is the fear of death innate?

I think fear of death is more a result of environmental conditioning and a fear of the unknown. while we do have innate survival instincts, this is not the same as having an innate fear of death.

also, i think to be born with an innate fear of death, one would have to innately have knowledge of death. do babies and young children understand the concept of death before it has been presented to them?

 

i agree, fear of death is definately a learned behavior naturally i BELIEVE it is something that should be embraced no matter what happens you wont be dealing with this lifes problems anymore

 

I agree with you somewhat... but I also don't think there is a fear of death so much as there is a fear of not having lived, or of premature death, or of losing our ability to help the people who depend upon us, or of no longer being able to experience the things in this world that make us happy.

We are all much more likely to accept someone dying if that person is old or has had a long, productive life... of course, sometimes they will be missed, but ultimately they have served their purpose. But if someone has children that need their support, or has a project that they desperately want to see through, or if they are in love, etc., etc... then they haven't yet served their purpose or lived what we consider to be their whole life, and so when someone like that dies, it is a tragedy... and that person is far more afraid of death than someone without those things.

In fact, I don't think a person who has very much happening in their lives is afraid of death at all. That's why those people get depressed-- they don't have anything making them happy, or keeping them alive. It's difficult to live if your life seems meaningless or unfulfilled... we need to create meaning to live, and once we've created it, we grow fearful of losing it.

 

No creature alive has a complete knowlegde of death, but almost all of them have a fear of the unknown, and death is the greatest unknown.

But I agree with what Heywood Floyd said. Death is more scary because of what it isn't (life, love, happiness) than because of what it is.

 

I think "fear" is the wrong word to use, at least when describing that innate sensation that we never really get rid of. Awareness of death, I think is a better choice of words. I believe this is an important part of what makes us alive. Fear of death is completely irrational and pointless. Death is certain. But to be aware of it, understanding that it will happen one day, serves to encourage us to hurry up and live. (Or from an animal's point of view, to hurry up and procreate.)

I don't think there is any correlation between having a good life and fear of death. I think some people who have nothing happening in their life might be much more afraid than some who do. My life is wonderful, but it is so partly because I realize it will end.

 

How can we, the “man on the street”, Tom & Jane, gain an insight into the meaning of this dread of death? A dread so strong that we kill to prevent that death and that we are so dedicated to repressing that dread that many things we do is done in that behalf.

I suspect most of us have experienced the feeling we call ‘claustrophobia’. I have experienced that feeling and I am confident that I would do almost anything to stop that experience. I suspect that it was the dread of death that caused the inmates of the Nazi concentration camps to tolerate such terror as daily existence must have been.

I suspect that dread of death is the reason that ‘water-boarding’ is such a popular form of torture. Torture is, I suspect, an effort to induce that same dread that we experience in a claustrophobic episode. I think that we might properly use the metaphor ‘dread of death is claustrophobia’ or perhaps ‘dread of death is water-boarding’.

The ‘curse’ is anything that lies about the creatureliness of wo/man. Any effort to make a lofty spiritual character out of sapiens represents an ‘occultism’, i.e. an ‘occult’ is anything that attempts to make supernatural the creatureliness of humans, which is the constant preoccupation of human society.

Jung and Adler recognized from the beginning that Freud was wrong in his dogmatic insistence regarding wo/man’s innate instincts of sexuality and aggression; however, they also recognized that Freud had correctly diagnosed and emphasized wo/man’s creatureliness.

Freud “reflected the true intuitions of genius, even though the particular intellectual counter-part of that emotion—the sexual theory—proved to be wrong. Man’s body was a “curse of fate”, and culture was built upon repression—not because man was a seeker only of sexuality, of pleasure, of life and expansiveness, as Freud thought, but because man was also primarily an avoider of death.”

Not sexuality, as Freud theorized, but the consciousness of death is the primary repression. Freud recognized the curse early and dedicated his life toward exposing it. However, he missed the correct scientific fact that was the source of the curse; this being the repression upon which society is constructed.

Becker theorizes that Freud’s mistake is reveled in one key idea, which emerged in his later writings. “Death instinct” was introduced by Freud in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”. This theory was an attempt to patch up his libido theory, which he was very reluctant to reject. The death instinct was “a built in urge toward death as well as toward life”. He theorized that the death instinct was an instinctive urge to die, which was redirected outward into the desire to kill. Wo/man defeats this instinct by killing others.

Psychology has rejected Freud’s death instinct theory for a simpler one. Killing represents a symbolic solution that results from a fusion of animal anxiety with the death fear of the human animal. Rank says “the death fear of the ego is lessoned by the killing, the sacrifice, of the other; through the death of the other, one buys oneself free from the penalty of dying, of being killed.”

Churchill said something to the effect that “there is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at and missed”.

Quotes from “The Denial of Death”; Pulitzer Prize winner for nonfiction by Ernest Becker.

 

I don't think fear of death is innate. If a five year old kid had no concept of death, then he would not know what would happen to himself if he profusely bleeding and kept on getting "sleepier". He might think he was just going to sleep, or thought he felt so much pain that his body needed to rest.
Usually fear of death is determined by one's sense of identity or "ego". If you think the physical body is the end of ur total existence, or maybe after death is either heaven or hell, there definately might be fear. If you enjoy physical pleasures so much that you do not want it to "end", then you might fear death. But if you are a saint and your sense of identity encompasses the whole of humanity, then you might not fear death. Maybe saints know that the love and peace that they sent into the world before they died will vibrate with each soul it touches into infinity, so they have nothing to fear in death.
Ultimately, IMO, fear of death is learned because they have to learn what death is. Then they question who they are, and what it means to be alive. Then comes in religion.... =}