Death Is The World 's Universal Fear

Meaning and significance of death in the light of the Christian narrative is addressed including adequate detail.

Fear: an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat(Websters Dictionary).Fear is something that our lives have adapted to rarely use as our ancient predecessors have.In our day and age the concept of fear comes through the stress of work. We humans no longer fear a cold nor do we fear storms as our houses protect us and on average our life spans are longer as old in the Paleolithic was 33 while currently it is 71.5(Wikipedia Life Expectancy). Why then is our fear so extensive that it can make us freeze up? “The answer is our legacy of ancient fears, the result of having spent millions of years running from predators. Our fear response is more influenced by the ancient species we struggled to escape than any modern challenges.”(The evolutionary legacy of having been prey.By Rob Dunn) This is one of the statements about human life. If this is so how do we develop from terror to finding fear fun?

There wasn’t anything holy and beautiful about mass death. I tightened my grip around the instrument that would make me just as bad as the sinners around me. But the noise grew louder, Mr.Richards’ ignorant laugh grew more confident. The increasing decibel level was maddening my senses and I needed an escape. I suddenly began to sympathize with the seven fallen bodies. Just because their views were different, they were told they were unworthy of leadership or life. Growing up, I questioned the words in the holy book, but never had I dared to speak my mind. Maybe, just maybe, it was because I was fearful of being one of those bodies.

In view of these safeguards, proponents of capital punishment believe that state executions are justified sentences for those convicted of willful first-degree murder. They do not think sentencing murderers to prison is a harsh enough sentence, especially if there is the possibility of parole for the perpetrator. A final argument posed by proponents of the death penalty is that execution is an effective deterrence. They are convinced that potential murderers will likely think twice before they commit murder. Despite the rhetoric of politicians for the increased use of the death penalty, a number of prominent individuals and organizations have emerged to express their opposition to capital punishment. Along with families of death row prisoners, the International Court of The Hague, the United Nations, Amnesty International, the Texas Conference of Churches, Pope John Paul II, Nobel Peace recipient, Bishop Tutu, numerous judges and former prosecutors, former Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, actors, and writers are waging a determined struggle against the death penalty. They invariably argue that capital punishment is wrong and inhumane. Religious folk generally evoke the nature of an “ideal spiritual community” (Cauthen, 1). Within this perspective, a moral and ethical community does not insist on a life for a life. While a community must act to protect law- abiding citizens, an ethical response would be to

Pain. Anger. Frustration. Hatred. These feeble words do not describe the anguish felt by the families of murder victims. Ted Bundy was responsible for the deaths of more than 50 young women across the United States.(Lamar 34) Bundy was finally sentenced to death by the state of Florida in 1978 for the kidnapping and brutal murder of a 12 year old girl and the deaths of 2 Florida State sorority sisters.(Lamar 34) As if the loss of a loved one is not enough for a family to contend with, Bundy remained on death row for nearly 10 years. Three stays of execution and endless appeals kept Bundy alive for almost a decade, when his victims lives were untimely and viciously taken from them.(Lamar 34) If

The fear of death is meaningless in this concept. But what are we fearing in death? Is it the unimaginable or our life afterwards? Socrates does not seem to explain this; he simply summarizes that if you lead a life, such as seeking true wisdom, the idea of fear does not exist. What completely is death? He explains it as the separation of the soul and body, but is there actually more to that? For instance, what occurs to your body once you are liberated? How can the soul be called pure if it tainted within a body? Even though the body is simply a vessel, the actions of the individual and the knowledge they have is due to some of the information obtained from the body. The body is not completely evil; although it is distracting, the soul carries on the information of the body. So, in this sense, what does he mean by pure (pure from what- sin, distractions, false happiness). Socrates fails to take into account these type of questions and simply tries to state death as such: upon death, a person obtains an immortal and flawless soul and a person grows closer to the truth upon death.

The Execution of God is a disturbing book—and rightly so: any meaningful discussion of the death penalty should be profoundly unsettling. It should cause us to reassess our values and our ethics. It should press us to reevaluate our actions—or inactions—regarding what continues to be one of the most divisive and troubling issues in modern America. The Execution of God succeeds on all these counts, and its potent message lingers, disturbingly, long after the final page.

