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Is Death such a tragedy for everyone?

German Hops

GAF's Nicest Lunch Thief
Imagine we have two people let's say person A and person B :

- Person A: This is a rich man in his 30s. He is still young, he loves to enjoy his life, why not? He has money, he lives in a rich country, let's say northern Europe. He has a wife and highly valuable assets: a big house, an expensive car, tons of clothes, he can afford traveling around the world in first class and is healthy. Unfortunately, the doctor has bad news for him and he is going to die in a matter of months. He has lots of things to loose.

- Person B: This is a poor man in his 30s. He is still young, but he never enjoyed his life because he lacks of opportunities. He lives in a third world country, surrounded by poverty, with no services. He is not educated because he never had the opportunity to go to a local school, the nearest school is far away, he had no transport meanings to reach the closer school. He lacks of any device/asset and he has no access to any medical service. He has now a disease, easily treated in a first world country, but since he lacks of medical assistance, he is going to die in a matter of months. An end to a meaningless life?

Do you think is death the same for everyone? Is death the same to Person A who enjoyed his life since he was a child and never faced a tough time than to Person B who lacks of everything?
 

bitbydeath

Member
I think that someone who is depressed would take death harder than someone who has accomplished a lot in their life.

Sure they talk a big game of wanting to die due to being depressed but when the crunch time comes that’s when they’ve realised they have no legacy to leave behind.
 

SKM1

Member
I don't think it is even remotely true that people in dire circumstances have less meaning in their lives. It's usually the contrary.

The most tragic aspect of death, at least in my opinion, is not that your life ends, but how that radically changes the life of those who loved and or depended on you.
 

highrider

Banned
I enjoy life and my son, I would feel bad that I missed out on more of his life.

That said I’ve been very close to death, seen people draw their last breath up close and personal. You really have no concept of death unless you’ve kind of lived that. It’s sad, because the expressions aren’t peaceful like in the movies. I’m not afraid of death only because I know how easily we can be killed, how fragile we are. Once you really comprehend your role in the universe, death just becomes the end, hopefully not a drawn out painful one. But I’m 53, for context a century ago I’d probably be dead or well on my way.
 
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Be stingy with your money by saving, but also give to others in need when the opportunity arises. Life is short and unpredictable, so save up money to glide over any obstacles that come up(like covid lol). Don't seek big material shit to impress others like houses or cars. Who gives a fuck, really? Life is a rigged game where you work your ass off to make other people rich. I say do it in the most comfortable way by paying as little interest as possible.
 
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NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
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the hangover GIF
 
The fear of death is universal to everyone, even those who wish to take their own lives they struggle to even go through such an act and there are accounts of people jumping off bridges then they immediately regretted it afterwards. It does not matter how bad or depressing your life is, people who try or think about taking their lives struggle to fight the very basic instinct of survival programmed in all living life and that is another trauma in of its own.


Being in Hospice or dying in pain is a slightly different story with it's own can of worms of controversy in terms of "pulling the plug". Still, many people fear death and will inevitably go through the stages of grief on their death bed when they have the time to reflect.
 

Soodanim

Member
Imagine we have two people let's say person A and person B :

- Person A: This is a rich man in his 30s. He is still young, he loves to enjoy his life, why not? He has money, he lives in a rich country, let's say northern Europe. He has a wife and highly valuable assets: a big house, an expensive car, tons of clothes, he can afford traveling around the world in first class and is healthy. Unfortunately, the doctor has bad news for him and he is going to die in a matter of months. He has lots of things to loose.

- Person B: This is a poor man in his 30s. He is still young, but he never enjoyed his life because he lacks of opportunities. He lives in a third world country, surrounded by poverty, with no services. He is not educated because he never had the opportunity to go to a local school, the nearest school is far away, he had no transport meanings to reach the closer school. He lacks of any device/asset and he has no access to any medical service. He has now a disease, easily treated in a first world country, but since he lacks of medical assistance, he is going to die in a matter of months. An end to a meaningless life?

