Modern WisdomDoes A Fear Of Death Drive Everything We Do? | Sheldon Solomon | Modern Wisdom Podcast 240
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
115 min read · 22,862 words- 0:00 – 2:46
Mortality awareness: why death can deepen life
- SSSheldon Solomon
I don't think it is good for us or for humanity to lose track of the fact that in our finest moments, uh, it is just the sheer joy of being alive, the spontaneous exuberance of wallowing (laughs) i- in the mystery of life that I think is what makes life, uh, most worthwhile. But, yeah, but it's also dreadful to be alive and to know it because u- unless you're a child or cognitively impaired, if you're smart enough to know that you're here, you're also smart enough to know that like all living things, you too will someday die. And Ernest Becker's point is that that unwelcome realization, the, the worm at the core of the human experience, as William James put it, that that was the most significant psychodynamic event in the history of the human species.
- CWChris Williamson
Are we gonna talk about death today?
- SSSheldon Solomon
Um, I believe that we will. Uh, hopefully not for the sake of death per se, but in the interest of enhancing life.
- CWChris Williamson
How does death enhance life?
- SSSheldon Solomon
Well, uh, at our best, the existentialists tell us since time immemorial, um, it is necessary to come to terms, uh, with the most basic fact of human existence, and that is that, uh, l- that we, like all living creatures, are o- are of finite duration. And, um, theologians, philosophers, you know, people just sitting on a rock, uh, back in the... in, in antiquity have wrestled, frankly, uh, with this idea. Um, uh, you know, every other form of life is unperturbed, uh, by the reality that, uh, o- of finitude, um, but we necessarily are. A- and, uh, the claim very simply is that whether we're aware of it or not, death anxiety, um, pervades every aspect of our existence, a- and malignant manifestations of death anxiety are arguably responsible directly or indirectly, uh, for a considerable proportion of human foibles. And so, the claim is that both for the benefit of ourselves as individuals to, to get the most out of life, as well as for the benefit of society in general, yeah, it is necessary both individually and collectively to come to terms with our mortality.
- CWChris Williamson
What are some of the manifestations of how they can malignantly manifest?
- 2:46 – 7:35
Ernest Becker’s thesis: death anxiety as the hidden engine of behavior
- SSSheldon Solomon
Yeah. S- so great question. I'll back up a little bit just to give folks, um, some detail that the work that we do, um, is, is derived from a cultural anthropologist, Ernest Becker, who in the 1970s, uh, won a Pulitzer Prize for a book called The Denial of Death. A- and, uh, what Becker argued, uh, you know, very simply i- is that, um, yeah, humans are like all other living things. Uh, you know, Darwinian wise, that, uh, we are biologically predisposed to want to survive in the interest of self-preservation and, and for reproduction. Um, and yet, uh, we're different than other creatures. And without being overly arrogant, the claim is that our, our huge forebrain, uh, gives us the capacity to think abstractly and symbolically, uh, to the point where we can even imagine stuff that doesn't yet exist and then have the audacity to take our dreams and render them real. And that could not be more uplifting, uh, to me. Um, uh, I, like Otto Rank, you know, Freud's boy, who said, "Humans make the unreal real." A- and we don't wanna lose track of the fact that all other creatures, uh, have to, uh, accept the world in the form in which they encounter it. You know, I get it. Spiders, uh, make webs, beavers make dams, bees make hives, a- and they've been doing it quite well for hundreds of millions of years. Yeah, but they don't imagine a flying machine like da Vinci, you know, in the 1500s or 1400s, uh, or, and then actually, you know, centuries later, we're flying around in what was originated in somebody's imagination. All right. All great so far, uh, until... and still great, um, when, when, uh, Ernest Becker says, "Okay. Uh, let's now move to Kierkegaard, the Danish existential philosopher who said, 'You know, people are so smart that we realize that we're here.'" A- and, uh, and of course, humans, w- we take this for granted. You know, you wake up every day and you're like, "Here I am. I woke up." Or, you know, you're walking down the street. You're like, "Here I am, walking down the street." Or it can get even crazier than that. "Here I am, walking down the street, thinking about that I'm walking down the street." So, uh, it... you know, you could be, "Wow. Now I'm thinking about that I'm thinking about that I'm walking down the street," until you have to turn into the nearest pub to extricate yourself from this (laughs) perseverating cycle o- of annoying, uh, self-focus. Well, so what? You know, Kierkegaard said, uh, you know, "If you're smart enough to know that you're here," uh, which he insisted requires a sophisticated cognitive apparatus to render yourself the object of your own subjective inquiry, then you're gonna experience two uniquely human emotions, awe and dread. A- and Kierkegaard's like, "L- wait a minute. It's awesome to be alive and to know it."...that, that's just great. That's why if you get to choose between being a person and a potato-
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- SSSheldon Solomon
...or a person and a potted plant-
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- SSSheldon Solomon
