"American culture in particular has a great fear of death..."

I'd say the deathist-meme is pretty much rampant.

I think you've touched brilliantly on the one big folly of the Immortalist movement: that death brings oblivion. While I wont get into specifics here, Paul, your NDE beautfully echoes and compliments my own glimpses, intuitions, amd affirmations about where death takes "us." "We" go back into the Dreamtime, where all the glories and vagaries of this lifetime will forever remain, a perfectly poised bubble adrift in the cosmic Sea of Mind. But the ego itself will no longer be identified with this lifetime alone; rather it will regain its Supreme Identity as the whole of the Dreamtime itself, each and every lifetime ever lived being one of Its infinitely many dreaming guises.

Incarnation is a true and authentic miracle, and I feel and know deeply what trailblazers like RCW Ettinger are arguing for. But I hope the movement will take a cue from people like you, and become more centered on 'love of life' as opposed to 'fear of death.' For what we're all trying to preserve -- the enlivening wind of the Spirit -- cannot be quenched, not even in death. Allowing the Spirit freer and more exuberant expression in a vastly elongated lifetime should not, in the end, be an exaltation of the personal ego, but rather a most precious gift from the human back to the divine.

This was a very inspiring and moving post, Paul. Please dont hold back from sharing this next chapter of your journey. For your wisdom is much needed, and appreciated.

Namaste.

I had a dream a long time ago that, the world was falling apart, meteors where falling, fire was taking over , te sky was red and knew one big rock was aboutto kill us all, my mother and father where in this house with me and right before the rock hit the planet i closed my eyes and grabbed my mom and dads consciousness and pulled them with me. I opened my eyes and the world was no more, i was in a black void where i could feel my self existing and i could feel my mom and dad and i knew i was still alive, but not in this realm. It wasnt scary, i dont know your article reminded me of that. Your always teaching important things, and i like how you have questioned yourself almost to a painful level and still come trhough with even more knowledge.

your expirience eve sounds familar to me, because some of us remeber. its like what would be the purpose of being physical and still having the sight of that and the world beyond it. But we are humans, and we are hungry and though it can be painful, it is fun in the end because it is the ultimate adventure.

is my quest for immortality actually a fear of death? a question i've asked myself and quickly received the answer no. still i realise that so many are truly terrified of dying, i'm just not one of them. my desire for immortality is almost an afterthought and comes from my love of life and the wish to eradicate or at least reduce human suffering.

i side with ian m. banks culture philosophy on this one, "It is seen as bad manners to try and pretend that death is somehow not natural; instead death is seen as giving shape to life." besides i've always felt that death is either benign emptiness or love filled infinity. after many personal experiences i now err towards the latter. one of the greatest and most beautiful books to illustrate the nature of death, for me, is 'the scripture of the golden eternity' by jack kerouac. which he wrote after his own NDE.

about all your other concerns on the way the world seems to be going, the loss of frontiers and increase in social control. i share them and think about them but also try to recall as much as possible that if we are on the physical plane for any purpose then we have to do it in-spite of the social conditions.

also i like to remember that nobody is in control, yes the fuedal lords may have the guns and money but this seems due to them being terrified of the way humanity is evolving. i think the increase in control is in direct response to the fact that humanity is beginning to slowly wake up. could it be nothing more than global labour pains?

so we proceed with stealth towards that utopia and maintain our own personal morals and ethics along the way.
aim for 'selective' immortality but be totally accepting of death.
aim for wealth but be accepting of any lack of it.
aim for goals but don't become attached to the attainment of them.

one last thing about psychedelics i consider them to be great teachers and though they might not offer the same insights and revelations of NDE's they are so powerful that every government in the world seeks to demonise and prohibit them. this if anything tells me to stick with them as enablers in developing such abilities as astral projection and past/future life exploration.

we are becoming more free and that's why they're increasing the security. or more to the point we are already completely and totally free and they just don't want to let the illusion slip.

stay optimstic, stay hopeful and excercise your freedom.

thanks for the great thoughts paul. keep them coming.

Susan Ertz:
"Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."