Do you think is death the same for everyone? Is death the same to Person A who enjoyed his life since he was a child and never faced a tough time than to Person B who lacks of everything?
Person A always thought that money could make you happy. His wife is with him for his money, and she doesn’t really love him. He doesn’t have many friends, and the ones he does have aren’t close friends. He doesn’t have any fulfilling relationships in his life, and the spending is an attempt to fill the hole in his life. He will scarcely be remembered as more than the rich man who wore nice suits. He will die in a hospital bed after a visit from his wife, who doesn’t have too much to say.

Person B has a wife he’s known since they were young. They never had much, but they have always had each other and they love their 3 children dearly. As a family they laughed and cried together. He taught his children valuable life lessons, kept them safe, and kept them fed. He will be remembered as a loving father and husband by those closest to him and as a good, honest, and kind man by friends and neighbours. He will die surrounded by his family.
 
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Kenpachii

Member
Person A always thought that money could make you happy. His wife iss with him for his money, and she doesn’t really love him. He doesn’t have many friends, and the ones he does have aren’t close friends. He doesn’t have any fulfilling relationships in his life, and the spending is an attempt to fill the hole in his life. He will scarcely be remembered as more than the rich man who wore nice suits. He will die in a hospital bed after a visit from his wife, who doesn’t have too much to say.

Person B has a wife he’s known since they were young. They never had much, but they have always had each other and they love their 3 children dearly. As a family they laughed and cried together. He taught his children valuable life lessons, kept them safe, and kept them fed. He will be remembered as a loving father and husband by those closest to him and as a good, honest, and kind man by friends and neighbours. He will die surrounded by his family.

Reminds me a bit of that Christmas movie family man or that one from adam sandler click.
 

Werewolf Jones

Gold Member
Death is death. True equality bestowed upon us all. Race, age, religion, sexuality? None of it matters. Everyone holds onto their individuality, no one has equal time but we all have an equal end, it's just getting there.

Person A might be celebrated more but to undermine Person B because of that is unfair.
 

Trimesh

Banned

I used to live in a building in Hong Kong that took this to heart - they numbered the floors so all the ones that had a "4" in them were skipped. They also missed out the 13th floor and the floor just above the 39th was the 50th. Another building had originally been built with sequentially numbered floors but apparently some of the residents didn't like it so the numbering was changed to go 1, 2, 3, 3A, 5, ...
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
Jokes apart, it’s really impossible to say what one feels and thinks when death is coming. Way too much fiction has been created about it, giving us all sorts of ideas and additional fears, because of this. After all, it’s the idea of death that’s scary and painful. When you’re dead, you’re beyond all that. It’s those who remain that have to face the feelings, and I don’t think there’s really many people who can remain unaffected by the death of someone they cared about or had a history with.

I don’t think the more you have to lose, the more you’re afraid of death. Nobody really wants to die, and I can’t easily believe the people who say they’re not afraid of dying.
 

Ballthyrm

Member
Its depends.

Person A would spend the rest of his life destroying the planet, consuming, making life slightly worse for everyone around him ?
Person B would have a chance of living the world slightly better for his children than he got.

Potential for person A to not contribute anything of value to society may be higher than for person B.
So I wouldn't mind A dying but B I would be upset about.

It's all about opportunity cost, death robs you of that and it robs the people you love of that too.
 
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M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Both of those person not going to care, after they are going to be dead, only who suffer from your death is those who like you.
 

BigBooper

Member
I think death is always a tragedy, unless you've lived a well-lived life to old age. Either a tragedy of circumstance or wasted potential.
 

Moogle11

Banned
I think it’s largely as simple as some people are happy, enjoy life and would be crushed by a terminal diagnosis. Others are miserable and unhappy and would probably take the news better (unless they’re religious and scared of going to a hell even worse).