...uh, you make your own choice. (laughs) But I, I wanna be, (laughs) I wanna be a person. Um, and so like that, that is awesome. And I, I always wanna emphasize just f- to cheer myself up and, and oh, also to make an important point, all silliness aside, I, I don't think, uh, that it is good for us or for humanity, uh, to lose track, uh, of the fact that in our finest moments, uh, it is just the sheer joy of being alive, the spontaneous exuberance of wallowing (laughs) i- in, uh, just the mystery of life that I think is what makes life, uh, most worthwhile. But Kierkegaard says, "Yeah, but it's also dreadful to be alive and to know it." Uh, because, um, u- unless you're a child or cognitively impaired, if you're smart enough to know that you're here, you're also smart enough to know that like all living things, you too will someday die. A- and Ernest Becker's point is that that unwelcome realization, the, the worm at the core of the human experience, as William James put it, that that was the most significant psychodynamic event in the history of the human species. I- it was a quite unintended byproduct o- of consciousness, which is otherwise, uh, you know, quite frankly, tremendously uplifting and adaptive. But it doesn't end there. So, uh,
- 7:35 – 9:05
The ‘three hits’: inevitability, unpredictability, and being embodied animals
- SSSheldon Solomon
you know, psychological kick in the groin, number one is that you're gonna die someday. Uh, number two, um, uh, is that not only will you die someday, but you can die at any time for reasons that you could never anticipate or control. It'd be bad enough if I knew I was gonna die, you know, in some vaguely unspecified future moment with all of my friends and family, uh, you know, linked arm in arm, chanting Kumbaya into the afterlife. That would be maybe okay, uh, but I know I can walk outside and get smoked by a comic- a comet or, or a pandemic. A- and then on top of that, uh, Becker says, "Wow, uh, humans, we don't welcome the idea that we're gonna die, and we certainly, uh, are discombobulated by the fact that death is always potentially eminent." And then on top of all of that, uh, borrowing from Freud, we chafe at the idea that we're embodied animals, u- uh, respiring pieces of defecating meat, uh, no more significant or enduring, uh, than barnacles or armadillos. And all that Becker says is, "Look, if that's the only thing that you are thinking about, uh, you know, I'm gonna die someday, uh, I could get hit by a comet, you know, I'm a breathing piece of, uh, meat," uh, you, you would not be able to stand up in the morning. You, you
- 9:05 – 12:36
Cultural worldviews and self-esteem as terror management systems
- SSSheldon Solomon
would be crippled by overwhelming existential terror that, according to Becker, human beings manage, uh, by embracing what he calls cultural worldviews, humanly constructed beliefs about reality, uh, that we share with the people in our group, uh, that reduces death anxiety by giving us a sense that life has meaning and we have value. A- and basically, um, that's the essence o- of, uh, Becker's, um, w- way of thinking about things. We're smart enough to know that we're here. Uh, that makes us aware of the fact that we are finite and vulnerable embodied creatures. Uh, that raises the possibility o- of being flattened by debilitating terror that we manage, uh, by, by, by, by embracing a belief system that allows us to feel like life has meaning and we have value. A- and moreover, i- if you're lucky enough to believe that you're a person of value in a world of meaning, that's what Becker calls self-esteem. A- and then he says, "Well," uh, that, that, "whether we're aware of it or not, uh, we spend, uh, most of our waking moments and perhaps many of our dreaming ones, trying to maintain confidence in our cultural world views o- and a, a sense that we are people of value in the context of them." All right. Having said all of that, Chris, now back to your fine question, which is, okay, let's now think about the implications of that fact, uh, for non-optimal outcomes, because what a lot of people said to Becker, i- is, "Well, look, so what? You know, let's say that you're right. Uh, my beliefs about reality, uh, serve to diminish death anxiety, a- and it does so by making me feel like life has meaning and I have value." Well, uh, you know, if it's not broke, don't fix it. You know, some people just said, "Well, maybe that's, that's what's happening," uh, to which Becker replies, "Um, yes, um, that is what's happening." A- and we now need to consider some of the, uh, uh, less than desirable, uh, outcomes as a result. And so, for example, um, where we got interested in these ideas, Chris, my buddies, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Puzanski and I, uh, we've spent almost the last 40 years, we're egghead experimental psychologists. And so, uh, Becker, you know, writes this book, he gets a Pulitzer Prize, he couldn't get a job when he was alive. Uh, a- and we couldn't get any of these ideas published when we first were attracted to them in the 1980s because people said there's no evidence, uh, for any of these ideas, nor is it possible to collect any evidence. And so we're like, "Okay..."Uh, let's see if we can do that. Uh, and what we were interested in at the time, uh, was how come people can't get along with other people who don't share their beliefs in reality? You know, why is it that, uh, since minute one,
- 12:36 – 16:08
Why worldview defense turns hostile: difference as a threat
- SSSheldon Solomon
you know, uh, if you... even the most benign, uh, look at human history, uh, reveals what I think is a grotesque and ugly picture, an ongoing succession of genocidal atrocities juxtaposed with the brutal subjugation of designated in-house inferiors. And, um, and- and- and- and we are now at the point in human history where, of course, uh, it's a cliché, uh, but we possess the kind of weapons that could reduce the Earth to rubble. Uh, and so this longstanding problem, as Robert J. Lifton, a- a psychohistorian who I'm fond of and a book called Destroying the World to Save It, uh, he's like, "Wow, we may be the first form of life to be responsible for our own extinction because of our inability to get along with folks who are different than ourselves." Uh, and, uh, Becker's account i- is disarmingly simple. Uh, and he has two points. One is, he says, "Well, if my beliefs about reality help me reduce death anxiety, then whenever I run into somebody who's different, I've got a problem whether I'm aware of it or not." Uh, "If I believe God created the Earth in six days, and then I run into somebody in the Fulani tribe in Mali, and they think that the Earth was created out of a giant drop of milk, well, if they're right, then I've got to be