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

Lex Fridman 0:00 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. 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Lex Fridman 5:34 What is the role of death and fear of death in life?

Sheldon Solomon 5:38 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.

Lex Fridman 6:00 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...

6:16 Can you elaborate, like, what... How you see death fitting in? What does it mean to be at the core of our being?

Sheldon Solomon 6:24 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...

Lex Fridman 12:18 And that was his last book?

Sheldon Solomon 12:19 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-"

Lex Fridman 13:20 You're onto something.

Sheldon Solomon 13:21 Yeah, you're onto something.

Lex Fridman 13:22 It's the same thing here.

Sheldon Solomon 13:23 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-

Lex Fridman 14:36 (laughs)

Sheldon Solomon 14:36 ... 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.

Lex Fridman 15:05 (laughs)

Sheldon Solomon 15:05 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-

Lex Fridman 15:29 (laughs)

Sheldon Solomon 15:29 ...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-

Lex Fridman 16:35 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?

Sheldon Solomon 16:41 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-

Lex Fridman 17:08 You used to be a fish.

Sheldon Solomon 17:10 Yes.

Lex Fridman 17:10 We've each to be a fish and now it's-

Sheldon Solomon 17:11 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 17:11 Yeah, and now we end up talking on a podcast about-

Sheldon Solomon 17:14 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 17:15 ... how we came to be that way.

Sheldon Solomon 17:16 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.

Lex Fridman 17:45 Yeah. (laughs)

Sheldon Solomon 17:46 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.

Lex Fridman 18:27 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?

Sheldon Solomon 19:18 I feel confidently unconfident-

Lex Fridman 19:23 (laughs) .

Sheldon Solomon 19:23 ... to have it both, both ways.

Lex Fridman 19:25 Like what do we make of psychology? What do we make starting with Freud s- s- you know, starting, um, just, just, or, or even just philosophy, um, even, uh, the aspects of, uh, the, the sciences. Like, um, you know, my, my field of artificial intelligence, but also physics. You know, it, it often feels like, man, we don't really understand most of what's going on here, and certainly that's true with, uh, the human mind.

Sheldon Solomon 19:54 Yeah. Well, to me that's the proper epistemological stance. Uh-

Lex Fridman 19:58 I don't know anything (laughs) .

Sheldon Solomon 19:59 Well, uh, it's the Socratic, uh, "I know that I don't know-"

Lex Fridman 20:04 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 20:04 ... which is the first step on the path to wisdom. I, I would argue forcefully that we know a lot more than we used to.

Lex Fridman 20:17 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 20:18 I would argue equally forcefully, uh, not that I have a PhD in the philosophy of science, but I, I believe that the Thomas Kuhns of the world are right when they point out that change is not necessarily progress. And so, on the one hand, I, I do think we know a lot more than we did back in the day when if you wanted to fly, you put on some wax wings and jumped off a mountain.

Lex Fridman 20:46 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 20:47 On the other hand, I think it's quite arrogant when scientists, I'll just speak about psychological scientists, um, when they have the audacity to mistake statistical precision, uh, for knowledge and insight. And when they make the mistake, in my estimation, um, that Einstein bemoaned, uh, and that's this idea that the mere accumulation of data, uh, won't necessarily result in conceptual breakthroughs. And so I, I like the, um ... Well, we're all, I hope, appreciative of the people who trained us. But I remember my first day in graduate school at the University of Kansas, uh, they brought us into a room and on one side of the board was a quote by Kurt Lewin, or Levine, famous German, uh, social psychologist. And it was noth- And the quote is, "There's nothing more useful than a good theory." And then on the other side was another quote by a German physicist, his name eludes me, and it was, "All theories are wrong." And I'm like, uh, "Which is it?" And of course the point is that it's both. Our, our theories are, I believe, powerful ways to direct our attention, uh, to aspects of human affairs that, uh, might render us, um, better able to understand ourselves and the world around us. Now, I also, uh, as an experimental psychologist, uh, I adhere to the view, uh, that theories are essentially hypothesis-generating devices. And that at its best science is a dialectical interplay where you have theoretical assertions that yield testable hypotheses and that, uh, either results in the corroboration of the theory, the rejection of it, or the modification thereafter.

Lex Fridman 22:57 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-

Sheldon Solomon 23:08 I know Jordan pretty well.

Lex Fridman 23:09 (laughs) . Uh-

Sheldon Solomon 23:11 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) .

Lex Fridman 23:29 Let's get into this-

Sheldon Solomon 23:30 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 23:30 ... because I'm sure I'll talk to Jordan, uh, eventually on this thing.

Sheldon Solomon 23:33 Yeah, I-

Lex Fridman 23:33 He's going through some rough times right now

Narrator 23:34 Roughly.

Sheldon Solomon 23:34 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.

Lex Fridman 24:26 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 ...

Sheldon Solomon 24:38 Yeah. Well, back in the day, I just said, you know, Jordan was a young punk.

Lex Fridman 24:42 (laughs)

Sheldon Solomon 24:42 Uh, we were young punks. He was just kind of flailing in an animated way at some conferences, saying that, um, we-

Lex Fridman 24:50 You're still both kind of punks.

Sheldon Solomon 24:51 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 24:51 Kind of young.

Sheldon Solomon 24:51 We are both kind of punks.

Lex Fridman 24:52 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 24:52 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-

Lex Fridman 25:29 Yeah, of course.

Sheldon Solomon 25:29 ...and you have to film yourself, and then you have to put it on YouTube."

Lex Fridman 25:33 Yeah. Uh, he was onto something that, uh... You know, the- just as a small tangent-

Sheldon Solomon 25:37 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 25:38 ...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.

Sheldon Solomon 25:57 That's right.

Lex Fridman 25:57 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.

Sheldon Solomon 26:09 Yes.

Lex Fridman 26:09 As- as... And then the interesting ones kind of go on their own, and there's not a smartphone recording.

Sheldon Solomon 26:14 No, no. That's- that's what ...

Lex Fridman 26:15 And it's so interesting. He was onto something that, um... I mean, it's interesting that he... I don't think he was thinking from a money perspective, but he was probably thinking of like connecting with people or sharing his knowledge, but, uh-

Sheldon Solomon 26:28 We're all-

Lex Fridman 26:28 ...people don't often think that way.

Sheldon Solomon 26:29 That's right.

Lex Fridman 26:30 So may- maybe we can try to get back to-

Sheldon Solomon 26:33 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 26:33 ...you're both brilliant people, and I would love to get some interesting disagreements earlier and later about i- in your psychological work-

Sheldon Solomon 26:42 Sure.

