Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning | Lex Fridman Podcast #117

1. 0:00 – 5:34

   Introduction

   1. LFLex Fridman0:00

      The following is a conversation with Sheldon Solomon, a social psychologist, a philosopher, co-developer of terror management theory, and co-author of the Warm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. He further carried the ideas of Ernest Becker that I can crudely summarize as the idea that our fear of death is at the core of the human condition and the driver of most of the creations of human civilization. Quick summary of the sponsors: Blinkist, Express VPN, and Cash App. Click the links in the description to get a discount. It really is the best way to support this podcast. Let me say as a side note that Ernest Becker's book, Denial of Death, had a big impact on my thinking about human cognition, consciousness, and the deep ocean currents of our mind that are behind the surface behaviors we observe. Many people have told me that they think about death or don't think about death, fear death or don't fear death, but I think not many people think about this topic deeply, rigorously, in the way that Nietzsche suggested. This topic, like many that lead to deep personal self-reflection, frankly is dangerous for the mind, as all first principles thinking about the human condition is. If you gaze long into the abyss, like Nietzsche said, the abyss will gaze back into you. I've been recently reading a lot about World War II, Stalin, and Hitler. It feels to me that there's some fundamental truth there to be discovered in the moments of history that changed everything; the suffering, the triumphs. If I bring up Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin in these conversations, it is never through a political lens. I'm not left nor right. I think for myself, deeply, and often question everything, changing my mind as often as is needed. I ask for your patience, empathy, and rigorous thinking. If you arrive to this podcast from a place of partisanship, if you hate Trump or love Trump or any other political leader, no matter what he or they do, and see everyone who disagrees with you as delusional, I ask that you unsubscribe and don't listen to these conversations, because my hope is to go beyond that kind of divisive thinking. I think we can only make progress toward truth through deep empathetic thinking and conversation, and as always, love. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with five stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, support it on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter @lexfriedman. As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now and no ads in the middle. I try to make these interesting, but I give you timestamps so you can skip, but please do check out the sponsors by clicking the links in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. This episode is supported by Blinkist, my favorite app for learning new things. Get it at blinkist.com/lex for a seven-day free trial and 25% off after. Blinkist takes the key ideas from thousands of non-fiction books and condenses them down into just 15 minutes that you can read or listen to. I'm a big believer in reading at least an hour a day. As part of that, I use Blinkist every day, and in general, it's a great way to broaden your view of the idea landscape out there and find books that you may want to read more deeply. With Blinkist, you get unlimited access to read or listen to a massive library of condensed non-fiction books. Right now, for a limited time, Blinkist has a special offer just for our audience. Go to blinkist.com/lex to try it free for seven days and save 25% off your new subscription. That's blinkist.com/lex. Blinkist, spelled B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T. This show is sponsored by Express VPN. Get it at expressvpn.com/lexpod to get a discount and to support this podcast. Have you ever watched The Office? If you have, you probably know it's based on a UK series also called The Office. Not to stir up trouble, but I think the British version is actually more brilliant than the American one, but both are pretty amazing. Anyway, there are actually nine other countries with their own version of The Office. You can get access to them with no geo restrictions when you use Express VPN. It lets you control where you want sites to think you're located. You can choose from nearly 100 countries, giving you access to content that isn't available in your region. So again, get it on any device at expressvpn.com/lexpod to get a extra three months free and to support this podcast. This show is presented by the great, the powerful Cash App, the number one finance app in the App Store. When you get it, use code LEXPODCAST. Cash App lets you send money to friends, buy Bitcoin, and invest in the stock market with as little as $1. Since Cash App allows you to send and receive money digitally, let me mention a surprising fact about physical money. It costs 2.4 cents to produce a single penny. In fact, I think it costs $85 million annually to produce them. So again, if you get Cash App from the App Store or Google Play and use the code LEXPODCAST, you get $10 and Cash App will also donate $10 to FIRST, an organization that is helping to advance robotics and STEM education for young people around the world. And now here's my conversation with Sheldon Solomon.

2. 5:34 – 22:57

   Role of death in life

   1. LFLex Fridman5:34

      What is the role of death and fear of death in life?

   2. SSSheldon Solomon5:38

      Well, from our perspective, the uniquely human awareness of death and our unwillingness to accept that fact we would argue is the primary motivational impetus for almost everything that people do, whether they're aware of it or not.

   3. LFLex Fridman6:00

      So that's kind of been your life work, your view of the human condition is that death... You've written the book Warm at the Core, that death is at the core of our consciousness of everything, of how we see the world, of what drives us. Maybe can you...

