What's So Bad About Death?

The following is the opening paragraph for an article I found in the September 25, 2014 London Review of Books. It expresses my view of death more concisely than I have yet been able to myself. While it does not express the profound implications of what it says, implications that usually end up clouding my own attempts to say the same thing, it does very precisely say something I have been trying to say for a long time.

"What's really so bad about death? Unlike heartbreak, debt, public speaking or whatever else we may be afraid of, our own death isn't something we experience. "Death", Epicurus said, "is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist." Death is not an event in life. It isn't, properly speaking, something that happens to us. It is, rather, the nullification of the self as experiencing subject. How can then death be a bad thing for the person who dies? What is there to be afraid of?"

The implied answer to that last question is, of course, "nothing"! Which is why the entire idea of a "death penalty" seems so silly to me. This paragraph (above) should make it very clear to anyone who cares to understand the reason I prefer to think of my so-called "execution" as my "release day". And I truly look forward to that day with all the excitement and anticipation as any release day in the conventional sense. Regardless of anything else that it may or may not be, it will be the end of this nightmare I call my life.

(J.D. 9-28-2014)

P.S. One should not mistake the joyful anticipation of my "release day" as a desire to die. No one can escape from life (i.e. by killing themselves for example). We must be "released" in one way or another, from our purpose for being here. I know I have a purpose if for no reason other than the fact that I have not been "released" yet. Attempting to "escape" life not only results in one's purpose being carried over into another life, or another "nightmare" as I would say. This is the principle of reincarnation, and it is a simple fact of life that is plain for anyone with an open heart and a clear mind to see.

(Note: the concept of reincarnation was central to the original Christian scriptures, but explicitly removed after the Romanization of Christianity, presumably because it undermined the rational of church and state authority. For this same reason even the Eastern traditional version of reincarnation has been perverted to imply some sort of continued individual existence, which infers then that social order must be imposed and inforced. Of course, any independently thinking person will realize sooner or later that order cannot be imposed, and all attempts to do so invariably result in more imbalance and chaos. Thus, those who would impose their idea of order onto others rely on the irrational fear of death - which the belief in some kind of continued individual existence naturally invokes - in order to promote their "authority". It was this very "insanity" that the fear of death invokes that I broke free of when I threw down the rock I had meant to kill Shasta with, and took her home instead.)

P.P.S. The above "note" is a pretty good example of how I frequently end up clouding my own words with "relevant implications". I just feel so often that the implications are at least as important, if not more important, than the point itself. If I were a better writer I'd be able to integrate the implications into the point itself, like "coloring it in", instead of adding all these cumbersom and destractingly detached sub-texts. At least I'm still learning!