This can be a really heartfelt subject for a lot of people. Do you want to be plugged into a machine and live a lifetime in your last moments? Do you want to plummet from the sky? I've got a few myself. If I'm earthborne, I'd like to drown or freeze to death. In both ways, it's supposedly very euphoric during your last moments. You know what I dream about though? You know how I wish to die? In space. Shoot me out of a cannon. Preserve me and put me in a Voyager II. I don't care, I just want to be put in the endless blank. The endless dark that is the observable universe. To traverse that very silk, the flowy smoothness of nothing. I suppose a close second would be sending me to the speed of light, so I become pure energy. The energy that you use, the energy everything uses.
It's so sad isn't it, the thought? Personally I've got a peculiar view on mortality. This isn't anything new to people who like #futurology or #philosophy, but it's mind-boggling to most people. What makes us, us? The answer to the age old question of self-identity is not so much our makeup, not so much our body, but our memories. Every decision we make, our entire personality and lifestyle, is based on our memories and experiences. As such, if there was, say, a teleportation machine that worked by destroying your body and reconstructing your atomic makeup completely 1:1, that person would still be you. "You'd" be "dead", but at the same time "You're" not "dead". In actuality you're not dead at all. Now onto the actual point I have to make, there's not going to be an actual immortality pill in the future. There's going to be the ability to backup you're entire life and experiences. Making an 'image' in computer terms that you can flash onto a blank body. That'd be you, and you'd be 'immortal'. Haha, but this isn't #futurology, so there's that. 80 day later edit: I've spend many an hour reading about self-identity philosophy.. I read until my head hurts.
Have you seen the film 'Transcendent Man' by any chance? It's a documentary on the very subject of immortality.
An excellent documentary as well. Informative, and interesting. Seeing Kurzweil talk about reviving his dead father through a computer was one of the oddest, saddest things I've seen in film. He's a man who literally believes he can bring his father back from the dead--amazing. Another part of the film I found extremely interesting was where one of the interviewees talk about how doomsday, religious end of days, or singularity predictors all seem to place their predictions within their lifetime--an example I've heard a lot about is Mormon prophert Joseph Smith predicting the second coming of Jesus in the mid 1800s (during which Smith would have been alive had he not been killed). It creates an interesting emotional level to Kurzweil's science--is he drawing conclusions from data that doesn't point to what he says it does, holding out for his father's reincarnation?
I agree. The only time I can even consider the thought of dying is if everyone I know and love dies as well--I wouldn't have much left to live for, and I may even feel a sense of completion and willingness to die. However, at any given moment I can think of a thousand reasons to keep living, so that may never happen.
If I died and went to hell, I wouldn't mind that because the last thing I'd have is consciousness. If the punishment I experienced in hell was the severance of my consciousness, I might as well not be in hell, right? That's what I'm afraid of, the dissolving of my consciousness.
I wish I could choose the manner of my death. It would be swift, unexpected. I don't mind pain; lived through enough to last several lifetimes, and have learned to take it on like a doddering old auntie. However, I suspect I may know the mode of my demise... Cancer takes time. It steals time. You think you have a life with set mornings, afternoons, chosen evenings. But after the tumor tsunami hits, you have dry-locked land, a dusty dance card filled with the same partner over and over and over, the kind of partner who smells like moth balls, who steps on your feet. You can't escape his sweaty clutch. Since the initial diagnosis, I sat through: an MRI, a CT Scan, a chest x-ray, five - yes FIVE biopsies, three ultrasounds. My breast looked like swiss cheese. Doesn't matter how minor, how serious your cancer is; the doctors will poke and prod and analyze the motherfucker until they see and understand every nuance, every cell. Thing is, isn't an exact science. We all have cancer in our bodies at any given moment, but our bodies take care of it, eat it, spit it into waste and dissipated air. What cancer they see today may not be there one week from today, but the decisions and evaluation have been made. I think about my biopsy samples. I had to wait in a doctor's cold steel bed, only wearing my pants and a pink paper vest covering my breasts. This has been a pink journey: pink housecoats, robes, vests, pink ribbon sculpture and artwork linking walls. Is this comforting or political statement? I honestly can't tell. Pink isn't my color. Even one nurse, a woman who sees a hundred cancer patients a day, looked at me while I sat in a hot pink paper vest, and shook her head. "Pink just isn't your color." I know. And breast cancer isn't my thing either, though it apparently thinks it is. Where do we get these wayward lovers? So, I am doing well nine months later, a little surgery, a little radiation, a little medication. I had the genetic profile ordered by my doctor, and yup, got the BRCA mutations, have a body poised to attack itself. Nothing I can do but eat well, meditate, sleep, and go about the business of living.
Wow your responses are brutal, I would have never said drowning as a way to go. I like the idea of endorphins being a part of dying though. I think for me it would either be: peacefully with my loved ones, or being part of a great stunt with other people and that stunt to be remembered.
When I was young and I first learned about black holes, I really wanted death by black hole, just so I would know what it was like. I suppose I would be unconscious before it got interesting, so I'm joining the Tripping Hard on Psychedelics Death Club. When I imagine my death, I just know my last thoughts will be "This is really it, I can't believe this is real, I'm actually dying right now." I am very sure of this, and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to change that. I don't really know whether I'll be scared or not. I used to think I was going to hell (Christian upbringing) and was so afraid I couldn't bear to contemplate my own death at all. I used to have nightmares of hell, though they generally weren't fiery, hell could just be a house for example, but the terrifying thing was the feeling of finality: "This is it, I blew it, I never got saved and now I'm here forever, never to see my family again." The idea of oblivion is very comforting compared to eternal suffering. And hey, at least I lived.
Ideally, happy with myself. As for the method of acquiring deadness, I'd prefer anything that doesn't take a long time. I don't want to spend the last few years of my life wasting away like my grandfather.
No, just plain old age, but he was confined to a bed for four or five years. It's a shame, because he was mentally sharp until the end.
And panic-inducing before the chemicals come into play. Anyone who has ever almost drowned can tell you exactly how stupid it is to choose drowning as your way out.I've got a few myself. If I'm earthborne, I'd like to drown or freeze to death. In both ways, it's supposedly very euphoric during your last moments. You know what I dream about though?
Death and end-of-life issues are very interesting to me. This is a great documentary about finding the most humane way to kill someone (if a government is going to sentence someone to death, they ought to at least ensure it is not torturing/painful.) I think that hypoxia would be how I'd like to go, it's euphoric and painless. I've seen too many people working in health care that come to an unfortunate end, I don't want to die in a hospital.
At 92, while unlocking the door to my apartment coming home from somewhere, where I've been with my family. Quick and painless, something like an aneurysm.
fast and painless, and without fear. But the older I get the more I push myself towards a scary painful death. I like to back country snowboard in the winter, climb, solo backpack/peakbagging in the summer. I have a feeling I'll be a cautionary tail some day.
I've heard that drowning is the most painful way to go. I don't have a source or anything, this is just what I've heard. I would want to go either very peacefully and quietly or in a blaze of glory. Dunno which. All I know is that I want people to remember me after I die. I don't want to live a wasted life.