   4. Can you elaborate, like, what... How you see death fitting in? What does it mean to be at the core of our being?

   5. SSSheldon Solomon6:24

      So I think that's, uh, a great question. A-And, you know, to be pedantic, I usually start, you know, my psychology classes, uh, uh, and I say to the students, "Okay, uh, you know, let's define our terms." And the ology part, they get right away. You know, it's the study of. And then we get to the psyche part, a-and understandably, you know, the students are like, "Oh, that means mind." And I'm like, "Well, no, that's a modern interpretation." Uh, but in a, uh, in, uh, ancient Greek, it means soul, uh, but not in the Cartesian dualistic sense that most of us in the West think when that word comes to mind. And so you hear the word soul, a-and you're like, "Well, all right. That's the non-physical part of me that's potentially detachable from my corporal container when I'm no longer here." Uh, but, uh, Aristotle's... Who coined the word psyche, I think, um, he was, uh, not a dualist. He was a monist. He thought that the soul was inextricably connected to the body, and he defined soul as the essence of a natural body that is alive. And then he goes on, and he says, "All right. Uh, let me give you an example. I-If, um, if an ax was alive, the soul of an ax would be to chop. And if you can pluck your eyeball out of your head and it was still functioning, then the soul of the eyeball would be to see." You know? And then he's like, "All right. The soul of a grasshopper is to hop. The soul of a woodpecker is to peck," which raises the question, of course, what is the essence of what it means to be human? A-And here, of course, there is no one universally accepted conception of the essence of our humanity. All right. Aristotle, uh, you know, gives us the idea of humans as rational animals. You know? We're homo sapiens. But not the only game in town. Got Joseph Heusinger, an anthropologist in the 20th century, he called us homo ludens, that we're basically fundamentally playful creatures. And I think it was Hannah Arendt, uh, homo faber. We're tool-making creatures. Uh, another woman, Ellen Dissanayake wrote a book called Homoestheticus, uh, and following Aristotle and his poetics, she's like, "Well, we're not only rational animals. We're also aesthetic creatures that appreciate beauty." Uh, there's another take on humans. I think they call us homo narrans. Uh, we're all... We're storytelling creatures. And I, I think all of those, uh, uh, designations of what it means to be human are quite useful heuristically and certainly worthy of our collective cogitation. But what, what garnered my attention when I was a young punk was, uh, just a single line in an essay by a Scottish guy who was Alexander Smith, um, in, uh, in a book called Dreamthorpe. I think it's written in the 1860s. He just says right in the middle of an essay, "It is our knowledge that we have to die that makes us human." And I remember reading that, and I... In my gut, I was like, "Oh, man. I don't like that, but I think you're onto something." A-And then William James, the, the great Harvard philosopher, and arguably the first academic psychologist that m- He referred to death as the worm at the core of the human condition, so that's where the worm at the core idea comes in. A-And that's just an allusion to, um, the story of Genesis back in the proverbial old days in the Garden of Eden. Uh, everything was (laughs) going tremendously well un- Until the serpent tempts Eve to take a chomp out of the apple of the tree of knowledge, and Adam partakes also. A-And this is, according to the Bible, what brings death into the world. A-And from our vantage point, uh, the story of Genesis is a remarkable allegorical, uh, uh, recount o- Of the origin of consciousness where we get to the point, uh, where, by virtue of our vast intelligence, we come to realize the inevitability o- Of death. And so, uh, you know, the apple is beautiful, and it's tasty. Uh, but when you get right into the middle of it, there's that ugly reality, which is our finitude. And then fast-forward a bit, and, uh, I was a, a young professor at Skidmore College in 1980. Um, my PhD is in experimental social psychology, and I, I mainly did studies, um, with clinical psychologists evaluating the efficacy of non-pharmacological interventions to reduce stress. A-And that was good work, and I found it interesting. But, um, in my first week as a professor at Skidmore, uh, I'm just walking up and down the shelves of the library. Um, saw some books by a guy I had never heard of, Ernest Becker, uh, a cultural anthropologist, recently deceased. He died in 1974, um, uh, after, um, weeks before actually he was posthumously, uh, awarded the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction for his book, The Denial of Death.And...

   6. LFLex Fridman12:18

      And that was his last book?

   7. SSSheldon Solomon12:19

      It wa- it's actually his next-to-last book. I don't know how you pull this off, but he had one more after he died called Escape From Evil. And evidently, it was supposed to... Originally, The Denial of Death was supposed to be this giant thousand-page book that was both, and they split it up. And, uh, what became Escape From Evil, uh, his wife, Marie Becker, finished. W- well, be that as it may, in... It is in The Denial of Death, uh, where Becker just says i- in the first paragraph, "I... I... I believe, uh, that the terror of death, uh, and the way that human beings respond to it or decline to respond to it, is primarily responsible for almost everything we do, whether we're aware of it or not, and mostly we're not." A- and so I... I read that first paragraph, Lex, and I was like, "Wow, okay, this dude-"

   8. LFLex Fridman13:20

      You're onto something.

   9. SSSheldon Solomon13:21

      Yeah, you're onto something.

   10. LFLex Fridman13:22

       It's the same thing here.

   11. SSSheldon Solomon13:23

       It's the same thing. And then it reminded me, I think, um, not to play psychologist, but, you know, let's face it, I believe there's a reason why we end up drifting where we ultimately come to. So I'm in my mid-20s, I got Ernest Becker's book in my hand, and the next thing I know I'm remembering, uh, when I'm eight years old, the day that my grandmother died. A- and, you know, the day before, my mom, um, said, "Oh, say goodbye to Grandma. She's not well." And, okay, so I was like, "Okay, Grandma." And I knew she wasn't well, but I didn't really appreciate the magnitude of her illness. Well, she dies the next day, and it's in the evening and I'm just sitting there looking at my stamp collection, and I'm like, "Wow, I'm gonna miss my grandmother." And then I'm like, "No, wait a minute, that means my mother's gonna die and... uh, after she gets old. And that's even worse. After all, who's gonna make me dinner?" And that bothered me for a while. But then I'm looking at the stamps, all the dead American presidents-

   12. LFLex Fridman14:36

       (laughs)

   13. SSSheldon Solomon14:36

       ... and I'm like, "There's George Washington, he's dead. There's Thomas Jefferson, he's dead. My mom's gonna be dead. Oh, I'm gonna get old and be dead someday." And at eight years old, that was my first explicit existential crisis. I remember it being, you know, one of these blood-curdling realizations that I tried my best, uh, to ignore f- for the most of the time I was subsequently growing up.

   14. LFLex Fridman15:05

       (laughs)

   15. SSSheldon Solomon15:05

       But fast-forward back to Skidmore College, mid-20s, you know, reading Becker's book in the 1980s, thinking to myself, "Wow, one of the reasons why I'm finding this so compelling is that it squares with my own personal experience." And then, to make a short story long, and I... I'll... I'll shut up, Lex, but what-

   16. LFLex Fridman15:29

       (laughs)

   17. SSSheldon Solomon15:29

       ...what grabbed me about Becker, and this is in part, uh, because I read a lot of his other books, um, there's another book, The Birth and Death of Meaning, uh, which is framed, um, in... from an evolutionary perspective. And... and then The Denial of Death I- is really more framed from an existential psychodynamic vantage point. A- and as a... a young, um, academic, uh, I was really taken by what I found to be a... a very potent juxtaposition that you really don't see that often. Y- usually evolutionary types are eager to dismiss the psychodynamic types and vice versa. And maybe only John Bowlby, uh, you know, there's per- there's other folks, but, uh, the attachment theorist, uh, John Bowlby, uh, was really one of the first serious academics to say, "These, um, these ways of thinking about things a- are quite compatible." And-

   18. LFLex Fridman16:35

       Can you comment on what's... what a psychodynamics view of the world is versus an evolutionary view of the world, just in case people are not familiar?

