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For a large portion of the life of Michel de Montaigne, he was plagued by this terrible, paralyzing fear of death.
And it's actually pretty funny.
I think 99.9% of people have a terrible fear of death.
The difference between people lies in how effectively they've learned to ignore it.
And really, it's not something to be ashamed of.
We are creatures programmed for survival.
And a fear of death is a great way for us to stay away from activities that might get us killed.
But ever since we've gathered together, and built these fortresses that we call cities,
and we've had an unprecedented level of security, that fear of death becomes much less useful than what it once was.
The paradigm to strive for now is to be a person that can appease that fear of death,
to achieve that level of tranquility that civilization should be providing people.
This was the task of all the various schools of the Hellenistic age, stoicism, epicureanism, skepticism, cynicism.
People have been experiencing this fear for a long time.
But when we're talking about going against processes in the brain that are as deeply ingrained as a fear of death,
that task of quelling it becomes much easier said than done.
Some would even say impossible.
This fear of death is present at a different level in everyone.