Homework Assignment 10: Sam Harris Claim On Death

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” (Mark Twain). This quote from the famous American writer is the basis for what became one of the hardest ideas to comprehend, death. Death has always been a complex term, causing one to struggle with what the true definition is. It is also hard to wrap your mind around what does it truly mean to die. These are the questions we long for the answer. Whether we acknowledge it or not, death has always been feared by many. Death remains an impossible question, one that has been unexplained since beginning of time. Even though dying is a natural, we as a human race still fear it. What can be done to defeat this never-ending battle? According to Montaigne’s “To Philosophize is to Learn to Die” and Cory Taylor’s “Questions for Me About Dying” we can overcome this by living to the fullest, living with no regrets, living a legacy, and lastly not fearing the inevitable. If you want to conquer the question of life, live in the moment.

That’s the thing about death: it sneaks up and robs a person of their life, taking away all of their happiness. People indulge themselves in the idea of fearing death rather than facing it. Death is an unknown territory where no survivors have ever came back to share their experience. The US Army Private, Roy Scranton’s article “Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene” shines hope where he explains how fear can be conquered if the idea of dying is accepted. It is fear that paralyzes people from moving toward the idea of death. If people started to embrace the present, they will understand the inevitability of death and start discrediting fear.

Many people seem to fear death, but philosophers such as Socrates and Epicurus would argue that one has no reason to fear it. Socrates sees death as a blessing to be wished for if death is either nothingness or a relocation of the soul, whereas Epicurus argues that one shouldn't worry themselves about death since, once we are gone, death is annihilation which is neither good nor bad. Epicurus believes that death itself is a total lack of perception, wherein there is no pleasure or pain. I agree with Epicurus because Socrates doesn't give a sound argument for death as a blessing, whereas Epicurus' argument is cogent. I would also argue personally that death is not something to be feared because, like Epicurus, I see no sufficient evidence

Mark Twain once said “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. ” Death is an inevitable process of human life. All men must die sooner or later.

Everyone consciously or subconsciously is afraid of death because we don’t really know what happens after we die. Many people wonder if our population is growing how can reincarnation be real. Three lines of evidence demonstrate reincarnation is real. There have been multiple stories where young children have remembered parts of their past life leading to the idea of reincarnation. Doctors have done multiple studies on patients that have had near death experiences (NEDs) and what they experienced. Many of the patients said they saw a bright tunnel or encountered spirits. Plato said you will never sleep as in you will never be dead for good and, you will always end up coming back to life.

The quote can be interpreted in a myriad of different ways. Throughout our lives, death will surely occur. It may not befall us at this current moment, but

The way I percieve death is that it is absoulute and no living thing can ever escape it. Nor should we be afraid of death it is simply a

When people ponder death they wonder about the unknown with trepidation. As a young man, William Cullen Bryant wrote the "Thanatopsis." His thoughts progress from the fear of death to the acceptance of the event. People should not fear death because everyone dies and becomes a part of nature.

Fear of the unknown, and fear of what is to come in our lives, has generations of people wondering what will our lives be like tomorrow or the next day. Death is always there and we cannot escape it. Death is a scary thing. Our own mortality or the mortality of our loved ones scares us to the point that we sometime cannot control how we are dealing with such a thing as the thought of death. Why do we fear such a thing as death? We don’t know what happens after we don’t how it feels. The fear of death is different for most but it is most certain to come and we cannot hide from it. For death is just around the corner and maybe it’s will come tomorrow or the next day! We fear not death but the unknown that comes from death, that is the scariest thing about death.

Death is something that many people fear and many people face. Most people do not know exactly when they are going to die, but being given a sort of idea of that can change the way someone thinks and acts drastically. Death is in escapable. Everyone must die eventually, some young, like my friend in fifth grade who passed from being in an ATV accident, and others old, such as my 15 year old cat who recently passed.

Everyone in this world is going to die at some point, but no one wants to think about that. Most people do not let the thought of death bother them, they just live their normal life and go on with their daily business. Death can happen at any given moment in time, but we will never know when that time will come. Death is not the number one fear in the world, but it is still in the top ten. There are a lot of people in the world do fear the thought of dying, so they put it in

My interviewee expressed that she has no real fear of death but does fear the process of dying. She wants to die with her mental health intact as much as possible. She explained she does have some “senior moments” like buying a bag of potatoes when she already had a bag at home and not being able to find the potato peeler which makes it a little tough with the sudden surplus of potatoes. However, she has recently taken some mental evaluations that test things like memory and she scored well on those. She believes there is an existence after this life and that helps her a lot as she

Death is an inevitable fate for all living beings. It’s an aspect of life that can be hard to deal with, and the ability to overcome the fear of this unavoidable event can be difficult when it comes to knowing the reality of your fate in an

I think many feelings towards death come from the unknowns that also come with dying. These unknowns are things such as the existence of an afterlife, what is feels like, and what will be left behind after they die. These unknowns and people’s answers to them largely impact how people feel towards death. As Erikson explains, psychologically this stage of life is dominated by one of two feelings, integrity or despair. According to Erikson the more productive and full we feel our life has been, the more integrity and contentment we will feel towards our death. The opposite of that would be the less we feel we have accomplished in our life, we will look at death with despair because we are generally unsatisfied with the legacy we will leave behind.

We are all aware of death, and we know it will come to us all. To many of us death brings a chill down our spine ridden with fear, but to others it is ridden with strength and satisfaction of accomplishment. Fortunately or unfortunately we are all condemned to death. However no one knows when exactly the inevitable will approach, but we all know it is inescapable. But what makes death seem more realistic to us and those in denial of it is the lucid pictures of people suffering, in pain and those on their death bed before many of us can be rationale and accept the truth. Someone once said, “Life is about 50-70 years of pain. One is born through the mother’s pain and die leaving others in pain.'; How do we accept and