Sadness and Death

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What are your thoughts on sadness and death? Has anyone you know close to died and how did you feel?

I am curious as to why this grieving emotion is so extremely out of proportion to the others. When someone dies it overwhelms every facet of our minds for pretty much the rest of our lives. That doesn't make logical sense to me. Wouldn't it just be short and leave after a few months and we'd move on? It's one of the most severe sensations in human history, one that countless billions could not reverse.

It has ruined more lives than it has ended them. I don't understand why there is such a huge reaction to death from those who lose loved ones. Why are our minds built to torment us to such an indescribable extent. It doesn't make sense, it doesn't fit with the other emotions we feel. We only feel temporary happiness, even when a child is born, that eventually goes away. When someone dies, that lasts forever and it is unbearably overwhelming.

Of course, I have AS and I'm not sure if this is caused by it but I've always been out of touch with my emotions. When my grandfather died I was a wreck but I had absolutely no idea for several years then it hit me and I was pretty destroyed.

Well, remember most people don't have such an extreme reaction to it that their lives are wracked by it all the way forward.

As for why people in general get hit by it so intensely - understand that it's the reorienting and reordering of thousands and thousands of memories. That gets very personal and has an understandably profound impact because each memory has to be labeled with 'this person is no longer available'. It'll always be more poignant when its someone close to you like a parent, sibling, or spouse just by the sheer quantity of their presence in your life let alone shared activities.

One of the things I liked a lot about the movie Her was just how much it played up on how computers can by and large just sail right through data and, if they were hypothetically AI, they could just clear their cache no problem. It's a lot trickier for us and I think a lot of that has to do with evolutionary wiring which focuses heavily on survival and security.

I don't agree with this. I think that's a decision that people make in how to handle their memories. I find that positive and negative emotions are similar in intensity. People tend not to dwell on the ecstatic ones for fear of losing their bearings or moorings or connection to life and getting swept away in all that blissful intensity.

Love and eros are very positive and powerful beyond measure, just as loss and rage are very negative and powerful beyond measure.

I do think that being distanced from one's own emotions and having delayed intense reactions is something that many autistic people experience.

When my dad died I was really out of my mind with grief and it took months to develop, then several years to recover from.