   19. SSSheldon Solomon16:41

       Yeah, oh, yeah, absolutely. That's... that's a fine question. Well, for the evolutionary types, um, in general, are interested in, um, uh, how it is and why it is that, uh, we, uh, have adapted to our surroundings in the service of persisting over time, uh, and being represented in the gene pool thereafter. Um-

   20. LFLex Fridman17:08

       You used to be a fish.

   21. SSSheldon Solomon17:10

       Yes.

   22. LFLex Fridman17:10

       We've each to be a fish and now it's-

   23. SSSheldon Solomon17:11

       (laughs)

   24. LFLex Fridman17:11

       Yeah, and now we end up talking on a podcast about-

   25. SSSheldon Solomon17:14

       Yeah.

   26. LFLex Fridman17:15

       ... how we came to be that way.

   27. SSSheldon Solomon17:16

       How we came to be that way. A- and so, uh, whereas the existential psychodynamic types, I would say, are more interested in development across a single lifespan. A- and... but... but all... all... the evolutionary types dismiss the psychodynamic types as overly speculative and devoid of empirical support for their views. Uh, they, um, you know, uh, uh, they'll just say, "These guys are talking shit," if you'll pardon the expression.

   28. LFLex Fridman17:45

       Yeah. (laughs)

   29. SSSheldon Solomon17:46

       And, of course, uh, you can turn right around, a- and say the same about the evolutionary types, that they are often and rightfully criticized, evolutionary psychologists, uh, for what are called the Just So Stories, uh, where it's like, "Oh, this is probably why fill in the blank is potentially adaptive." A- and, uh, my thought, uh, again, early on, uh, was I didn't see any, um, intrinsic antithesis between these viewpoints. I just found them dialectically compatible and, uh, uh, very powerful when combined.

   30. LFLex Fridman18:27

       So one question I would ask here is, um...... about the science being speculative. You know, we understand so little about the human mind. You said you picked up Becker's book and, you know, it felt like he was onto something. That's the same thing I felt when I picked up Becker's book, uh, probably also in my early 20s (laughs) . Uh, you know, I read a lot of philosophy, but it felt like the question of the meaning of life kind of, uh ... You know, this seemed to be the most, uh, the closest to the truth somehow. It was onto something. So, I, I guess the question, uh, I wanna ask also is like, um, how speculative is psychology? How, like all of your life's work (laughs) , um, how do you feel, how confident do you feel about the whole thing, about understanding our mind?
3. 22:57 – 53:02

   Jordan Peterson

   1. SSSheldon Solomon22:57

   2. LFLex Fridman22:57

      If we look at the existentialists, or even like, uh, modern, uh, philosopher psychologist types like Jordan Peterson, I'm not sure if you're familiar with him-

   3. SSSheldon Solomon23:08

      I know Jordan pretty well.

   4. LFLex Fridman23:09

      (laughs) . Uh-

   5. SSSheldon Solomon23:11

      We go way back actually. If he were here with us today, we would, he would be jumping in and o- I believe very interesting and important ways. But yeah, we go back 30 years ago. He, he was, um, uh, basically saying our work is nonsense (laughs) .

   6. LFLex Fridman23:29

      Let's get into this-

   7. SSSheldon Solomon23:30

      Yeah.

   8. LFLex Fridman23:30

      ... because I'm sure I'll talk to Jordan, uh, eventually on this thing.

   9. SSSheldon Solomon23:33

      Yeah, I-

   10. LFLex Fridman23:33

       He's going through some rough times right now

   11. NANarrator23:34

       Roughly.

   12. SSSheldon Solomon23:34

       Oh, absolutely, and I, and I wish him well. Um, Jo- Jordan was working on his maps of meaning, and we were publishing our work. And I, I think Jordan at the time, um, was concerned about our vague claims to the effect that all meaning is arbitrary. He takes a more Jungian as well as evolutionary view that I don't think is wrong, by the way, uh, which is that, um, there are certain kinds of meanings that are more important. Let's say religious-... types, uh, and that we didn't pay sufficient attention to that, um, in our early days.

   13. LFLex Fridman24:26

       So, uh, can you try to, uh, elucidate like what his worldview is? 'Cause he's also a religious man. Uh, so what, uh, what was the s- what- what was, uh, some of the interesting aspects of the disagreements that then ...

   14. SSSheldon Solomon24:38

       Yeah. Well, back in the day, I just said, you know, Jordan was a young punk.

   15. LFLex Fridman24:42

       (laughs)

   16. SSSheldon Solomon24:42

       Uh, we were young punks. He was just kind of flailing in an animated way at some conferences, saying that, um, we-

   17. LFLex Fridman24:50

       You're still both kind of punks.

   18. SSSheldon Solomon24:51

       Yeah.

   19. LFLex Fridman24:51

       Kind of young.

   20. SSSheldon Solomon24:51

       We are both kind of punks.

   21. LFLex Fridman24:52

       Yeah.

   22. SSSheldon Solomon24:52

       So I saw him three or four years ago. We spoke on a... It was an awesome day. We were in Canada at, uh, the Ontario Shakespeare Festival, where we were asked to- to be on a Canadian broadcast system program. I think we were talking about Macbeth from a- um, a psychodynamic perspective. And I hadn't seen him in a ton of years, and we spent two days together, had-had a great time. You know, we had just written our book, uh, The Worm at the Core, and he's like, "You know, you- you're- you're missing a big opportunity. Every time you say something, you have to have your phone-

   23. LFLex Fridman25:29

       Yeah, of course.

