| | Michael,
If you wish to spend precious time cowering from it, be my guest.
Perhaps you can elaborate on what you mean by 'cowering' and how exactly that describes me.
Your own words: "You should be afraid of dying as it is the destruction of your existence. Anything that threatens your existence rightly creates a fear in you to compell you to avoid that thing."
Is spending time, effort, and money trying to fight a disease such as cancer 'cowering' from that disease? How is that any different than spending time, effort, or money fighting senescence or death in general?
No, and I never suggested it was. But spending time and effort to fight disease and extending life (perhaps indefinitely) doesn't require a fear of death.
It was once an immutable fact that men could not fly or live underwater or go to the moon, and the concept of whether men would be able to do that was fundamentally accepted or rejected philosophically by people. Those who rejected men's capacity and potential to overcome those tremendous odds were the ones that did absolutely nothing but slow progress down. The ones that accepted axiomatically that it was possible were the ones that eventually achieved it.
Nothing I said challenged the possibility that man may, one day, have the ability to cure all disease and extend life indefinitely. And neither did I ever say that the pursuit of such was a waste of time. What I did say -- and what I still maintain is true -- is that to fear death is a waste. That doesn't mean that I'm in a hurry to die, or that I view death as a "good" thing. It's simply a thoroughly rational acceptance of reality.
Summer
Post Scriptum: I need to catch a train, so if you wish to continue this discussion, I may not be able to respond 'til tomorrow morning. Ciao.
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I do not believe that men are afraid of dying, they are afraid of being cowards.
