Fear of no longer existing anymore

March 1, 2025March 17, 2025 Dave UnderwoodLeave a comment

In 1979 four members of the band Joy Division stand on a snow-covered Epping Walk Bridge in Manchester. Photograph by Kevin Cummins. — (above) Joy Division, photographed by Kevin Cummins on Epping Walk Bridge in Manchester, 1979

“What feeling do you have when you wake up in the morning, when your feet touch the floor? Or before that when you’re lying there, thinking about your feet hitting the floor? What feeling do you have, what does that feel like for you?” – The Rover (2014)

A long time ago I watched a Grand Designs episode where the man who was building a house said that he woke up each morning thinking “Still alive! I get to do this living thing for another day.” I think about him often. I envy his comfort with his mortality and his openness to living or dying. I do not have that – I have fear of death.

Perhaps more specifically I have fear of no longer existing any more. While dying in my sleep somewhat appeals as a less scary way to go, more scary for me is the thought of my life ending in the blink of an eye. No waking up. No reflection. No existing. No more Dave.

As I’ve talked about before, perhaps being an ex-Christian makes it harder for me to face no longer existing. As a Christian you anticipate living forever, when you give that up suddenly you have to reckon with your mortality and what, in comparison to forever, feels like a very short life. I am in awe of how people just go on with their daily lives knowing death awaits them. I’ve asked a lot of people how they do it and the answer seems to be mostly distraction; ignore the feeling and eventually it goes away.

In his book This Life: Why Mortality Makes Us Free, philosopher Martin Hägglund posits our lives are meaningful, precious, and interesting precisely because they are limited. I have to be honest and say that this perspective does not bring me relief or consolation. I would rather have immortality with the option to die if I want to than the burden of mortality with no options.

Ultimately I can pontificate as much as I like but it’s not going to change the fact I am mortal and will not live to be 200 years old. Maybe better is to find what relief and consolation from death that I can find while I am still alive. I tell my therapist that my hope is if I get to live to be old enough, eventually I might be that kind of Very Old where you feel so very tired and start to think that you would like things to stop at some point. That is what I hope anyway, that one day instead of trying to find distraction I will actually welcome the end.

Are we ultimately hardwired to go extinct?

May 2, 2022May 6, 2022 Dave UnderwoodLeave a comment

Over the last few months or so I have been having conversations with friends & family about the findings of Seth Wynes & Kimberly Nicholas (2017) with regards to the top five actions each of us can personally do to combat climate change:

(Source: Seth Wynes and Kimberly A Nicholas – ‘The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions’. Published July 12, 2017. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541.)

One of the most common comments I’ve had in response to the top five is people referring to the often-quoted line “100 companies are responsible for 70% of all carbon emissions”. Which is true, and we need to put pressure on those companies to urgently find ways to significantly reduce their carbon footprint. But I have found it surprising that this quote is used to provide cover for not making individual efforts to try to reduce personal carbon emissions as much as possible. Surely the majority of us can be doing both?

Some people can’t financially afford to fully take all the top five steps, which is fair enough. And some people argue over the wording of the top five and/or question the validity of the findings. And while I’m all for critical thinking, this just feels like sophisticated denial to me.

But besides the reactions above, often what people do in response to hearing the top five steps is react defensively and start justifying why they haven’t started or won’t start doing one or more of the things on the list. It’s not always articulated this way, but it often comes across as “well, yes, OTHER people should start doing those things but I can’t/won’t because…”

It seems to be part of the human condition: these rules don’t apply to me. Or to put it another way, not obeying these rules has no negative consequences for me right now so I’m not going to change my behaviour. I think part of this is an aversion to discomfort and/or change. It’s a perceived threat to “my way of life” which I think some people unconsciously interpret as “a threat to my survival”. Which I can understand, I want to survive too.

But it makes me wonder: this hardwired survival instinct i.e. selfishness, if one way it’s manifesting is a resistance to making personal changes to combat the climate crisis, is the human species ultimately hardwired for extinction?

Here’s my question:

At the scale of billions of people, is it realistic to try to get enough people to cooperate & overcome our selfish instincts in order to ultimately avoid the extinction of the human species?

Please let me know what you think in the comments 🙂👍 >>