Fear of Death

So I have decided that animals don't fear death existentially. They don't want to die, but they don't fear death. I think that they generally live in the moment, with some obvious exceptions such as animals who have to plan more than others, like chimpanzees and elephants and marine mammals. But I don't think that they think of their own death on a regular basis. My rationale is because we see limited evidence of burial ceremonies in the animal kingdom. If other animals thought about death while they were alive, there would be some evidence of their devotion or attention to death. Of course these elaborate burials and rituals were part of human evolution as we became closer to our current form, but they seem to be largely absent in the animal world, with the exception of the most intelligent mammals. So if we assume that most animals don't regularly think about their death, then it follows that they do not live with fear of death.

What this means is that the one of the biggest fears that humans have coursing through them on an almost daily, if not weekly or monthly basis, and with increasing frequency as they age, is absent in most animals. What follows is that animals are able to just enjoy their life, and then when they're done living, they die. There is no fear associated with this death. There may be some slight discomfort or pain towards the very end of life, and we hope that this is brief, but there isn't fear of it. And there isn't this obsession with extending their life. I don't think an animal sits there and wishes that they have a long or a short life. They just are trying to live and be happy and get food and have sex and do their thing. But they're not thinking about how long they're going to live and when they're going to die and how they are going to die.

This is beautiful in so many ways. This idea, if true, allows animals to enjoy the present moment much more deeply than most humans. Yes, animals don't often have the ability to think about the future the way that humans do. They also don't necessarily have the ability to harm themselves or kill themselves with such ease or swiftness that humans are able to do. Obviously humans have to be aware of their own death in order to avoid certain fates, like what would happen if I drove my car into a brick wall at 180 mph etc. In order to avoid death, we sometimes have to think about it, and do things to avoid it. I understand that. But what I'm trying to glean from animals is the beauty and grace that they're able to live with when they are not living in fear of their own demise.

Let’s use an analogy to understand this better. Imagine that you are reborn as a snail, only you have the mind of a human. You can think like a human, but you are physically a snail. You could ask yourself, “how do I live my best life as a snail with a human mind?” You could focus on trying to live in a snail body like a human, by building a really nice house which would basically be your shell, and finding a really dope-looking female snail, and finding a nice patch of garden to settle down. Or, you could just focus on your senses, rely on your instincts, find moist areas, smell things, eat things, defecate, and hopefully find another female snail that likes the same things as you do and have sex with her, and just live your best life. It’s entirely up to you, but you're a snail with a pretty damn short lifespan either way. So if you're going to focus on trying to be like a human and live as long as you can, it kind of seems silly. Why not just enjoy as deeply as possible the experience of being a snail?

Let's view this a different way. Imagine that you are playing a virtual reality game. This is a very rare prototype game, possibly at the headquarters of Microsoft. This game may not be released for 2-5 years, but you have early access to it. You have two hours to demo this game and that's it. Now the game itself has a bunch of different options, some of which include tasks like accumulating resources, building a house, blah blah blah. You could potentially play this game for hundreds of hours, and that feature to build up things and accumulate resources is there as a feature. Alternatively, you could go exploring in this world. You could see the sights and sounds, jump over the mountains, experience the landscape and the beautiful graphics, get a sense of awe, and listen to the birds around you, because it's an immersive experience like never before. During your two hours you can choose to spend your time building stuff like a house, which you're never going to to live in, or you can just enjoy the game as you wish. It seems obvious that you would choose to enjoy your time and experience things and listen and explore and just have fun without focusing on building for the future. 

Flash back to the real world and you say, “well, we live in the real world, and we have a long lifespan, and we have to accumulate these resources so we can have a long life and enjoy it.” But there is a fundamental contradiction in that statement. By accumulating resources and focusing on trying to live a long life, we inherently diminish our ability to enjoy our present life. We become so focused on the fear of dying and not dying and having enough stuff and making sure that we're protected against all these future concerns, that we aren't enjoying and exploring and living life as richly as possible. This isn't to say that living in the moment harms you, but it does say that you aren't necessarily planning 60 or 70 years into the future. So yes, living in the moment probably won’t net you as many resources as the person who's planning 70 years down the line, but you're likely going to be enjoying life more deeply and more meaningfully if you are living in the moment.

Animals seem to be living in the moment far more than humans do, with fewer distractions about the future and fewer anxieties. I think a huge reason for this momentary living is the fact that they do not worry about dying. They do not worry about their lifespan. They do not worry about death. They may worry a little bit about where their next meal is coming from. They may worry a bit about whether they're feeling sick or whether they want to defecate. But they don't sit there and focus on when they're going to die. And I notice that when people focus on death and the fear of death, they really aren't enjoying life as much as the people that don't worry about it. Suppose I could give you 30 years of a perfect life, a 10 out of 10 life, an unbelievably blissful extreme euphoric life for 30 years, OR 90 years of just a tepid life, like a 5 out of 5 life, a never-have-wonderful-euphoria and never-have-complete-satisfaction life. The question is, which life would you choose? And why? Why would you choose mediocrity no matter how long it lasts? Why live a life of eternal mediocrity when you could have 30 years of unreal euphoria? Isn't the point of life to be happy? There's no point of living to be 90 years old in-and-of itself.

If we stopped worrying about dying, dropped our fear of death, and just said, “let's enjoy life as much as possible and make the days that we're alive as rich and as valuable and as enjoyable as possible,” then we wouldn't be so damn bothered by death. “Okay, so someone died but they lived their fullest life.” Grieve, and move forward - that's how evolution works. It's this fear of death, the extension of death, and the dragging out of death that makes it seem so bad. Death is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be dreadful. You decide how much you want to think about it.