YouSaid · the spoken record

Sheldon Solomon

lines on the record: 156
first: 2020-08-20
most recent: 2020-08-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Because of them. And I'd be like to my parents, well, you're telling me that all people should be judged on the merits of their character, but don't come home if you don't marry a Jewish woman. Which is implying that if you're not Jewish, you're an inferior form of life.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, yeah, her point has God in the title, of course, but she's like, look, all religions. Are generally fairly right minded in that they advocate the golden rule. And all religions at their best do seem to foster pro social behavior towards the in-group. And that confers both psychological as well as physical benefits. That's the good news. And the bad news is historically all religions are. Subject to being hijacked by a lunatic French Who declares that they're the one since soul possession of the liturgical practices or whatever they call them? And they're the ones that turn religion at its best into your crusades and holocausts. My view, not that it should matter for much, but I. I grew up just skeptical of religion because I'm like, as a kid, I'm like, well, if we didn't have these beliefs, we wouldn't be killing each other.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, who knows? So that's a great question, Lex. So there's a woman named Karen Armstrong. She was a nun turned historian. Jeez, I can't remember the name of the book. But no matter we could look that up, but”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so people have vigorous disagreements about that. But I guess our point would be we see religion as being inextricably connected ultimately to assuaging concerns about death.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Back to the unshakable joy that Heidegger alludes to. And that the original function of religion was to foster social cohesion and coordination and that it was only subsequently some claim that burgeoning level of consciousness made it such that religious belief systems that included the hope of some kind of immortality were just naturally selected thereafter. So, there are some people, it's David Sloan Wilson, wrote a book called Darwin's Cathedral, and he said religion has nothing to do with death. It evolved to make groups viable. He's actually a group selection guy.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not necessarily, so here we got to be a little bit more careful. And again, I'm not a scholar. How about I'm a well-intentioned dilettante in this regard? Because what I have read is that Religion evolved. Very early on, long before our ancestors were conscious and the issue of death arose. And the word religion evidently is from a Latin word regatear. We can look it up. And it means to bind. And Emile Durkheim, the dead French sociologist, he said, you know, originally religion is Darce Lessing, who's a dead novelist. She calls it the substance of we feeling, that it's literally that it arose because we're Uber social creatures who from time to time took comfort in just being in physical proximity with our fellow humans and that there is This kind of sense of transcendent exuberance.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I see it as the disease and the cure in a sense. Few things. One is that I think a case could be made that humans are innately religious. So now we're going to get into territory where there's going to be a lot of disputes.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want to be back into the warmth. I want to be back. Getting back to Heidegger for a moment. I like the, yeah, he uses a lot the idea of feeling at home, not as like in your house, but just feeling like you're comfortably situated.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but perhaps understandable. I mean, one of this is an anecdote, of course, but when we were trying to get a publisher for our book, we had a meeting with. A publisher Published some Malcolm Gladwell books. And she said, I'm very interested in your book, but can you write it without mentioning death? Because people don't like death. And we're like, no, it's really kind of central. And I think that's part of it. I think, again, if these ideas have merit, And I actually like the way that you put it, Lex. It's that to step away is to momentarily expose yourself To all of The anxiety. That our identity and our beliefs typically enable us to manage. I think it's as simple as that.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is not, but this gets back to the Heidegger, Kierkegaard School of Anxiety, you are stepping out. And you are momentarily shrugging off again, the culturally constructed psychological accoutrements that allow you to stand up in the morning”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's a tough one. I could tell you what not to do. You know, so when we are young and annoying. A lot of famous people, mostly psychologists, because that's who we intersected with, you know, we would lay out these ideas and they would be, well, I don't think about death like that. So these ideas must be wrong. 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 spared you the existential excruciations that would otherwise arise. That's like Freud, you know, you're repressing, so you either agree with me, in which case I'm right. You disagree with me, in which case you're repressing, and I'm right.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm in agreement with you on that. You know, two things. You know, one is it reminds me of Ben Franklin, who in his autobiography Has a similarly childish in the best sense of the word. Unbridled imagination for what might become. You know, Ben Franklin's like, yeah, I got electricity. That's cool. But we'll be levitating soon. And we can't even begin to imagine what we are capable of. And of course, people are like, dude, that's crazy. And there's a guy's FCS Schiller, some humanistic guy at the beginning of the 20th century. He's like, you know, 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 for being a lunatic”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I love that idea. And so what I've been babbling about with Kierkegaard or Heidegger, I'm like, yeah, Kierkegaard is a leap of faith in God. Heidegger is a leap of faith in life. And I just.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I like that direction as an alternative to the Kierkegaardian insistence that the only psychologically tenable way to extricate ourselves from maladaptive reactions to death, anxiety is through faith in the traditional sense.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Way of thinking about things that moves us more in that direction. And so that's kind of 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 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. I just would travel around and I'd be like, here's what this Becker guy says. I think this is cool. Well, my present view is I'm like, here's what this Heidegger guy says. I think these ideas are consistent with what Becker is saying because they are anchored in death anxiety.