No doubt many people have the feeling that to talk about death at all is, in effect, to conjure it up mentally, to bring it closer in such a way that one has to face up to the inevitability of one's own eventual demise. So, to spare ourselves this psychological trauma, we decide just to try to avoid the topic as much as possible.
Interpretation
People often avoid discussing death to escape the discomfort of acknowledging their own mortality.
Raymond Moody highlights the psychological tendency of individuals to steer clear of conversations about death, driven by a desire to avoid the emotional pain associated with confronting their own mortality. This avoidance can lead to a deep-seated fear of death and a reluctance to engage with the reality of life’s impermanence, demonstrating the struggle between human instinct and the acknowledgment of an inevitable end.
In practice
In a speech about embracing life, one might say, 'As Raymond Moody reminds us, avoiding the topic of death can keep us from fully living.'
People into hard sciences, neurophysiology, often ignore a core philosophical question: 'What is the relationship between our unique, inner experience of conscious awareness and material substance?' The answer is: We don't know, and some people are so terrified to say, 'I don't know.'
I have absolutely no fear of death. From my near-death research and my personal experiences, death is, in my judgment, simply a transition into another kind of reality.
The subject of death is taboo. We feel, perhaps only subconsciously, that to be in contact with death in any way, even indirectly, somehow confronts us with the prospect of our own deaths, draws our own deaths closer and makes them more real and thinkable.
To be born means being compelled to choose an era, a place, a life. To exist here, now, means to lost the possibility of being countless other potential selves.. Yet once being born there is no turning back. And I think that's exactly why the fantasy worlds of cartoon movies so strongly represent our hopes and yearnings. They illustrate a world of lost possibilities for us.
There's hostility to lying, and there should be.
Tis not where we lie but whence we fell; the loss of Heaven's the greatest pain in Hell.
There is one act par excellence which profanes money by going directly against the law of money, an act for which money is not made. That act is giving.
Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.
Decidedly it will never have been given to me to finish anything, except perhaps breathing. One must not be greedy.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.