wrong." Uh, and so one point that Becker makes is that the mere existence of people with alternative belief systems is fundamentally threatening. All right, so that's point number one. All right, point number two, i- in a book called Escape from Evil, which is after The Denial of Death, uh, Becker says, "Here's the other problem. Uh, our culturally constructed beliefs are very potent, but they're still symbolic, whereas death is a very real biological fact, and there's no symbol that is potent enough to completely eliminate death anxiety. Therefore, in psychobabble, uh, there's residual anxiety, uh, that is repressed." And I love Becker's language. He says, "Look, there's gonna be death anxiety. There's gonna be a panic rumbling beneath the surface of consciousness." And- and- and that panic is so unpleasant that what we do psychodynamically is we project it, and- and we- we basically lay it onto other people or groups of people that we just declare to be the all-encompassing repositories of evil. Uh, and- and so the point here is that e- even if there weren't people who were different around, we would create those differences. We would need to... Virginia Woolf, uh, in A Room of Uh, One's Own, she just says, "If necessary, we'll hate somebody for the shape of their nose, a- and for the color of their shirt," because we can't help it. We've got to have a way of offloading our insecurities. All right, either way, uh, what Becker argues is that what we do when we bump into folks who are different or declare people to be different is we
- 16:08 – 18:51
Terror Management Theory experiments: how death reminders change attitudes and behavior
- SSSheldon Solomon
denigrate them, uh, we badger them to abandon their beliefs and adopt ours instead, or- or we just kill them, uh, thus demonstrating the superiority of our beliefs, a- after all. Uh, and our experiments show that this is very much the case. So, our studies are- are very simple. Uh, they involve, uh- uh- um, reminding some people that they're gonna die, and other people, uh, are asked to think about something unpleasant but not fatal, uh, like you're getting a root canal without anesthetic, you've been in a car accident and they have to chop off one of your legs. All painful, uh, but beats being dead. Uh, and sometimes we remind people they're gonna die by stopping them outdoors in front of a funeral parlor as opposed to 100 meters on either side. Yeah, that's a good one. And sometimes we bring people into the lab and- and we have them read stuff on the computer while we flash the word death for 48 milliseconds, so fast that you can't see anything. Uh, and so when we do that, uh, what we find, for example, is that if you remind Christians that they're gonna die, uh, they love Christians more and they hate Jewish people. Uh, and it has nothing to do with Christianity. If you remind Israelis that they're gonna die, they love Israelis a- and they hate Arabs, a- and ditto all over the world. But it's not only about attitudes. Germans reminded that they're gonna die, they sit closer to people who look German, further away from people who look like immigrants. Um, you remind Iranians that they're gonna die and they become more willing to, uh, blow themselves up. They become more willing to become suicide bombers. You remind Americans they're gonna die and they become more supportive of using, uh, biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons against countries who pose no direct threat to us. All right, so one malignant manifestation, uh, of death anxiety i- is that it increases, it amplifies the hostility and disdain, uh, that-...that we have towards people who are different. Uh, and, uh, uh, if I could remember it, I, uh, always loved George Bernard Shaw. On Your Side of the Pond a century ago, and, uh, Heartbreak House, one of my favorite plays, he says, uh, "When the angel of death sounds his trumpet, the pretenses of civilization are blown from men's heads into the mud like hats in a gust of wind." So that's one possibility. I can babble about a few more. I will, and then you'll shut me off.
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- 18:51 – 25:49
Mortality and politics: charismatic leaders and ‘alchemists of hate’
- SSSheldon Solomon
But anyway, uh, uh, another thing that we are really interested in, and I think is very pertinent right now, both here and on your side of the world, is the extent to which existential anxieties, uh, impel us to embrace certain kinds of political leaders. Uh, Max Weber, dead German sociologist at the beginning of the 20th century, he said, "In times of historical upheaval, uh, when existential uncertainties are apt to prevail, that people are prone, uh, to become attached to and supportive of a particular kind of leader." Uh, he coined the term charismatic-
- NANarrator
Mm.
- SSSheldon Solomon
...that we're now all familiar with, seemingly larger than life individuals that are often believed to be divinely ordained to rid the world of evil. And becker uses, uh, Weber's analysis to understand, um, how Hitler came to power, uh, in Germany. Uh, the, you know, the Germans had been humiliated, um, after World War I. The economy was decimated, and here comes Hitler saying, "I can make Germany great again. Only I can do it." A- and he gave the Germans, it was a tremendously uplifting psychological vote of confidence to restore, uh, meaning and value i- in a, uh, a very psychologically tenuous time. And I'm not saying that this ended well, the, in fact, the point is that it rarely does. We became interested in this in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, when President George W. Bush, in a three-week period, went from having the lowest, uh, support in the history of presidential pollings, to three weeks after 9/11, he had the highest. Uh, and we're like, "Wow, maybe, um, maybe intimations of mortality had something to do with it. Maybe September 11th was like a giant death reminder." Uh, of course it was. You had the people dying and jumping off the World Trade Center. Uh, terrorists are evil, but they choose their targets wisely. They, they didn't target random buildings. They targeted the Pentagon-
- NANarrator
Symbols.
