Death is enviable.

[Monarchist]

I apologise for revisiting this subject as I once did before, but it seems an imperative question to me. Why do we enshrine the dead upon a pedestal of tragic sorrow and mourning?

We call practically every death below the age of 65 a "tragedy"; most above that age, too. This is a proposition which makes no sense to me, at least when speaking without familiarity for the dead person in question. It is obviously the duty of any moral person to comfort the relatives and friends of the dead, but when in private, why must every death be a tragedy?

I only ask the question because I see a limited set of philosophical/moral possibilities, all of which lead to the conclusion that it is pointless to mourn. Presuming that this life is only a test by God(s), and that God is just, the dead can only look forward to what they truly deserve. If God is not just and is still the controlling force of the Universe, there is nothing we can do but bow to His reserve and industry. The first view is Christian; the second is Nietzschean, due to its centrality on God's power, and thus on God's 'immoral morality', as it were. The two ideologies (admittedly not often paired with each other) do have one similarity here: God's/the gods' power is such that the conclusion is inevitable. If a conclusion is inevitable, why do you mourn it? To do so is entirely in the face of God's plan.

When there is no God (or gods), there is likely no objective justice within the Cosmos, or without it. If this is truly the case, and we disintegrate into energy upon death, why do you mourn the loss of it? How can an atheist be sad about something with no absolute meaning beyond the worms and the rain? If the world is based not in theism or atheism but in Karma and undirected moral energy, there is even less to mourn. A man who is reincarnated as a beetle most manifestly deserved it, and is progressing in his way to The End.

This set of possibilities all lead me to the admittedly simplistic conclusion that it is pointless to mourn ourselves, except in order to comfort those who mourn. In my own opinion (which assumes the first set of philosophical ideas to be the truth), humans are empty caskets when death occurs. Nothing is to be mourned. Are there any other philosophical possibilities that seem to negate this, in your minds?

[Jabberwock]

Because human beings are selfish, non-pejoratively. It's the nature of the human. We mourn what is no longer ours. If I have a friend and he dies, I will mourn. He was my friend and vice versa were I to die.

America mourned the victims of 9/11 because they were their countrymen. Did America mourn for the victims of the terrorist strikes in the UK and Spain like 9/11? No, because they were not theirs.

Human beings are funny creatures like this.

[Dan the Man]

Because human beings are selfish, non-pejoratively. It's the nature of the human. We mourn what is no longer ours. If I have a friend and he dies, I will mourn. He was my friend and vice versa were I to die.

America mourned the victims of 9/11 because they were their countrymen. Did America mourn for the victims of the terrorist strikes in the UK and Spain like 9/11? No, because they were not theirs.

Human beings are funny creatures like this.

I'm the exception to that rule. I morn every terrorist strike equally.

Anyway, death has been part of human culture since the first ceremonial burials thousands of years ago. I think we find it so intriguing because it's so much of a mystery. The body is dead, but that cannot be the end. The body is just a cell that holds the human's true being or soul, if you will. When we contemplate death we are thinking about where that soul or being goes. It doesn't matter if you believe in an afterlife of some sort or not, death is still a mystery.

Plus, as you stated, normally people go into an intense stage of grief at the death of a loved one, because they know they will never see said loved one again until the afterlife.

If my post seems incoherent, it's because it is now 1 AM my time, and I'm getting tired.

[Justice and Mercy]

Because human beings are selfish, non-pejoratively. It's the nature of the human. We mourn what is no longer ours. If I have a friend and he dies, I will mourn. He was my friend and vice versa were I to die.

America mourned the victims of 9/11 because they were their countrymen. Did America mourn for the victims of the terrorist strikes in the UK and Spain like 9/11? No, because they were not theirs.

Human beings are funny creatures like this.

That's a reason in very few cases.

Generally, we feel sorry for the dead because we feel empathy. We don't want to die.

Be it for rational reasons or purely instinctual, we all want to live.

[Monarchist]

Well, perhaps the Americans didn't mourn for the deaths of people in 7/7 as they did for their own, but it was still called a tragedy, or at least a crime. I wasn't really speaking so much of purposeful acts of murder, of course, but I suppose it can fit in. My question was more restricted to accidents, natural death, diseases, and old age.

