It seems to me like you guys are equating “natural death is no longer a thing” with “death and suffering are also no longer a thing”. People commit suicide every day, and they have suffered for mere years or decades. Imagine all the trauma and suffering you could accumulate in centuries. It only takes to make the decision once, and it is final.
If someone is perfectly happy for 279 years and then they get a streak of bad luck for 2 years (say, a war), that may very well be too much suffering for their untrained mind, and they may want to just switch it off. How many outlived friends/daughters/true loves would it take to make you at least consider it?
I’m not saying I’d do it, just that it probably wouldn’t be that rare, given that there’s probably no possible cure for non-natural death.
For my part, I think Dumbledore could have made a more compelling argument. One can easily claim that one should fear death, and that in fact everyone alive already does, whatever their belief system says. But saying that is like saying one should wash one’s hands before eating, until someone washes their hands until they bleed. Or that protecting people against harm is a good thing, until someone enslaves everyone against their will in order to better protect them...
Dark wizards do not merely fear death, or simply desire immortality, like we all do. They are obsessed with it—consumed with it, to the point of a mental illness, such that they are willing to do any harm to anyone in order to avoid their own mortality. That was the element in Voldomort’s psyche that Dumbledore couldn’t understand.
It seems to me like you guys are equating “natural death is no longer a thing” with “death and suffering are also no longer a thing”. People commit suicide every day, and they have suffered for mere years or decades. Imagine all the trauma and suffering you could accumulate in centuries. It only takes to make the decision once, and it is final.
If someone is perfectly happy for 279 years and then they get a streak of bad luck for 2 years (say, a war), that may very well be too much suffering for their untrained mind, and they may want to just switch it off. How many outlived friends/daughters/true loves would it take to make you at least consider it?
I’m not saying I’d do it, just that it probably wouldn’t be that rare, given that there’s probably no possible cure for non-natural death.
For my part, I think Dumbledore could have made a more compelling argument. One can easily claim that one should fear death, and that in fact everyone alive already does, whatever their belief system says. But saying that is like saying one should wash one’s hands before eating, until someone washes their hands until they bleed. Or that protecting people against harm is a good thing, until someone enslaves everyone against their will in order to better protect them...
Dark wizards do not merely fear death, or simply desire immortality, like we all do. They are obsessed with it—consumed with it, to the point of a mental illness, such that they are willing to do any harm to anyone in order to avoid their own mortality. That was the element in Voldomort’s psyche that Dumbledore couldn’t understand.
I don’t think Harry understands it either.