What is the real tragedy, death or life?

[LuckyR]

This topic is about the May 2022 Philosophy Book of the Month, The Maestro Monologue: Discover your Genius, Defeat your intruder, Design your destiny by Rob White

The tragedy of life is not death; rather, it is what we let die inside of us while we live

-Norman Cousins-


Everyone is afraid of death. Dying is a terrifying thought to the individual, and it brings sadness to that individual's close ones. And there are many that become like 'vegetables' (technically speaking 'vegetative state') and live a terrible life before dying. Latter is more tragic than the former, and it is quite relatable to the quote.


But I always felt like life is the real tragedy. We always struggle to keep our lives, maintain our bodies, keep our relationships, to be happy, etc. And we have to put a great effort to fulfill all these, yet at the end if we do not achieve what we expected we feel sad. However, death is not like that. It is a peaceful state in which you can stop all the running and struggling, and be calm and quite. So I feel like life as a tragedy and death as a gift. What about you?

I totally agree. You right that we fear death, but generally when we aren't that close to death. By the time we're actually infirm enough to actually die, we're usually pretty accepting of it.

As to the quote, the dimming of the light is definitely worse than the moment the dim light snaps out, though to be fair, commonly the decline is slow enough where we can accept it as the "new normal".

Quite true. Usually everyone is afraid of death. But young ones are more afraid compared to the old ones. As you said, because the changes of life that we are taken towards death are slow, we usually get accustomed to death. In some occasions people wish to die when living becomes much harder due to these changes.

Thus theoretical death is much worse than actual death.

[LuckyR]

Everyone is afraid of death.

I would say that most people reasonably avoid death.

However, lots of people cannot really afford to be afraid of death. Soldiers, for example, become rather ineffective if they are afraid of death, especially, if the other side is not.

In fact, if you are afraid of death, you will find yourself dominated and bossed around by people who are not. Therefore, you cannot live life to its fullest extent, if you are afraid of death.

People who are afraid of death will end up being afraid of people who are not afraid of death. It effectively creates a hierarchy with superiors and inferiors. Therefore, learning to overcome your fear of death is probably a necessity. Otherwise, you may look forward to a life of getting bullied.

However, death is not like that. It is a peaceful state in which you can stop all the running and struggling, and be calm and quite. So I feel like life as a tragedy and death as a gift. What about you?

I actually enjoy much of the running and struggling. It is like going to the gym. It requires struggling, but afterwards, you actually feel better.

Well if you have played your cards right, you aren't in life and death situations in your day to day life, therefore your fear or non fear of death is immaterial.

Or put it a different way, if your fear of death is coming up routinely in your life, you've got bigger problems than your fear of death.

Quite true. We fear a lot more things like financial security, relationship issues, issues regarding moral values, etc. Death does not come even to our minds unless we get into a life or death situation, which many of us usually do not. If one is constantly reminded of death or lives with fear towards death, some psychological support can be very much useful.

Well, I acknowledge there are those who deal with life and death issues routinely, it's just that those folks made some poor life choices along the way.