Why do humans fear death? Should we?

[Barreldriver]

First off I know that such a question, at first glance, would seem to be more of a psychological issue more so than philosophical, however I am interested in clear logical argumentation pertaining to why humans fear death and whether or not we ought to fear death. The demands of logical argumentation and the "should we" part I believe would make this thread appropriate for the philosophy section.

Off the top of my head I do not have any syllogisms or inductive arguments prepared, however I will be working on some during this very week and in the mean time would be eager to read the thoughts of others on the subject of why humans fear death and whether or not we ought to do as such.

Strict guidelines for argumentation:

Follow the 15 valid categorical argumentation forms or present a flowing inductive argument. Please keep formal and informal fallacies in mind so that we may have a productive discussion.

[SilverKnight]

Is part of our nature as a specie. We require fear to survive, this is how our ancestors made it and we exist today.

[arcticwolf]

The short answer is the fear of the unknown. In other words misunderstanding reality. Death is the inescapable part of existence, fearing it is absurd. As someone said "life is a terminal illness spread sexually and the death is the cure". Totally seriously now, it's the fundamental ignorance of the true nature ( not the apparent one ) of reality that is the cause. Hope this helps.

[Supreme American]

I can't say all cultures fear death. Religious fanatics, especially, don't seem to.

[Padre Organtino]

I can't say all cultures fear death. Religious fanatics, especially, don't seem to.

Religious zeal actually indicates a strong fear of death and hence need to clinge on the idea of afterlife IMO.

[rashka]

I think there is nothing after death. We would like for there to be something but the reality of it is that there is nothing. Just like there is nothing for the ant when you squash it under your foot.

[arcticwolf]

I think there is nothing after death. We would like for there to be something but the reality of it is that there is nothing. Just like there is nothing for the ant when you squash it under your foot.

Are you sure about that? if non-existence was an option I would be the first one to sign up for it! But I think it's as much a wishful thinking as the existence of envious and jealous and angry and scheming God is. Why do you think it would end with no consequence at all, does anything you observe in reality support that theory? To me it all seems to be cyclical, nothing really ends for ever it just changes form. But! I like your theory to be true, unfortunately I don't think we are that lucky.

[Phil75231]

The religious people fearing death, thus clinging to the idea of an afterlife: Not necessarily, especially if they are firm lifelong believers. In this case, death followed by a wonderful afterlife is simply the nature of things - like the sun being bright, living grass being green, etc.

As for fear of death in other aspects (whether religious or not), yes, fear of the unknown could well be a factor. However, it could also be dreading never having any more good experiences to enjoy. This is especially true if the person believes that we don't take our memories with us after we die.

I guess one way to deal with this is to live not for ourselves (i.e. living for our pursuit of pleasure alone), but to live for helping others (to the extent we don't let others take advantage of us, of course). For all we know, our good deeds could be the first link in a chain of events creating great good - a kind of temporal "Butterfly Effect". Of course the flip side of this is that any harmful or bad deeds we do could just as easily cause a great harm or evil to others after our lives have passed, again with a "Butterfly Effect".

This just goes to show you that any action of ours, no matter how small, IS important. The only question for you is whether you're gonna do the good action or bad action. Think about that for a few minutes.

[Sarmatian]

Fear of unknown would be the first reason for fear of death.

Another reason is not so obvious. I think every man has innate sense of unique purpose in life. He has subconscious desire to fulfil this purpose. But modern society denying existence of such thing thus most often forcing people into false activities they don’t really need. As result vast majority of us are far from satisfying our purposes. We have this inner call telling us we missing something important. While we alive we have a chance to fix that. Once we dead it’s all lost.

[rhiannon]

Death in it of itself does not scare me.

It's the gettin' dead part I'm not too thrilled about lol