Lex Fridman 26:42 ...in your worldviews.

Sheldon Solomon 26:43 Well, our disagreements today would be, uh, along two dimensions. Uh, one is he is... And again, I wish he was here to correct me-

Lex Fridman 26:57 Yes.

Sheldon Solomon 26:58 ...um, when I say that he is more committed, uh, to the virtues of the Judeo-Christian tradition-

Lex Fridman 27:08 I see.

Sheldon Solomon 27:08 ...uh, particularly Christianity, and in a sense is a- a contemporary Kierkegaard of sorts, when he's saying there's only one way to leap into faith. And I would take ardent issue with that claim on the grounds that that is one but by no means not the only way, uh, to find meaning and value in life. And so... And I see his-

Lex Fridman 27:39 What's his worm at the core? What does... Like, uh, so we're talking about a little bit of a higher level of discovering meaning.

Sheldon Solomon 27:45 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 27:46 What's his... Uh, what does he make of death?

Sheldon Solomon 27:49 Oh, I don't know. And this is where it would be nice to, uh, have him here. He has, you know, from a distance, criticized our work as misguided. Having said that though, when we were together, um, he said something along the lines that there is no, uh, theoretical body of work in academic psychology right now for which there is more empirical evidence. And so, I- I appreciated that. He's a great, uh, researcher. He's a good clinician. The other thing that we will agree to disagree about, um, rather vociferously, um, is, uh, ultimately, uh, political/economic. So I remember being at dinner with him-

Lex Fridman 28:39 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 28:39 ...telling him that the next book that I wanted to write, uh, was gonna be called Why Left and Right Are Both Beside the Point. And my argument was going to be, and it is going to be, that both liberal and political... no, liberal and conservative political philosophy are each intellectually and morally bankrupt because they're both framed in terms of assumptions about human nature that are demonstrably false. And Jordan didn't mind me, uh, knocking, uh, liberal political philosophy on those grounds, that would basically be like Steven Pinker's Blank Slate-

Lex Fridman 29:18 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 29:19 ...but he took issue, um, when, uh, I pointed out that, um, actually it's conservative political philosophy which starts with John Locke's assumption that in a state of nature, there are no societies, just autonomous individuals, uh, who are striving for survival. That's one of the most obviously patently wrong assertions in the history of intellectual thought. And Locke uses that to justify, uh, his claims about the individual right to acquire unlimited amounts of property, which is ultimately, uh, the justification for neoliberal economics. Uh, and w-

Lex Fridman 30:06 C- can you linger on that a l- a little bit?

Sheldon Solomon 30:08 Sure.

Lex Fridman 30:08 Uh, what's the, uh...Can you describe his philosophy again and his view of the world, and-

Sheldon Solomon 30:13 Sure.

Lex Fridman 30:13 ... and what, and, uh, uh, neoliberal economics is?

Sheldon Solomon 30:17 Yeah. Let me translate it in English.

Lex Fridman 30:19 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 30:19 So basically, all, all, all... These days, anybody who says, "I'm a, a, a, I'm a conservative free market type-"

Lex Fridman 30:29 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 30:30 ... um, you're following John Locke and Adam Smith, whether you're aware of it or not. So here's John Locke, who, by the way, all these guys are great. So for me to appear to criticize any of these folks, it is with the highest regard. And also, uh, we need to understand, in my estimation, how important their ideas are. Locke is working in a time, uh, where all rule was top-down by divine right, and he's trying desperately to come up with a, a philosophical justification to shift power and autonomy to individuals. A- and he starts in his Second Treatise on Government, 1690 or so, he, he just, he says, "Okay, let's start with a state of nature." And he's like, "In a state of nature, there's no societies, there's just individuals."

Lex Fridman 31:26 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 31:27 A- and in a perfect universe, there wouldn't be any societies. There would just be individuals who, by the law of nature, have a right to survive. And, uh, i- in the service of survival, they have the right to acquire and preserve the fruits of their own labor. A- and... But his point is, and it's actually a good one, you know, he's following Hobbes here, he's like, "Well, the problem with that is that people are assholes." A- and, um, if they would let each other alone, then we would still be living in a state of nature, everybody just doing what they did to get by each day. But it's a whole lot easier, you know, if, if I see, like, an apple tree a mile away, well, I can go over and pick an apple. But if you're 10 meters away with an apple in your hand, it's a lot easier if I pick up a rock and crack your head and take the apple.

Lex Fridman 32:29 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 32:29 And his point was, uh, that the problem is that people can't be counted on to behave. They will, they will take each other's property. Moreover, he argued, if someone takes your property, you have the right, uh, to, you have the right to retribution in proportion to the degree of the magnitude of the transgression. English translation, uh, if I take your apple, you have the right to take an apple back. You don't have the right to kill my first-born.

Lex Fridman 33:05 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 33:06 But people being people, they're apt to escalate retaliatory behavior, thus creating what Locke called a state of war. So he said, "In order to avoid a state of war, people reluctantly give up their freedom in exchange for security." That they agree to obey the law, uh, and that the sole function of government is to keep domestic tranquility and to ward off foreign invasion in order to protect our right to property. All right, so now here's the-

Lex Fridman 33:39 Okay, so you-

Sheldon Solomon 33:39 ... property thing.

Lex Fridman 33:40 Uh-huh.

Sheldon Solomon 33:41 All right, so, uh, uh, Locke says, "If you look in the Bible and in nature, there is no private property." Um, but Locke says, "Well, surely you, if there's anything that you own, it's your body, and surely you have a right by nature to stay alive. And then, by extension, anything that you do where you exert effort or labor, that becomes your private property." So back to the apple tree. If I walk over to an apple tree, that's everybody's apples until I pick one. And the minute I do, that is my apple, right? And then he says, "You can have as many apples as you want, as long as you don't waste them, and as long as you don't impinge on somebody else's right to get apples."

Lex Fridman 34:41 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 34:41 Right? So far, so good.

Lex Fridman 34:43 Yep.

Sheldon Solomon 34:44 All right, and, uh, then he says, "Well, okay, in the early days, you, you could only eat so many apples, or you could only trade so many apples with somebody else." So he was like, "Well if you put a fence around a bunch of apple trees, those become your apples. That's your property." If somebody else wants to put a fence around Nebraska, that's their property, and everybody can have as much property as they want because the world is so big that it... there is no limit to what you can have, i- if, uh, you pursue it by virtue of your own effort.

