[taxicabjesus]

You made an account (or a throwaway) just to reply to my comment. I think that's interesting... I've gotten a few other replies, which means that this thread is something people care about.

I knocked myself out, nearly drowned, and don't remember 2 weeks. Phased back in over the course of about 6 months. I thought that was basically like being dead, but I've since reconsidered.

Modern Americans don't deal well with death, maybe because we're led to think it's avoidable. I've been watching some movies of the civil war period recently. There were lots of casualties, much more so than previous wars. WWI and WWII and Vietnam were bloodbaths too (more for the Vietnamese civilians than the US soldiers).

The japanese gave their kamakazi pilots meth to help them feel immortal -- soldiers might have survived the skirmish, but being a kamikazi was a death sentence. The japanese were more ... cavalier about dying, which I think helped them to be more efficient fighters.

Pre-modern Americans must have been more realistic about dying. I think it'd be easier to make smart political decisions with the assumption that we're all going to die eventually, than with the assumption that death is optional.