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| quote: | Originally posted by Arbiter
Er, no. You can in fact be as certain of what "lies beyond" as you can about anything if you have a modicum of sense. I mean, you won't have a functional nervous system, so that rules out having any sensory or cognitive functionality. Without the capability to perceive anything, much less process any information if you even had the capacity to receive or store it, the possibilities for what you might experience are pretty darn limited. |
Logically, sure.
Everything we have researched and studied about the process of death and sensation so far has indicated as such. But I am talking about the part of both the brain and the mind that considers what has been impossible - the part that many people's minds go to as soon as they see something that they don't understand. I'm not even necessarily speaking of a violent death and, as I already said, I'm not even necessarily speaking about being faced with the possibility of death or fear of the uncertain - I am saying that when somebody is faced with an imminent and sure sense of impending death, they will be afraid - not of pain, but of the lapse in their existence. Whether the fear is justified by rational sensation and consciousness is irrelevant, in my opinion. People don't think like that when they know they are going to die.
Consider the extermination of jews at Auschwitz Birkenau during WWII - the gas chambers they would fill wall to wall with people, stripped and herded in like cattle. Through the walls, they would inject Zyklon B, but many were dead before the gas even reached them. People knew that their death was coming, so out of sheer terror, they would topple over one another, crush each other, spew out their own organs, empty their bowels, and all of death panic - and imminent death, at that.
The process of dying is probably one as debilitating and serene as Arbiter described it. We can probably say with much certainty that people don't feel a whole lot of pain in their passing moments, nothing sensory at least, but the perception of pain is one that is most often much worse than the actual sensation. And fear of pain is a sensation much more severe than the actual torture of fleeting life, itself. For someone who has never died before, I doubt that the new experience of seeing one's own demise forthcoming is a fearless one.
But this isn't to instill fear in people, especially when it's already there, all by itself. I would say, from my experience, it's the things you don't ever see coming that kill you, so who has time to be afraid, anyways. 
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There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
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