So, things like hangovers and charley horses and movie spoilers are bad, because you're there to experience them. But as far as Epicurus was concerned, life was like a night of drinking before the hangover that is death. Which, inevitable as it is, you will never actually experience.
Now, the 21st century has its own perspectives on death. And one might be best described as a kind of philosophical FOMO. Contemporary American philosopher Thomas Nagel points out that some people dread death because they'll miss out on things that they want to experience. If you died right now, you'd never get to finish the video game you’re in the middle of, or read the next George R. R. Martin book, or see humans land on mars. Which would suck.
But think about it like this cool stuff was going on way before you were born. And you missed it! I'm gonna make some assumptions about your age here and say that you weren't listening when Orson Welles terrified the nation with the war of the Worlds. You didn't March on Washington. You totally missed Woodstock. So, Nagel asks if you don't feel some sort of deep sense of loss at what you missed before you were even alive, why should you feel loss at what you’ll miss after you die?
Now Nagel does point out that if we believe that life is essentially good, then there is something to mourn when a life is cut short. Since humans can live, on average, for about 80 years, someone dying at the age of 20 is a tragedy, because that person missed out on 60 possible years of good times. But we should pause here to talk about what you really value about life, because that will also have an impact on what you think about death in general, or about the death of a particular person.
If you say that life is just always, inherently, good, then you're set to place a high value on the sanctity of life. It doesn't matter what the content of that life looks like or what the person is like. The fact that they're alive is just good. So, losing it would not be good. But if you think that quality of life is what’s important, then you're going to want to distinguish between lives that are full of good experiences, and those that aren't. If you value, quality of life, you don't think that there's something inherently valuable about merely being alive. So, in these terms, some deaths might actually be positive or valuable like, if they bring about an end to a terrible, painful existence.
Now, of course, it might make sense to be afraid of dying itself, because the process of dying can be painful and drawn out and involve saying a lot of difficult good-byes. But maybe Socrates and Epicurus have convinced you that fearing your own death is absurd.
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乙亥年七月初九
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