Lex Fridman 35:35 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 35:35 But then he says money came into the picture. A- and this is important because it's a... He noticed, long before anybody, before the Freuds of the world, that money is funky because it has no intrinsic value. He's like, "Ooh, look at that shiny piece of metal," uh, that, uh, actually has... If you're hungry, uh, and you have a choice between a carrot and a lump of gold in the desert, most people are gonna go for the carrot. But his point is, is that, uh, the allure of money, uh, is, uh, it- it's basically a concentrated symbol of wealth. But because it doesn't spoil, Locke said you're entitled to have as much money as you're able to garner, right?

Lex Fridman 36:23 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 36:23 Then he says, "Well, the reality is, is that..."Some people are more, the word that he used was industrious. He said, "Some people are more industrious than others." All right, today we would say smarter, less lazy, more ambitious. He just said that's natural. It's also true, therefore he argued, uh, uh, over time some people are gonna have a whole lot of property and other people not much at all. Inequality for Locke is natural and beneficial for everyone.

Lex Fridman 37:04 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 37:04 His argument was that, you know, the rising tide lifts all boats. And that the truly creative and innovative are entitled to relatively unlimited worth because we're all better off a- as a result. So, the point very simply is that well, that's ba... And then you have Adam Smith, the, you know, uh, in the next century, uh, with The Invisible Hand.

Lex Fridman 37:30 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 37:30 Where Adam Smith says, "Everyone pursuing their own selfish," that's not necessarily pejorative, "If everyone pursues their own selfish interests, we will all be better off as a result."

Lex Fridman 37:44 And what do you think is the flaw in that way of thinking?

Sheldon Solomon 37:47 Well, there's two flaws. One is, is that, um, uh, well, one flaw is first of all that, that, it, it is based on an erroneous assumption to begin with, which is that there never was a time in human history when we were an asocial species.

Lex Fridman 38:05 In a sense you don't feel like the w- there's a, this emphasis of the individual autonomy is a flawed premise. Like, where there's a, there's something fundamentally deeply, uh, interconnected between us?

Sheldon Solomon 38:18 I do. I think that Plato and Socrates, uh, you know, in the Crito were closer to the truth, uh, when they started with the assumption that we were interdependent. Then they derived individual autonomy as a manifestation of a functional social system.

Lex Fridman 38:37 That's fascinating.

Sheldon Solomon 38:38 So, when Margaret Thatcher, you're too young, uh, you know, in the 1980s she said, "Societies? There's no such thing as societies. There's just individuals pursuing their self-interest." So, uh, so that's one point where I would take issue, respectfully, with John Locke. Point number two is when Locke says in 1690, "Well, England's filled up, um, i- i- so if you want some land just go to America, it's empty. Or maybe there's a few savages there, just kill them." So, and, and Melville does the same thing in Moby Dick where he, uh, he thinks about will there ever come a time where we run out of whales?

Lex Fridman 39:23 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 39:23 And he says, "No, but we have run out of whales." And so Locke was right maybe in 1690 that the world was large a- and had infinite resources. He's certainly wrong today in, in my opinion. Also wrong is the claim, uh, that the unlimited pursuit of personal wealth does not harm those around us. There, there is no doubt, uh, that radical inequality is tragic psychologically and physically. I- it's, poverty is not that terrible. It's easy for me to say because I have a place to stay and something to eat. Uh, but as long as you're not starving and, and have a place to be, poverty is not as challenging as being, having the impoverished in close proximity to those who are obscenely wealthy.

Lex Fridman 40:22 So, the... It's not the, any absolute measure of your wellbeing, it's the inequality of that wellbeing-

Sheldon Solomon 40:27 That is quite right.

Lex Fridman 40:28 ... is definitely painful. Um, so maybe just to, um, linger on the Jordan Peterson thing in, in terms of your, um, disagreement on his worldview. So he went through quite a bit, it, you know, there's been quite a bit of fire, right, in, in his defense or maybe his opposition of the idea of equality of outcomes. So, looking at the inequality that's in our world, looking at, you know, c- certain groups-

Sheldon Solomon 40:56 Yep.

Lex Fridman 40:57 ... measurably having an outcome that's different than other groups and then drawing conclusions about fundamental, uh, unfairness, injustice, inequality in the system. So like, systematic racism-

Sheldon Solomon 41:11 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 41:11 ... systematic sexism, systematic anything else that creates inequality and he's been kind of, uh, saying pretty simple things, uh, to say that, uh, you know, the system for the most part is not broken or flawed.

Sheldon Solomon 41:28 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 41:29 That the inequalities part, the, um, the inequality of outcomes is part of our world, what we should strive for is the, uh, you know, equality of opportunity.

Sheldon Solomon 41:39 Yeah. And I, I do not dispute that as an abstraction, but again to back up for a second, I, I do take issue with Jordan's, uh, fervent devotion to the free market and his cavalier dismissal of Marxist ideas which he has, uh, in my estimation, uh, mischaracterized in his public depictions. This is-

Lex Fridman 42:06 Let's, let's get into... So he, he seems to really not like, um, uh, socialism, Marxism, Communism.

Sheldon Solomon 42:13 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 42:13 Uh, historically speaking sort of, uh, I mean, how would I characterize it? I'm not exactly sure, I don't want to... Again, he's not-

Sheldon Solomon 42:20 Yeah, that's why-

Lex Fridman 42:21 He'll eventually be here to defend himself. John Locke unfortunately not here to defend himself-

Sheldon Solomon 42:25 Exactly. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 42:26 (laughs) But what's, what's your sense, um, about Marxism and, and, um, the...... uh, the way Jordan talks about it, the way you think about it, from the economics, from the philosophical perspective.

Sheldon Solomon 42:39 Yeah. Well, I- I- I- I- If we were all here together, I'd say we need to start with Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, before Marx became more of a polemicist. And I would argue that Marx's political philosophy... He's a crappy economist, I don't dispute that. Uh, but his arguments about human nature, uh, his arguments about the inevitably catastrophic psychological and environmental and economic effects of capitalism, I would argue every one of those has proven quite right. Marx maybe did not have the answer, uh, but he saw in the 18, whenever he was writing, um, that inevitably, uh, capitalism, um, would lead to massive inequity. That it was ultimately based on, uh, the need to denigrate and dehumanize labor, to render them, in his language, "a fleshy cog in a giant machine."

