Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - When You Are Dying...

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Sept. 28, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

06:51

When You Are Dying...

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	One of my first videos was live like you're dying, which is to say, at some point, maybe you're 80, maybe you're 90, maybe you're younger, older, but at some point you're on your deathbed and you get that slow shake of the head from the doctor, Doc, am I going to get better?
	And he's going to say those faithful words.
	Well, I'm afraid all we can do at this point is make you as comfortable as possible.
	And you realize that the sheet sticking to your back is what's going to be used to carry you to the morgue.
	That you're never getting back up, you're never getting back out.
	You'll never feel the blood rush to your feet again.
	You'll never get even slightly dizzy getting up too soon.
	You're never going to climb a tree.
	You're never going to climb the stairs.
	You're never going to climb out of bed.
	You're going to lie there and expire there.
	Like you're a sandcastle under the sort of drizzling rain of endless mortality.
	You're just going to dissolve down into nothing, be reduced to your component atoms without the emerging principle and purpose and brilliance and glory and morality of life and consciousness.
	And the nurses will come in and the nurses will go out.
	And they will go on with their lives.
	And they may mention, oh, there was a sweet old man, there was a sweet old woman, really, really hammered the morphine drip.
	And your family, the oldest, the older members of your family will be ashen-faced, realizing that they're next.
	Middle-aged people will be exhausted because they've had to care for you and their kids.
	The teenagers will be bored and restless.
	And the younger kids will run around and jump up inappropriately and be pulled off your rough, one-thread, weird fabric that makes up your sheets in hospital.
	And you will realize that you maybe have five meals left.
	Four, three, two.
	Last meal, last bite, last swallow.
	And every time you close your eyes and lay your head back on the pillow, it will feel like you're falling down into eternity and you will jerk back up and you will try and cling to life.
	But you will also realize that by extending your life, if you can, through willpower, you will be extending the agony of those who have to watch you die.
	And at some point, at some point, you may just relax and fall into the great beyond, into the arms of your ancestors, or into nothing.
	Into judgment or as much consciousness after you die as you had before you were born, which is to say, none.
	And people will cry both in sadness and gladness, sadness that you're gone, but gladness that your suffering is over.
	And the little kids will ask when you're going to wake up.
	And their parents won't know what to say.
	And all the people you had your conflicts with, your cousins, maybe your brother-in-law, sister, will look back at all of those conflicts and will say, I really didn't understand any of that.
	Why did we fight?
	Why did we not talk to each other for that year?
	What wouldn't I give now to have another conversation or another year?
	And as you're dying, I think time slows down.
	This is what the reports are of people who died and came back.
	As you're dying, time slows down, and I think you revisit all the major points and decisions and choices in your life.
	When it's too late to change any of it, I think that the entire mechanic and purpose and principles of your life are laid clear to you at the end.
	And the girl who was just right for you, but maybe not quite pretty enough, that you left for the hardy borderline.
	She would come back and say, you could have had this, but you had that.
	And your cousin who wanted you to start a business with him, but you were being too well paid.
	So you ended up being a cubicle surf under the sightless, sore on, flickering eyes of endless fluorescence.
	And you clawed your way up through some kind of hierarchy, got spit out the side.
	Couldn't take your chair home and walk by the company.
	But it didn't even cool down before some new ass sat in it.
	There was some cake, there were some goodbyes, you drive away for the last time, and you look back and you say, how much of my family time did I sacrifice for these people who are going to forget me tomorrow?
	And the moral cowardice.
	I think all of that is revealed.
	I think you're right, Simon.
	At the end, everyone has a conscience and the moral compromises you made.
	When you yelled at your kids, I said you'd do better.
	I'm stop yelling at my kids.
	And then you just forgot about it and went back on autopilot, back on the train tracks of circular inevitability, based upon unexamined harshness from your own childhood.
	And that time that someone really reached for you and needed you, but you kind of walked away because you were kind of embarrassed and didn't know what to say.
	Or the time when you had a conflict and stormed off, even though staying and talking would have changed your whole life.
	Or those times you refused to ask for what you want, but expected people to read your minds.
	And because they can't read your mind, you've got to bully and dominate them.
	All of that stuff.
	I think the curtain is lifted and it all just becomes utterly clear.

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