Why now days we are more scared of dying?

[star68]

I am reading so many posts from different anxiety forums there are pages and pages and if they did a survey I think more people than we think suffer with fear of heart attacks , strokes, panic attacks, constant health anxiety, fear of death in general. I am wondering why so many people including myself are so afraid of dying. In the old days people lived, enjoy themselves, they didn't have so much knowledge about health issues, at least the years they lived they never worry about dying and lived happy. They hardly went to the doctors and health worries didn't happen unless they were seriously ill. Now days we are constantly living in fear , thinking every time that this time it's going to happen, every symptom scares us to death, and is a burden that stops us to enjoy and live our lives. So much health information and doctors warning about blood pressure, cholesterol, heart disease, cancer, etc,. I know all the warnings can save lives and we should see it as a positive way to know our bodies and report illness in the early stages but at the same time so much information is killing us with worry and anxiety. We are so aware of illness and death. What do you think?

[PanchoGoz]

One word: Media.

[anxietyoverload]

Definitely the media! Everywhere you look there are warnings and there is just no need!

[inCOGnito]

Survival is an in-built basic drive of the human (and animal) kingdom. Fear is a natural protection mechanism. That mechanism doesn't know any better. It takes information from other parts of the brain. That is why beliefs are so vitally important. If you 'believe' something to be a threat to you (consciously or unconsciously) then your fear response is activated. This could be to a lion in front of you, a jar of peanut butter, or a distant thought about some disease. It matters not what the source is if it is seen as a threat.

It's my contention that all forms of fear stem from the basic root fear, the fear of death. Fear of a public talk, a disease, a bear, or a queue at the local bank are all fragmented fears that have came from this basic fear.

If you couple these mechanisms with increases in knowledge, health warnings, economics crises, and basically everything you see on the six o'clock news then you are bombarded with potential threats that your mind wants to protect you from. As you say, these things have increased over the years to the effect of increasing the perceived levels of threat and promoting anxious thinking.

But maybe it isn't all bad. Maybe we, as a species, have to get to a point where we break the current evolutionary mould as it were. In evolution a species evolves due to the environment around it and I believe, and hope, that some time soon humanity will make an evolutionary turn.

[hanshan]

The better the health industry has become at prolonging life, the more people have become afraid of dying early.

Past eighty or so, even if you are healthy and active, you will have increasing difficulties with mobility, sight and hearing.

Basically, in the words of George Bernard Shaw: "Do not think you will live forever. You will not succeed."