Phobia of Death?

These are separate tracks of thoughts I had whenever I came across the idea of death. 

In my Japanese Studies class, the professor told us how Japan had constantly moved capital after each emperor's death until they settled in at Nara. 

Of course, there were many reasons leading up to these events, but one of the reasons the Prof mentioned, and stuck in my head was that traditional Japanese used to equate death to pollution, taboo: indicating, the more important person dies, the more pollution it is. 
This kind of trend is seen in many other cultures as well.

We, humans, have such violent reaction against death. Even though the prospect of death is something expected, like say, your hair growing, we still can't accept it as natural part of us, probably for so-called self-protection reason.

However, putting our common sense aside, let's consider other views of death.

Recently in developmental psychology I was learning about development of fetus, and one interesting thing came up: apoptosis, defined as genetically programmed cell death. Certain cells die selectively, as constant companion to other developmental processes. For example, fingers are produced as the result of apoptosis in the hand area. In this sense, death is regarded as totally natural part of our life that quite ironically starts from our birth.

Birth and death is inseparable.

Lastly, linking up nicely from the previous sentence, my father had told me long long time ago about how some Buddhist or other religious people view death. They actually see it as the same of giving birth. 
According to them, babies still inside mother's womb resist coming out to the world because they are afraid. They think they are dying, since they think coming out to the real world for them is going to end their life. However, that's not the way we see it, right? For us, it is, in fact, the beginning of our real life. 
Of course, this statement has no empirical support whatsoever, but just an opinion of other kinds of people out there. And I really like this idea. It comforts me. For us, death is something horrible and something we do not ever want to happen to us. However, if we see death in this perspective, it can be seen as the mere transition period into the new beginning.

Even though we may not remember anything about us when we were in the womb, we still regard that fetus as us. Can the same thing apply? When we die, we may not remember having been a human living on Earth, but isn't that still us, just like the way we are still the same person or self as the fetus?


I don't know. This is all confusing. But I like thinking in that way. And after having recently watched The Island, I am thinking, to us, is The Island our death?