   24. SSSheldon Solomon25:29

       ...and you have to film yourself, and then you have to put it on YouTube."

   25. LFLex Fridman25:33

       Yeah. Uh, he was onto something that, uh... You know, the- just as a small tangent-

   26. SSSheldon Solomon25:37

       Yeah.

   27. LFLex Fridman25:38

       ...uh, it's- it's almost sad to look at Jordan Peterson and somebody like yourself. After having done this podcast, I've realized that there is really brilliant people in this world. And oftentimes, especially like when they're, um, uh, I mean it with love, are a little bit like punks.

   28. SSSheldon Solomon25:57

       That's right.

   29. LFLex Fridman25:57

       They- they kind of do their own thing, and like the world doesn't know they exist as much as they should. And it's so interesting, 'cause most people are kind of boring.

   30. SSSheldon Solomon26:09

       Yes.
4. 53:02 – 56:57

   Humans are both selfish and cooperative

   1. SSSheldon Solomon53:02

      So-

   2. LFLex Fridman53:03

      Left and right, look, you mentioned you're thinking of maybe actually putting it down on paper or something?

   3. SSSheldon Solomon53:07

      Yeah, I would like to, because-

   4. LFLex Fridman53:08

      Ah, that'd be great.

   5. SSSheldon Solomon53:09

      ...what I would, what, what I would like to point out a- again, in, in admiration of all the people that I will then try and have the gall to criticizes. Look, these are all geniuses. Um, Locke, genius. Adam Smith, genius when he uses the notion that we're bartering creatures. So he uses that reciprocation idea as the basis of his way of thinking about things.

   6. LFLex Fridman53:35

      But that's not at the core.

   7. SSSheldon Solomon53:36

      No.

   8. LFLex Fridman53:36

      The bartering is not at the core of human nature.

   9. SSSheldon Solomon53:38

      It's not at... Well, he says-

   10. LFLex Fridman53:40

       Right.

   11. SSSheldon Solomon53:40

       ...it is. He says we're fundamentally bartering creatures.

   12. LFLex Fridman53:44

       Well, that doesn't even make sense then, because then what... How, how can we then be autonomous individuals?

   13. SSSheldon Solomon53:50

       Well, because we're gonna barter with an eye on-

   14. LFLex Fridman53:53

       On, on, for self, so it's like self-

   15. SSSheldon Solomon53:54

       For ourselves.

   16. LFLex Fridman53:55

       ...self-interest.

   17. SSSheldon Solomon53:55

       Yeah. But... All right, so... Uh, but back to Adam Smith for a second, Lex, is like, Adam Smith, here's... He's got the invisible hand. And my conservative friends, I'm like, "You need to read his books," because he is a big fan of the free market. And this is my other, uh, gripe with, uh, folks who support just the unbridled markets, Adam Smith understood that there was a role for government for two reasons.One is, is that just like Locke, people are not gonna behave with integrity. And he understood that one role of government is to maintain a, a proverbial, you know, even playing field. A- and then the other thing Smith said was that there's some things that can't be done well for a profit. And I believe he talked about education and public health and infrastructure as things that are best done by governments, uh, because you can't... You can make a profit, but that doesn't mean that the institutions themselves will be maximally beneficial. Yeah, so I, I would... Uh, I- I'm just eager to engage people by saying let's start with our most contemporary understanding of human nature, w- which is that we are both selfish and tend to cooperate, and we also can be heroically helpful to folks in our own tribe. A- and, uh, and of course, how you define one's tribe becomes critically-

   18. LFLex Fridman55:47

       Right.

   19. SSSheldon Solomon55:47

       ... important. But what some people say is, "Look, we... Let... What would then be... What kind of political institutions and what kind of economic organization can we think about to kinda hit that sweet spot?"

   20. LFLex Fridman56:03

       Mm.

   21. SSSheldon Solomon56:03

       And that, that would be, in my opinion, uh, how, how do we maximize individual autonomy in a way that fosters, uh, creativity and innovation and the self-regard that comes from creative expression while engaging our more cooperative and reciprocal tendencies in order to come up with a system that is potentially stable over time? Because the other thing about all capital-based systems-

   22. LFLex Fridman56:39

       The stability.

   23. SSSheldon Solomon56:39

       ... is-

   24. LFLex Fridman56:39

       It's fundamentally un- unstable.

   25. SSSheldon Solomon56:41

       Yeah, because it's based on infinite growth, uh, and that, you know, it's a positive feedback loop. Uh, to be silly, infinite growth is only good for malignant cancer cells and compound interest. Uh, otherwise, uh, you know, uh, we wanna seek a steady state,

5. 56:57 – 1:10:07

   Civilization collapse

   1. SSSheldon Solomon56:57

      and, um, that would be-

   2. LFLex Fridman56:59

      Yeah.

   3. SSSheldon Solomon56:59

      ... you know, so when Steven Pinker writes, for example... Again, great scholar, but I'm gonna disagree when he says the world has never been better, and all we need to do is keep making stuff and buying stuff.

   4. LFLex Fridman57:14

      So your sense is the world sort of in disagreement with Steven Pinker that the world is, um, like, facing a potential catastrophic collapse in multiple directions and-

   5. SSSheldon Solomon57:28

      Yes.

   6. LFLex Fridman57:29

      ... and the fact that there are certain, like, the, the rate of violence in aggregate is decreasing, the, the death, you know, the quality of life, all those kinds of measures that you can plot across centuries, that it's improving, that doesn't capture the fact that our world might be de-... We might destroy ourselves in very painful ways, uh, in the, in the f- in the next century.

   7. SSSheldon Solomon57:51

      Yeah, so I'm with Jared Diamond, you know, in the book Collapse, where he points out, studying, um, the collapse of major civilizations, that it often happens right after things appeared to never have been better.

   8. LFLex Fridman58:06

      Mm-hmm.

