[ericls]

I think the idea of “death is part of life” is more than just “it is what it is”. It means when you say you love life, you want to live, it’s is implied that you also love death, and want to die. Otherwise you don’t really love life and you don’t really want to live.

[sigilis]

If that is what that phrase means, then I do not love life. I love living. I know nothing of death, and cannot help but dread its inevitable embrace.

All that I am now, all the things I do and could do, will change. It may be a part of life, but it is the end of living.

[cryptonector]

If you want children, then you must die so they can have children and those children can have children and... For if we lived forever then we could not have children, as otherwise the world's population would grow incredibly fast and quickly overwhelm the planet's carrying capacity.

[Nthringas]

the idea is that life and dead are both a side of the same figurative coin

[ajb]

Language doesn't work like that. Most people hearing the phrase "I love life" will correctly understand that death isn't included in the referent.

[ericls]

Okay, go tell {your wife, your children, your parents, etc}, and say: “I love you, but there’s a part of of you that I just can’t accept and want to change.” Will they think you still love them? Do you think you can love them that way?

Your love to them should be a source of power to accept all of them. Your love to life should empower you to embrace death.

[ajb]

Possibly this is well meant, but all I get from it is that you don't appear to know enough about life to give that advice (both the content of the advice, and the method of giving it).

[scubbo]

That is - and I mean this quite literally and without any hyperbole - the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

[ericls]

Okay, go tell {your wife, your children, your parents, etc}, and say: “I love you, but there’s a part of of you that I just can’t accept and want to change.” Will they think you still love them? Do you think you can love them that way?

Your love to them should be a source of power to accept all of them. Your love to life should empower you to embrace death.

[scubbo]

Well, sure, if you phrase it in that misleading way then it sounds bad. But death is not "a part of them" - quite the opposite, in fact, there is nothing that is less "of them" than "the process which makes them no longer alive, no longer them".

By your logic, I shouldn't care for my partner when they're ill, or lend a friend money if they need it, or teach a child a skill; their illness, their poverty, their ignorance, are all "part of them", and I should just embrace it rather than trying to change it.

I can play with phrasing too - go tell your loved one "I am happy that you're going to die. I welcome it, and I want it to happen. I wish you would die tomorrow". Report back. Do they feel loved?

> Do you think you can love them that way?

I genuinely think that anyone who embraces someone else's death, except in the case of relief from a painful incurable illness, does _not_ fully love them. They're protecting their own feelings - avoiding their grief - by lying to themselves that death is somehow good or noble or pure, simply because it's natural. There are _plenty_ of things that are "natural" that we all agree we're better off without. Or do you want to catch smallpox or be eaten by a tiger because it's natural?

(And don't for one second think, because death provides relief from pain, that it's good. That just means that incurable pain is _worse_. Getting stabbed in the face is worse than getting stabbed in the hand, but neither is to be welcomed)

[cryptonector]

Living forever == not having children (for obvious reasons I mentioned below).

Life without children (and grandchildren) wouldn't be worth living.

[saghm]

I can only hope you mean that life in general wouldn't be worth it if those who wanted kids couldn't have them because deciding for people who choose not to have kids or are infertile that their lives "aren't worth living" would be pretty horrifying.

[cryptonector]

Of course. Anyone can choose not to have children, and many do, and it's perfectly fine. But if none of us could have children, and we had to live forever...

[scubbo]

> if none of us could have children, and we had to live forever...

...then those of us who have at least half a brain would be overjoyed at the opportunity to enjoy one another's arts, personalities, minds, and bodies; to explore everywhere we wanted to go, including realms of thought; to create, to play, to live.

[scubbo]

Yeah, I didn't even touch that one because it was too obvious, and tangential to the main point. But _wow_ this person is messed up.

[scubbo]

Even if I accept the axiom of your second paragraph (which I absolutely categorically do not), that still doesn't logically follow:

* You can love something while recognizing that there have to be reasons that it should end _and still disliking that fact_. Someone who loves chocolate fudge cake does not have to be happy about the fact that they cannot eat that and only that forever. They can begrudgingly accept the necessity of sometimes-not-eating-chocolate-cake, but that doesn't imply that they _want_ to not be able to eat it all the time.

* Having children is _not_ incompatible with living forever. Our hypothetical individual could be the only infinite-lifespan person among the population, free to continue living and experiencing and forming new relationships while the planet continues with an otherwise-unaffected level of population.

* But, hey, you know what, we're _already_ living in fantasy land by hypothesizing infinite lifespan already - why _does_ it have to be "obvious" that overpopulation and resource exhaustion are necessary outcomes of an immortal unaging population? I hereby declare that the same magic mystery sci-fi bullshit that caused immortality _also_ gave us reliable interstellar transportation and settlement, and quantum expansion wibbly-wobbly pocket universes. Oh, and world hunger is solved too. Bam, done. You still gonna tell me that I have to love the idea of death?

There are reasons to accept, in our current society and with our current level of technology, that a finite lifespan is a necessary constraint to prevent further privation - but if "a begrudging acceptance of necessity" is synonymous to "love" in your vocabulary, then I feel deeply sorry for you. Just because rational sensible mature adults recognize that there are _currently_ reasons why humans _have_ to have finite lifespans for societal reasons, or just because death is currently a "fact" of life, doesn't mean we are beholden to celebrate that fact. To use the word "love" about death is _deeply_ offensive. Death is the antithesis of love.