didn't have a brother.

It was indeed a tough task to convert myself from a carefree teenager to a matured lady as my age hadn't progressed as much as my behaviour had. Death is powerful-- yes, part of life--yes, has negative effects--yes, anything positive-- it does teach you to handle even the biggest misfortune.

Absolutely agreeing with web designer, faith will keep us going and bear the pain of losing someone very close to us.