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People With University Degree Fear Death Less
An anonymous reader writes "People with a university degree fear death less than those at a lower literacy level. In addition, fear of death is more common among women than men, which affects their children's perception of death."
People fear what they don't understand. Ignorant people fear more, and are manipulated by their fear en masse.
Bruce Perens.
Because that's a false statement (more people can't die than the total number of people born, as those who are not born can't die, due to not existing in the first place), and you're begging the question.
Not a sentence!
"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."
If I believed that there was a good chance that after I died I would be thrown into a lake of fire and otherwise punished for the rest of eternity, you can bet your sorry ass that I would be scared shitless of dying. Yes yes if you're good you get to go to heaven, but what if you accidentally committed a mortal sin without realizing it or something? After all, if you read the Bible, God is nothing if not capricious; how can you know that when He said "No mixed fabrics!", He didn't really mean it? What if you really are supposed to believe in the Miracle of Transubstantiation, reality be damned? It's just so uncertain.
Fortunately there's no hell, so there's no worries on that front. Honestly, I can't for the life of me see why theists think that religion brings peace and comfort. What is any amount of Earthly reassurance, in the face of the threat of infinite torture? (take that, Pascal!)
This might be pretty obvious, but there's also a difference between the "fear of death" you feel in everyday life and the kind of "fear of death" you have when you believe that your life is actually threatened in some way. I don't walk around being afraid of dying or anything, but a panic attack a few years ago gave me a new perspective on a few things.
Oh freakin' hell --
This is such baloney. It's not influencing beliefs, it's good 'ol human sentimentality. Which I value very highly. THIS IS WHAT MAKES US HUMAN. Think of everything you love, and hold dear. Now imagine your life without it. You are not on a horse, you are dead, in a blank void, as you clearly stated.
I have a 6 year old son. Tell me why I would not be scared of losing the chance to see him grow up?
And as an aside, please tell me how you managed to cognitively grasp the concept of thought if there was no thought itself.
They fear the rule of law more than death and Government is their God.
Yes, and they also kidnap infants and drink their blood at their Satanic gatherings.
Can we stop with the hysteria yet? People in the US government are like people anywhere else -- some good, some bad, most just trying to pay their bills and keep out of trouble. Just because it's in the political interest of certain right-wing media organizations to regularly vilify them doesn't mean you have to mindlessly play along.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Everything becomes quiet...then silence. Peace at last.
That's incorrect -- death is not peaceful silence. Peaceful silence is something people have experienced and are familiar with. Death is your own non-existence, which by definition it is impossible for you to experience.
(You might get some moments of peaceful silence just before you die.... but that's not death, that's dying. And depending on how you die, you might not even get that)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Saying that as somebody who spent a lot of time in the academic world:
Ignorance is not at all a privilege of people without a degree.
Seems like there's a long list of benefits in education. Not only will you be less religulous, but you will also not fear death as much and hopefully get a more fullfilling job.
Educating women is even better, they have fewer children and a better health. And they tend to see education as something important for their children.
Have a look at Hans Roslings excellent talk about the miracle in Pakistan for what education has done, and especially education of women.
Long live education, which should be free and availible.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
Oh, I did not mean Satan with the guy responsible for this. Any god condemning a single soul to infiinte punishment for a finite transgression is pure evil. That one would be the target in this unlikely case.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Let's see.. Imagine person sitting in a comfy classroom learning about finance, science, etc. Not very scary. Now imagine a person living in an unsafe locale learning how to avoid warlords, disease, cold, hunger, etc. Pretty scary. I'm thinking the lack of fear of death among the educated has less to do with the education, and more to do with the fact that most educated people are from safer places.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Heaven is a terribly boring place, Hell is suffering, I would rather take another chance at life and Re-incarnate, of course it would be nice to retain ALL my memories of the past life so I could learn from experience and not make the same mistakes twice.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Death is your own non-existence, which by definition it is impossible for you to experience.
I work on the method of thinking about what life was like (for me personally) before I was born. That's identical to death in my opinion. What I personally experienced in 1856 is identical to what I will personally experience in 2156.
Definitely a bit of weird thing to wrap your head around in terms of the "non-existence", but I feel it's a better comparison than the post you replied to talking about "peaceful silence".
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People fear what they don't understand. Ignorant people fear more, and are manipulated by their fear en masse.
Getting a master's degree in physics did not give me any particular understanding of death. However, a central point of experimental sciences is coping with uncertainty. Understanding that the world is not black and white has a lot to do with your personality, and many people do not seem to be comfortable with themselves unless they feel absolutely certain about some things.
In my current work as a teacher, one general challenge is getting my students from "what is the right/wrong answer" to understanding and analyzing the questions in a deeper level. I feel like I must first undo the elementary school teachings, in order to teach scientific thinking.
This seems to reflect the fact that lower levels of education are about strict judgment and rote memorization. People at this level fear death, because they feel like they must have some kind of absolute knowledge in order to deal with it.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
"There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of 'Heaven' ridiculous by saying they do not want 'to spend eternity playing harps.' The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-up, they should not talk about them."
-- C.S. Lewis
"Isn't fear of death natural?"
The fear of _dying_ perhaps, death itself feels like it felt before you were born.
That wasn't so bad, wasn't it?
Look, that's certainly true, but we're talking about distributions here. I've seen stupid people in academia, and I've seen smart people in the general population. But here in academia, if I walk up to someone and strike up a conversation about some complex issue that perhaps one or both of us aren't very familiar with, 99% of the time I'll come out with a greater understanding of the issue than I had before. I learn something, just by accessing the intelligence of that other person. In the general population, 99% of the time the best I can hope for is a complete lack of interest from the other person or a few very stupid comments that make me sorry I started the conversation.
So yeah, academia ain't no intellectual utopia, but there is a difference...
weinersmith
it's because (statistically) the more educated, the less religious. While one would think that the religious person, hoping for life after death, would fear it less, I think the opposite is true. The atheist can take comfort in believing that everything just stops when you die, that is you just cease to exist - no pain, no awareness, no anything. A religious person who believes in the after life has to worry about whether they're going to heaven or hell, will it hurt when I'm dead and (for some) maybe even a little fear about the cracks in their faith (i.e. could I be wrong?)..
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
No, nobody is supposed to eat Taco Bell.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"