I don’t think it’s just down class lines. I know a fair amount of well off people who are miserable, work and drink themselves nearly to death, are unhappy in their marriage (or alone and lonely) etc. and others who are pretty poor, but mostly content as they have time to enjoy their hobbies, have good marriages etc. Not talking abject poverty and constantly worrying about keeping a roof over their head and food in their mouths level of poor, just getting buy with minimum wage jobs and public assistance in cheap rural areas where I grew up and my parents still live.

But yes, of course some people have more to lose than others. Be it happy people vs. miserable people, people with kids and others depending on them vs. loners or kid free couples with two good incomes and so on.
 

PSlayer

Member
I guess it depends of the context at which death happens.For instance, an old person who had a great fullfilled life and now is too old and bound to a chair would probably take death much better than a young person who just found out it has terminal cancer.
 

Thaedolus

Member
I’m not going to care when I died that I’ve died, I do care about living long enough to create memories with my kids and someday grandkids, and hopefully set them up to go on their own way successfully. That means I gotta keep myself going for a couple more decades
 
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GeorgPrime

Banned
Imagine we have two people let's say person A and person B :

- Person A: This is a rich man in his 30s. He is still young, he loves to enjoy his life, why not? He has money, he lives in a rich country, let's say northern Europe. He has a wife and highly valuable assets: a big house, an expensive car, tons of clothes, he can afford traveling around the world in first class and is healthy. Unfortunately, the doctor has bad news for him and he is going to die in a matter of months. He has lots of things to loose.

- Person B: This is a poor man in his 30s. He is still young, but he never enjoyed his life because he lacks of opportunities. He lives in a third world country, surrounded by poverty, with no services. He is not educated because he never had the opportunity to go to a local school, the nearest school is far away, he had no transport meanings to reach the closer school. He lacks of any device/asset and he has no access to any medical service. He has now a disease, easily treated in a first world country, but since he lacks of medical assistance, he is going to die in a matter of months. An end to a meaningless life?

Do you think is death the same for everyone? Is death the same to Person A who enjoyed his life since he was a child and never faced a tough time than to Person B who lacks of everything?

I dont think death is a bad thing. Most cases its finally the end to a lot of suffering that life had prepared for someone.
 

Dai Kaiju

Member
I encourage you guys to open up your minds to the possibility of there being more to death than your body crapping out on you and then your consciousness ceasing to exist. Believing there’s something more afterwards doesn’t make you stupid or crazy...even if I used to believe it did.
 

Tesseract

Banned
death is not a tragedy, it's the end of this realm after a series of unforeseen consequences

there's sadness tho, relief in most cases

don't make the mistake of gating failure to death, the analogy would be that of a tombstone turned stepping stone toward some higher order system / time

 

Hudo

Member
This reminds me of an interesting SCP I read one day about the concept of death ceasing to exist and what that entails. Imagine that you'd retain some form of consciousness connected to every cell of your body. So if someone were to kill you by, say, sticking you in a blender, you'd still would retain a form of consciousness even though all your sensory input is gone and shit like that. And the story played with this. Basically, immortality from a consciousness point of view without any adjustments to biological/physical attributes, meaning that you'd age like normal but just continue to live. Obviously, the older you get the more fucked up your body becomes until you're basically a husk of a human but your're still conscious, forever. The most interesting thing about that story was that it tried to hypothesize that there's a spectrum between life and death rather than a binary partition. For example, being comatose would fall somewhere between the spectrum of life and death. Or being asleep. Both states would probably be closer to the "life" end of the spectrum than the "death" end.
 
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Tesseract

Banned
is that the scp where pain and pleasure persist beyond death, higher order consciousness and integrative functions

edit: closer to life sounds right, maybe ...
 
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johntown

Banned
OP your concept of what brings happiness is itself flawed. Why would the rich person be happy and the poor person not? What if the poor person had a great family, did what he really enjoyed and had a wife and family that truly love him? The rich person could be miserable, have a cheating wife, friends who only care about his money and a job that he hates. So who really had the meaningless life and who got the most out of it?