Abstract The author’s perception and treatment of Everyman are that each individual need to prepare for it by repenting, following God, and doing good works. The author’s perception is that at the end of the day one cannot take anything or anyone with them when they die. The only entity someone can take is their actions and how they use the resources that are given to them. Those who put God before everything and perform good works will enjoy eternity with Him, but those who enjoy only the pleasures of life and forget God, will not. The author’s main message throughout the play is to not fearful of death but know that one day everyone will die, so do as much good as one can, repent of one’s sins, and to put God first. Keywords: author, perception, treatment, death The Author’s Perception and Treatment of Death in Everyman In the late fifteenth century, an unknown author wrote a morality play called Everyman. According to Pearson, a morality play during the Medieval period would communicate a moral lesson and make it so simple that both illiterate and well-educated audiences could both understand the lesson (Adu-Gyamfi, 2016). One may believe that the author of Everyman want to communicate to the audience that everyone will receive judgment the actions they commit on Earth. The author’s perception of death is that God is the only one who has the power to control when each individual die, so if one has a relationship with Him one should not be fearful death. The author

against the death penalty, with press releases, special reports, and amicus briefs” (Klein 1). With so much going on already in this world, why create an added problem by keeping the death penalty around? America promotes freedom of religion but then goes against religious beliefs with the death penalty; which creates protests. Protests can lead to a divided nation, which is not what America needs right now.

When faced with the inevitable fate of death, the reaction of the population is very different because of their relation to life. Some men did not stop for death; they “hurried to and from” grinding their teeth in anger, which indicated their frustration in their inability to change the inevitable. Some “hid their eyes and wept” because of their unwillingness to accept the end while others rested “Their chins upon their clinched hands.” The latter watched their world fall apart bravely and smiled at their fate.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is full of themes in which the force of love, fear of death, and power of the Gods are portrayed. The theme of death and the inevitability of it are not only just themes but are themes that reflect on who Gilgamesh is as a character. Death is an inevitable and inescapable fact of human life, in which Gilgamesh is determined to overcome by becoming immortal. Because Gilgamesh is known for his godly power, strength, and ambition the gods decided to counteract his arrogance with the creation of Enkidu…man of the wild. Enkidu was created to put Gilgamesh in his place, but with a kiss they began to call one another brother. Gilgamesh the beloved king of Uruk is bitter that only the gods can live forever which ultimately decides that he shall find a way to prove differently. With the help of Enkidu, Gilgamesh sets out on a quest for immortality. The theme of the inevitability of death is prominent as shown by his fear, experience, and acceptance. Gilgamesh’s fear of death is what ultimately makes him the king his is in the end of the poem.

The title "On The Fear Of Death," caught my eye as I was skimming the text for a story. After some thought, I concluded that the word "death" means more to me than most of my peers. I grew up as the daughter of a hard working man, one with an uncommon occupation. My father is a mortician. "On The Fear Of Death" intrigued me because many adopt such a negative view of death. Kubler-Ross takes the concept of death and embraces it, perhaps allowing her to ease her own fear of mortality. She eloquently expresses her views, emotions, and feelings regarding death and dying. Humans cannot conceive peaceful death, instead most imagine themselves suffering before they pass. Kubler-Ross nicely expresses that "death in its

At the most basic level of subconscious thought, every living animal possesses a desire to stay alive. Usually, this instinct lays dormant, although in dire situations, we can be led to do unexpected things. In addition to this subconscious drive, there is a socially constructed motivation for fearing death. Thanks to the pervasive nature of religion throughout history, much of humanity has, at some point or another, feared the prospect of eternal damnation and torture during one’s life after death. Although not every religion has a negative aspect of the afterlife, or even any semblance of an afterlife at all, those religions which do contain some such construct receive much more attention in this regard. Throughout history, many

Mortality salience is a product of the terror management theory its ideas are based in the existential anxiety that is kept at bay by an individuals cultural worldview and sense of self-esteem.(Cite Ernest becker and pshcy) Mortality salience leads to negative attitudes and agressiveness against other ideological worldviews. (Cite ernest becker psyc) Therefore, Terror managament theory provides evidence to the idea that humans build societies through a variety of symbolic systems;laws, religion and culture are examples of ways in which meaning-making is applied to individuls to combat the terror of death on a collective, large scale. On an individual level, terror managemnt theory helps to alleviate death anxiety and terror by bolstering invidual self-esteem . Through this, we can escape the fear of “extinction with insignificance” (CITE Endings).

"Punishment," writes McTaggart, "is pain and to inflict pain on any person obviously needs justification." But if the need to justify punishment is obvious, the manner of doing so is not. In fact, there is a wide variety of opinion on the single issue of publicizing execution. For example, Even though Sister Helen Prejean, a spiritual advisor who worked with death row inmates wrote the deeply moving novel Dead Man Walking, her ideas to make a difference may be impractical wishes to others. In addition, Prejean finds the moral cost of death penalty too damaging to tolerate, and thus she believes those death row inmates who "have died a thousand times already" deserve to die and stop suffering from "their anticipation of the final horror"