- SSSheldon Solomon
...and the World Trade Center, that's right. Uh, and they did with airplanes from American and United Airlines or USA Air. They knew, uh, w- what they were doing. And so we did a lot of studies, uh, i- prior to the 2004 election, where we showed that reminding people of death increased their support for President Bush. And in fact, in the absence of a death reminder, our participants liked Senator John Kerry, who was the Democratic challenger in that election, much more than President Bush. All right, so fast forward to 2015. Uh, we got Donald Trump, uh, saying, "Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make America great again." Uh, "I am the only one that can keep you safe from the rapists and the drug dealers, the negrottenish hordes storming the borders, uh, the terrorists that are parachuting into America to rape our daughters and eat our chicken and wings, and the Chinese, uh, that are threatening our economy." Uh, and, uh, and, um, it worked. Uh, and so, uh, President Trump, now President Trump, uh, despite the fact that, uh, in the eyes of more than 60 million Americans, they're like, "Wait a minute. Um, uh, it's really a bad idea to have a vulgar, sadistic, vindictive, pathologically narcissistic, sociopathic, racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, homophobic, functionally illiterate twittering Mussolini pussy-grabbing Cheez Doodle impersonator, that would be a bad idea, uh, to have someone like that, uh, in office." Uh, and, uh, moreover, uh, a- uh, psychiatrists and psychologists said, "It's really a bad idea to, uh, that, that, uh, that pre- now-President Trump a- has a unique combination of toxic psychological disorders, that being malignant narcissism, sociopathy, uh, lack of empathy, touch of paranoia." When you have somebody with a massive ego who is congenitally incapable of ever admitting that they're wrong, uh, that's gonna be a problem, particularly i- if any crisis arises, uh, because there's no way a person with that particular set of affectations will be capable of acting in anyone's interest but their own. All right, be that as it may, we then did studies, um, that demonstrated the same thing, uh, specifically, uh, that in America, support for President Trump is magnified, uh, by i- intimations of mortality. Uh, uh, in a control condition, uh, Americans liked, uh, Hillary Clinton more than they did Donald Trump, but if they were reminded of their mortality first, they now liked Donald Trump a lot more. So that's another area, uh, where death anxiety, uh, has potent effects that I believe to, uh-... ha- have serious implications for the future of democracy. A- and this is not only on the US side of things. I think a lot of the things that are happening, uh, in the UK, um, th- uh, you know, to be silly and at the risk of annoying people, we have orange Hitler over here, you've got yellow Hitler, and there's a bunch of other, uh, uh, Hitlers, uh, th- uh, you know, right-wing populist movements that parlay death anxiety, uh, into support. Because it is well-known, a woman I like, Hannah Arendt, in a book called The Origin of Totalitarianism, uh, after written in the 1950s, she just points out that, um, you know, it's pretty much the same playbook. Another guy I like a lot, Eric Hoffer, wrote a book called The True Believer. And what all these kinda leaders do, they're like alchemists of hate. They, they are very good at acutoing existential anxieties. They convert fear into hate because they take the internal anxiety, and they tell their followers who it is that they're supposed to hate. Anyway, that doesn't bode well for democracy. All right. Another area of inquiry is, uh, just studies that show that death anxiety makes us uncomfortable,
- 25:49 – 28:51
Death anxiety, consumerism, and environmental disengagement
- SSSheldon Solomon
uh, with the fact that we're embodied animals, makes us uncomfortable with nature, makes us more likely, uh, to, um, to, to engage in behaviors vis-à-vis nature that undermine, uh, the preservation of non-renewable resources. And so, uh, basically death anxiety has demonstrably negative effects on environmental concerns. It has the opposite effect, uh, on our seeming insatiable desire for money and stuff. Uh, and so on the one hand, when death is on our minds, uh, it really makes us distance ourselves from nature. On the other hand, when death is on our minds, it makes us run to the television, to the pub, and to the shopping mall. Um, a- and, um, and this is an idea that also goes back, uh, uh, quite a bit. Uh, in fact, uh, who was it, John Locke in his Second Treatise on Government in, what is it, 1690, he said, "Look, anything that really matters, anything that is real, there's an upper limit to how much you can want." And, uh, and so, and, and he explained that. He said that's because anything in nature is of finite duration. So, if you like apples, well, that's great, but after, like, 10 apples you're like, "Oh, I've had enough." Uh, but, but, and if you like pizza, "All right, I've had, uh, you know, a whole pizza. That's enough." "I like beer. Uh, after eight pints, no, maybe 10, that's, that's enough." You know, just fill in the blank. Well, but what's the one thing that people can't get enough of? Well, there's never enough money a- and there's never enough stupid shit, if you'll pardon the expression. A consumer society would collapse in a matter of hours if people bought only what they genuinely needed. So, anyway, um, uh, what Becker says is, look, whenever there's insatiable desires, you can assume that death anxiety underlies them. A- and sure enough, if we remind people they're gonna die, uh, they say they need more money to feel wealthy. Uh, they're more eager to buy things that are luxury items. They'll even pay more money to have a star named after them, uh, in the galaxy. A- and then I'll say one more thing and, and then back to you, Chris, and I appreciate the time just to belt these out because I, I do think that one of the things that i- is, uh, I find compelling about these ideas i- is how pervasive they apply to a range of superficially disparate human affectations. The idea, uh, that death anxiety influences, you know, who you hate,
- 28:51 – 30:22
Clinical spillover: mortality salience amplifies existing psychological disorders
- SSSheldon Solomon
uh, who you voted for, uh, how you feel about being outside and so on, uh, whether or not, uh, you like a certain kind of car, I, I find that quite astonishing. But the last thing that, um, that I would note is just that, uh, death anxiety amplifies all existing forms of psychological disorders. A- and, uh, so if you're depressed and you're reminded of death, you become more depressed. If you're afraid of spiders, you become more, uh, afraid of spiders. And, and, and, and so on and so forth. And so yeah, the basic argument here, you know, and it sounds kinda corny, but when we write about this, w- we, we use a phrase from a, a guy, a, a British author I like, Thomas Hardy, a novelist, who says, "If a way to the better there be, it comes from taking a close look at the worst." Uh, and, you know, that is humanity, uh, at its worst, right? Hateful proto-fascists, uh, you know, kinda, uh, raping the Earth in our effort to maximize the accumulation, you know, of money and stuff in a perpetual, uh, you know, alcohol, pill-infused, Facebook, Twittering stupor. And so that's, that's not great, of course. Uh, and, but it doesn't follow from that, you know, just getting back to where