Nice post Paul. its nice seing people's questioning their views and having the balls to change them when need is felt.

one thing i dont quite get is this desire for what people think of as being "immortality".
To me, we are already immortal creatures, stuck in a decaying organic mechanism. whatever we are, i am not sure. for now, they tell us we are "humans", "homosapiens". ok, sounds convenient enough with me.
We are told that this species is "self aware". one of the things it becomes aware during the painfull process of newly developped capacities for self examination, is its own mortality of the flesh. Perhaps this is where the desire for its "immortality" comes from. since we can only look for something which we feel we are missing.

when i die, i dont know what will happen. what i am pretty sure of though, is that as long as there is some life form which is "self aware", another individual of the species will wander about its own mortality. it will not be "me", but it will be another creature wandering and asking about itself, asking about its own part called the "me".
In this sense, i am not interested in my own immortality, because i feel i already have it through whatever species i might belong to during specific time/spaces, if so that species can ask itself such questions.
then, if the part of me that can ask itself about "me" does not exist anymore, well....i just wont be asking myself any longer....

this is my 2 cents on the subject of immortality.
for now, i am just gonna enjoy the present life/form as best i can.
good post, keep them coming:)

I am the passenger
And I ride and I ride
Singin’ la la la la la-la-la la
La la la la la-la-la la
La la la la la-la-la la la-la
Iggy.

peas and brocolis.

My own take is that death answers questions. True immortality is fear of death, but choosing to live for a very long time and deciding when to die do indeed seem very promising choices in the future.

But who among us today has the right to even 'hope' to live a second longer, when im sure there is life you could save if you worked hard to do so. Im talking about the countless millions of people born into soul wrenchingly short death sentances, given a life of extreme struggle that ends in extreme loneliness and extreme pain.

Who among us with our motor vehicles and our computers can be so self obsessed as to wish for immortality in this most cursed of times of extreme development and progress, and extreme suffering and misery.

I for one would rather die like the Christ, a gift to the suffering, than live a thousand years surrounded by this filth that has guts to call itself HUMAN.

I will embrace my death as I live my life, a lonely pact between me and existance itself. I will be freed from the hell of the ignorant serving themselves, and I shall claim my destiny, I shall find my answers, one way or the other.

"Perhaps Death is lifes greatest gift" Ancient Greek Philosopher (I forget his name).

my first acid trip was the same as your NDE I think. I can confirm that a glimpse at liberation how you described it (or how I mean it) is possible with psychedelics. I spent an eternal moment in that state, enough to become totally obsessed with the possibility of this and having it implanted into my earthly consciusness so deeply that I simply cannot do anything else now but doing the unstoppable search for it. as if a seed had been planted which now drives me along.

about fear of death: among all the various kinds of meditations, buddhists say the meditation on death is one of the highest importance. if one is able to face death, he/she resolved the deepest issue of human (or possibly not just human) life. this is the central switch, so to speak. if it is switched over (0-1) then everything is liberated.

I recommend the books of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. I think you would like them at your present state, quite much. If you want just one book, take Sambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior - or - Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism.

oh, and if you want to go one step further, study the death of Jesus Christ. that's where the switch turned for the first time in our current history. when you begin to understand (and feel) that, you will be back on the right track.

when you face this fear of death (closer inspection reveals that we have this fear in every single moment of our life and all of our decisions are determined by it), you cannot do anything about it, because it is too scary. to get through this black hole, you need an aid, a friend, someone, in whom we can trust, someone, who takes you and carries you over the abyss. this someone is Jesus Christ, because he came to earth for exactly this purpose. and he has done it already. he could do this, because he was the Son of God, he knew what he was doing. he had faith, so he could let it go, but even he got totally lost at the end, thinking that his Father left him alone, but this had to be so for nothing tangible must have remained - he must have done it on faith alone. that's the only thing that carries us over.)

Paul: You yourself have said it many times, most recently just a few months ago. The way things are accelerating, I think it's unreasonable to expect nanotech cell-rejuvenation/repair to be more than 30 years away. And I don't think it espcially *UN*reasonable to anticipate it coming about as soon as, say, 15 years from now (+/- approx. 5yrs). The trajectory for nanotech certainly makes this latter prospect not-at-all-unreasonable. We could have the first primitive assembler breakthrough within 10 years or less, and then all sorts of stuff (mostly good, hopefully/probably; but also potentially terrifyingly, catastrophically bad) will start developing/accelerating into the wild-blue yonder. One reason this site (along with many other fine futurist-&or-transhumanist sites) is so important is that it provides info and projections and hope---we have a window of only about 10 to (at most) 15 years to get things right or nanotech and hyperspatial tech may very well be weaponized. I think there IS something beyond physical death (and I'm therefore not especially fearful of death), but I'd much RATHER see us--all of us--fulfill our tremendous potential for GOOD and SELF-ACTUALIZATION (we--each of us--after all, are a *microcosm* of the MetaCosmos actualizing ItSelf).