   9. SSSheldon Solomon58:07

      A- and in that regard, I mean, there are more, uh, known voices that have taken issue, uh, w- with, uh, Dr. Pinker. I- I'm thinking of, uh, John Gray, who's a, a British philosopher, and here in the States, I don't know where he is these days, but Robert Jay Lifton, the psychohistorian. Yeah, they're both of my view, and which I hope is, by the way, wrong, uh, but-

   10. LFLex Fridman58:34

       (laughs) Me too. (laughs)

   11. SSSheldon Solomon58:35

       Yeah, no, I... But I... But, you know, between, um, you know, ongoing ethnic tensions, environmental degradation, economic instability, and the fact that, uh, you know, the world has become a petri dish of psychopathology.

   12. LFLex Fridman58:52

       Like, what w- really worries me is the, the quiet economic pain that people are going through, the businesses that are closed-

   13. SSSheldon Solomon59:00

       Yeah.

   14. LFLex Fridman59:00

       ... the dreams that are broken because you can no longer do the thing that you've wanted to do, and how... I mentioned to you off-camera that I've been reading, um, The, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and, I mean, (sighs) the amount of anger and hatred and, uh, on the flip side of that, sort of a nationalist pride that can arise from deep economic pain. Like, what happens with that economic pain is you become bitter.

   15. SSSheldon Solomon59:29

       Yep.

   16. LFLex Fridman59:30

       You start to find the other, whether it's other European nations that mistreated you, whether it's other groups that mistreated you.

   17. SSSheldon Solomon59:38

       Yep.

   18. LFLex Fridman59:38

       It always ends up being the Jews, uh, (laughs) somehow, somehow our fault here.

   19. SSSheldon Solomon59:43

       Yep.

   20. LFLex Fridman59:43

       Uh, that's what worries me, is where this quiet anger and pain goes in 2021, 2022, 2030. Do you look-

   21. SSSheldon Solomon59:56

       No, no.

   22. LFLex Fridman59:56

       Sorry, sorry to see the parallels-

   23. SSSheldon Solomon59:58

       No, no, no. O- oh-

   24. LFLex Fridman59:59

       ... uh, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, but, you know, what happens 10, 15 years-

   25. SSSheldon Solomon1:00:03

       Yep.

   26. LFLex Fridman1:00:03

       ... from now from what's... Because of the COVID pandemic-

   27. SSSheldon Solomon1:00:06

       Yeah.

   28. LFLex Fridman1:00:07

       ... that's happening now.

   29. SSSheldon Solomon1:00:08

       And Lex, you make a, a, I think a really profoundly important point. You know, back to our work for a bit, or Ernest Becker, rather, you know, his point is, is that the way that we manage existential terror i- is to embrace culturally constructed belief systems that-... give us a sense that life has meaning and we have value. A- And in the form of self-esteem, which we get from perceiving that we meet or exceed the expectations associated with the role that we play in society. Well, here we are right now in a, in a world where, first of all, if you have nothing, you are nothing. And secondly, as you were saying before we got started today, a lot of jobs are gone and they're not coming back.

   30. LFLex Fridman1:01:00

       And that's the, where the self-esteem
6. 1:10:07 – 1:16:10

   Meditating on your mortality

   1. SSSheldon Solomon1:10:07

      pursuing them.

   2. LFLex Fridman1:10:08

      Uh, i- it's such a fascinating idea, I don't ... I have to think about, a lot about the experiments you've done and that you've inspired, about the fact that death changes the way you see a bunch of different things. Uh, the- I think the stoics ta- talked about the, uh, I mean, in general, just memento mori, like just thinking about death and meditating on death is a really positive ... not a positive, it's an enlightening way to, uh, live life. So what do you think about that, uh, at the, uh, in the individual level? Like, what is the role about-

   3. SSSheldon Solomon1:10:46

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:10:46

      ... being, bringing that terror of death, fear of death to the surface?

   5. SSSheldon Solomon1:10:51

      Nice. Nice. My-

   6. LFLex Fridman1:10:51

      And being cognizant of it.

   7. SSSheldon Solomon1:10:53

      For us, that's the, that's the ballgame. Um, so what we write in our book and here we're just, um, paying homage to the philosophers and theologians that come before us, is to point out that literally since antiquity, um, there has been a consensus that to lead a full life requires, um, Albert Camus said, "Come to terms with death, thereafter, anything is possible." Uh, and so you've got the, the stoics and you got the Epicureans and then you got the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and then you got like the medieval monks that, you know, worked with like a skull o- on their desk. And the whole idea I should back up a bit, because- and just remind folks that our studies, you know, when we remind people that they're gonna die and we find that, yeah, they drink more water if a famous person, um, is, is, you know, advertising it. Uh, they eat more cookies. They want more fancy clothes. They sit closer to people that look like them. It changes who they vote for. But all of those things, those are very subtle death reminders. You don't even know that death is on your mind. And so our point is, is that, and this is kinda counterintuitive, and that is that the most problematic and unsavory human reactions to death anxiety are malignant manifestations of repressed death anxiety. You know, we try and bury it under the psychological bushes and then it comes back to bear bitter fruit. But what the...... theologians and the philosophers of the world are saying is it behooves each of us to spend considerable time... You don't have to be a goth death rocker-

   8. LFLex Fridman1:13:06

      (laughs)

   9. SSSheldon Solomon1:13:06

      ... you know, wallowing in death imagery, to spend enough time entertaining the reality of the human condition, which is that you too will pass, to get to the point, uh, where there is, uh, to lapse into a cliché, uh, the capacity for personal transformation, a- and growth.

   10. LFLex Fridman1:13:36

       Let's go personal for a second.

   11. SSSheldon Solomon1:13:37

       Yeah.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:13:37

       Uh, are you yourself afraid of death?

   13. SSSheldon Solomon1:13:42

       Yeah.

   14. LFLex Fridman1:13:43

       (laughs)

   15. SSSheldon Solomon1:13:43

       Um... (laughs)

   16. LFLex Fridman1:13:44

       I mean, and how much do you meditate on that thought? Like, uh, may- maybe your own study of it (laughs) is a kind of escape from your own mortality.