Lex Fridman 43:51 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 43:52 And that it would create, uh, a tension and conflict between those who own things and those who made things, that over time, would always... You know, the Thomas Piketty guy who writes about Capital a- and just makes the point that return on investment will always be greater than wages. That means the people with money are gonna have a lot more. That means there's gonna come a point where the economic House of Cards falls apart. Now, the Joseph Sumpters of the world, they're like, "That's creative destruction. Bring it. That- that's great." So, I think it's Niles Ferguson, he was... He's a historian. He may be at Stanford now. He was at Harvard. You know, he writes about the history of money and he's like, "Yeah, there's been 20 or whatever depressions and big recessions, uh, in the last several hundred years. A- And when that happens, half of the population, or whatever, is catastrophically inconvenienced. But that's the price that we pay for progress." Other people would argue, and I would, uh, agree with them, that I will happily sacrifice the rate of progress in order to flatten the curve of economic destruction. To put that in plainer English, um, I would, um, uh, direct our attention to the social democracies that... Forgetting for the moment of whether it's possible to do this on a scale in a country as big as ours, on all of the things that really matter, uh, you know, gross domestic GDP or whatever, that's just an abstraction. But when you look at whatever the United Nations says how we measure quality of life, uh, you know, life expectancy, education, you know, rates of alcoholism, suicide, and so on. The countries that do better are- are the mixed economies. They're market economies that have high tax rates in exchange, uh, for the provision of services that come as a right for citizens.

Lex Fridman 46:17 Yeah. So, I mean, I guess the question is... (sighs) You've kind of mentioned that, uh, you know, uh, like as Marx described the capitalism with a slippery slope, eventually things go awry in some kind of way. So that's... The question is, when you have... When you implement a system-

Sheldon Solomon 46:34 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 46:34 ... how does it go wrong eventually? You know, the... Uh, you know, eventually we'll all be dead (laughs) .

Sheldon Solomon 46:39 That's exactly right.

Lex Fridman 46:40 So-

Sheldon Solomon 46:40 No, no, so-

Lex Fridman 46:41 So-

Sheldon Solomon 46:41 Look, th- that... No, that's right.

Lex Fridman 46:43 So-

Sheldon Solomon 46:44 Okay.

Lex Fridman 46:44 Uh, and then the criticism, I mean, I think these days, uh, unfortunately Marxism as like... Is a dirty word. I- I say unfortunately because even if you disagree with a philosophy-

Sheldon Solomon 46:55 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 46:55 ... you should, you should... Uh, like calling somebody a Marxist-

Sheldon Solomon 46:59 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 47:00 ... should not be a thing that, uh, shuts down all conversation.

Sheldon Solomon 47:04 No, that's right. And then the fact is, is I'm sympathetic with, uh, Jordan's dismissal of the folks in popul- the talking heads these days who spew Marxist words. Um, to me, it's like fashionable nonsense. I'm... Do you know that book that the physicist wrote mocking? Uh, you're too young so in the-

Lex Fridman 47:26 (laughs)

Sheldon Solomon 47:26 ... uh, 20 or so years ago.

Lex Fridman 47:28 We're all pretty young relative to-

Sheldon Solomon 47:29 Yeah. That's right.

Lex Fridman 47:30 (laughs) .

Sheldon Solomon 47:30 But they're... I think there were these-

Lex Fridman 47:31 Ages are-

Sheldon Solomon 47:31 ... NYU physicists, they wrote a paper just mocking the, uh, kinda literary, uh, postmodern types. And it was-

Lex Fridman 47:39 Oh, yeah. Oh, those kinds... Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 47:40 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 47:41 Yes, yes.

Sheldon Solomon 47:41 And it was just nonsense, and of course, it was made the lead article. Um, and I... And, you know, my point is, Marx wouldn't be a Marxist.

Lex Fridman 47:49 (laughs)

Sheldon Solomon 47:50 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 47:51 True. I've, uh, read and listened to some of the work of, uh, Richard Wolff. He speaks pretty eloquently about Marxism.

Sheldon Solomon 47:58 I like him. Yes.

Lex Fridman 47:58 Uh, he's, uh, one of the only, uh, you know, one of the only people speaking about... A lot about Marxism in the way we are now in, in a serious way. In a, in a sort of saying, you know, uh, what are the flaws of capitalism? Not saying like... Yeah. Basically, sounding very different. And people should check out his work because-

Sheldon Solomon 48:18 No, I- I agree.

Lex Fridman 48:19 ... because all this kinda work... This kind of outrage mob culture, uh-...of, uh, sort of demanding equali- equality of outcome, that's not Marxism, uh-

Sheldon Solomon 48:30 It is not Marxism.

Lex Fridman 48:32 And-

Sheldon Solomon 48:32 But he w- he, he, he didn't say that. You know, he literally said each, uh, what was it? Like, "Each according to their needs and each according to their abilities," or something like that.

Lex Fridman 48:42 Yeah, so the question is the implementation, like-

Sheldon Solomon 48:45 Absolutely.

Lex Fridman 48:45 ...humans are messy, so how does it go wrong, like, you know?

Sheldon Solomon 48:48 It is m- there you go, Lex.

Lex Fridman 48:50 It's messy.

Sheldon Solomon 48:50 Brilliant, it's messy. And this gets back to my rant about, uh, the book that I wanna try if I don't stroke out, why left and right are both beside the point.

Lex Fridman 49:00 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 49:01 You know, the, the people, uh, uh, the conservatives are right when they condemn liberals for being simple-minded by assuming that, uh, uh, modification of external conditions will yield changes in human nature.

Lex Fridman 49:20 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 49:20 You know, the, uh, you know, again, those... And that's where Marx and Skinner are odd bedfellows. You know, here they are just saying, "Oh, let's change the surroundings and things will inevitably get better." On the other hand, when, um, conservatives say that, you know, people are innately selfish and they use that as the justification for glorifying, uh, the unbridled pursuit of wealth, well, they're only half right. Because it turns out that, uh, we can be innately selfish, uh, but we are also innately generous and reciprocating creatures. There's remarkable studies, I think they've been done at Yale, uh, of, you know, babies, 14-month-old babies, um, that if, uh, someone hands them a toy and then wants something in return, babies before they can walk and talk will reciprocate. All right, fine. If someone, if they want a toy, let's say, or a bottle of water, baby wants a bottle of water and I look like I'm trying to give it to the baby, but I drop the bottle so the baby doesn't get what she or he wanted, when given a chance to reciprocate, little babies will reciprocate because they're aware of and are responding to intention. Similarly, if they see somebody, um, behaving unfairly to, to someone, they will not help that person in return. So, so my point is, is yeah, we are selfish creatures at times, but we are also simultaneously uber social creatures who are eager to reciprocate. And in fact, we're congenitally prepared to be reciprocators to the point where, uh, we will reciprocate on the basis of intentions above and beyond what actually happens.

