Why we don’t have to worry about dying

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Every day we lose consciousness and regain it as we go through our sleep wake cycle. We are completely offline for 6–8 hours and we often enjoy it.

If we go to sleep each night confident we will awake in the morning, why shouldn't we be confident that we will awake when we die? I don’t need to evoke the concept of an immutable, immortal spirit trapped in a body. This thought is well suited for a natural understanding of person hood. When we die and prove our mortality, we do not exist anymore. But someone does exist. In fact, many persons exist. There is never a dead person who is aware. The very idea of death is to no longer be aware. Only aware persons exist. When we die there is no longer a “me” so I can not mourn my own death. I can only fear it. But this is ridiculous. Why should I fear something that is not here? And when it is here I do not exist. As Epicurus said around 200 BC

The real question is, What does it feel like to die? Only the living are conscious. And the living are always conscious. To die is to be reborn. Not through the spirit but through the collective humanity. Someone is aware. Everyone is aware.

It’s difficult to conceive of “nothing.” We tend to think of darkness and emptiness, but nothingness is much different and hard to grasp. We denote a symbol to define nothing: 0. But then nothing becomes something, namely zero.

To illustrate nothingness I want you to close both eyes and tell me what you see.

I see darkness, blackness. Maybe some lines and spots too.

Now open your eyes. Close your right eye. What does your right eye see?

Nothing.

Closing one eye is perhaps a better demonstration of nothing than closing both eyes. You can better compare something (what your left eye sees) to nothing (what your right eye sees).

Dying is like closing one of your eyes, except there are billions of eyes in this case. Billions of people which are single points of awareness. When I die its like closing one point out of billions.

So while one of us dies and our light goes out, the over all light of humanity shines with a brightness that is difficult to conceive. We have collectively conquered death.

Death is nothing to us. To die feels like waking. We should ensure that those who remain (children, relatives, friends) when we die are capable of taking care of themselves because the responsibility has been passed to them temporarily.

So whenever we are tempted to fear death, we should channel this energy into making lives better for the living. After we are gone, humanity will continue. If we love this world, we should work toward a better future for everyone.

Summary:

This idea of rebirth through death can be captured in a few simple points. While simple to state they can be difficult to fully imagine.