Being With People Like You Offers Comfort Against Death's Chill
29 replies, posted
[url]http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/02/06/384043496/being-with-people-like-you-offers-comfort-against-deaths-chill[/url]
[QUOTE]Looking around ShantiNiketan, the community in Tavares, Fla., that Ignatius created, you'd never know you weren't in India.
He started the project in August 2008. And just one month later, the stock market crashed. Iggy thought ShantiNiketan was doomed. He was trying to sell two-bedroom condos for $130,000, and across the street you could get a four-bedroom, single-family house for $100,000.
But, it turned out, the fact that Florida was in the worst housing crisis in the history of the state was not a problem at all. He sold out an entire wing of condos instantly.
That got us wondering, what had Iggy tapped into? What human impulse is more compelling than money?
"[B]It's a gated community where you will be living with people of your own cultural background[/B]," Iggy says in one of the YouTube advertisements for the complex.
So I went down to Florida to find out if the people had bought out of some primal desire to stick with their own. And if so, was that OK? What if you flipped this and this is like one of those country clubs that only let in white men?
That comparison is unfair, Ignatius says. "We would let anybody in."
But no one at ShantiNiketan was shy about admitting that part of what everyone was paying for was being around people like them.
"My God, Lulu, the happiness they give me," said one resident, Vijaya Garimella. "Very, very nice people are here; very, very nice people."
It can be exhausting to live in a culture as an outsider, Garimella and others say, a place where people don't understand your accent or your beliefs.
"You know I would dread to go through the drive-through to even buy a cup of coffee," Ignatius says, "because when I ask her for a coffee, she just wouldn't understand. 'What? What do you want?' "
So the return to a community of people just like you is a relief. "Life is just better here," Garimella says.
But there's a dark side to this homogenous heaven, its founder says. "I don't want my children or grandchildren to live in a community like this," Ignatius says. "[B]Retirement communities are places where people go waiting to die.[/B]"
And at that time, he thinks, it's beyond your control. No matter who you are, you'll experience a deep primal desire to withdraw, like a salmon swimming upstream to the place of its birth to spawn and die. "I think that is an animal instinct which we as human beings seem to have."
Iggy is absolutely right, according to Jeff Greenberg, a professor of psychology at the University of Arizona. If you raise the specter of death in a person's mind, he says, Christians like Christians better; Italians like Italians better. Even Germans, who are usually pretty lukewarm about other Germans, if you get them to contemplate their own mortality, suddenly they really like Germans.
"If you interview Germans near a funeral home, they're much more nationalistic," Greenberg says.
And the reverse is also true: We like people outside our group much, much less. "People become more negative toward other cultures," Greenberg says. "Because death haunts us as it does, we have to do something about it."
Greenberg thinks that in this odd way we try to fend off death. He figures that people who are not in your group in some very primal way make you feel invisible.
[B]
That's unpleasant at any stage of life, but particularly so when the threat of disappearing is so real.
"And so to manage the terror that we're just these transient creatures," Greenberg says, we shoo away those people who make us disappear.
When we dive deep into our own category, what Greenberg thinks we're actually getting is the lovely illusion that we're significant, and we're enduringly significant.[/B][/QUOTE]
It isn't any surprise that being around people like yourself is more comfortable. There isn't as much reason to worry about drama arising from your differences. This especially applies to strong differences in ethnic backgrounds, as with the people at this retirement home. This is a good reminder that getting old really sucks.
It's true.. Being with people I don't like makes me want to embrace deaths cold hands.
[QUOTE=TheFilmSlacker;47095979]Death is so fucking scary.[/QUOTE]
Premature death maybe but regular death? Of old age?
Call me strange but not really.
[QUOTE=TheFilmSlacker;47095979]Death is so fucking scary.[/QUOTE]
He's actually a pretty chill guy, didn't you read the article title?
[QUOTE=Bradyns;47096062]It's true.. Being with people I don't like makes me want to embrace deaths cold hands.[/QUOTE]
Well I bet everyone has had that time where you have been in a place with people you don't like and jokingly said "God kill me."
[QUOTE=TheFilmSlacker;47096092]I honestly believe that I don't think I'll ever be ready for it.
How can I be ready for something that no human being even begins to understand? People kill each other every day over the argument of what happens when we die.
Kind of ironic when you think about it.[/QUOTE]
Honestly I couldn't care less about dying.. you simply cease to exist. There's no point in being scared of it because when you do die you won't know it.