It should be, eventually, if we properly-instantiate the proper tech, a piece-o'-cake to have lifespans measured in, if not cosmic, then at least geologic timescales--i.e., hundreds-of-thousands, and, indeed, even millions and tens-of-millions of years. Now, admittedly, a person's SELF would have to be "edited" every so often (although, given even conservative info-storage capability, the "editings"--basically, memories--should be able to be archived, perhaps in special planet-[or even star-]sized storage facilities made of [so-called] computronium...), otherwise, after just a few millenia (or, at most, a few tens of millenia), one's life would take-on a bizarre kind of repeating-tapeloop (Nietsche's eternal return?!!!????!! [wink])

We should strive for eternal youth & vigor, and indeed, complete control over our "body" (whatever substrate *it* may eventually consist of). The Immortality Meme, the Kill Aging-unto-Death Meme should be spread far-&-wide and shouted from every rooftop. For, as the great Alan Harrington said, in his classic *The Immortalist*, with the end of involuntary againg-unto-death, we may reasonably hope that Evil--with a capital E--may eventually evolve away, replaced by the eternal, ludic frolic post-human immortals, ever growing, ever exploring, ever doing what the hell ever they want to, as long as they respect everyone else's basic right to do the same...

Death, thou shalt die...

Live long & prosper...

Well thats kind of the problem, respecting each others right to do whatever the hell they want means I have to respect your right to wipe out that flourishing pre-industrial civilisation we recently found, because your bored.

If we are to be immortal, and all powerful, it is amazingly clear a new and fundamental morale code is required for our 'species' regardless of how applicable that term is. Free will, and transcendant mind does not mean eradication of evil, and it certainly cannot promise the prevention of perversion of that pathway before we attain godhood.

Letting the Genie out of the bottle, is rediculous. Its the sole purpose Governments were formed in the first place. If humanity is walking around going 'wouldnt it be cool if....' then like the teenager drinking alcohol and driving, our lesson may well be brutal and terminal.

It is our duty to safeguard the path our species must walk, not fool around blindly while we are alive. To bad 6 Billion Homo Sapiens Sapiens disagree with me, but then iv always been a fan of Plato and Aristotle, and never really liked the accomplishments of Hitler or Alexander the 'Two Horned One'.

Emotions are a bad guide to the future. What you are saying isn't because of some new argument, so far unknown, but because you feel blue.

As an immortalist, transhumanist and singularitarian I do not fear death. I know that death is bad, but I hope and expect to be able to avoid it, because I see the possibilities.

Yes, there are risks, and yes, we may all die. But I don't see much in terms of new facts or arguments in your post, just a sudden shift to pessimism. I think the reason is in your personal situation and so I do not feel compelled to worry more than I usually do.

Danila,

You said on your website:

"Our life is essentially just proteins being built according to a large collection of "IF THEN" instructions written in our DNA.

Wow, now that's a philosophy I want to live by. Your position is precisely the one this site is trying to undo. Scientific materialism as espoused by you is dead. It is not the facts, only dogmatic narrow mindedness and arrogance disguised as facts.

As far as emotions are concerned, they are definitely a good thing to live by (in part), especially if those emotions are fully integrated as part of ones being, rather than repressed and allowed to run amok. If you want to create yourself into some kind of Spock, be my guest, but what that tells me is you have yet to mature emotionally to understand their true importance.

As for feeling blue, nothing could be further from the truth. I am happier than I have ever been. What has changed is I have developed a greater appreciation and acceptance of my current situation by looking at the truth of the world head on, rather than pretending that part of the world doesn't exist. Finally, you will find you are not in good company here at Future Hi with the motto, that "death is bad". That is your "make wrong" and clearly something you fear. If not, then why is it bad? Obviously when someone like you believes that death is the final END, oblivion, period, sure it's bad. But that's your problem, not mine.