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, 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 sick of death. You said it, so I want to second what you say, Lex. It's not about death. It's the Sherwood Anderson guy. He's a novelist that I like about. He wrote a book called Weinsberg, Ohio. And now I'm going to forget what he said on his tombstone. But, you know, it was something to the effect. Oh, he said life, not death is the great adventure. The point being is that, you know, 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 love. And I feel like Heidegger has.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is accompanied with solicitous regard to our fellow humans which makes life appear to us to be an ongoing adventure that is permeated.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That makes your life seem like an adventure perfused with unshakable joy. Let me unpack those things. It is beautiful. I love Lex that you're resonating to the time thing. So he's like, okay We already talked about now anticipatory is already hopeful because it's looking forward. To be resolute, it means to be steadfast and to just have confidence in what you're doing moving forward. Solicitous, I had to look up all these words, by the way. It just means that you are concerned about your fellow human beings. But I love the idea, even if it seems allegorical, I don't mind that at all. This idea, you said love earlier, and I think that when Heidegger is talking about being solicitous. That's as close as he can get. There's an Italian.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am a contingent historical and cultural artifact. But so what? You know, if I was transported a thousand 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 this is his language. He says that there is a transformation. And he literally, he calls it a turning. You're turning away from a flight from death and you are allowed, therefore, you see a horizon as his word of opportunity that makes you In a state of anticipatory resoluteness with solicitous regard for others.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because you are reluctant to accept responsibility 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, you know, I'm a professor and I live in America in the 21st century. Well, if I was in the third century living in a yurt in Mongolia, I'm not going to 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. In other words, there is a me of sorts. Heidegger would take vigorous issue, so would Heidegger scholars, because I'm not claiming to understand him. This is my classic comic book rendering. But Heidegger's point is that you get to the point where you're able to say, okay.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 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 going to not always make good choices. Now you're guilty for your choices. And then he uses the poet Rilka. 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 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”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By the way, sorry It is brilliant. I agree, Wax, and that's just why I'm wondering why didn't Becker notice this? Because that's the being and time thing is it's got to be now. And then he says, so, okay, so now I've. Dealt somewhat with the death part. And now he says, now you've got to deal with what he calls existential guilt. And he says, well, all right, what 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. For Heidegger,”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Heidegger says there's another way, though. He's like, yo, 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 going to die in some vaguely unspecified future moment, that's still death denial because you're saying, yeah, not me, not now. Heidegger's point is you need to get to the point where you need to realize that I need to realize that I can walk outside and get smoked by a comet or I can stop for gas on the way home and catch the virus and be dead in two days or any number of potentially unanticipated and uncontrollable fatal outcomes.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A beautiful phrase because at the end of the denial of death, backer's like, look, the average American is either drinking or shopping or watching television. And they're all the same thing. 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 we don't feel at home in the world. Heidegger says that's death anxiety. In one direction is the Kierkegaard one. Heidegger calls it a flight from death. You just unself reflexively cling to your cultural constructions. And Heidegger borrows the term tranquilized, but he points out that he doesn't care for that term because tranquilized sound To actually think about anything consequential.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Out that what Kierkegaard says is that death, anxiety, most people don't go to the school of anxiety. They flee from death anxiety by embracing their cultural beliefs. Kierkegaard says they then tranquilize themselves with the trivial. And I love that phrase.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But of course, this raises the question of, well, is that just another death-denying belief system? 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 Becker has been the most singularly potent influence in my academic and personal life, but a year or two ago, I started reading Martin Heidegger. I'm reading Being in Time. And what I now wonder is why Becker, who refers to Heidegger from time to time in his work, why he didn't take Heidegger more seriously, because Heidegger has like a secular Kierkegaard. He has the same thing, which is death anxiety. Oh, and I should have pointed.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. 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 in the New Testament, there's something you have to die in order to be reborn. 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 and Christianity, that you can't have unbridled faith and cultural construction. The only thing that you can have unequivocal faith in is some kind of transcendent power”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think about that. You have to think about it and feel it. You got to let it seep into your mind at which point, according to Kierkegaard, basically 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. 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 we've been living a lie of sorts. Becker calls it a necessary lie. And we have to moment. Dispose of that. And so now Kierkegaard says, well, here I am. I have shrugged off all of the cultural accoutrements that I have used to define myself.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was agnostic on that, but he did. Now, the denial of death is. There's a chapter devoted to Kierkegaard. He talks about for Kierkegaard, if you want to become a mature individual, if you want to learn something, you go to the university. If you want to become a more mature individual according to Kierkegaard, you got to go to the school of anxiety. What Kierkegaard said is that we have to let this vague dis-ease put a hyphen between dis and ease about death's point is you have to really”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so. So interesting to me is Becker, also from a Jewish family, claimed to be atheistic, 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.