- 30:22 – 32:22
A constructive pivot: making mortality conscious rather than unconscious
- SSSheldon Solomon
we started the conversation, um, th- that it doesn't follow from that, that w- we can't use these same ideas, uh, more productively. Because I think what we have to note is that everything that I've talked about so far i- is...... is in response to really subtle, even unconscious reminders of death. A- and so when you asked me, when we began to talk a half an hour ago, when you said, "All right, you know, what is, why is it so important, uh, that we come to terms with death," uh, like Albert Camus, "come to terms with death, thereafter anything is possible." Um, this is really a plea, uh, to not leave our death anxiety buried under the psychological bushes, you know, where it comes back to bear bitter few- fruit. This is rather a plea, you know, not to wallow i- in concerns about mortality. That's not the point. If you want to do that, you start a goth punk rock band, and that might be pretty good. Uh, but rather, uh, you know, to courageously a- and, and, uh, you know, with diligence, uh, to embrace the lifelong task, uh, of coming to terms with the reality of death, uh, in a very self-conscious way, uh, because that can produce outcomes that are of a distinctly more favorable kind.
- CWChris Williamson
Dude, I love that. I absolutely love that. I've got a million different doorways to hell open in my mind at the moment, so I'm gonna try and close a couple of them. Uh, one of the questions I had was, you mentioned that the denial of death is innate and is essentially fixed by culture, or one of the particular tools we use to try and dampen that down is culture. Presumably, evolutionarily, our current brain manifestation, and thus awareness of
- 32:22 – 37:36
Before culture: rituals, religion as social glue, and the ‘tipping point’ of self-awareness
- CWChris Williamson
death, would have arisen before we had culture to be able to deal with it. What do you think ancient man would have done?
- SSSheldon Solomon
Yeah. Wow. All right. Uh, Chris, I, uh, I'm sorry we lost our video, so I can't smile at you. That's a- like, an awesome question, and if I could answer that, um, you know, I'd be chugging rum, uh, in a coconut with my Nobel Prize on the beach. No, that, um, because, a- as a lot of folks have noted, um, a- a- as we have pondered, uh, for quite some time, uh, you know, the, the apes and the chimps from which, uh, we presumably evolved, you know, are unaware of death and, and don't appear thereby to deny it. We most assuredly are. And you're raising an important question, which is, phylogenetically, how did that happen? And, um, the argument that we make, and, uh, this is necessarily speculative, of course, but there are other scholars who have independently come up with similar ones. Uh, the argument is that, um, humans were almost certainly, uh, back in the day, uh, engaged in ritualistic behavior, uh, of a religious nature. Uh, and this is long before, uh, the awareness of death arose, even if it was, uh, vague, uh, and it's long before even gods arose. So Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist, uh, he points out, and, uh, David Sloan Wilson, who's a- an evolutionary biologist, uh, they argue that, that, that religion arose basically as social glue, a- a- a way to foster social cohesion and coordination, uh, between large-
- CWChris Williamson
What's the... Sorry to interject there, Sheldon. What's the Latin word for religion? Is it r- reg- regal or s- regoth or something?
- SSSheldon Solomon
I, you know, I should have looked that up. Yeah, it means to bind-
- CWChris Williamson
To bind, yeah, that's it.
- SSSheldon Solomon
... or to tie.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- SSSheldon Solomon
And I think-
- CWChris Williamson
So social glue is an- a very apt term for it.
- SSSheldon Solomon
Yeah. Th- no, thanks, Chris. And please jump in here, 'cause I do think that this is important. The, the idea i- is that, you know, we are uber social creatures, a- and, and for Durkheim, there, there's an emotional component to this binding. Uh, he just said that there is something tremendously uplifting about being in the company of our fellow humans i- in, uh, moments that, uh, can only be described as, uh, you know, just ones that are, are, are... They are described as moments of, like, transcendental joy, um, where, you know, you're back in the day, uh, it's a beautiful day, the hunt has gone well, life is good, everybody's hanging around, a- and there's just this collective effervescence, which for Durkheim has a lot to do, uh, with what underlies the appeal of religion. But anyway, back to our story. The, the argument is that there already was a, a primitive, in the non-pejorative sense, early forms of ritualistic behavior, uh, that served a religious function. And this is before, uh, the origin of the mythical narratives that eventually came, uh, to correspond to the behavior. And so the argument is that the rituals came first, and then, uh, the narrative account of why we're engaged in them came subsequently. A- and one possibility is that all of this is happening while human beings are-... uh, reaching a, a threshold of self-awareness. Both Nietzsche as well as Otto Runke, probably based on Nietzsche. Uh, they hypothesized that, uh, self-awareness just kinda gradually increased, but then it gets to a, a, a, a point where there's kind of a tipping point, where you become explicitly aware, uh, of the prospect of mortality. At which point, the argument is that, uh, different... there were probably different mythological accounts o- of the world that existed at the time, a- and that just through the process of natural selection, uh, that the ones that tended to offer existential comfort, uh, in the form of promises of either literal or symbolic immortality, uh, were probably those that were most appealing and therefore persisted over time.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- SSSheldon Solomon
So I don't know if that makes any sense, but that's the-
- 37:36 – 47:25
The bicameral mind, origins of consciousness, and why awareness is social
- CWChris Williamson
No, i- it ab- absolutely, absolutely does. Um, do you think... Oh God, man, Sheldon, I've got, I've got about f- fifty questions that I need to ask, ask at the same time. Um, first one, is that tipping point us stepping out of the bicameral mind and into something above that?
