Might you consider death the most painful loss of life...

@soberSimplicity Great perspective.

@soberSimplicity we all have our own opinions... but just to say ... death is not pain free for many people, many or even most don't want to go and don't want to leave... even for those who commit suicide, we cannot know whether it was painful, more painful than they wanted/expected or whether they wish they changed their mind.. I think that none of us on this mortal plane can sit around saying that death is liberating unless we have actually died.. and been able to come back and evaluate that... see that's where it falls down!

@Adaydreambeliever People don't want to die because of the aforementioned attachment issues. Assuming that the afterlife isn't something biblical, its more energetic, its more transcendental, you become part of the God-Head again, or maybe you just sleep forever, well this would prove to be quite liberating and peaceful. Existence is suffering, fundamentally, not pain and suffering isn't a bad thing neccicarily, change can be at worst a necessary evil, but at best a powerful motivator. Now if you're to argue that this needs empirical data, not just philosophy, which I see as flawed, BUT, a certain amount of empirical data does exist. Plenty of people have died, clinical death, but were able to somehow or another be revived. These people have talked about their experiences. Most of them actually have a bigger improvement to life after dying. They are pretty much never scared of death after dying. This is for one, because they're forced to realize the temporal nature of their attachments and lives, but also because they get to experience whats afterwards. Also, as for the pain of dying, well the pains you feel as your dying aren't death, thats life. You're still alive at that point, you're feeling pain, not death- yet anyways.

@Tibby Yes, Buddhist and Gnostic ideas continue to amaze me

@soberSimplicity I as well.

@Tibby You're aware of Gnosticism? People usually know less about it, at least compared to Buddhism.

@soberSimplicity the point is... you don't know.. nor do i.. so we should really be very careful of spouting like we know .. and the point is.. life is only suffering for some people, and that suffering has been known to improve.. and like I say.. those who commit suicide often regret it.. who knows how many of those who are successful actually regretted it in their last moments. we don't know!! to talk about it like we do know is so self-serving

re the people with near death experiences.. yes that's ONE aspect of data.. and it supports what I said.. that those who died mostly wanted to live// and are glad they did.. wanting to die is very different from not being scared of it.. even those who aren't scared tend to still want to live.. unless they are suicidal which is an entirely diferent matter..

re the pain. yes but who wants to go through what might be agonising pain.. say of being shot.. stabbed, beaten.. its not a picnic..

I am off to bed soon and will leave you to your musings.. but it seems to me that when you grow up you might think very differently on these things ie when you get some real experience of life and people

@Adaydreambeliever First of all, you're treating this as if what I said was in support of suicide, which is a serious straw-man. I never said anything about suicide, I don't think this philosophy disproves or proves suicidal mentality, and thats coming from someone who has experienced a lot of suicidal thoughts and tries, on both a personal and interpersonal level. Also, I feel like you're entirely missing the point of philosophy, especially the kind of philosophy Im bringing up. Also, based on the data of those people, they were neither against nor for dying. They didn't WANT to live, but they didn't WANT to die. Which actually proves my point about attachment. Also, I feel as though I was able to give you the empirical data you seemingly wanted, but the moment you had it, you didn't really care and kept going.

@Adaydreambeliever Also, I would mention, most of what you just said is essentially trying to devalue what I said, instead of argue against it. You use age against me in the last bit, as if I don't have enough life experiences, which age doesn't exactly matter, because plenty of people older than even you have the same opinion as I do here. Im sure they just have more life experiences than you. You also bring up the fact that I haven't died before, which is a fair criticism, but the problem with that is that im using philosophy to talk about this, im not directly saying I know it must be liberating, just why using that philosophical reasoning, you could assume it is. But even then, I provided you with empirical data.