Lex Fridman 51:32 H- how close though... I mean, your, your work is on the fundamental role of the fear of mortality-

Sheldon Solomon 51:40 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 51:40 ...in our, in ourselves. How fundamental is this reciprocation, this human connection to other humans?

Sheldon Solomon 51:46 Oh, I think it's really innate.

Lex Fridman 51:49 Innate.

Sheldon Solomon 51:49 Yeah, I think it's...

Lex Fridman 51:49 That's neat.

Sheldon Solomon 51:49 Because, yeah, bats reciprocate, uh, not by intention, but, uh, you know, there's some... Going here from, uh, Richard Dawkins, uh, The Selfish Gene, you know, to... I love the early Dawkins. I'm less enamored, uh, w- with-

Lex Fridman 52:04 (laughs) Like the, the early Beatles?

Sheldon Solomon 52:05 Yeah. No, no, no.

Lex Fridman 52:07 (laughs)

Sheldon Solomon 52:07 And, and again, I say this with great respect, but, uh, you know, Dawkins just points out that, uh, you know, reciprocation is just fundamental, cooperation is fundamental. You know, it, it is the, the... It's a one-sided view of evolutionary takes on things when we see it solely in terms of individual competition. Uh, and-

Lex Fridman 52:32 It's, it's almost, though, from a game theoretic perspective too, it's just easier to see the world that way.

Sheldon Solomon 52:37 Yes, it is.

Lex Fridman 52:37 It's, it's easier to... I don't know, I, I mean, you see this in physics, uh, there's, there's a whole field of folks, like complexity-

Sheldon Solomon 52:45 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 52:45 ...uh, that kind of embrace the fact that it's all an intricately connected mess and it's just very difficult to do anything, uh, with that kind of science. But it seems to be much closer to actually representing what the world is like.

Sheldon Solomon 52:59 So, like you put it earlier, Lex, it's messy.

Sheldon Solomon 53:02 So-

Lex Fridman 53:03 Left and right, look, you mentioned you're thinking of maybe actually putting it down on paper or something?

Sheldon Solomon 53:07 Yeah, I would like to, because-

Lex Fridman 53:08 Ah, that'd be great.

Sheldon Solomon 53:09 ...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.

Lex Fridman 53:35 But that's not at the core.

Sheldon Solomon 53:36 No.

Lex Fridman 53:36 The bartering is not at the core of human nature.

Sheldon Solomon 53:38 It's not at... Well, he says-

Lex Fridman 53:40 Right.

Sheldon Solomon 53:40 ...it is. He says we're fundamentally bartering creatures.

Lex Fridman 53:44 Well, that doesn't even make sense then, because then what... How, how can we then be autonomous individuals?

Sheldon Solomon 53:50 Well, because we're gonna barter with an eye on-

Lex Fridman 53:53 On, on, for self, so it's like self-

Sheldon Solomon 53:54 For ourselves.

Lex Fridman 53:55 ...self-interest.

Sheldon Solomon 53:55 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-

Lex Fridman 55:47 Right.

Sheldon Solomon 55:47 ... 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?"

Lex Fridman 56:03 Mm.

Sheldon Solomon 56:03 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-

Lex Fridman 56:39 The stability.

Sheldon Solomon 56:39 ... is-

Lex Fridman 56:39 It's fundamentally un- unstable.

Sheldon Solomon 56:41 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,

Sheldon Solomon 56:57 and, um, that would be-

Lex Fridman 56:59 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 56:59 ... 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.

Lex Fridman 57:14 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-

Sheldon Solomon 57:28 Yes.

Lex Fridman 57:29 ... 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.

Sheldon Solomon 57:51 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.

Lex Fridman 58:06 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 58:07 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-

Lex Fridman 58:34 (laughs) Me too. (laughs)

Sheldon Solomon 58:35 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.

Lex Fridman 58:52 Like, what w- really worries me is the, the quiet economic pain that people are going through, the businesses that are closed-

Sheldon Solomon 59:00 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 59:00 ... 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.

Sheldon Solomon 59:29 Yep.

Lex Fridman 59:30 You start to find the other, whether it's other European nations that mistreated you, whether it's other groups that mistreated you.

Sheldon Solomon 59:38 Yep.

Lex Fridman 59:38 It always ends up being the Jews, uh, (laughs) somehow, somehow our fault here.

Sheldon Solomon 59:43 Yep.

Lex Fridman 59:43 Uh, that's what worries me, is where this quiet anger and pain goes in 2021, 2022, 2030. Do you look-

Sheldon Solomon 59:56 No, no.

Lex Fridman 59:56 Sorry, sorry to see the parallels-

Sheldon Solomon 59:58 No, no, no. O- oh-

Lex Fridman 59:59 ... uh, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, but, you know, what happens 10, 15 years-

Sheldon Solomon 1:00:03 Yep.

Lex Fridman 1:00:03 ... from now from what's... Because of the COVID pandemic-

Sheldon Solomon 1:00:06 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:00:07 ... that's happening now.

Sheldon Solomon 1:00:08 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.

Lex Fridman 1:01:00 And that's the, where the self-esteem

Sheldon Solomon 1:01:02 That's where the self-esteem and identity come in. Where people... It's not only that you don't have anything to eat, you don't even have a self anymore to speak of. Because the... We typically define ourselves... You know, as Marx put it, "You are what you do." A- And now who are you, uh, when your way of life, as well as your way of earning a living is no longer available?

Lex Fridman 1:01:26 Yeah, and it feels like that, uh, yearning for self-esteem, though. We could talk a little bit more because-

Sheldon Solomon 1:01:31 Sure.

Lex Fridman 1:01:32 ... you, uh, uh, about defining self-esteem is quite interesting. When... The more I've read, sort of, Warm to the Core, and just in general, your thinking, it made me realize I haven't thought enough about the idea of self-esteem. But the thing I wanna say is, uh, it feels like when you lose your job, then it's easy to find... It's, it's tempting to find that self-esteem in a tribe that's not somehow often positive.

Sheldon Solomon 1:02:04 That's exactly-

Lex Fridman 1:02:05 It's, it's like a tribe that defines itself on the hatred of somebody else.