[Jabberwock]

Well, perhaps the Americans didn't mourn for the deaths of people in 7/7 as they did for their own, but it was still called a tragedy, or at least a crime. I wasn't really speaking so much of purposeful acts of murder, of course, but I suppose it can fit in. My question was more restricted to accidents, natural death, diseases, and old age.

I was just using it as an example, not specifically the event. Yes, it is a tragedy. It would be inhuman to not see it as such. But it's a tragedy more remembered by Britons than Americans.

Our nature doesn't see those list of things. It'll only see the fact that we lost something that was once ours.

[Elfdude]

I apologise for revisiting this subject as I once did before, but it seems an imperative question to me. Why do we enshrine the dead upon a pedestal of tragic sorrow and mourning?

We call practically every death below the age of 65 a "tragedy"; most above that age, too. This is a proposition which makes no sense to me, at least when speaking without familiarity for the dead person in question. It is obviously the duty of any moral person to comfort the relatives and friends of the dead, but when in private, why must every death be a tragedy?

When there is no God (or gods), there is likely no objective justice within the Cosmos, or without it. If this is truly the case, and we disintegrate into energy upon death, why do you mourn the loss of it? How can an atheist be sad about something with no absolute meaning beyond the worms and the rain? If the world is based not in theism or atheism but in Karma and undirected moral energy, there is even less to mourn. A man who is reincarnated as a beetle most manifestly deserved it, and is progressing in his way to The End.

Atheist mourn the loss of potential and the mind. When someone dies anything that they might've done after X period is lost forever. As a scientist the 4th dimension occurs as the probability wave is collapsed by reality. As such there is no destiny simply potential. In this potential atheists find solace. Their life is worth so much more to them specifically because of the lack of an afterlife or universal justice i.e. this is the one chance you get to make your mark with your life.

If you want more philosophical meaning in life than that read up on the secular philosophies on the meaning of life. Absurdism is a great one.

This set of possibilities all lead me to the admittedly simplistic conclusion that it is pointless to mourn ourselves, except in order to comfort those who mourn. In my own opinion (which assumes the first set of philosophical ideas to be the truth), humans are empty caskets when death occurs. Nothing is to be mourned. Are there any other philosophical possibilities that seem to negate this, in your minds?

I suppose you don't value the relationships of those around you and feel nothing when the relationship is ended via nothing but a random roll of the dice? I suppose you might subscribe to a religion and find solace in the idea that they are with god, however I think all but those who are psychologically impaired would still miss the person they cared for. In essence grief is the result of missing someone very severely.

[pericles_plato]

All death is sad. Adrenalin helps us forget it when we start killing or are killing, *hopefully no one where will kill anyone except if they be in Military* It's only after the adrenalin is gone that we understand what we did.

[Prodigal]

It is a selfishness of humans. We do not mourn them going on, but because we will no longer see them. This is the selfishness. I think that we must celebrate, not mourn the death of others, but in this I am being hypocritical, as I also mourn.

My great great Aunt was not a very religious person. Sure, she proffesed Orthodox Christianity, but she wasn't very religious. Her husband died, and she grieved. She became a very pious person after that. I believe she still, in her 90s, attends both vespers and the Sunday service. Her and her two sisters lived together their entire lives, and one of them died a couple years back. She did not grieve, but celebrated her death and her ascent into heaven. She would definitely be my personal role model for piety.

She's also awesome, so there's that too. She's one of those old people that never really got old.

[Dracula]

I apologise for revisiting this subject as I once did before, but it seems an imperative question to me. Why do we enshrine the dead upon a pedestal of tragic sorrow and mourning?

We call practically every death below the age of 65 a "tragedy"; most above that age, too. This is a proposition which makes no sense to me, at least when speaking without familiarity for the dead person in question. It is obviously the duty of any moral person to comfort the relatives and friends of the dead, but when in private, why must every death be a tragedy?

I only ask the question because I see a limited set of philosophical/moral possibilities, all of which lead to the conclusion that it is pointless to mourn. Presuming that this life is only a test by God(s), and that God is just, the dead can only look forward to what they truly deserve. If God is not just and is still the controlling force of the Universe, there is nothing we can do but bow to His reserve and industry. The first view is Christian; the second is Nietzschean, due to its centrality on God's power, and thus on God's 'immoral morality', as it were. The two ideologies (admittedly not often paired with each other) do have one similarity here: God's/the gods' power is such that the conclusion is inevitable. If a conclusion is inevitable, why do you mourn it? To do so is entirely in the face of God's plan.