   17. SSSheldon Solomon1:13:53

       It is absolutely, Lex. So you got it.

   18. LFLex Fridman1:13:56

       (laughs)

   19. SSSheldon Solomon1:13:56

       And... (laughs)

   20. LFLex Fridman1:13:57

       Oh, like if you figure out death, somehow you won't die.

   21. SSSheldon Solomon1:13:59

       So... No, no. Uh, so my, my colleagues and good friends, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszynski, you know, we met in graduate school in the 1970s. We've been doing this work for 40 years, and we cheerfully admit, even though it doesn't reflect well on us as humans, that... I should just speak for myself, but I, I feel like there's a real sense in which, um, doing these studies and writing books and, and lecturing has been my way of avoiding directly confronting my anxieties by turning it into an intellectual exercise. Uh, and, um, and- and every once in a while, therefore, when I think that I'm making some progress as a human, I- I have to remind (laughs) myself that, uh, that is probably not the case, um, and that I have, at times, like all humans, been more preoccupied with the implications of these ideas for my self-esteem. Uh, it's like, "Oh, we're gonna write a book and maybe, uh, we'll get to go on TV or something."

   22. LFLex Fridman1:15:11

       Yeah.

   23. SSSheldon Solomon1:15:11

       Well, no, that's not the same as to actually think about it in a way that, uh, you feel it rather than just think it. No.

   24. LFLex Fridman1:15:23

       Yeah, like you did when you were eight. That starts those- those first feelings.

   25. SSSheldon Solomon1:15:26

       That's exactly right. So when I first read The Denial of Death, uh, I was so literally flabbergasted by it that I took a leave of absence for a year, and just, like, did what would be considered menial jobs. I- I did construction work, I worked in a restaurant. And I- I was just like, "Well, wait a minute. If- if I- if I understand what this guy is saying, then I'm just a culturally constructed meat puppet..."

   26. LFLex Fridman1:15:58

       (laughs)

   27. SSSheldon Solomon1:15:59

       (laughs)

   28. LFLex Fridman1:16:00

       That's, uh...

   29. SSSheldon Solomon1:16:00

       "... doing things for reasons that I know not-"

   30. LFLex Fridman1:16:03

       Yeah.
7. 1:16:10 – 1:33:25

   Kierkegaard and Heidegger

   1. SSSheldon Solomon1:16:10

      acceptable.

   2. LFLex Fridman1:16:10

      Maybe o- another interesting person to talk about is Ernest Becker himself.

   3. SSSheldon Solomon1:16:15

      Sure.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:16:16

      So, how did he face his death? Is there something interesting, personal-

   5. SSSheldon Solomon1:16:25

      I- I think so.

   6. LFLex Fridman1:16:25

      ... there?

   7. SSSheldon Solomon1:16:25

      So, uh, uh, interesting to me is, um, Becker, also from a Jewish family, claimed to be, um, atheistic, uh, d- did not identify ultimately as Jewish. I believe he converted to Christianity, but was himself a religious person and he said he became religious when his first child was born.

   8. LFLex Fridman1:16:55

      Now, religious, what does that mean?

   9. SSSheldon Solomon1:16:59

      Well-

   10. LFLex Fridman1:16:59

       D- does he have a faith in... Well, let's talk more...

   11. SSSheldon Solomon1:17:02

       Yeah.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:17:02

       Most importantly is the afterlife.

   13. SSSheldon Solomon1:17:05

       He was-

   14. LFLex Fridman1:17:05

       What's his view on the afterlife?

   15. SSSheldon Solomon1:17:07

       He was, uh, agnostic on that, but he did... Um, uh, now, The Denial of Death is, um, there's a chapter devoted to Kierkegaard a- and he talks about for Kierkegaard, um, if you wanna become a mature individual. You know, if you wanna learn something, you go to the university. If you wanna become a more mature individual, according to Kierkegaard, you gotta go to the uni- you gotta go to the school of anxiety. A- and what Kierkegaard said is that we have to let this vague dis-ease, put a hyphen between dis and ease, about death... Kierkegaard's point is you have to really think about that. You have to think about it and feel it. You gotta let it seek in- or seep into, uh, your mind. At which point, a- according to Kierkegaard, basically you realize that your present identity is fundamentally a cultural construction. You didn't choose the time and place of your birth. You didn't choose your name. Uh, you know, you didn't choose necessarily even the social role that you occupy. You might have chosen from what's available in your culture, but not from the full palette of human opportunities. And so what Kierkegaard said is that we need to realize that, uh, we've been living a- a lie of sorts. Becker calls it a necessary lie. Uh, and, uh, and we have to momentarily...... dispose of that. And, and so now Kierkegaard says, "Well, here I am. I, I have shrugged off, uh, all of the cultural accoutrements that I have used, uh, to define myself. And now what am I or who am I?" This is like the ancient Greek tragedy where the worst thing was to be no one or no thing. All right, at this point, Kierkegaard said, "You're really dangling on the precipice of oblivion. And some people tumble into that abyss and never come out." On the other hand, Kierkegaard said that what you can now do metaphorically and literally is to rebuild yourself from the ground up. And there's a... In the New Testament, there's something, you have to die in order to be reborn. Uh, and Kierkegaard's view though is that there's only one way to do that. This is his proverbial leap into faith. And in Kierkegaard's case, it was faith in Christianity, that you can't have unbridled faith in cultural constructions. The only thing that you can have unequivocal faith in is some kind of transcendent power. All right, but of course this raises the question of, well, is that just another death denying belief system?

   16. LFLex Fridman1:20:21

       Right.