Sheldon Solomon 1:02:09 So, that's brilliant. And, and this is what John Gray, the philosopher in the 1990s, he predicted what's happening today. Uh, he wrote a book about globalism. And actually, Hannah Arendt, in the 1950s, said the same thing in her book about totalitarianism. When she said that, um, you know, that economics has reached the point where most money is made not by actually making stuff. You know, you use money to make money. A- And, uh, uh, therefore, uh, what happens is money chases money across national boundaries. Ultimately, governments become subordinate to the corporate entities whose sole function is to generate money. And what John Gray said is that, uh, that will inevitably produce economic upheaval in local areas, which will not be attributed to the economic order. It will be misattributed to who- whoever the scapegoat du jour is. And the anger w- what... And the distress associated with that uncertainty, uh, will be picked up on by ideological demagogues who will transform that into rage. So, both Hannah Arendt, as well as John Gray, they, they just said, uh, "Watch out. We're gonna have right-wingish, populist movements, uh, where demagogues, who are the alchemists of hate... What makes them brilliant is they don't, they don't... Uh, the hate's already there, but they take the fears and they expertly redirect them to who it is that I need to hate and kill in order to feel good about myself." So, back to your point, Lex, that's right. So, the self-regard that used to come, uh, from having a job and doing it well, and as a result of that, having adequate resources to provide a decent life for your family, well, those opportunities are gone. A- And, yeah, what's left? So Max Weber, German sociologist, at the beginning of the 20th century, um, he said, "In times of historical upheaval, um, we are apt to embrace." He was the one who coined the term charismatic leader.

Lex Fridman 1:04:53 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 1:04:54 Right? Seemingly larger than life individuals, uh, who often believe, or their followers believe, are divinely ordained to rid the world of evil.

Lex Fridman 1:05:04 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 1:05:05 All right. Now, Ernest Becker, he used Weber's ideas in order to account for the rise of Hitler. Hitler was elected, and he was elected when Germans were in an extraordinary state of existential distress. And he said, "I'm gonna make Germany great again." All right? Now, what Becker adds to the equation is his claim that what underlies our affection for charismatic, populist leaders, good and bad, is death anxiety. All right. Now, here's where we come in. We're egghead, experimental researchers. You know, Becker wrote this book, The Denial of Death, and he couldn't get a job. People just dismissed these ideas as fanciful speculation, uh, for which there's no evidence. A- And-

Lex Fridman 1:06:02 And you've done some good experimental psychology work and-

Sheldon Solomon 1:06:04 Yeah. And here's where, here's where I can be more cavalier and where what I would urge people... Uh, like what you said, Lex, is ignore my histrionic and polemic language if possible-

Lex Fridman 1:06:17 (laughs) Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 1:06:17 ... and step back if you can, myself included, and let's just consider the, the research findings. Because, uh, in... September 11th, 2001, people that are old enough to remember that, uh, horrible day-... two days before, um, that George W. Bush had the lowest approval rating in the history of presidential polling. All right, three weeks later, after he said, "We will rid the world of the evildoers," and then a week or two after that, he said in a cover story on Time Magazine that he believed that God had chosen him to lead the world during this, uh, to lead the country rather, during this perilous time, he had the highest approval rating. And so we're like, "Well, what happened?" You know, is, what happened to Americans that their approval of President Bush got so high so fast? Well, our view, following Becker, is that 2001 was like a giant death reminder.

Lex Fridman 1:07:24 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 1:07:24 Uh, the people dying plus the symbols of American greatness, World Trade Center, uh, and, and the, the Pentagon. So we did a bunch of experiments and most of our experiments are disarmingly simple. We have one group of people and we just remind them that they're gonna die. We say, "Hey, write s- your thoughts and feelings about dying." Or in other cases, we stop 'em outside, either in front of a funeral home or 100 meters to either side. Our thought being that if we stop you in front of a funeral home, then death is on your mind, even if you don't know it. And then there's other studies that are even more subtle, where we bring people into the lab and they read stuff on a computer, and while they're doing that, we flash the word death for 28 milliseconds. It's so fast, you don't see anything. And then we just measure people's reactions or behavior thereafter. So what we found in 2003, leading up to the election of 2004, was that Americans did not care for President Bush or his policies in Iraq in control conditions. But if we reminded them of their mortality first, they like Bush a lot more. So in every study that we did, Americans like John Kerry, who was running against Bush, they like Kerry more than Bush, in a-

Lex Fridman 1:08:50 Po- policy-wise, in the control...

Sheldon Solomon 1:08:52 In a control condition.

Lex Fridman 1:08:54 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 1:08:54 And, but if, if they were reminded of death first, then they like Bush a lot more.

Lex Fridman 1:09:01 So by the way, just a small pause, you said, "They're disarmingly simple experiments." I think that's, um ... and people should read, uh, Warm at the Core for some other descriptions. You have a lot of, uh, different experiences of this nature. I think it's a brilliant experiment, um, connected to the stoics perhaps, of, uh, how your worldview on anything, on how delicious that water tastes-

Sheldon Solomon 1:09:25 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:09:26 ... after you're reminded of your own mortality. That's such a fascinating experiment that you could probably keep doing, like, millions of them to, uh, draw insight about, uh, the way we see the world.

Sheldon Solomon 1:09:39 No, that's right, Lex, and I appreciate the compliment. Not because we did anything, but because what these studies, many of which are now done by other people around the world in labs that we're not connected with. What I'm most proud about our work, I am proud of the experiments that we've done, but it's not science until somebody else can replicate your findings and an independent researchers are interested in, in

Sheldon Solomon 1:10:07 pursuing them.

Lex Fridman 1:10:08 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-

Sheldon Solomon 1:10:46 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:10:46 ... being, bringing that terror of death, fear of death to the surface?

Sheldon Solomon 1:10:51 Nice. Nice. My-

Lex Fridman 1:10:51 And being cognizant of it.

Sheldon Solomon 1:10:53 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-

Lex Fridman 1:13:06 (laughs)

Sheldon Solomon 1:13:06 ... 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.

Lex Fridman 1:13:36 Let's go personal for a second.

Sheldon Solomon 1:13:37 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:13:37 Uh, are you yourself afraid of death?

Sheldon Solomon 1:13:42 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:13:43 (laughs)

Sheldon Solomon 1:13:43 Um... (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:13:44 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.

Sheldon Solomon 1:13:53 It is absolutely, Lex. So you got it.

Lex Fridman 1:13:56 (laughs)

Sheldon Solomon 1:13:56 And... (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:13:57 Oh, like if you figure out death, somehow you won't die.

Sheldon Solomon 1:13:59 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."

Lex Fridman 1:15:11 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 1:15:11 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.

Lex Fridman 1:15:23 Yeah, like you did when you were eight. That starts those- those first feelings.