- SSSheldon Solomon
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
Right. That's, that's, that's what I-
- SSSheldon Solomon
I-
- CWChris Williamson
... wanted to know. Um-
- SSSheldon Solomon
A- absolutely. And this, uh, the, uh... So y- you know the Julian Jaynes stuff?
- CWChris Williamson
No. Please tell me.
- SSSheldon Solomon
Oh, so you said bicameral mind. This is awesome. I'm enjoying this immensely, although selfishly, it's not, uh, about, uh, m- me being entertained, Chris.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SSSheldon Solomon
But there's a guy in 1975, you're too young, um, uh, Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. A- and so to answer your question, and that's one of my favorite books, and I... ho- how I got interested in this, uh, because, uh, Jaynes' point is that for much of human history, we were kind of automatons, uh, and that it's only recently, uh, that we've gotten into full death denial mode.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SSSheldon Solomon
Uh, and that is a reflection of the breakdown of the bicameral mind, leaving us starkly aware of the reality of our condition. That's why Nietzsche said that consciousness is the most calamitous stupidity by which we shall someday perish or perish someday.
- CWChris Williamson
That's a beautiful quote. I, uh... Yeah, you... I- it's really interesting to think about what it would've been like to not know that you... Well, I mean, you're technically not your own thoughts, but y- you are at least aware that they're coming from somewhere within you as opposed to being bestowed on you by a god, someone who's essentially sort of speaking words in your ear. Um, yeah, that... I mean, whoever the first human was that decided to cross whatever threshold of consciousness it is, that's a, that's a very uncomfortable frontier to be the (laughs) first person to get to step on.
- SSSheldon Solomon
No, abso- No, absolutely, Chris. And I wish I had the skills to, like, do science fiction because, you know, the argument, and I think it's quite plausible, is it might have happened a shit ton of times over history. You know, so imagine you're the one self-aware person in antiquity. I- it must have been quite a ride.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Yeah, definitely would have been. No one else would have been able to understand you. Um-
- SSSheldon Solomon
That's correct.
- CWChris Williamson
Right. Next question is, what... I actually, I'm gonna, I'm gonna diverge again and just open up another branch. What is your view... I know you're not a- an evolutionary psychologist, an evolutionary biologist, but I'm gonna ask you it anyway. What is your view of the reason why consciousness exists?
- SSSheldon Solomon
Well, yeah, again, another, uh, Nobel Prize winning one. Um, so-
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, just small questions today, Sheldon.
- SSSheldon Solomon
Yeah, yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Just the simple ones, the real easy ones for you.
- SSSheldon Solomon
Yeah. Oh, and I'm happy to talk again if you wanna save the Trivial Pursuits till next time around.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SSSheldon Solomon
Um, you know, always depends on who you ask. You know, the, uh... and, you know, so Steven Pinker, you know, Harvard, smart guy, he said the problem with consciousness is the central issue of, uh, you know, psychological discourse for the 21st century. A- and he's probably right. Um, and, um, a- and so, as you know, there are some people who think that consciousness is, uh, epiphenomenal. It- it's just really like an ethereal mist given off, uh, as an irrelevant afterthought. It's just a byproduct of, uh, other processes.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- SSSheldon Solomon
Uh, and, um, I find that extraordinarily unconvincing, uh, for a variety of reasons. Uh, and even folks, uh, uh, like, um, oh, Selfish Gene, uh, Richard Dawkins-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SSSheldon Solomon
... um, uh, i- he writes in the 1970s that he finds it inconceivable, uh, that consciousness, uh, ha- has, uh, no functional value. Um, Nicholas Humphrey, who's a British guy, uh, he wrote a book called Consciousness Regained, I think in the 1980s. And, um, I favor his view, which is that consciousness may have evolved, um, in social settings, that it's not actually an individual psychological attribute, but rather that in a complex setting, um, knowing how you're feeling was probably a good way to figure out how other people are feeling.... and being able to know that, that's like theory of mind and-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- SSSheldon Solomon
... psychobabble, makes it so much easier to negotiate your relationships with fellow human beings. A- and so one possibility, uh, is that consciousness arose, um, in order to facilitate social interaction. Uh-
- 47:25 – 1:01:37
If we ‘defeat death’: boredom, lost meaning, and increased fear via chance
- CWChris Williamson
Cool, right. I am going to... I'm gonna move on. Um, what do you think happens if we defeat death one day? Have you considered that? I had David Pearce, one of the foremost-
- SSSheldon Solomon
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
... thinkers behind the transhumanism movement on. He's talking about extending life, whether we have-
- SSSheldon Solomon
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
... whole brain emulation, integrating with machines. We use, uh-
- SSSheldon Solomon
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... pharmaceuticals to extend our life. We do all sorts of other different things. What-
- SSSheldon Solomon
Yep.
- CWChris Williamson
... happens if we defeat death one day?
