Vivat Libertas

I have a fear of death. It is perhaps more accurate to say that I have existential anxiety about death – the knowledge that everyone around me is going to die and that the last thing I ever do will be failing and shutting down my bodily functions. At the moment, it’s inevitable and in some ways there’s an upside to that – poor quality of life can be unbearable. That doesn’t change the fact that I’m a selfish, moody little bugger; I want to experience the world and learn and see and do, and I’m upset that I won’t get to learn and see and do everything before I die. I’m also upset that death is, as far as we know, permanent; I’m going to lose the people I love and never get them back, and one day I’m going to lose my consciousness permanently. The atoms that made me up will go into the earth and the air and help to make up different people, and maybe I will leave a legacy – love, kindness or knowledge – but that’s no substitute for losing my entire being and never, ever being conscious a...

Right, so this is me being a bit of a pseudointellectual twat. Just bear with me for a blog post. You can skip over it, honest. I believe that all living things die and that death "feels like unconsciousness" - it will be nothingness. I won't even notice I'm gone. At the same time, since I don't want to die yet (I don't fear death, I just don't feel like it right now), it chills me that one day I'm going to lose consciousness forever, and I rail against it. Though I know life is meaningless, I still ask why I was born and developed consciousness if I must inevitably lose it. At times it does look better to just die - quite apart from how I'm wasting resources just by being alive, I've also cocked up the art of living so many times I may as well just say I'm a failure and leave it there. No point in carrying on...but, strange as it seems to me, someone who's become accustomed to having no reason to live and frankly not liking it very m...

Increasingly, I find myself wanting to die young. This isn't because I'm depressed, or because I have some kind of death wish. It's because I think that a short life full of worthy acts (such as protesting) is better than a long, quiet life lived doing essentially nothing (i.e. what most people do), and because I fear growing old. But why would I, a future scientist - not a model or actress - fear growing old? Because as well as being a future scientist, I might just be a future activist. I've gotten myself involved (foolishly, some might say) with radicals and motivated people. It's...it's best described as enlightening. I've learnt so much that I never could have in the classroom; I've met people from all walks of life who share my crazy views, and it doesn't matter that other people think us crazy because at least our beliefs can get a proper airing here. I try to think critically, evaluating everything I come across, and I try to join in the ...

If you have Twitter, follow The Activists . It is a VERY cool left-wing account and if you are a left-winger, you really should be following it. However, some of the things it says are questionable - not least what it says in this blog post . Go on, read it, take your sweet time. I'll be waiting. For those who didn't read it, it talked about how death "is a meaningless concept with the intention of making people afraid". There is a lot wrong with this, firstly and most obviously that death is neither meaningless nor a concept. Death is a real, documented phenomenon: breathing and heartbeat stop, as do brain activity and other important biological processes (e.g. respiration). Then all the rest sets in: pallor mortis , livor mortis , algor mortis , rigor mortis , decomposition ...in short, it exists and is therefore probably the antithesis  of a meaningless concept. It is real, not imaginary, and it is all around us. Most people, young or old, rich or poor, male ...