(no subject)
Hi there.
I've been a "friend" of this community for a long while, but didn't quite get the whole membership/posting thing.
Anyway, about 5 years ago I had some severe anxiety over the prospect of my own death. (this is one a of a series of ocassional anxiety attacks I get...nuclear war, Y2K, bioterrorism, you name it I've probably fretted away a sleepless night over it)
But I met this challenge head on by thinking my way through....I've come to a place where I can accept the idea of dying with no promise of an afterlife.
So, this is the link...I think it's one of the most important things I've written:
Dealing With Mortality:
A Skeptic's Guide
or: Kirk's Big Fun Pages O' Inevitable Death
http://www.kisrael.com/mortal/
It's a series of 8 or so mini-essays and a collection of quotes (I think small pithy quotes can hold a lot of wisdom)
Let me know what you think! Maybe I'm fooling myself, maybe this is too cerebral to help most people, but I haven't had a sleepless night about mortality since establishing this. (And it's helped with some of the other anxieties...for a lot of cases, the worst that will happen is death, so if you can come to grips with that you're ahead of the game....there's still "dying horribly" and "tons of people dying at once" to deal with, but you can get a head start by accepting your own passing as a natural part of life in the universe.)
I've been a "friend" of this community for a long while, but didn't quite get the whole membership/posting thing.
Anyway, about 5 years ago I had some severe anxiety over the prospect of my own death. (this is one a of a series of ocassional anxiety attacks I get...nuclear war, Y2K, bioterrorism, you name it I've probably fretted away a sleepless night over it)
But I met this challenge head on by thinking my way through....I've come to a place where I can accept the idea of dying with no promise of an afterlife.
So, this is the link...I think it's one of the most important things I've written:
Dealing With Mortality:
A Skeptic's Guide
or: Kirk's Big Fun Pages O' Inevitable Death
http://www.kisrael.com/mortal/
It's a series of 8 or so mini-essays and a collection of quotes (I think small pithy quotes can hold a lot of wisdom)
Let me know what you think! Maybe I'm fooling myself, maybe this is too cerebral to help most people, but I haven't had a sleepless night about mortality since establishing this. (And it's helped with some of the other anxieties...for a lot of cases, the worst that will happen is death, so if you can come to grips with that you're ahead of the game....there's still "dying horribly" and "tons of people dying at once" to deal with, but you can get a head start by accepting your own passing as a natural part of life in the universe.)