I mean, obviously I don’t mean to come off as suicidal but death is the absence of pain, suffering, and work, so I don’t think it’s bad, it’s just letting yourself rest without worrying about the stresses of life. Existence kinda sucks, especially if it were to be prolonged beyond finding meaning in existence. The limitations of existence makes it meaningful. I think I would be the most miserable person on the planet if I had to live eternally.

If that makes you happy, in the theoretical sciences there exist a number of ways to “cheat” death. According to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, it could be that you live on in parallel universes. According to special relativity, you are always alive in a spherical shell expanding from the point of your death at the speed of light. According to the holographic principle in string theory, your entire life could be contained as a projection on the surface of a black hole. According to general relativity, our spacetime could contain (or be modified to contain) closed timelike curves along which the time coordinate is circular and objects are bound to revisit their past existence at some point.

Of course, just like the search for the holy grail or the philosophers’ stone of the mythological past, these might all turn out either practically infeasible, empirically false, or mathematically contradictory; but it is nice to know - or at least guess with a high probability - that your existence will have left an indelible mark on reality and someone, something in the far future might still find your traces and remember you. In the meantime, perhaps with a bit of black humour considering the topic, I like to close with a quote from Engels’ Anti-Dühring:

Freedom lies not in the dreamt independence from the laws of nature, but in their recognition and in the therein contained opportunity to plan and let them act towards certain purposes.

In terms of afterlives I think it’s best to be agnostic. Maybe a will be reincarnated as someone feeling the affects of my karma, maybe not. I don’t think hell exists because that’s kind of evil and arbitrary to lump someone who wasn’t good enough with someone who was the worst person ever. It’s absurd that everyone who hadn’t heard of a religion is damned to eternal suffering.Though, there are some Christian groups that think Jesus abolished hell and now there’s just heaven. It also could be that they are just states of mind, maybe the Buddhist heavenly and hellish realms are also states of mind. However, we can’t know everything, so whether there’s an afterlife, we’re stuck in a Bergsonian loop, or there’s a void, it’s good to do good things and try to affect the world positively. If there is a heaven a dedicated communist is going there.

I figure I am going to die one day but also I don’t want to die yet so I’m gonna try to not die… I do fear death but that fear is to remind me I’m not ready to die yet. On the other hand I know it will happen eventually so when the time comes and I know there no real chance or reason to fight it anymore then I figure I will let that at fear go. At least that’s what I say now. Not sure how it’ll play out when the time comes.

From the Buddhist tradition, I’d say you can use meditation practice to realize for yourself that the notion of a coherent self is an illusion, and you are losing nothing in death. I’d suggest you listen to Revolutionary Left Radio and Shoeless in South Dakota, because Breht has a lot of episodes about Buddhism and stuff. He often tells the story of when his spiritual practice led him to have a crisis where he obsessed about the fact he was going to die, but he eventually realized he was just mourning the human condition.

Edit:

A fear of not having the time to learn the innumerable interesting things that there are to learn.

I found that relatable, and I guess I think you can’t regret anything if you don’t exist. I think it’s good to try and learn as much is you can, but what matters is that you try to affect the world in a net positive way. I’m still trapped in the illusion of self, but theoretically with how your consciousness is constantly changing there is no need to regret anything, just be present with experiences as they come, and try to be good, but in the end it won’t matter.

I was going to answer “I try not to think about it”, but then I saw your last line. Now I have to give an actual answer.

I personally think that death is like before one was born, nothingness. I would say that that belief has helped shape my mentality that you should do everything you want to while you still can. There’s nothing afterwards, so gotta hurry up and live while you’re alive.

None of us is going to live forever, we won’t see how things end up, and maybe that’s for the better. I get the fear of missing out on history, that’s something that can’t be remedied. Just try to imagine the future, remain optimistic, do what you want, find a purpose in life, and you will leave this world peacefully.

I’ve got a few disjointed thoughts regarding life/death that may help.

Fearing death is a perfectly natural response to living. We have evolved to fear death. It’s there so we strive to live long enough to breed and raise our young. Humans are enlightened beyond only fulfilling our natural instincts but they still linger and this can’t be helped. It’s in our makeup.

