The Fear of Death - How Reducing Our Fear May Help Us Live Better Now

Anyone who reads my posts regularly already knows that I believe biomechanical death is incidental - that it doesn't permanently alter anything except our physical perception.  But I believe there is so much more to understanding - and even embracing - the process of death than we can fully understand.  I believe that the fear of death prevents us from evolving now, and a great many of our modern crises may even have their foundations in the fear of death and dying.  

Before I progress much further, however, I want to remind my readers of one very important fact:  here in the West, there is a monopoly on death and dying.  And that monopoly is held by healthcare facilities and the funeral industry - both of whom profit heavily from the process of dying and the events surrounding death.  Healthcare in the US is abysmal - no matter what anyone tells you. Here, as a patient, you're not permitted to die until the absolute last dollar is squeezed out of your insurance plan.  If you don't have insurance, then you're allowed to die immediately; as soon as possible - the sooner, the better.      Naturally, then, if you've coin (which is the household god here in the US) you can afford to linger as long as possible (clinging to a biological life you already know is gone) while planning your lavish cremation and/or interment with a quote unquote funeral professional who will happily collect the proceeds from your grieving loved ones in exchange for putting you either in an urn or in the earth.     

My apologies if that seemed harsh. 

Now, though, you can see why the fear of death might have such a grip on us. When we commoditize it (which we've successfully done) we make it something that certain groups of people cannot afford - namely, those who have limited access to funds.  It is any wonder, then, that the fear of dying is so strong?  Who alive wants to leave their family shackled with a financial burden from which they may not soon recover?   

And there's more.  What about how we treated one another during the pandemic?   We were little shits to each other, that's what. So much othering and blaming. I've heard both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated call each other names, with prominent figures on both sides of the argument accusing the other side of ludicrous, insidious evils deserving of punishments worse than death.  The unvaccinated believed the vaccinated were sentenced to certain death at the hands of a conspiracy to eliminate the population, while the vaccinated believed that those who didn't get the vaccine should be herded into labor camps and isolated from the public.    Cruelty reigned, on both sides of the argument.    And we haven't yet made our way back toward forgiveness.  It was all based on fear of contracting an illness that may kill us - as any illness might if it finds the right set of circumstances within any human body.   

We can clearly see, then, how the fear of dying immobilizes us as a culture. And I mean humankind here, not just the Western world.   It keeps us from kindness; prevents us from empathy. The fear of dying - as we have seen during the pandemic - ignites great evil.   When we fear death, we begin to point fingers and cast blame.  Here in the US, we have historically marginalized groups of people over this; like the interment during of Japanese-Americans during World War II, for example.  (BTW, I find it humorous that we used a benign phrase like "relocation center" for these concentration camps; here in the US we seem to believe that if we put a PR spin on it, it's so much more palatable). Research has even been produced that shows when death or the prospect of it enters into an equation, we are more likely to embrace the groups that think and act like us, and marginalize (and ostracize) those that do not.   That article I linked to, by the way, describes something called "terror management theory."  What more do I need to say about that? 

The fear of death creates unrest within our culture, and causes us to marginalize anyone who 
doesn't think or act like we do. 

If we are ever to progress as humans - if we are to see a world where any sort of equity and justice prevail - we must start by eliminating the fear of death and dying.   The fear of death leads to othering - to marginalization of people who do not share our worldview - and ultimately to blaming them for the evils that befall us.  This, of course, then also leads to scapegoating, and with scapegoating comes the need for punishment of an individual of group of individuals, in which we mimic the ancient rites of religious sacrifice by the "elimination" of such individuals/groups from our culture through some ritualistic purge.  The Salem Witch Trials here in the US are a perfect example of this type of fervor.  

We believe ourselves to be beyond these sorts of behaviors.  We fancy ourselves enlightened; educated.  But we are still subject to the most basic of fears: that of death and dying.   If we can learn to see biomechanical death differently - if we can learn what it is not - we will be then at the beginning of our journey toward acceptance and love.  Reducing our fear of death will lead us to respect  ourselves, have respect for others, and to dignity for those who are making their exit, regardless of the mechanism through which they do so.   

If we can eliminate the fear of death, we will eliminate much of what makes us hate, and maybe we can begin to break the cycles of history.