"Our life is essentially just proteins being built according to a large collection of 'IF THEN' instructions written in our DNA."

My only problem with this statement is the word "just". Otherwise, I'm spiritually delighted that this is so.

Ha ha true 'its just an amazingly astounding miracle of creation'

I wish to raise a few points on topic of immortality.

Can there be anything more dangerous and frightening to the rulers of states than the immortality of its population and of its enemies?

How can a practically closed loop system of chemical processes and matter recycling (Earth) support an eternally and rapidly growing population?

What effect will immortality have on people in general, i.e. sudden and instant chaos and terror regarding the potenatial extermanatory long term effects of long term climate change.

Immortality and morality, can we prevent the mentally ill from being allowed to be immortal? If no what effects will immortality have on unstable minds?

Immortality and spirituality, once one achieves immortality wont they immediatly reject materialist society and even employment etc? In the search for true knowledge and God?

Immortality and reality, isnt throwing something like immortality into the reality of this century exceptionally dangerous?
In reality.

Implications of immortality, if one removes death, then there is no longer life, only existance. What are the risks of a few death fearing scientists removing all emotion and adventure and glory from human existance?

At any rate, whether the technology exists in 30 years or not, it is my view imortality will be the most closely controlled development in the history or future of our species. Your Governments will not allow you to become immortal. I will tell you now that the societies that exist and the Governments that control them at this time are the most powerful things to have ever existed on this planet. Your sociecty, your own greed, will force you to walk the path that they build for you and control, and there is no getting away from it, regardless of your 'freedom of speech' or other noble concepts.

No one here will become immortal, or even live longer than 150 years, I am convinced of that.

You reap what you sow, these decisions will be made for you, without you even knowing. This is what happens when you do not wish to take responsibility for your actions while you exist.

And death isnt bad, it helps to prune away the rot, and allow youth and originality to spring forth. Only those that cannot see past themselves fear death. I am thankful I was given the chance to live.

Eventhorizen.

Paul,

With this post, you have become "Shakespearean man" to the near maximum.

An ambitious man, greeted with the Absurd, yet still expanding yourself.

Well aware of the "value of contraries", dialectic and new territories(with its occasional vertigo).

The dangers of being on "one's own"(as one mostly is in the "digital age") have never been as pronounced in civil life save ostracism.

Life is "self-organizing".

Godspeed to you!

EventHorizon: I have to admit to being a bit perplexed by many (if not most) of your posts. The ongoing (indefinite) continuance of any given individual self (certainly, at least, to that particular individual self!!) is almost axiomatically a good thing. Certainly one of the best paeans to this, and a systematic exploration of the Immortalist meme, is none other than Alan Harrington's (now himself ironically deanimated [only temporarily?!?!]...) classic, **THE IMMORTALIST**. If you've not read it, I very respectfully suggest that you do so a.s.a.p. Ongoing consciousness and capability-of-action--no matter in what substrate or form--is very nearly ***axiomatically*** a GOOD THING for any particular entity, especially a (trans/post-)human being. Surely you would ideally like to be able to continue to do your thing indefinitely (whatever your thing might be at any given time...). This, again, is almost a praxeological/psychological **axiom**.

And, again, it's philosophically either bizarre (forgive me) or rather unsophisticated (again, please forgive me) to suppose that I or anyone else--as a post/superhuman--would have a ***right*** to wipe-out "that flourishing pre-industrial civilisation we recently found, because your [sic] bored." In terms of any **deontic logic** I'm familiar with that is sufficiently sophisticated & robust to support the most cutting-edge eithical theories (ethical eudaimonism has won the day, btw, folks--the dust just hasn't quite settled yet!), such a pronouncement is simply absurd!

What you have to understand, EventHorizon, is that some very interesting **cosmic** forces, or trendings, are now fully in-play which will lead either to catastrophic oblivion (alas, still a real, but, in my judgment, diminishing, possibilty) OR to an ongoing (Meta)Cosmic process of growth and continuing transformation. I would also highly recommend you read not only Kurzweil's *The Singularity is Near*, but also carefully check-out John Smart's website, SingularityWatch.com. Smart is on to something, but check him out and let him speak for himself.