When there is no God (or gods), there is likely no objective justice within the Cosmos, or without it. If this is truly the case, and we disintegrate into energy upon death, why do you mourn the loss of it? How can an atheist be sad about something with no absolute meaning beyond the worms and the rain? If the world is based not in theism or atheism but in Karma and undirected moral energy, there is even less to mourn. A man who is reincarnated as a beetle most manifestly deserved it, and is progressing in his way to The End.

This set of possibilities all lead me to the admittedly simplistic conclusion that it is pointless to mourn ourselves, except in order to comfort those who mourn. In my own opinion (which assumes the first set of philosophical ideas to be the truth), humans are empty caskets when death occurs. Nothing is to be mourned. Are there any other philosophical possibilities that seem to negate this, in your minds?

Your first oppinion is based on wrong ideas.

God did not create man to die, but to live forever. That he dies in this world is according to the teaching of christianity a human induced change of god's plan, resulted from the original sin. The people born in this world cannot in themselves separate from the notion, which is original in them, from the creation, that they SHOULDN'T DIE !!! So to say, there is an original matrix which is implanted into everybody born, and a second one put over it, resulting from the original sin. They coexist together and are both natural, one by the originality, the second by necessity. People are therefore contradictory in nature and often dubious what to think and what to do. The notions of their first nature sometimes prevail, sometimes these of the second. The questions about death and all basic things in man should be referred to the original nature, which doesn't have the notion of death. It is therefore natural to mourn the death as a loss of the life which shouldn't end.

Christianity further stresses on this that death must be overcome. By the returning to the original nature of man through sanctity. There is little left to mourn or to accept the present reality in all this, everybody has to be swallowed by the care and progress to the eternal reality. Therefore it is both wrong to not care about death by your second proposition, and to mourn it by your first. It will be wept away by life revealed to us by participation into the divine desire and communion.

[The Dude]

When there is no God (or gods), there is likely no objective justice within the Cosmos, or without it. If this is truly the case, and we disintegrate into energy upon death, why do you mourn the loss of it? How can an atheist be sad about something with no absolute meaning beyond the worms and the rain? If the world is based not in theism or atheism but in Karma and undirected moral energy, there is even less to mourn. A man who is reincarnated as a beetle most manifestly deserved it, and is progressing in his way to The End.

Since I'm an atheist I can only really respond to this bit: I don't think death is a tragedy at all. From a purely scientific point of view there is no loss of anything except perhaps the personality that makes a human being a human being. It's not the loss of body that is mourned, it's the loss of the sum of that body's parts. Mourning makes sense, I've mourned the dead myself and I think everyone on this forum has at some point or another. But that still doesn't make it a tragedy.

There's nothing inherently wrong with death, even less so because we don't know what happens after we die. Is life is just a single stage of a longer galactic cycle of events? Or is it truly the end of sentience? Who knows. Since there is no way to know, there is no point in casting judgement on death beyond that it sucks to lose someone close to you.

[Justice and Mercy]

Since I'm an atheist I can only really respond to this bit: I don't think death is a tragedy at all.

In that case I recommend reaching into that cold, black heart of yours and finding some human emotion.

You feel no empathy for the dead, or even their familes?

There's nothing inherently wrong with death, even less so because we don't know what happens after we die.

Yes we do.

It is the mind that allows us to experience. When the mind stops functioning, we stop experiencing.

I don't want that.

[The Dude]

In that case I recommend reaching into that cold, black heart of yours and finding some human emotion.

You feel no empathy for the dead, or even their familes?

So quick to cast judgement.

As I said, losing a friend, family or anyone else close to you is a sad thing and I've mourned my share of deaths. Really, my post wasn't that long, I don't understand how you could've read past that. I'm not a boastful type of person but I think you'll find that empathy is actually one of my greater qualities.

The point I was trying to make is that death in itself is not a tragedy. Quite the opposite, it's fairly meaningless since it happens to tens of thousands of people every day, if not more. Probably more. You don't mourn everyone equally since you don't know everyone equally well, simple as that. Right now, as I am writing this post, someone in China died. And now someone in Peru died. And now someone in Canada died. What a bother, I can't even finish a single sentence fast enough without anyone passing away. And these deaths are all equally sad to their close friends and relatives, but not to me or you. So what I said was true: the sadness in death lies not in the biological shutdown of the human body but in the absense of the personality that accompanied it.