Listened to this last night in the bathtub.
There was an interesting interview as well. Great article.
[QUOTE=TheFilmSlacker;47096092]I honestly believe that I don't think I'll ever be ready for it.
How can I be ready for something that no human being even begins to understand? People kill each other every day over the argument of what happens when we die.
Kind of ironic when you think about it.[/QUOTE]
If you're gonna die, you're gonna die. You really can't do shit about it, so there's no point of being scared off it either, until the very last moments of your life I guess. The world is ruled by probability theory. If it decides that a car runs you over, there's nothing you can do to stop it.
In the very least you may find out if there's anything going on after death, after all even the most scientific minds can't answer that question.
[QUOTE=proch;47096733]If you're gonna die, you're gonna die. You really can't do shit about it[/QUOTE]
That is exactly why people are afraid of it
[QUOTE=TheFilmSlacker;47095979]Death is so fucking scary.[/QUOTE]
I find it to be more of a zen and calming concept, rather than a scary one. That's because, in my opinion, any and all possible outcomes for death aren't worth worrying about.
If it's a religious afterlife of eternal peace, it's something amazing to look forward to for once your life has reached its natural (or unnatural) conclusion. And even if it isn't peaceful, like in older non-Abrahamic religions that feature an afterlife with an ever-raging sport/good vs. evil war between the dead, it'll give you something new with fun/purpose to do once your time here is over.
If it's a scientifically-explainable post-life/second life existence with little/no religious involvement, probably through some form of quantum/interdimensional/etc. scientific principles that we can currently only shoot in the dark about with our theories, then it could be literally anything we can or can't imagine. But, we will still exist in some form if so, regardless of what realm awaits beyond this one. Even if we can't begin to hope of comprehending the other world from this one's viewpoint, chances are it'll be some strange continuation or new stage of life rather than a permanent dead-end.
And, in the admittedly-scary (and unlikely in my opinion, based on how uniformly prevalent religion and eerily-specific ghost stories are in all human cultures) event that there's nothing beyond the veil but nonexistence, becoming frightened by the prospect is pointless. If you won't exist, you won't be able to feel terror about it, now will you? Best to just keep on living, and let it happen when it happens.
No matter what kind of afterlife or lack thereof awaits us, it's best to just live life to the fullest and be accepting of the fact that you might get to see the answer for yourself at any moment. Dwelling on death as something that invalidates the importance of this life will just make you miserable, whether it's getting invisible karma points or fretting over the incomprehensible notion of nonexistence.
[QUOTE=TheFilmSlacker;47096092]I honestly believe that I don't think I'll ever be ready for it.
How can I be ready for something that no human being even begins to understand? People kill each other every day over the argument of what happens when we die.
Kind of ironic when you think about it.[/QUOTE]
I see death as: You don't remember before you were born, do you? You won't know you're dead, either. You'll just reappear somewhere in the universe, who knows how many years, millions, billions, from now, as someone or something else. Unrelated, of course, not reincarnated
[QUOTE=proch;47096733]If you're gonna die, you're gonna die.[B] You really can't do shit about it[/B], so there's no point of being scared off it either, until the very last moments of your life I guess. The world is ruled by probability theory. If it decides that a car runs you over, there's nothing you can do to stop it.
In the very least you may find out if there's anything going on after death, after all even the most scientific minds can't answer that question.[/QUOTE]
If everyone who ever made a scientific breakthrough thought like that, we wouldn't be where we are now, would we?
Biotech and research is quite at an all time high now; huge ammounts of data are being collected on cells, microorganisms, genes/genomes, [URL="http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/01/environment-more-genetics-shapes-immune-system"]the way the environment has an effect on how you cope with diseases[/URL].
There is living [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_life_span#Exceptions"]proof[/URL] that it's doable, so we might just get on to it aswell.
The threat of death is my key motivating factor to study science and spend most of my free time studying.
I may not succeed but let no man say I didn't make an attempt.
[QUOTE=TheFilmSlacker;47096092]I honestly believe that I don't think I'll ever be ready for it.[/QUOTE]
Being ready for death isn't really a good thing. If you know it's coming and you aren't ready, you will most likely delay it as much as possible.
[QUOTE=gokiyono;47098677]Being ready for death isn't really a good thing. If you know it's coming and you aren't ready, you will most likely delay it as much as possible.[/QUOTE]
How or based on what? I mean apart from a couple of heart warming stories of people hanging on just to finish something or wait for something to happen. What about the thousands that die everyday? I know it is comforting and all and everyone likes to believe that they will be the one lasting longer but you can't possibly imagine that being ready or not has any meaningful impact on your survival?