One thing with which I concur is that GOVERNMENTS (DER STAT) is/are indeed the PROBLEM. Sure we need legal frameworks, the rule-of-law, protection of fundamental rights (such as not to be "wiped-out" as a good example!!!), but Governments as institution and the bureaucratic denizen-bastards thereof, may turn out to be a BIG PROBLEM. If anyone doubts that GOVERNMENT(S) is/are not a big problem, see the work of Ron Rummel, particularly his classic, **DEATH BY GOVERNMENT**: Governments are indeed responsible for more death, destruction, mayhem and madness than anyone or anything else. Strong Constitutional safeguards are about the best we can do about this. And that my not be enough; but we have a window of opportunity to try to get it right before the shit (good, bad and/or otherwise) really starts hitting the fan...

EventHorizon, you baldly state, with no argument or rationale, "It is our duty to safeguard the path our species must walk, not fool around blindly while we are alive..." I have to admit to being "WTF" (as it were) utterly dismayed. What do you base this on? What the fuck does it even **mean**? At the risk of sounding a bit Randroidian (oh my goodness! [wink]), what premises lie behind this pronouncement? Duty!? ****MUST**** walk? [Merely] ***Fool around***!? ***Blindly***?!?!?!? With all due respect (and I say that most sincerely), that whole ball of rhetoric strikes me as little more than incoherent babbling bullshit (as does some of your other stuff as well...). Now, please understand, I don't mean this at all as a personal attack (which would be both disrespectful and counterproductive), but simply as reportage of my own cognitive-intellectual goings-on whenever I read your stuff. You're no doubt sincere (if only said arguendo...), but WHAT, pray tell, ARE you basing much of your rhetoric on? Perhaps I'm just a bit slow or somehow underinformed, but much of your--seemingly almost **gratuitously** pessemistic-- stuff (some of which is, again with all due respect, little more, as best I can fathom, than ill-informed claptrap) doesn't make much sense.

Please enlighten me: ***WHY*** should we as a species not be individually physically immortal? What even minimally-plausible--much less knock-down-drag-out--rationale could there be for NOT pursuing an Immortality Project?!?!!!! What possible rational, ***well-informed*** set of reasons, also w/o begging the hell out of various questions with some sort of collectivist (and/or reverse-speciesist) claptrap, can you (or anyone else) provide for **not** systematically and with all due haste, seeking to **completely conquer disease, aging/senescence and death itself**? No one will **force** immortality on you, EventHorizon!! Grow old, and allow yourself to "pruned-away as rot" if you wish!! I'd personally like you to stick around, but I for one sure as hell won't force you to be long-lived, much less immortal. But shouldn't anyone who **wants** to go on living with youth & vigor, BE **ABLE** TO DO SO!?!? There is no genuinely even minimall-rational (much less reasonable) ***well-informed*** argument(s) against a SENS/Immortalist position. If you care to offer one, by all means go ahead...I'm always for Socratic dialectic, that's for sure...

Bless your heart, darling, and I mean that sincerely with all my heart, your latter-posting rhetorical questions simply evince that you simply haven't---to any sufficient/significant extent, at least---**done your homework**. You haven't studied the previous postings here at FutureHi (as Paul has already pointed-out), you haven't systematically explored the Immortalist works (such as Harrington's, Ettinger's, et al), you haven't explored/investigated the technical possibilities (both good and bad) implicit in full-fledged nanotech (let alone hyperspatial tech).

You mean well--and, again, your pessimissm vis-a-vis Governments is, ALAS!!, spot-on!!! (which means, though, that we gotta DO somethin' about that, not just give-up and let the NeoHitlers have nanotech, for goodness sake!!!!)--but would you not like for humankind to wake-up and **DEMAND** tech to instantiate eternal youth-&-vigor, **DEMAND** total cybernation of "work" and the virtual elimination/obviation of labor-as-we-know-it (to be replaced by leisure-work, play, exploration, etc.), to DEAMND tech to enable the large-scale (trans)human migration off-planet and on out into the Solar System and Galaxy beyond?

We now live in the supreme instant, the window of opportunity, to bring all the greatest dreams and aspirations of humankind, both individually and collectively, to **fruition**---and then, indeed, to move beyond THAT---to continue to bring life and mind to an otherwise lifeless, mindless universe---or, perhaps to link-up with other, already highly-evolved super-beings...

We have to do the best we can...