Sheldon Solomon 1:15:26 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..."

Lex Fridman 1:15:58 (laughs)

Sheldon Solomon 1:15:59 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:16:00 That's, uh...

Sheldon Solomon 1:16:00 "... doing things for reasons that I know not-"

Lex Fridman 1:16:03 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 1:16:04 "... in order to assuage death anxiety." And that's, like, that- that- that's not

Sheldon Solomon 1:16:10 acceptable.

Lex Fridman 1:16:10 Maybe o- another interesting person to talk about is Ernest Becker himself.

Sheldon Solomon 1:16:15 Sure.

Lex Fridman 1:16:16 So, how did he face his death? Is there something interesting, personal-

Sheldon Solomon 1:16:25 I- I think so.

Lex Fridman 1:16:25 ... there?

Sheldon Solomon 1:16:25 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.

Lex Fridman 1:16:55 Now, religious, what does that mean?

Sheldon Solomon 1:16:59 Well-

Lex Fridman 1:16:59 D- does he have a faith in... Well, let's talk more...

Sheldon Solomon 1:17:02 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:17:02 Most importantly is the afterlife.

Sheldon Solomon 1:17:05 He was-

Lex Fridman 1:17:05 What's his view on the afterlife?

Sheldon Solomon 1:17:07 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?

Lex Fridman 1:20:21 Right.

Sheldon Solomon 1:20:22 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.

Lex Fridman 1:21:38 Yes, beautiful.

Sheldon Solomon 1:21:38 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."

Lex Fridman 1:23:26 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 1:23:27 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-

Lex Fridman 1:23:53 That's brilliant, by the way. Sorry. Uh, uh, to, to, to, to bring it into the now-

Sheldon Solomon 1:23:58 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:23:58 ... this thought.

Sheldon Solomon 1:23:59 It is brilliant. I, I agree, Lex.

Lex Fridman 1:24:00 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 1:24:00 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.

Lex Fridman 1:24:07 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 1:24:07 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."

Lex Fridman 1:25:05 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 1:25:07 For Heidegger, you have to realize that, like I said, I didn't choose to be born a male, or Jewish, or in America, the offspring of working class people. And, and Heidegger, what he says is, "Yeah, but you still have to make choices and accept responsibility for those choices, even though you didn't choose any of the parameters that ultimately limit what's available to you. And, moreover, you're gonna not always make good choices. So now you're, you're guilty, uh, for your choices." And then he uses the, the poet, uh, Rilke, uh, who-

Lex Fridman 1:26:00 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 1:26:00 ...he has a phrase, Becker uses it in The Denial of Death, "The guilt of unlived life." I just love that. You have to accept, uh, that you have already diminished and, in many ways, amputated your own possibilities by virtue of choices that you've made or just as often have declined to make, uh, because you are reluctant to accept responsibility for, uh, uh, for the opportunities that you are now able to create by virtue of seeing the possibilities that lay before you. So anyway, Heidegger then says, "Look, okay, so, uh, you know, I'm a professor and I live in America in the 21st century. Well, if I was in the 3rd century living in a yurt in Mongolia, I'm not gonna have an opportunity to be a professor." But what he submits is that there is some aspects of whatever I am that are independent of my cultural and historical circumstances.

Lex Fridman 1:27:18 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 1:27:19 In other words, there is a me of sorts. Heidegger would take vigorous issue and so would Heidegger scholars 'cause I'm not claiming to understand him. This is my classic comic book rendering.

Lex Fridman 1:27:29 (laughs)

Sheldon Solomon 1:27:29 But Heidegger's point is that you get to the point where you're able to say, "Okay. I- I am a contingent historical and cultural artifact, but so what? You know, if I was, uh, you know, not... If I was transported 1,000 years in the past in Asia, I'd be in the same situation. I would still be conditioned by time and place. I would still have choices that I could make within the confines of what opportunities are afforded to me." And then Heidegger says, "If I can get that far," and, and this is his language, he says that, "There is a transformation." And, and he literally, he calls it a turning. You're turning away from a flight from death, and you are allowed... You, therefore, you see a horizon, is his word, of opportunity that makes you in a state of anticipatory resoluteness with solicitous regard for others that makes your life seem like an adventure profused with unshakable joy. All right, let me unpack those things.

Lex Fridman 1:28:52 That's beautiful.

Sheldon Solomon 1:28:52 It is beautiful. It is... I love, Lex, that you're resonating to the time thing. So he's like, okay-

Lex Fridman 1:28:57 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 1:28:57 ...we already talked about now anticipatory is, is already hopeful because it's looking forward.

Lex Fridman 1:29:04 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 1:29:05 Right? To be resolute, it, it, it means to be steadfast, uh, and, and to just have confidence i- in, um, what you're doing moving forward. All right. The solicitous... I had to look up all these words, by the way. It, it just means that, uh, you are concerned about your fellow human beings. Uh, and, but I love the idea, uh, even if it seems allegorical, I don't mind that at all, this idea... You said love earlier. And I think that-

Lex Fridman 1:29:38 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 1:29:38 ...when Heidegger is talking about being solicitous, that's as close as he can get. Uh, there's a, an Italian-

Lex Fridman 1:29:46 Yeah. Si- uh, se juntur. Well, so what was that line again with the solicitous of the-

Sheldon Solomon 1:29:50 Oh, okay. So-

Lex Fridman 1:29:51 I mean, the, the whole thing of the turning away from death and then-

Sheldon Solomon 1:29:53 Yeah, he-

Lex Fridman 1:29:54 I mean, all the words you said are just beautiful.

Sheldon Solomon 1:29:56 I love those words, yeah. Anticipatory resoluteness that is accompanied with solicitous regard to our fellow humans, which makes life appear to us to be an ongoing adventure that is permeated by unshakable joy. Now, again, Heidegger's not, uh, Mary Poppins. This-

Lex Fridman 1:30:19 I just got a tattoo. (laughs)

Sheldon Solomon 1:30:20 Uh, no, I, now, I, now-

Lex Fridman 1:30:22 This is great.

Sheldon Solomon 1:30:22 ...I just love the-

Lex Fridman 1:30:23 Wait, is that an exact quote?

Sheldon Solomon 1:30:25 No, bec- I'm piecing together... These are his exact words that... And I spent the last two years reading almost everything that I can find because I want to... I'm, I'm sick of death. You said it, so I wanna second what you say, Lex. So it's not about death. It, it's the Sherwood Anderson guy. He's a novelist that I like about. Uh, he wrote a book called Winesburg, Ohio, and, uh, now I'm gonna forget what he said on his tombstone. Uh, but, you know, it, it was something to the effect... Oh, he said, "Life, not death, is the great adventure." The, the point being is that, you know, the, the... To consider that we must die and the existential implications of that, really, the goal, the way I see it, is getting from hate to, to love.

