On Death: Why We Shouldn't Worry About It

On Death

Death is a subject that most people try to avoid. Who can blame them? Death is a rather depressing thing to talk about. And no one likes to talk about depressing things. "Why focus on death? Just live!" they say. Some people would even suggest that talking about death is pointless, because it's completely unknowable. After all, how can you have a meaningful discussion about something that is unknowable?

Some philosophers argue that one shouldn't even worry about death at all, because death could not ever really touch you. So it's best that one be indifferent to death.

The reasoning behind this is quiet simple. It goes like this: death is not really possible for you. Because when death comes, you are gone. Death is not something you can experience, because you and death cannot be in the same place at the same time. For you cannot experience death, in the strict philosophical sense, you have no reason to be concerned with it.

If you fear the actual event of death, if you fret about what death will actually be like, you are wasting your time. You and death cannot be in the same place at the same time. It makes no sense to worry about it.

Of course, you may worry about dying, how you die. But that's concerning the suffering you may feel before death, and not concerning the actual event of death itself.