What is the meaning of death?

[DCP81]

After reading the posts on the meaning of life and not being able to come up with any definition that satisfied me I've wanted to try and look at the question from another angle. Asking what the meaning of life is assumes that life has inherent meaning. I suppose we assume this because we can't imagine having to go through the struggle of living without there being some ultimate reason for it all. But if that is the case, if life has meaning then why do we die? What is the purpose of death? Is there a purpose? Are the two related?

[Sy Borg]

Alas, the most satisfactory meaning of life must be one's own meaning, but that is a highly unsatisfying answer :)

The wastefulness of death bothers me. So much effort and learning and experience - gone. Maybe.

Whatever life's meaning (or lack) it seems to me that if you do your best to appreciate the good things in your life and generally "try to do the right thing" to others you probably won't go too far wrong.

[Burning ghost]

Without death there can be no appreciation of life. Without life there can be no appreciation of death.

"Meaning"? That is a question in itself as is "question"? Is there a question of meaning or a meaning of question? Here we find the tautology of language rear its head.

The "what" question has remained an enigma.

[Fooloso4]

Socrates said that philosophy is preparation for death. This can be understood on many levels, but since, as he said we do not know what death has in store for us, we must live in such a way that whatever the eventuality we have lived well. If there are rewards and punishments then the just will be rewarded. If death is a dreamless sleep then we should not waste this life and must remain awake to it.

Stoic philosophers practiced spiritual exercises wherein they were reminded that life is fleeting, everyone will die and become nothing, and so through meditation on that we can become free of the concerns that consume our lives.

[Clory]

I think the fact that you can even ask this question and that principles of reality evolved you in this state where you can question is meaning by itself.

[Apex_Predator]

There wouldn't be life without death unless we're in a magical world where god creates everyone and there's infinite space and infinite resources and everything's magical.

But death is a giver of life, new life, more life, evolved life, more intelligent life, better life. Like a forest fire that renews the forest, the seeds that are planted only during fires. There is no death without life, no life without death.

[Felix]

Death makes evolution possible. And according to some (e.g., Sri Aurobindo, Teilhard de Chardin), the purpose of life is the evolution of consciousness, and when evolution has reached the summit of consciousness, death will become superfluous and physically or psychologically cease to exist.

[Renee]

Death, and its meaning:

Live it up. Don't waste another day on negative things: either build for the future, or squander some resources for entertainment, but never allow dullness to enter your life. Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down. (Quote: Traditional.) A meaningful death is one in which you carry on living (via fame, and remembrance of you by future generations.) "...'till Death do us part...", which is a complete misunderstanding, because death unites, not separates. We are each dead the very same way as every other, after we die. Death gives meaning to the "death penalty". Also to "sudden death overtime." Also to "deadline", "deadhead", and "deathtongue".

[Sy Borg]

Socrates claimed that philosophy was a preparation for death. My own interest in philosophical matters intensified while waiting for a possibly scary diagnosis a few years ago, thinking about how after a diagnosis nothing would ever be the same for me again. I was already squaring off losses.

I was disconnected at the time - trapped in an exclusively human bubble - ignorant of most that lay outside of it, aside from science trivia. The sky, trees, stars, insects, birds and other animals, the Earth itself - all of the rest of nature were treated as mere abstractions that may be of use in my focus on human connections and interactions. I only ever interacted with the rest of nature incidentally.

IMO this is a form of madness that infects most of humanity, who are often completely blind to the extreme limits of their sympathies. It's akin to being blind to the cleaners, waiting staff, other underlings and equipment in your workplace while you focus on relationships between one's peers and bosses. Most people who go through NDEs are surprised at how much they missed in life while "playing the game". I don't see why one should need to almost die to learn that it's desirable to pay attention to, and appreciate the remarkableness of, one's reality.

While there are no obvious practical negative consequences for limiting one's focus to the functional and fun, that functionality in human systems comes at the expense of being in touch with reality, which largely comprises "unimportant" things. I suppose this can be thought of as the definition of "selling one's soul".

Death felt, and still feels, unreal to me, which lets me know that I'm still not in touch with reality. Death is objectively the removal of old forms, which make way for new (generally more complex) forms. Without death the Earth would only be populated by immortal unicellular organisms (or maybe one big one). The existence of death makes me question why it should matter that life has become more aware and intelligent. Is it better to be an immortal mindless organism or a doomed aware one? Not that we have a choice.

I consider the massive wastefulness of death. All the atoms are recycled but almost all of the hard-won experience, knowledge and understanding is lost. Maybe. As Felix suggested, it really depends how far evolution will go in the universe over the next trillion years. Given how much has happened in the last few billion, it seem very possible that our frail animal state is extremely primitive as compared with the possible future states of much more advanced beings.