Another way to look at death, a way that I at least find interesting, is to consider it an opportunity. Many people live in fear in death and have a very life-biased way of looking at it, which makes sense of course but is also very limited. Why is death necessarily sad for the person who died? He or she couldn't care less. They're dead. Maybe for them it is an opportunity? Consider that for a second. Nobody knows what happens after we die, so I'd say dying is the surest way of finding out.

There's actually a few cultures who look at death like that. Our gloomy outlook on non-life is just as culturally inspired.

I hope you'll be less eager to get on your ethically high horse next time.

[Justice and Mercy]

So quick to cast judgement.

I cast judgement when a truth is revealed. If I was quick to cast judgement, you were quick to reveal truth.

Really, my post wasn't that long, I don't understand how you could've read past that.

You said that you don't consider death a tragedy.

That's what I replied to. That's what I'm talking about.

Quite the opposite, it's fairly meaningless since it happens to tens of thousands of people every day, if not more.

Again, what I'm pointing out is that your belief that death is "meaningless" seems inhuman.

Death is very profound.

You don't mourn everyone equally since you don't know everyone equally well, simple as that.

I'm not saying you should mourn everyone. I'm saying that death is always a tragedy.

I hope you'll be less eager to get on your ethically high horse next time.

Nothing to do with ethics.

[The Dude]

I'm not saying you should mourn everyone. I'm saying that death is always a tragedy.

My grandfather, 81 years old, was hit by a car on his way to the supermarket. He survived the impact, but only barely. He arrived at the hospital in a critical condition. He had several broken ribs and bones. In the hospital he fell out of bed several times. After the first time we were appalled that this was allowed to happen and asked the hospital staff to make sure he couldnt fall out of bed. After the second time, we were outraged. After the third time, he was dead.

That was a tragedy. Not because he died, but because it was so utterly needless. A child raped and murdered by a pedophile is a tragedy. A young Turkish girl being buried alive because she was flirting with boys is a tragedy.

These are all tragedies because of the circumstances that lead up to these deaths. Death in itself is merely a shutdown of biological functions. That is not tragic, that is natural. You seem to treat death as an entity in itself. I disagree with that view. And I'm not even going to get started on your ridiculous claim on the truth with which you opened your post. I have nothing to learn from those who think they have no questions left to ask.

[Tankbuster]

The mourning is not on behalf of the dead, it's on behalf of the living: we've lost a friend, a family member, a lover, a fafter,... Even if we ourselves didn't know the deceased person, we can sympathise with the loss others have had.

It's not a coincidence that we often say "I'm sorry for your loss".
Ceremonies and funerals are for the same reason: they're a ritual to mark an important transition for the living: from life with that person to life without him.

[handsome pete]

the oc is a really interesting question. i'm not sure what the religious explanation for why god created a world in which the fall of man would result in mourning is, but from the perspective of natural history i think the issue is very deep and hard to penetrate.

why do individual's do something that lessens their effectiveness. many people take years to get over the death of people close to them and people exposed to horrors after time develop battle stress and become neither able to fight or produce. obviously there is a deeper process at work. if the causation is that it affects the likely hood of certain combinations of genes occurring and remaining, then that would be a very difficult thing to analyze.

[Garnier]

The mourning is not on behalf of the dead, it's on behalf of the living: we've lost a friend, a family member, a lover, a fafter,... Even if we ourselves didn't know the deceased person, we can sympathise with the loss others have had.

It's not a coincidence that we often say "I'm sorry for your loss".
Ceremonies and funerals are for the same reason: they're a ritual to mark an important transition for the living: from life with that person to life without him.

This is what I think of it too. It's right and proper to grieve with those still living who will miss the joy of being with the person who has died.

[Giorgos]

@o.p

Play Planescape Torment. Pc, older game. Beginning to end. You'll thank me after you do.

[Monarchist]

@o.p

Play Planescape Torment. Pc, older game. Beginning to end. You'll thank me after you do.

Oddly enough, that is one of my favourite games from childhood.

I hope you'll be less eager to get on your ethically high horse next time.

What is wrong with riding on the highest, proudest horse of all? The high horse of ontological certainty is the most glorious charger of all.

This topic has been very revealing of some differences between theists and atheists, so far.