What's It Like to Be Undead?

[Florian]

Alien.

First and foremost: Alien.

Living creatures are driven and gouverned by certain biological needs and instincts.
You die, all of that ceases to be.

[asnys]

Some really good stuff here! My own thoughts:

I imagine that undead not really having the same set of emotions that humans do. A human turned into a wight can remember once feeling empathy or love in an abstract sense, but can no longer really call the feeling to mind, or feel it anew. They might continue acting as though they feel those emotions at first out of inertia, but only for a time. A highly logical and rationalist undead might commit to doing good for abstract reasons of philosophy, but they have no emotional feel for it, no kick of endorphins when they help someone out. At the same time, sentient undead still feel an emotion that would roughly translate as hunger - the hunger to consume the living etc. etc. So, except in very rare cases - the undead equivalent of a Buddha or a Socrates - an undead is going to be a nasty, evil being whose only real pleasures anymore are derived from the sufferings of others.

[Raimun]

Pretty much all fictional accounts* agree that it's a horrible experience.

*Except the ones that portray vampires as humans with fangs and superpowers.

[dspeyer]

Didn't Thomas Nagel address this?

[Closet_Skeleton]

Wrong, that's what it feels like. Bodies die, that's what's normal for them. A dead body that moves is like a tool being used for a job it isn't suited.

Ever been so tired you were unable to move, but had to force yourself to move anyway?

Ever tried to do something only to realise that your arms can't bend that way? Its like that except you make them bend that way and accomplish things you shouldn't be able to do.

Ever tried to move with a broken leg and realised you could not? Its like that, except you do move, step after step.

Your eyes will soon rot away, but that doesn't matter because they can't see anyway. If you can still see, it isn't real sight, you can't see the way a mortal could. What you can see is something between the real world and the spirit world, you can see some things that are invisible to mortals, but most of the time that's no advantage. You might not be able to close your eyes either, you have to see and have no choice in the matter. Even if you throw a blind fold over your head the blindfold is a thing of the material world and therefore something you can only half see. But you can't really see the afterlife or the spirit world properly either. You're on a journey and unable to reach the destination, everywhere you can catch glimpses of the paradise you've been denied, but it is no more real or solid to you than the shadowy way you perceive the material world.

Your non-visual senses are even worse. As your flesh crumbles away your sense of touch fades, though somehow the pain remains. Most of your sensory inputs are just phantoms conjured from your memory, as your skeletal hand clutches a small ball you remember what smoothness used to feel like, but can feel nothing. You can sense some kind of heat coming from fires, but its not the heat you remember. You can just barely make out the leaves in the trees shaking and for a second fancy that you can hear the wind, but you can't tell if its the real wind or a wind that is a mere ghost like you.

You were supposed to be free of the crude, filthy world of matter, but it dragged you down and won't let you escape.

You reach out with your skeletal hands around a mortal's neck. You remember the warmth of a lover's skin against your own, but this is not your lover. You squeeze and crush and can feel the vibrations from where your bones grind against his. You let go and the echo of a thud resounds in your mind. For a second the corpse looks more real to you than it had when it had been alive, but then it fades away into the ground. You look down and laugh at your faint memories of sympathy, for you feel the only real feeling you ever get to feel that is more than just a faint memory, jealousy that the cursed gods allowed this creature to die.

[VoxRationis]

Kinda itches.

[Fizban]

A lot of it depends on your mentality. But I see two major takes on it that one could pursue.

First, liberation. Part of what makes people so stressed all the time is the time. It's limited. We get a certain amount, and then snuff it. So we dream, we despair, we struggle, because there's so much stuff we want to fit in and not enough time.

An Undead, such as a Necropolitan, has all the time. Literally, all of it. Death is no longer an impediment. So all that stuff that was stressing you out because you never thought you'd have the time to get it done? Do it. Whenever you want.

See the world. Practice every martial art. Take up painting. Read all of the great novels. Learn every language. An intelligent Undead enjoys limitless potential to explore every crevice of what life has to offer, virtually consequence-free. Few things can be more liberating than knowing that you can have whatever you put your mind to, whenever you're ready to take it.

Ah, but with infinite time comes the even stronger fear of death. Normally a person can only be bothered to go so far to protect their existence, as it will end regardless of their efforts. An undead will continue to exist forever. . . or until destroyed. With that comes an absolute obsession with avoiding their final destruction which can only be countered by. . .

Second, and the other side of the coin, malaise. The same way life's brevity gives us despair, it gives us meaning. When a person only has so many decades to perfect his craft, he raises it to an artform. When we only have so long to pursue love, we dive into it wholeheartedly.

When there is no more fear of an end, there is no more pressure to accomplish things before then. When you're no longer in a rush to do something, why rush to do anything? And as more and more of the world rises and falls around you, while you remain unchanging, you may find yourself disconnecting more and more from it. It ceases to matter as much.

... Good answer.

I'd have added, "You may live."

For the incorporeal side of things, the Dresden Files book Ghost Story has some insight. You feel better than you ever have before. It's not that you've gotten healthier or anything though, it's just that the accumulated damage on your body that never goes away, all the aches and pains, are gone along with the body.