No doubt many people have the feeling that to talk about death at all is, in effect, to conjure it up mentally, to bring it closer in such a way that one has to face up to the inevitability of one's own eventual demise. So, to spare ourselves this psychological trauma, we decide just to try to avoid the topic as much as possible.
Interpretation
People often avoid discussing death to escape the discomfort of acknowledging their own mortality.
Raymond Moody highlights the psychological tendency of individuals to steer clear of conversations about death, driven by a desire to avoid the emotional pain associated with confronting their own mortality. This avoidance can lead to a deep-seated fear of death and a reluctance to engage with the reality of life’s impermanence, demonstrating the struggle between human instinct and the acknowledgment of an inevitable end.
In practice
In a speech about embracing life, one might say, 'As Raymond Moody reminds us, avoiding the topic of death can keep us from fully living.'
People into hard sciences, neurophysiology, often ignore a core philosophical question: 'What is the relationship between our unique, inner experience of conscious awareness and material substance?' The answer is: We don't know, and some people are so terrified to say, 'I don't know.'
I have absolutely no fear of death. From my near-death research and my personal experiences, death is, in my judgment, simply a transition into another kind of reality.
The subject of death is taboo. We feel, perhaps only subconsciously, that to be in contact with death in any way, even indirectly, somehow confronts us with the prospect of our own deaths, draws our own deaths closer and makes them more real and thinkable.
Never - no, not for one moment - believe that any human being, with sense in his skull, will love or respect you on account of your fine or costly clothes.
I found this out over the years, that racism is a thinly veiled disguise over economics and money. It really is.
All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well-based - or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under the rug - it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault.
What do sad complaints avail if the offense is not cut down by punishment.
Corporations have neither bodies to kick, nor souls to damn.
Well, my book is written-let it go. But if it were only to write over again there wouldn't be so many things left out. They burn in me; and they keep multiplying; but now they can't ever be said. And besides, they would require a library-and a pen warmed up in hell.
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