Death is not the end and it really depends on what you believe in this life on whether death is a tragedy or the beginning of something greater. For Christians it is the start of something greater and not a time of despair. Losing a loved one is always hard but knowing you will see them again one day and knowing where they are means it is not a tragedy. Other beliefs are a roll of dice and could even be subjective to the individual whether it is good or bad.
 

FunkMiller

Member
Death is the same for everyone, prince or pauper.

We arrive from nothing, we return to nothing, so it doesn’t really matter what kind of life they both led.... both know how precious life is, whatever their life’s path, because it’s so temporary, fragile and amazing.

....least that’s the way I see it.
 
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Mistake

Member
It’s all the same to me op, so I just laugh it in the face. People always ask me why I’m so chill, and I say “why are you not?”
 
Person A can at least die reminiscing about that atomic head he got from his trophy wife. Does person B feel the same way about that vacuum cleaner?
 

DeafTourette

Perpetually Offended
Imagine we have two people let's say person A and person B :

- Person A: This is a rich man in his 30s. He is still young, he loves to enjoy his life, why not? He has money, he lives in a rich country, let's say northern Europe. He has a wife and highly valuable assets: a big house, an expensive car, tons of clothes, he can afford traveling around the world in first class and is healthy. Unfortunately, the doctor has bad news for him and he is going to die in a matter of months. He has lots of things to loose.

- Person B: This is a poor man in his 30s. He is still young, but he never enjoyed his life because he lacks of opportunities. He lives in a third world country, surrounded by poverty, with no services. He is not educated because he never had the opportunity to go to a local school, the nearest school is far away, he had no transport meanings to reach the closer school. He lacks of any device/asset and he has no access to any medical service. He has now a disease, easily treated in a first world country, but since he lacks of medical assistance, he is going to die in a matter of months. An end to a meaningless life?

Do you think is death the same for everyone? Is death the same to Person A who enjoyed his life since he was a child and never faced a tough time than to Person B who lacks of everything?

The problem with your scenario is that you think the rich man is happier than the poor man. Or better than the poor man. I could go down the list of why I think your scenario is poorly constructed and why it has very little meaning but I'll leave it there.
 

Celcius

°Temp. member
I don't think either person would want to die. I know I wouldn't regardless of which person you are.
As long as you are alive, there's the possibility of a better tomorrow... aka hope.
If you know that you're going to die then I can imagine that being incredibly demoralizing for both.
 
I am closer to Person A and my life has still sucked. I've had huge advantages in life and have done all thats considered the traditionally great shit that life supposedly has to offer and tbh it really does still suck if you're cynical and aware of how bleak everything is. I get why Robin Williams and Anthony Bourdain still killed themselves even when their lives were relatively dope. Even if you have the best possible life this shit is still fucking awful and insane, it's like competing to take the least smelliest shit
 
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German Hops

GAF's Nicest Lunch Thief
I get why Robin Williams and Anthony Bourdain still killed themselves even when their lives were relatively dope. Even if you have the best possible life this shit is still fucking awful and insane, it's like competing to take the least smelliest shit
It completely blows my mind when I hear about a rich man killing himself. Especially if no drugs are involved. If I had Bourdain’s money, I would slap that feminazi Asia Argento's face with a wad of cash and tell her to get the fuck lost. Then drive away in my Lambo. Wtf is so wrong with your life you must end it????
 
It completely blows my mind when I hear about a rich man killing himself. Especially if no drugs are involved. If I had Bourdain’s money, I would slap that feminazi Asia Argento's face with a wad of cash and tell her to get the fuck lost. Then drive away in my Lambo. Wtf is so wrong with your life you must end it????
Money doesn't end suffering, it just helps mitigate it. We're all still trapped in the same horrible reality whether some of us get a head start or not. The rich and famous like Robin Williams and Anthony Bourdain kill themselves because they are still human and still have to deal with the realities of existince
 
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