They say life is a way for the universe to experience itself. Since you as a human are just one tiny piece of the whole universe, you’re not expected to experience and learn EVERYTHING… Rather you just learn and experience what comes to you naturally which will add to the universes “knowledge pool”.

All matter in the universe has existed since its beginning and will continue to exist until its end. You and all your loved ones are made of this matter. Even in death, your matter still remains in the universe. So while your consciousness might no longer exist, everything that makes up “you” still does… your matter has just rejoined the universe. Your matter shares this space with the master of everyone who has ever existed or who will ever exist. This means you will never be leaving your loved ones behind for eternity, quite the opposite.

I hope some part of my ramblings soothes you somewhat.

I don’t find the concept too scary - I didn’t feel anything before I was, I have no reason to think it’ll be different when I’m not.

I’ve got people I love and things I need to do here, so I’ll try to be as healthy as possible for as long as possible.

I’ll probably cry and beg to live if it comes violently, but that seems natural.

If you’ve ever stood up too quickly and fainted, you should have an idea of what death is like. Your consciousness and all your senses (including your very understanding of reality) simply fizzle out with a rapid numbing sensation. If you think about it, it shouldn’t have really bothered you all that much during. You just simply cease to exist, more or less. It’s just that with death, you don’t fizzle back into awareness and sensation. Being dead is the easiest possible state of existence. It’s simply dying that’s the hard part. So, I don’t fear death. I fear pain, yes, but not death. The world was here long before I was and got on without me just fine. Now that I’m here, I’m just using this “thing” we experience called life to make it somewhat worth it, since I’ve accepted everything I have and ever will have, I will lose at some point. All I’ve ever known is loss. All I’ve ever known is urban, social and economic decay. I’ve been at war with the imperial core since birth, since I was born into a family with military history and sympathy for capital. As we should know, western military powers condition their soldiers to be fully receptive and vulnerable to arbitrary rule, which was passed onto my abusive household situation. I thought after the hell of being abused at home, having to deal with similar treatment at school, that I would be free of it once I “graduated” into adulthood. I was lorded over and told all my interests and my very dignity were invalid and unworthy of consideration because I didn’t own the house or the land it stood on. I was told tirelessly throughout my upbringing that when I own the house and I pay the bills, I can do what I want and have what I want. A cruel jest, to say the least, because look around at the state of housing in the US. Being at the mercy of chuds from birth, subjected to arbitrary rule, being cheated every time I found a way to cope and always being told it was my fucking fault because I didn’t have the power to enforce my self worth and interests taught me that I never had shit, and never will. It was just full spectrum humiliation. I wanted to own a home and have the security of land that is my safe haven from the worst of the forces of capitalism and reaction, and my whole generation was told, when we came of age, “Sorry, that was a limited time offer, you just missed it. You should’ve read the fine print, unfortunately. Your futures are cancelled. Have a good life, what’s left of it.”

I could go on for days, but I have no reason to fear death simply because all I’ve ever known is war. War at home, war at school, war on TV, in the media, overseas, at work. You name it. Being dead is pure bliss compared to this shit. I just simply don’t want to endure a torturous death, which of course nazis and other rabid far-right elements deliberately want to subject us to. I’m passive about my survival, for the most part. Maybe some of you haven’t had to fight an uphill battle your entire lives from birth, and can find relevant reasons to fear death. The characteristics of everyone’s upbringing differ, so all I can offer is my own analysis based on the singular experience of my own life. My personal development fascinates me, and so does seeing my revenge playing out right now with the collapsing US and remnants of the EU empires. The suffering they’ve put me and my class through will be avenged, and they will eat shit and like it. In the meantime, I’m not seeking my own death. It’s simply that when it comes, I’m at peace with it, because I know my life can be so much worse. I didn’t ask to be here. I didn’t ask to see enough trauma for 100 years compressed into just three decades. However, while I have this, I’m simply going to observe and continue cultivating my skills and interests.

As a person from hindu origin, every religion sucks one way or other. It’s better to deal with bigots and nazis with science and reason. Marxism and scientific socialism is the best medicine for humankind and nature. If there is a god in this universe it is this. Everything else doesn’t matter to us. This cosmos is infinite and is humongous. Who knows how many civilizations are there lurking around and do they believe in God? That we should ask them.