Some speak of a "hard barrier", that life will always destroy itself, seemingly based on the fact that the biosphere is going through an unsettled and dangerous period ATM. However, the idea that every single intelligent species that evolves in the next trillion years will fall into the same hole as humanity, and with catastrophic consequences, seems unrealistic, more a product of negativity bias and disapproval of current circumstances than logic.

[Felix]

Alan Watts quipped that most people live their life like a condemned man winding his watch on the way to the guillotine.

[Renee]

Alan Watts quipped that most people live their life like a condemned man winding his watch on the way to the guillotine.

What do you mean, "winding his watch"? Airing his watch? Holding it to the wind?

Alan's WAttch's statement also applies to many would-be suicides' reasoning. "What's the difference if I die now, or twenty, forty, sixty years from now?" In a way we are right, life is endful, death is endless. The only failure in Alan's logic is that there is not going to be a growing need to go to the washroom, to eat, to sleep, to go to the kid's school for a PTA meeting when ambulating the short distance between the prison cell and the guillotine.

[DCP81]

Am I right in saying there consensus that death makes way for the new. It is part of the evolutionary drive that allows us as a species to be better tomorrow then we are today? In a way I understand this, because we have limited time to live our lives, we are forced to make decisions about how we will live. Like a woman who reaches her mid thirties and suddenly realises she only has a small window to have children if she wants them, death forces us to choose and in doing so we either succeed, and pass some of that success to the next generation, or fail and be wiped out of the gene pool forever.

I also agree with the notion that death is wasteful, when my grandfather passed away the tragedy was in the fact that he was still living life. He was old but he was still mentally sharp and physically able to take care of himself. My grandmother was a different story, she was sick and in pain and wanted to die, when she passed away, although it was still very sad, there was relief that she was no longer in pain.

I have to admit that, as Greta says, death feels unreal to me. It might sound childish but when I think about the people in my life who have passed away I find myself wondering where they went. Their body was still here so where is their personality? I don’t really find the idea that we go to heaven or hell very convincing, it doesn’t make much sense to me. This world is governed by scientific principles, why they would no longer apply to us after our death seems illogical.

Also I’m not sure I agree with Renee’s assertion that a meaningful death is one in which you carry on living through the memory of others. The Egyptians held a similar belief, which is why they built enormous tombs to their pharaohs. But if that were true, then do the deaths of the forgotten masses mean nothing?

[Renee]

do the deaths of the forgotten masses mean nothing?

How many lives of the twenty or forty million Ukrainians that Stalin had ordered killed are you familiar with? Without introducing or inducing generalizations, are you aware of their individual desires, thoughts, poetry, love for their mother and motherland? Are you at least somewhat familiar with Shakespeare's life, mind, soul, circle of interest?

Do you know what Nobel, the prize maker, did in his life? Or are you familiar with his legacy?

Do you know the agony (without generalization, fantasizing, or induction) my grandfather had had before he took his own life when my dad was merely 2 years old?

This is what I meant.

What is it that you meant to say?

-- Updated November 20th, 2016, 11:37 pm to add the following --

do the deaths of the forgotten masses mean nothing?

Everybody dies. "No one here gets out alive." According to this, death is not unique. If there is nothing to latch on to in remembering someone else, death is deafeningly non-unique. It's the greatest equalizer. You can only alleviate this status quo by making your life memorable to others.

Or an even better one: "It's all in the art. Nobody gets points just for existing." This contradicts the Christian notion that to God every soul counts, as to Satan. Satan will pray any price to get a soul. He will pay anything. "Anything???" We used to live in a world before general atheism, in which every person had a soul, and it was undying and everlasting. This was a given and a privilege. Now we don't have that any more. You pass on, there is nothing left of you. Unless you buy immortality during your living years by doing things by which others remember you. Granted, it's not the same as eternal life, but this is the best you can hope for.

[Atreyu]

To me, 'meaning' here basically means 'purpose' or 'function', so I'll answer the question as such.

As someone above said, death gives life meaning and purpose. If we lived forever, it would be a most meaningless and purposeless existence. Nothing in life would matter. So in this sense death is a necessary counterpoint to life. Neither could exist without the other.

I call all of the above the 'personal' or 'subjective' meaning of death. Our personal deaths make our personal lives meaningful. But death has another 'meaning' (or function/purpose) which is more 'objective' and not personal. At death our awareness (our entire life experiences added together) is eaten/consumed by another entity, much like the food we eat is incorporating into our own bodies. Think of it as a sort of Gigantic Psyche which grows bigger and bigger as more and more living beings on Earth die over time.