Lex Fridman 1:31:21 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 1:31:21 A- and I feel like Heidegger has...... a way of thinking about things that moves us more in that direction. A- and so that's kinda my current preoccupation, is to take what I just said to you and to talk about it with my colleagues and other academic psychologists. Because the way we started with Ernest Becker, remember I said earlier, I wasn't trained in any of these things. I'm an egghead researcher that was doing experiments about biofeedback. And, you know, then we read these Becker books, and I thought they were so interesting that for the first few years, we didn't have any studies.

Lex Fridman 1:32:10 Mm-hmm.

Sheldon Solomon 1:32:10 I just would travel around, and I'd be like, "Here's what this Becker guy says. I think this is cool."

Lex Fridman 1:32:15 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 1:32:16 Well, my, my present view is, I'm like, "Here's what this Heidegger guy says. I, I think these ideas are consistent with what Becker is saying because they are anchored in death anxiety." But I like that direction as an alternative, uh, to the Kierkegaardian insistence that the only psychologically tenable way to extricate ourselves, uh, from, um, maladaptive reactions to death anxiety is through faith in the traditional sense.

Lex Fridman 1:32:56 Yeah. I- I al- always kind of, uh, saw Kierkegaard unfairly, like you said, uh, in a comic book sense, uh, of the word faith as a nontraditional sense.

Sheldon Solomon 1:33:06 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:33:06 I kinda like the idea of leap of faith.

Sheldon Solomon 1:33:07 Oh, I love that idea. A- and so what I've been babbling about with, you know, Kierkegaard or- or Heidegger, you know, I- I'm like, "Yeah, Kierkegaard is a leap of faith in God. Heidegger's a leap of faith in life." And I- I just-

Lex Fridman 1:33:24 Yeah, I- I-

Sheldon Solomon 1:33:24 I- I

Sheldon Solomon 1:33:25 like it.

Lex Fridman 1:33:25 ... 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-

Sheldon Solomon 1:33:39 Oh, absolutely.

Lex Fridman 1:33:40 ... that takes, uh... I mean, he's, uh, sometimes a little bit insane on, on, uh-

Sheldon Solomon 1:33:45 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:33:45 ... 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.

Sheldon Solomon 1:33:57 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:33:58 But he also just, just the way, the humor and the way he sees life, it just, like, refuses to be conventional. Uh-

Sheldon Solomon 1:34:07 Yeah. I, uh, uh-

Lex Fridman 1:34:08 ... 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.

Sheldon Solomon 1:34:47 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:34:47 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.

Sheldon Solomon 1:34:53 Uh-

Lex Fridman 1:34:54 He fully believes that we can, you know, we can go to ma- we can colonize Mars.

Sheldon Solomon 1:34:58 Yep.

Lex Fridman 1:34:59 I mean, how cr- how crazy is it to just believe and dream and actually be taking steps towards it?

Sheldon Solomon 1:35:08 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:35:08 Um, to colonizing Mars when most people are like, "That's the stupidest idea ever."

Sheldon Solomon 1:35:12 Yeah. Well, I'm, I'm in agreement with you on that. Um, you know, two things.

Lex Fridman 1:35:16 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 1:35:16 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.

Lex Fridman 1:35:32 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 1:35:32 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.

Lex Fridman 1:36:34 Yeah. And, uh, that's-

Sheldon Solomon 1:36:36 Uh-

Lex Fridman 1:36:36 ... 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.

Sheldon Solomon 1:36:53 Oh, yeah. That's right.

Lex Fridman 1:36:55 Let me ask you,

Lex Fridman 1:36:56 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.

Sheldon Solomon 1:37:14 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:37:14 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.

Sheldon Solomon 1:37:26 Sure.

Lex Fridman 1:37:26 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.

Sheldon Solomon 1:37:41 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:37:41 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-

Sheldon Solomon 1:38:17 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:38:17 ... you, you kind of brought this up a few times of really letting it sink in.

Sheldon Solomon 1:38:21 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:38:21 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."

Sheldon Solomon 1:38:31 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:38:31 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.

Sheldon Solomon 1:38:39 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:38:39 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-

Sheldon Solomon 1:39:05 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:39:05 ... by more people.

Sheldon Solomon 1:39:07 Well, that's a tough one. Uh, you know, I could tell you what not to do.

Lex Fridman 1:39:11 (laughs)

Sheldon Solomon 1:39:11 Uh, you know, so when we are young and annoying-

Lex Fridman 1:39:14 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 1:39:14 ... 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."

Lex Fridman 1:39:34 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 1:39:35 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.

Lex Fridman 1:40:04 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-

Sheldon Solomon 1:40:32 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:40:32 ... 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-

Sheldon Solomon 1:40:43 You are.

Lex Fridman 1:40:44 ... and I'm-

Sheldon Solomon 1:40:44 Yes.

Lex Fridman 1:40:44 ... taking a step out, and, uh, it feels, it... There's this feeling like you're basically drowning. I mean, it's, it's not a good feeling.

Sheldon Solomon 1:40:56 It is not, but this gets back to the Heidegger, Kierkegaard school of anxiety. You are stepping out.

Lex Fridman 1:41:01 Yeah.

Sheldon Solomon 1:41:02 And, and you are momentarily shrugging off the, the, again, the culturally constructed psychological accoutrements that allow you to stand up in the morning, and-

Lex Fridman 1:41:14 But so, I, I mean, at that, in that sense, it feels like... (sighs) I mean, um, what do you... Uh, how do you have that conversation? Because I guess I, I, I'm, I'm dancing around a, a set of questions which is like I guess I'm disappointed that people don't, are not, uh, as willing to step outside, like, uh, even just, uh, even any kind of thought experiment.

Sheldon Solomon 1:41:43 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:41:44 Let's, let's forget, uh, denial of death, like, um, uh, there's, there's now a community of people... Let's just take an easy one that I think is scientifically ridiculous, which is there's a community of people that believe that, uh, the Earth is flat.

Sheldon Solomon 1:41:58 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:41:59 Uh, or actually, even, even better, (laughs) was that space is fake. (laughs)

Sheldon Solomon 1:42:04 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:42:05 Uh, like what I find surprising is that a lot of people I talk to are not willing to, um, be... Like, imagine if it