Hacker News Reader

Comment by MartinCron | Hacker News Reader

One may argue that the denialist approach to mortality is even worse for mental health.

It is too late for us, but spare your friends and especially your children. We who search for all the answers suffer when find the unanswerable ones. The minds who are lucky don't encounter the darkest questions of life, and we should let them be happy, and help protect their innocence.

Children can, in child-appropriate ways, understand that death is a part of life. Just today, my five year old daughter pointed out a dead fish floating in a tank at my local fish store. It was neither traumatic nor funny, it just was.

Death isn't an unanswerable question. It is, in a world with finite resources, a necessary inevitability. The only question is whether that death comes in orderly cycles, or catastrophically.

Not everyone wants to live forever. My grandparents lived to their 80's. My father, who is a bit over 60, considers that to be a very reasonable number, and I feel the same way. I don't want to still be here in 60+ years straining the resources of my daughter's generation.

Let me know the day you feel you've had your fill and you're ok with pulling the plug, if not due to your body ceasing to function properly.

Maybe I'll feel differently in 50 years, who knows. My dad certainly feels more strongly about not wanting to take unusual measures to extend life than he did 10-20 years ago (when he probably hadn't thought of it much).

Death is not a failure of the design. It's an integral part of it.

> Death is not a failure of the design. It's an integral part of it.

And that's Stockholm syndrome at its maximum expression.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com