"You know? You always have to start from where you are." Robert LeFevre, autarchist

"Start HERE: The Future branches out indefinitely from THIS point in spacetime." John Rader Platt, physicist.

May we ALL live long, thrive, and prosper...

paul,
I really appreciated you post...
I too used to think immortality , physical one tied to this often absurd sensless ego, (many misuse the term self or true self), was something to long for. Many others I have quickly revied as answers to you post really have a childish Ayn Rand approach to this the silly idea of self-control or even it's possibility, the mere idea of controlling the self or the ego as if it wasn't plainly reactive.
Your NDE sound most likely like a full-on psychedelic revelation, it takes more than just one subministration and a lot of dialectic comprehension to go beyond the firdt stage.
The best datailed concise description of the phenomena you can find it on www.egodeath.com , I think Micheal Hoffman is a near genius in his attempt at explaining egodeath, block universe, determinism etc. For those still stuck in the 3 + 1 dimensions I can but feel sorry. Do you really thik time as you perceive it is real or just a by product of rudimental linear consciousness?
Also all this naive talk about the future and technology...How about the past, the far distant forgotten past... the biospiritual tech, changing DNA with tought, music or mantras...
We are so presumptuos in thinking we are the apex of evol on Earth or are indeed alone in the Universe...the has already been many immortals on Earth some probably still alive, many probably have chosen to move on into other realms or dimensions.
But you can go on thinking scientific research is free, unconditioned and unmanipulated...(who dishes out the mony guys? get real)and that downloading 'your' "consciousness" (the absurd bulk of your past experiences, preferences and lots of unneccessary words, which by the way, is the only thing gives you the worthless identity you soo much cling to, in this debased level of conscoiusness, which is actually a deep Gurdjieffan Sleep) unto a silicon chip or an array of photons running aroung quantum gates or mirrors, think twice. You are already made of condensed light (ie. matter). The denser the medium the slower the process speed, slow time.
You want to step into eternity? Let go...relinquis all power, abandon all might, flow...exercise of 'will' "power" will only bring you misery. You cannot become what you are not, you can only BE what you already are

As Osho simply put it death (the physical one you all really fear, as I once did) is opposition with birth, and springs from true ignorance (the only real sin committable against 'god' or onself, and wich will doom you for eternity) not with "life"...once you really 'live' you can never ever die

Yours
Matteo

PS. hope you exscuse my rough English, I am Italian and haven't written in a while.

PPS. As nice reading for those utopian fans is P.K. Dick essays on various possible future dystopias.

Further addendum...
To all of those still in this 'wonderfull future' accellerated time point idea galore (this is not what Mckenna and others had quite in mind about accelerated time scope evolution for man)that are yet presently obsessed with the concept of mind and reason, do remember that mind alone will not get you anywhere. Mind itself, like science, it's direct byproduct, will get you to the moon, but nowhere really fast indeed. Mind itself, likewise science, by it's very structure, can only be negating. Science does not prove by belief or affirmation, it can only prove something not to be true. At moste you get an ontologically negative philosophy like Buddhism, not an ever evolving transformating process as in Taoism.
See Alan Watts per reference, even the idead of self controll doesn't hold up, even in old time traditional Zen Buddhism. When the mind tries to control the mind (power struggle) you only get insanity (see our present society, where you guys are hypothetically discussing phys immortality and about half of the world population lives with a dollar a day or less. You can't even stop the US govt from fluoridating water or buying CO2 pollution slots from Iceland to build alluminum smeltering plants, even at this very moment as I write the govt is working on and planning further internet censorship, how can you really think to have control, not only your self or that they will even allow you to have in the first place???). To become 'transhuman' as you might like it you have to boldly believe and go beyond the mind (ie physical boundaries of you brain), it has to be through intense mystic experience and insight...not only mith and science...stuck in linear time etc.
Think about folks

Matteo

I've always thought that most immortalists were 'in it' through fear of death. And I agree that it's more than just possible that non-physical immortality is the key issue. My first proper trip was rather profound. Whether as much as your NDE is not so easy to communicate in merely the written word, but some of the main points seem to be in common.

I think that a kind of spiritual maturity is reached once one can face one's own death with equanimity. 10 years ago, I was as terrified as the next man. Now, it doesn't seem like anything to be afraid of...