   17. SSSheldon Solomon1:20:22

       And at the end of The Denial of Death, Becker admits that there's no way to tell while still advocating for what is ultimately a religious stance. Now, one of the things that I don't understand, and I, uh, Becker has been the, the most singularly potent influence in my academic and personal life. But a year or two ago, I, I, um, started reading, uh, Martin Heidegger, I'm reading Being and Time. A- And what I now wonder is why, um, why Becker, who refers to Heidegger from time to time in his work, why he didn't take Heidegger more seriously. Because Heidegger has this... is like a secular Kierkegaard. He's, he has the same thing, which is death anxiety. Oh, and I should have pointed out that what Kierkegaard says is that death anxiety, most people don't go to the school of anxiety. They flee from death anxiety, uh, by embracing their cultural beliefs. Kierkegaard says they then tranquilize themselves with the trivial. And I love that phrase.

   18. LFLex Fridman1:21:38

       Yes, beautiful.

   19. SSSheldon Solomon1:21:38

       It's a beautiful phrase, 'cause at the end of The Denial of Death, Becker's like, "Look, the average American is either drinking or shopping or watching television, and they're all the same thing." Right? Heidegger says the same thing. He says, "Look..." and he acknowledges Kierkegaard. He says, "What makes us feel unsettled..." And evidently that's an English translation of angst that it, that it's we don't feel at home in the world. Heidegger says that's death anxiety. And one direction is the, the Kierkegaard one, he ca- Heidegger calls it a flight from death. You just unselfreflexively cling to your cultural constructions. A- And Heidegger borrows the term tranquilized, but he points out that he doesn't care for that term because tranquilized sounds like you're subdued, when in fact what most culturally constructed meat puppets do is to be frenetically engaged with their surroundings to ensure that they never sit still long enough to actually think about anything consequential. Heidegger says there's another way, though. He's like, "Yo, uh, what you can do is to come to terms with that death anxiety in the following way." Thing number one is to realize that not only are you going to die, but your death can happen at any given moment. So for Heidegger, if you say, "I know I'm gonna die in some vaguely unspecified future moment," that's still death denial, because you're saying, "Yeah, not me. Not now."

   20. LFLex Fridman1:23:26

       Yeah.

   21. SSSheldon Solomon1:23:27

       Heidegger's point is, you need to get to the point, uh, where you need to realize that, uh, you know, I need to realize that I can walk outside a- and get smoked by a comet, or, or I can stop for gas on the way home and catch the virus and be dead in two days, or, or any number o- of potentially unanticipated and uncontrollable fatal outcomes. But the-

   22. LFLex Fridman1:23:53

       That's brilliant, by the way. Sorry. Uh, uh, to, to, to, to bring it into the now-

   23. SSSheldon Solomon1:23:58

       Yeah.

   24. LFLex Fridman1:23:58

       ... this thought.

   25. SSSheldon Solomon1:23:59

       It is brilliant. I, I agree, Lex.

   26. LFLex Fridman1:24:00

       Yeah.

   27. SSSheldon Solomon1:24:00

       And this is why I'm, I'm, I'm wondering, why didn't Becker notice this? Because that's the Being and Time thing.

   28. LFLex Fridman1:24:07

       Yeah.

   29. SSSheldon Solomon1:24:07

       I- Is it's gotta be now. Right? And then he says... So, okay, so now I've dealt somewhat, uh, with the, the death part. And now he says now you've got to deal with what he calls existential guilt. A- And he says, "Well, all right. What you have to... Y- you have to realize that like it or not, you have to make choices." You know, this is Jean-Paul Sartre, "We are condemned by virtue of consciousness to choosing." But Heidegger is a little bit more precise. He's like, "Look, as I was saying earlier, you're... In reality, you're an insignificant speck of respiring, carbon-based dust born into a time and place not of your choosing when you're here for a microscopic amount of time, after which you are not."

   30. LFLex Fridman1:25:05

       Mm-hmm.
8. 1:33:25 – 1:36:56

   Elon Musk

   1. SSSheldon Solomon1:33:25

      like it.

   2. LFLex Fridman1:33:25

      ... I found the leap of faith really interesting in the, so in the technological space. So of, um... I've, I've, I've talked to on this thing with Elon Musk, but I think he's also just in general for our culture, a really important figure-

   3. SSSheldon Solomon1:33:39

      Oh, absolutely.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:33:40

      ... that takes, uh... I mean, he's, uh, sometimes a little bit insane on, on, uh-

   5. SSSheldon Solomon1:33:45

      (laughs)

   6. LFLex Fridman1:33:45

      ... social media, on, and just in life. When I, when I met him, it was kind of interesting that, uh, of course there's a l- a- I mean, he's a legit engineer, so he's fun to talk to about the technical things.

   7. SSSheldon Solomon1:33:57

      Yeah.

   8. LFLex Fridman1:33:58

      But he also just, just the way, the humor and the way he sees life, it just, like, refuses to be conventional. Uh-

   9. SSSheldon Solomon1:34:07

      Yeah. I, uh, uh-

   10. LFLex Fridman1:34:08

       ... so it's a constant, uh, leap into the unknown. And one of the things that he does, uh, and this isn't even, this isn't even, like, fake. A lot of people say 'cause he's a CEO, that he's a business owner, so he's trying to make money. No, I think this is, this is... Uh, I- I looked him in his, uh, uh, in his eyes. I mean, this is real, is a lot of the things he believes that are going to be accomplished that a lot of others are saying are impossible, like autonomous vehicles, he truly believes it. To me, that is the leap of faith of... I'm almost going, like, we're, like, the, the entirety of our experience is shrouded in mystery.

   11. SSSheldon Solomon1:34:47

       Yeah.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:34:47

       We don't know what the hell's gonna happen. What, you don't know what we're actually capable of as human beings, and he just takes the leap.

   13. SSSheldon Solomon1:34:53

       Uh-

   14. LFLex Fridman1:34:54

       He fully believes that we can, you know, we can go to ma- we can colonize Mars.

   15. SSSheldon Solomon1:34:58

       Yep.

   16. LFLex Fridman1:34:59

       I mean, how cr- how crazy is it to just believe and dream and actually be taking steps towards it?

   17. SSSheldon Solomon1:35:08

       Yeah.

   18. LFLex Fridman1:35:08

       Um, to colonizing Mars when most people are like, "That's the stupidest idea ever."

