[fapjacks]

The first time I saw the death of someone close to me, I was tormented, too, by my own sense of the fragility of life. But especially my own life. I was afraid for myself, and tormented by the certitude of my own terminal existence, the fear amplified by the urgency of my circumstances and especially after witnessing (or participating in) the subsequent deaths of yet more close friends. But after some years of therapy (on a couch with a professional but also especially on drugs in the forest with amateurs), I've come to terms with it, and in fact I get some comfort out of the inevitability of my own death. It's one of the few things we can count on without any doubt, and being able to predict anything about life is a blessing. And actually, instead of being tormented by it, I'm grateful for the experience. I don't take much for granted, and I'm really thankful for every day that I wake up. I genuinely believe that I was given the greatest gift that I could ever receive. And even though it may seem weird to say -- and given that I'm interpreting your words in the right way, and also if you'll pardon my presumption for offering -- I honestly believe that you've been given the very same gift, but that you only don't know how to receive it just yet.

[anongraddebt]

There is a dual or two-aspect irony at the center of modern culture in the West. The ironies - both negative - are the following:

(1) An increasing, intentional aversion to one's own death and the death of others. Instead of living life in full awareness that you and those you care about are all dying (in some sense), our culture runs from the prospect of death through various forms of distraction, etc. This adolescent attitude weirdly breeds a callousness of heart. If death isn't something you ever think about, then does it really have meaning? If you always evade the fear instead of confronting it head-on, then there is no real loss or pain or grief. There is less joy precisely because of this evasion, but at least you've numbed yourself, right?

(2) The second irony is that even though this culture runs from the thought of death, it is also increasingly a culture of death in some regards. A culture of death is one where individual and collective actions that typically lead to the de-stabilization, weakening, or implosion of the society which celebrates them... are celebrated. This can be seen across the West, regardless of one's ideological slant. Cultural/societal death and decay remain invariant across ideological groups (that is, they have no privileged locus).

[fapjacks]

Facing one's own mortality carries a tacit knowledge of death that can't be got by other means. It's one thing to think about it intellectually, to sort of turn it around in your mind. But it doesn't give you a sense of death. I can tell from your treatment of it that you haven't. And that you hold up this sort of deeply personal interaction as a demonstration of some problems you believe you've identified with an entire culture, I think shows of a different kind of callousness of heart.

[saiya-jin]

Hold your horses a bit, you can't make such blank statements about somebody who you don't know at all. People are so vastly different and unique inside that what works for you and defines you might have little to no meaning to next guy. What you consider an important marker of some aspect of personality might be lacking elsewhere, yet the aspect itself might be very well there.

Psychedelic drugs can give you perspective on, well almost everything that nothing else in western culture comes even close to. Or might not, as said we are so unique that no blanket statement can express the truth.

As for me, doing some rather extreme sports puts me to situation with imminent fear of death (ie climbing hundreds of meters above ground, used to have strong vertigo all my life), that one becomes well-aware and content with it. Maybe not every climber, but definitely me.

If I experience my parents/life partner passing in my hands, it will be a tough moment. But I will manage it, no doubt there. Same goes for rest of close people. If you expose yourself to extremes, you become familiar with how you react to them, and also in managing them.

[fapjacks]

I agree with what you've said about extremities of life experience, and I agree that people fundamentally experience life differently from one another. As an exception among most of my peers, I support the notion that someone hardly exposed to danger could become affected by e.g. PTSD. But that being said, I can assure you that there is nothing that comes close to the experience of combat, and nothing-er still that comes close to experiencing it continuously across years. It's not like being in the same room when grandpa passes away. It's being consumed by human terminality, every conceivable permutation of mortal extreme. Surely you've read about the continual shelling of the trenches, and at least intellectually understood there's a difference. But even then, I'm sure there have been folks who, through their own relative existence and differential experience, have stumbled high on mushrooms on the same tacit wisdoms as those realized by ascetic monks who spend their entire lives on the edge of existential crises. I'm totally sure it happens, but it doesn't happen often. I'm surprised all the time, but just based on his reply, I made an educated guess, which turned out to be right. I don't have children, but I know enough people with kids to understand that having kids flips a bit in the human brain. It's an experience with a tacit component that can't be got by other means, though I'm sure someone's been there somehow that didn't involve creating a child. There are exceptions to every rule, but they are exceptions.

[anongraddebt]

You get a sense of death in various ways. Life-threatening illness. Experiencing the death of friends and family members (and not just experiencing, but processing your emotions and not running from the pain by choosing to simply ignore it as if it is not really there). Spending time with and caring for the sick and elderly.

There are more ways.

I've only been in a life-threatening situation once in my life, but I've experienced the others a number of times.

My point was that our culture seems to discourage absorbing loss (within oneself) and transforming it from pain into maturity, resilience, increased desire to help others, increased motivation to maintain communities, etc. Instead, there seems to be a pressure to make death (and loss) something ephemeral, such that the loss never really occurs.

[fapjacks]

No, your point was that you were trying to use my post as a springboard into passing your value judgments about western culture. Which was itself incredibly ironic both in your actually using the word "irony" and in your sort of amazingly insensitive attempt to hijack my small message of encouragement to this poor dude (to try looking at and thinking of his torment in a different way) in order to interject your theories. Which was for me, in the end, the thing which QA folks call an indicator.