- SSSheldon Solomon
Yeah. Great, again, another great question. Um, it's one that goes back, uh, to antiquity. Uh, you know, the, in the ancient Greeks, the gods, uh, were immortal, and their lives were miserable and banal. And o- one philosophical notion...... uh, is that it would be, uh, terrible, uh, to live in a world, uh, where one existed in perpetuity. I, I like a, a American philosopher, Martha Nussbaum, uh, who just points out that if, if there was no such thing as death, then th- the very meaning of something being meaningful becomes meaningless. You know, there, there's nothing consequential. What does it mean to say somebody has courage or somebody's generous? Um, if, uh, uh, if, if like a video game, um, you know, if something bad happens, you just re-up your avatar and hit the trail again.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SSSheldon Solomon
So that's one possibility is that it would be boring to a degree, uh, that, um, it wou- would make most, uh, legal tomes seem uplifting by comparison. Another possibility is that, uh ... And this is one that Ernest Becker considers in The Denial of Death, is that rather counterintuitively, it might make us more anxious. Um, a- and his, his argument is by example. He just says, well, let's say that you're climbing up a mountain. You're 10 years old, and your life expectancy is 80 years, and you fall i- into the bottom of the Grand Canyon and you die. Well, that's a downer 'cause you just lost 70 years of life. Now let's say you're climbing up a mountain, and you expect to live half a million years or forever-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SSSheldon Solomon
... and you fall down the mountain. Uh, and his point is, is you can banish death, but you can never banish chance. Uh, you don't know that you're gonna ... you might get smoked by a comet and your body might be vaporized. Uh, you don't know that maybe you've abandoned your body and you put yourself on a, a cloud somewhere. Yeah, but when the power goes down, um, uh, there, there's not gonna be any cloud. In other words, you can banish death, but you can't banish chance. Uh, and therefore, Becker argues that death anxiety might increase, a- and our defensive reactions therefore or thereafter, uh, might also increase commensurately. And-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah. That would be, that would be an awful side effect. Right, guys.
- SSSheldon Solomon
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
We can live forever, but we're all going to be so unbelievably afraid that we're not-
- SSSheldon Solomon
There you go.
- CWChris Williamson
... we're not (laughs) prepared to do anything-
- SSSheldon Solomon
E- and I-
- CWChris Williamson
... because the potential downside of-
- SSSheldon Solomon
There you go.
- CWChris Williamson
... of it going wrong, the, the asymmetry starts to, to lean. I suppose that, you know, the, the, the nice thing about only living 80 years is if you, you know, die before you've reached middle age at kinda 35, like, well, I've nearly got 50% of the way there, like, you know-
- SSSheldon Solomon
There you go.
- CWChris Williamson
... it's not that long. So yeah-
- SSSheldon Solomon
That's right.
- CWChris Williamson
B- bizarrely, our short lives actually assuage the fear of death to some, somewhere or another, which is, which is very interesting.
- SSSheldon Solomon
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
What, what insight about our minds do you wish more people knew?
- SSSheldon Solomon
Oh, wow. Oh, what a disarmingly great-
- 1:01:37 – 1:15:22
Tranquilizing ourselves with the trivial: passive distraction and frenetic busyness
- CWChris Williamson
Um, before we finish up, couple of, couple of quick, quicker fire ones. What does tranquilize yourself with the trivial mean?
- SSSheldon Solomon
I love that. So that's a Kierkegaard phrase that Heidegger also picks up on. A- and, uh, his point is that the average individual... And, and Heidegger is quite clear when he says th- this is not meant pejoratively, even though it sounds like it, because the argument is that we all do this sometimes. Uh, but what, what Heidegger said is that in response to death anxiety, most people just unconsciously and un-self-reflectively, uh, they just literally desperately embrace the social role that is afforded to them in the context of their culture. A- and they essentially become culturally constructed meat puppets, uh, who live their lives, um, a- a- as caricatures of a stereotype of their particular social role. And Kierkegaard's point is that when you do that, uh, you just tranquilize yourself, uh, with the trivial. Um, uh, the most, um, popular event in the United States every year i- is the Super Bowl. A- and so, uh, you know, watching football, the stupid kind of football, a- and eating chicken wings, a- and shopping. More people go shopping in the US after Thanksgiving, the day after Thanksgiving than who vote in presidential elections. And so-
- CWChris Williamson
That's crazy.
- SSSheldon Solomon
It's crazy. Uh, and so shocking. Uh, and, uh, and so that's why Frank Zappa, dead musician, he says, "The average American treats intelligent behavior as if it was some kind of a hideous physical deformity."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SSSheldon Solomon
And he's right. Uh, uh, and so, and then Heidegger comes along a- and he's like, "Yeah, okay. Uh, th- that's one kind o- of, of tranquilizing," you know, where you're sitting at home, uh, y- you know, just pounding beer and watching the telly. Uh, but, uh, there's another kind of tranquilization, and that's just frenetic activity where you just keep yourself so busy, superficially engaged in the vagaries of life, uh, that you appear to be... There's a veneer of things going well-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- SSSheldon Solomon
... uh, but y- you're actually an empty husk, uh, desperately keeping busy so you don't sit still long enough to think about the fact that you might not be fully satisfied. D- do you know Woody Allen's film, uh, Annie Hall?
- CWChris Williamson
No.
- SSSheldon Solomon
Are there y- Okay, so you're too young.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SSSheldon Solomon
And so I won't go there because there's a scene that makes reference to the denial of death that illustrates that point. But, uh, so those are the two kinds of, uh, being tranquilized, you know, just being passive, you know, and, and, and being surrounded, uh, by trivia and stuff, or, you know, being active in one's pursuit of the uninspired and unimportant.