   19. SSSheldon Solomon1:35:12

       Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm in agreement with you on that. Um, you know, two things.

   20. LFLex Fridman1:35:16

       Yeah.

   21. SSSheldon Solomon1:35:16

       You know, one is it reminds me of Ben Franklin, who in his autobiography, you know, has a similarly childish, in the best sense of the word, um, unbridled imagination for what might become.

   22. LFLex Fridman1:35:32

       Yeah.

   23. SSSheldon Solomon1:35:32

       You know, Ben Franklin's like, "Yeah, I, I got electricity. That's cool, but we'll be levitating soon." You know, like, "We can't even begin to imagine, uh, what we are capable of." A- and of course, people are like, "Dude, that's crazy." And there's a guy, what's his... FCS Schiller, some humanistic guy at the beginning of the 20th century. He's like, "You know," um, (sighs) "lots of things that people think about may appear to be absurd to the point of obscene, but the reality is historically, every fantastic innovation has generally been initiated by someone who was condemned (laughs) for being a lunatic." And it's not that anything is possible, but surely things that we don't try will never manifest as possibilities.

   24. LFLex Fridman1:36:34

       Yeah. And, uh, that's-

   25. SSSheldon Solomon1:36:36

       Uh-

   26. LFLex Fridman1:36:36

       ... that's, uh... tha- there's something beautiful to that. That's the, uh, embracing the abyss. And, and again, it's like the, uh, it's the, uh, embracing the fear of death, the, the, the, the, the reality of death, and then turning, um, and to look at all the opportunities before us.

   27. SSSheldon Solomon1:36:53

       Oh, yeah. That's right.

   28. LFLex Fridman1:36:55

       Let me ask you,

9. 1:36:56 – 1:45:53

   Thinking deeply about death

   1. LFLex Fridman1:36:56

      whenever I bring up Ernest Becker's work, which I do, and, and yours quite a bit, I find it surprising how that it's not a lot more popular in a sense that, uh... No, well, not... Well, I don't mean just your book.

   2. SSSheldon Solomon1:37:14

      Yeah.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:37:14

      Uh, that's well-written, people should read it or should buy it, whatever. Uh, I think it has the same kind of qualities that are useful to think about as like Jordan Peterson's work and stuff like that.

   4. SSSheldon Solomon1:37:26

      Sure.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:37:26

      But I, I just mean, like...... why people, uh, are not... Don't think of that as a compelling description of, um, the core of the human condition.

   6. SSSheldon Solomon1:37:41

      Yeah.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:37:41

      Like, I think what you mentioned about Heidegger is, is quite... Connects with me quite well. So I ask... Uh, on this podcast, I often ask people if they're afraid of death. They, that's like almost every single per- I almost always get criticized for asking world-class people, uh, scientists and te- technologists, and, about fear of death and the meaning of life, and on the fear of death, they often like don't say anything interesting. What I mean by that is they haven't thought deeply about it, like what-

   8. SSSheldon Solomon1:38:17

      Yeah.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:38:17

      ... you, you kind of brought this up a few times of really letting it sink in.

   10. SSSheldon Solomon1:38:21

       Yeah.

   11. LFLex Fridman1:38:21

       They kind of say this thing about what, exactly what you said, which is like, uh, "It's something that happens not today. Like, I'm aware that it's something that happens."

   12. SSSheldon Solomon1:38:31

       Yeah.

   13. LFLex Fridman1:38:31

       And I'm not... The, the thing they usually say is, "I'm not afraid of death. I just want to live a good life," kind of thing.

   14. SSSheldon Solomon1:38:39

       Yeah.

   15. LFLex Fridman1:38:39

       And, uh, uh, what, what I, I'm trying to express is like when I look in their eyes and the kind of the, the core of the conversation, it looks like they haven't really become, like they haven't really meditated on death. I guess the question is, um, what do I say to people? Uh, that there's something to really think about here, like there's some demons, some realities that need to be faced-

   16. SSSheldon Solomon1:39:05

       Yeah.

   17. LFLex Fridman1:39:05

       ... by more people.

   18. SSSheldon Solomon1:39:07

       Well, that's a tough one. Uh, you know, I could tell you what not to do.

   19. LFLex Fridman1:39:11

       (laughs)

   20. SSSheldon Solomon1:39:11

       Uh, you know, so when we are young and annoying-

   21. LFLex Fridman1:39:14

       Yeah.

   22. SSSheldon Solomon1:39:14

       ... um, a lot of famous people, mostly psychologists because that's who we intersected with, that... You know, we would lay out these ideas and they would be, "Well, I, I don't think about death like that. So these ideas must be wrong."

   23. LFLex Fridman1:39:34

       Yeah.

   24. SSSheldon Solomon1:39:35

       And we would say, "Well, you don't think about death because you're lucky enough to be comfortably ensconced in a cultural worldview from which you derive self-esteem, and that has ex- spared you the existential excruciations that would otherwise arise," but that's like Freud, you know, you're repressing, so you either agree with me, in which case I'm right, or you disagree with me, in which case you're repressing and I'm right.

   25. LFLex Fridman1:40:04

       Yeah. Well, so that, that's the, uh, the, the Nietzsche thing. I, I, what I've felt when I've... There've been moment in my life, moments in my life when I really thought about death. I mean, there's not too many, like, really, really thought about it and feel everything when you felt at eight, maybe I'm dramatizing or romanticizing it, but, uh, I feel like it's, uh, uh... Conservatives call it popularly, like, or the, the movie Matrix call it the red pill-

   26. SSSheldon Solomon1:40:32

       Yeah.

   27. LFLex Fridman1:40:32

       ... moment. Uh, I feel like it's a dangerous thought because, um, I feel like I'm taking a step out of a society, like there's a nice narrative that we've all constructed-

   28. SSSheldon Solomon1:40:43

       You are.

   29. LFLex Fridman1:40:44

       ... and I'm-

   30. SSSheldon Solomon1:40:44

       Yes.

Episode duration: 2:56:23