[QUOTE=TheTalon;47096850]I see death as: You don't remember before you were born, do you? You won't know you're dead, either. You'll just reappear somewhere in the universe, who knows how many years, millions, billions, from now, as someone or something else. Unrelated, of course, not reincarnated[/QUOTE]
I don't know about this but I'd be okay with it happening.
I am pretty scared that someday I just won't be here anymore and anything I do won't change that. There's so much to do and there is so little time to do it in, and that's if I am lucky.
What scares me most about death (in the theory of no afterlife) is the sort of paradox that is created from the state of just not existing.
We as beings spend the vast time of our days in some form of consciousness, and even in our sleep we dream.
But what would it be like, from that perspective, to simply not exist, to not exist and have no thought process to analyze that non-existence? It seems like an easy question to answer but I couldn't imagine just not being. You aren't simply sitting in a pitch darkness for eternity, even that would be a form of afterlife. So what is a lack of an afterlife?
[QUOTE=Milkdairy;47098903]What scares me most about death (in the theory of no afterlife) is the sort of paradox that is created from the state of just not existing.
We as beings spend the vast time of our days in some form of consciousness, and even in our sleep we dream.
But what would it be like, from that perspective, to simply not exist, to not exist and have no thought process to analyze that non-existence? It seems like an easy question to answer but I couldn't imagine just not being. You aren't simply sitting in a pitch darkness for eternity, even that would be a form of afterlife. So what is a lack of an afterlife?[/QUOTE]
There's simply no answer to this question, seeing as you can't feel anything when you don't exist. That's like asking for the temperature of a vacuum.
[QUOTE=Fetret;47098723]How or based on what? I mean apart from a couple of heart warming stories of people hanging on just to finish something or wait for something to happen. What about the thousands that die everyday? I know it is comforting and all and everyone likes to believe that they will be the one lasting longer but you can't possibly imagine that being ready or not has any meaningful impact on your survival?[/QUOTE]
It's just, if you are ready to die, then there wouldn't be much point in living.
It's like those people who are ready to loose that don't put so much effort into something because they don't think they will win.
[QUOTE=TurboSax;47096812]I find it to be more of a zen and calming concept, rather than a scary one. That's because, in my opinion, any and all possible outcomes for death aren't worth worrying about.
If it's a religious afterlife of eternal peace, it's something amazing to look forward to for once your life has reached its natural (or unnatural) conclusion. And even if it isn't peaceful, like in older non-Abrahamic religions that feature an afterlife with an ever-raging sport/good vs. evil war between the dead, it'll give you something new with fun/purpose to do once your time here is over.
[B]If it's a scientifically-explainable post-life/second life existence with little/no religious involvement, probably through some form of quantum/interdimensional/etc. scientific principles that we can currently only shoot in the dark about with our theories, then it could be literally anything we can or can't imagine. But, we will still exist in some form if so, regardless of what realm awaits beyond this one. Even if we can't begin to hope of comprehending the other world from this one's viewpoint, chances are it'll be some strange continuation or new stage of life rather than a permanent dead-end.[/B]
And, in the admittedly-scary (and unlikely in my opinion, based on how uniformly prevalent religion and eerily-specific ghost stories are in all human cultures) event that there's nothing beyond the veil but nonexistence, becoming frightened by the prospect is pointless. If you won't exist, you won't be able to feel terror about it, now will you? Best to just keep on living, and let it happen when it happens.
No matter what kind of afterlife or lack thereof awaits us, it's best to just live life to the fullest and be accepting of the fact that you might get to see the answer for yourself at any moment. Dwelling on death as something that invalidates the importance of this life will just make you miserable, whether it's getting invisible karma points or fretting over the incomprehensible notion of nonexistence.[/QUOTE]
No, stop doing that. You're applying metaphysics to real life and it doesn't work. Neither quantum mechanics or dimensions has [I]anything[/I] to do with an afterlife. It's not the same old dramatization we hear every other day about how the afterlife is nothing the human mind could ever comprehend, that's bullshit and has no place in real science.
Honestly when we die we're probably reincarnated since nothing in the universe is just gone.