- CWChris Williamson
I think... I, I've been playing around with these ideas for a little while. Um, one thing I've noticed, and I'm a massive advocate for people being as weird as they can possibly be, i.e., um, compromising as little of th- themselves for society as, as is possible, because I think what that leads to is you, um, not actually being able to work out what your own truth is. I wonder whether or not the fact that most people, the broad cross-section of society, prefers people that they can fit into easily defined archetypal roles, is because those people don't force them to step out of that particular, um, that's the geek, that's the nerd, that's the maiden-
- SSSheldon Solomon
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... that's the redeemed, that's the villain, that's the whatever. Um, I wonder whether that plays into what you're talking about. And I also think that the current self-development movement, this kind of... I- I'm, you know, I'm contributing to it, although I hope that I'm doing it in a slightly more virtuous way. But the, the motivational speaker, um, you can become anything you want movement at the moment, I think also is the 21st century much more cerebral manifestation of just what would have been the industry of religious speakers.... back in the day, that this is you being able to transcend what is going on, but it's repurposed and repackaged into words that have a para-scientific, a peri-scientific sort of, uh, uh, tinge to them, which removes the, uh, criticism, the easy sort of low-hanging fruit criticism, and the ickiness that religion has had, and theology's kind of gotten now in a scientific society. Uh, but still serves exactly the same reason that (smacks lips) you can become anything you want. You can be more productive, do more in your day. Well, why do you want to do more in your day? "Well, if I do more in my day, I get more life before it ... inevitably ends."
- SSSheldon Solomon
There you go. I, uh, there's an African proverb that I like. It's, "Just give us life, life, more life." And I-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SSSheldon Solomon
... I, I love how you put it, and I also love the distinction that you just made between trying to help people make the most of themselves in a virtuous sense, which you surely are, and, um, uh, becoming a, a 21st century, uh, e- essentially, uh, b- b- guru of sorts, uh, who is no different than a charismatic political leader to the extent that you're exploiting people's anxieties and insecurities for your own personal gain.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, it's, it's weaponizing it, isn't it, and commodifying it.
- SSSheldon Solomon
It is.
- CWChris Williamson
That's the reason for it. Um-
- SSSheldon Solomon
It is, and, uh, so I, I think we, um, uh, and for what it's worth, uh, I think what you and like-minded compatriots are doing is, is honestly the way of the world. I mean, I'm an egghead researcher. I'm proud of the work that I do. I've written books. Uh, I write journal articles that are non-pharmacological interventions for insomnia. Um, uh, you know, I, we write stuff, and maybe 12 people on Earth-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- SSSheldon Solomon
... uh, uh, partake of it. Uh, uh, you said that you learned of my ideas, uh, from, uh, talking to Lex, uh, uh, and I, I enjoyed talking to him immensely. Um, it, there have been more people who I have exchanged ideas with, uh, in the last six weeks than I have in the last six years, uh, for two reasons. One is, is that, uh, this is a much more, um, effective medium for the dissemination of ideas. And, and the second is, this is, we are uber social creatures who come to know ourselves in the context o- of, uh, sincere conversations with others. That's one of the things that I like about Heidegger, even though he was a Nazi, is that he emphasized the incredibly important role, uh, of language and discourse. Uh, and i- i- i- if there's a hope for humankind, uh, uh, uh, uh, the way I see it, it's gonna be a proliferation of, uh, people, uh, that are doing what you're doing in the various manifestations or, or incarnations. I think it gives me great hope.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, me too. I think that, um, what's interesting i- i- is a lot of people, I think, are drawn to these sort of longer form, uh, reflective, introspective conversations, uh, because maybe they're hungry for them elsewhere. They don't, n- they can't talk to their brother or sister or friends about it because that doesn't feel very natural. And the bizarre thing is that upon us now having a platform and a communications network which permits us to do this globally, you realize that the solitude and the weirdness that you thought was a personal affliction your whole life is actually very commonplace, and you're in incredibly good company.
- SSSheldon Solomon
There you go, but again, you just made a, a, a, a, a w- a, you made an earth-shattering point, and a guy named C. Wright Mills, in a book called The Power Elite, written in the 1950s, he made the same point, and that's that most of us, uh, and Hannah Arendt made this point in her book about fascism, and that is that, uh, that what, that what makes a, a, a society ripe for fascism is that if everybody feels isolated, um, and, and has a sense or, that nobody shares their problems. A- and there's nothing more uplifting, even if it's painful, than to recognize that what you might have been attributed, uh, uh, uh, to yourself as your own personal malady, uh, is A, uh, more common than you think, and B, may not be due to your own, um, weaknesses as an individual, but rather is the inevitable result of structural inequalities built into, uh, uh, you know, macro-institutional systems. And so I think there's a lot to be gained from these kinds of pursuits.
- CWChris Williamson
Absolutely, and the other thing as well is that weirdness and uniqueness is your competitive advantage. Even, you know, if I need to say it again to the people who are listening-
- SSSheldon Solomon
Nice.
- CWChris Williamson
... it might not feel like it, but you should view the particular quirks that you have as competitive advantages in the same way as, as soon as you can flip a workout from, "When it hurts, this is bad," to, "When it hurts, I lean into discomfort, because that's what I'm here for."
- SSSheldon Solomon
Yes.
Episode duration: 1:15:22
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