[QUOTE=Grenadiac;47096744]That is exactly why people are afraid of it[/QUOTE]
But what's the point of panicking? If you can do something to stop it, then stop it, if you can't do anything to stop it, you might as well sack up because it's not gonna care if you're a gibbering, depressive wreck or ecstatic about a life well lived, at least the guy who lived his life well had a good life instead of panicking about dying.
[editline]8th February 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=SpartanXC9;47099437]Honestly when we die we're probably reincarnated since nothing in the universe is just gone.[/QUOTE]
Yeah no, it might be impossible to destroy something in the universe that sure as hell doesn't mean you get resurrected it just means everything you once were slowly dissipates throughout the universe.
Theres nothing after you die. Watching my grandparents become husks from Alzheimer's showed me that. You're nothing but a brain and if that gets blended up you'll be gone even if your body still shits itself.
[editline]8th February 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=Riutet;47097423]The threat of death is my key motivating factor to study science and spend most of my free time studying.
I may not succeed but let no man say I didn't make an attempt.[/QUOTE]
everything rots.
[QUOTE=gokiyono;47099151]It's just, if you are ready to die, then there wouldn't be much point in living.
It's like those people who are ready to loose that don't put so much effort into something because they don't think they will win.[/QUOTE]
Not at all, people who are not ready and are scared of dying usually limit their lives because they are scared of that risk and always play it safe. People who are ready to loose in the first place don't mind taking risks because they are mentally ready for that outcome. Am I necessarily ready for death even though I haven't done everything that I want to do yet? no....but I accept that it can happen at any time and it doesn't stop me from living/taking risks. Definitely though one day I'll be ready for it and all people should reach that at some point.
[QUOTE=Riutet;47097423]The threat of death is my key motivating factor to study science and spend most of my free time studying.
I may not succeed but let no man say I didn't make an attempt.[/QUOTE]
See that's a great attitude to have, I find it funny people that are the most afraid of death are the ones who never do anything in the first place and limit themselves to live as long as possible. Just live to the fullest possible and if you die along the way oh well at least you tried, better then being afraid of death and hiding from it until it eventually gets you. Being scared of it is just pointless.
[QUOTE=Rapscallion92;47099459]But what's the point of panicking? If you can do something to stop it, then stop it, if you can't do anything to stop it, you might as well sack up because it's not gonna care if you're a gibbering, depressive wreck or ecstatic about a life well lived, at least the guy who lived his life well had a good life instead of panicking about dying.
[editline]8th February 2015[/editline]
Yeah no, it might be impossible to destroy something in the universe that sure as hell doesn't mean you get resurrected it just means everything you once were slowly dissipates throughout the universe.[/QUOTE]
I didn't mean you'd get resurrected I meant you'd still live in some way
[QUOTE=godfatherk;47097100]If everyone who ever made a scientific breakthrough thought like that, we wouldn't be where we are now, would we?
Biotech and research is quite at an all time high now; huge ammounts of data are being collected on cells, microorganisms, genes/genomes, [URL="http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/01/environment-more-genetics-shapes-immune-system"]the way the environment has an effect on how you cope with diseases[/URL].
There is living [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_life_span#Exceptions"]proof[/URL] that it's doable, so we might just get on to it aswell.[/QUOTE]
I know, I'm in that career path. I meant that you can't do shit against a car hitting you on your way to school, not to question medicine and scientific progress.
This is called "Terror Management Theory" in Psychology. The idea is that, as creatures with both mortal salience and the desire to live, the knowledge of death produces terror. In order to manage the terror of the horrible truth that you want to live but have to die is to create immortality. The most stereotypical example is religion, which provides an actual concept of an afterlife for people to avoid the terror of death. However, it is also postulated that culture, nationality, politics, ideology, and many other traits we consider uniquely "human" are ways of providing symbolic immortality through participation in an institution that persists beyond death.
This might also explain why older people tend to be more stubborn politically and religiously. As you grow older and the reality of your impending demise becomes more clear, you have to manage the terror much more aggressively. Perceived threats to your symbolic immortality create stronger reactions.
TMT also implies a great irony: warfare, genocide, oppression, and other terrible things associated with politics and ideology are, at their root, the act of humanity collectively killing itself in order to prevent itself from dying. We cause death to prevent our own.
Life, death, and existentialism are full of these ironies. Living is absurd. We are all as Sisyphus, pushing a boulder up a mountain, doomed to watch it tumble back down so we can start again. I wonder if Sisyphus ever dreaded the day when he would no longer be pushing the boulder.
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