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's exactly right. So when I first read the denial of death, 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 did construction work. I worked in a restaurant. And I was just like, wait a minute. If I understand what this guy is saying, then I'm just a culturally constructed meat puppet. Doing things for reasons that I know not.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is probably not the case, and that I have at times, like all humans, been more preoccupied with the implications of these ideas for my self-esteem. It's like, oh, we're going to write a book. And maybe we'll get to go on TV or something. Well, no, that's not the case. As to actually think about it in a way that you feel it rather than just think it.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, no, no. So my colleagues and good friends, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pasinski, 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 feel like there's a real sense in which doing these studies and writing books and lecturing has been my way of avoiding directly confronting my anxieties by turning it into an intellectual exercise. And every once in a while, therefore, when I think that I'm making some progress as a human, I have to remind myself that”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Entertaining the reality of the human condition, which is that you too will pass. To get to the point where there is to lapse into a cliche the capacity for personal transformation and growth.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 that, and this is kind of 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. Spend considerable time. You don't have to be a Goth, death rocker, you know, wallowing in death imagery. To spend enough time.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And being cognizant of it for us, that's the ball game. So what we write in our book, and here we're just paying homage to the philosophers and theologians that come before us is to point out that Literally since antiquity, there has been a consensus that To lead a full life requires Albert Camus and come to terms with death thereafter anything is possible. And so you've got the Stoics and you've got the Epicureans and then you've got the Tibetan Book of the Dead and then you got like the medieval monks that worked with like a skull on their desk. 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 going to die and we find that, yeah, they drink more water if a famous person is advertising it”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 independent researchers are interested in pursuing them.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They like Bush a lot more so in every study that we did, Americans like John Kerry, who was running against Bush they like Carey more than Bush.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or in other cases, we stop them outside either in front of a funeral home or a hundred 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. They're 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,”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The people dying plus the symbols of American greatness, World Trade Center, and 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 going to die. We say, hey, right?”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two days before George W. Bush had the lowest approval rating in the history of presidential polling. 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 the country, rather, during this perilous time. He had the highest approval rating. And so we're like, what happened? 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.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and here's where I can be more cavalier and where what I would urge people, like what you said, Lex, is ignore my histrionic and polemic language, if possible. Step back if you can, myself included And let's just consider the research findings because September 11th, 2001, people that are old enough to remember that horrible day.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 an extraordinary state of existential distress. And he said, I'm going to 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, where Egghead experimental researchers. You know, Becker wrote this book, The Denial of Death, and he couldn't get a job. People just dismiss these ideas as fanciful speculation for which there's no Evidence”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 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. And yeah, what's left? So Max Weber, German sociologist at the beginning of the 20th century, he said in times of historical upheaval, we are apt to embrace. He was the one who coined the term charismatic leader, seemingly larger than life individuals. Who often believe or their followers believe are divinely ordained to rid the world of evil?”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gray said, is that will inevitably produce economic upheaval in local areas, which will not be attributed to the economic order, it will be misattributed to whoever the scapegoat de jure is and the anger and the distress associated with that uncertainty will be picked up on by ideological demagogues who will transform that into rage. So both Hannah Arundt as well as John Gray, they just said, watch out. We're going to have right-wing-ish, populist movements where demagogues who are the alchemists of hate, what makes them brilliant. Is they don't, the hate's already there.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's brilliant, and this is what John Gray, the philosopher in the 1990s, he predicted what's happening today. 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 economics has reached the point where most money is made not by actually making stuff, you know, you use money to make money. And therefore, 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”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where the self esteem and identity come in with 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 we typically define ourselves, you know, as Marx put it, you are what you do. And now who are you when your way of life as well as your way of earning a living is no longer available?”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Lex, you make, I think, a really profoundly important point. Know his point is that the way that we manage existential terror is to embrace culturally constructed belief systems that Give us a sense that life has meaning and we have value. 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 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 and they're not coming back.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, ongoing ethnic tensions, environmental degradation, economic instability, and the fact that the world has become a petri dish of psychopathology.”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Century. So I'm with Jared Diamond, you know, in the book Collapse, where he points out studying the collapse of major civilizations, that it often happens right after things appear to never have been better. And in that regard, I mean, there are more known voices that have taken issue with Dr. Pinker. I'm thinking of John Gray, who's a British philosopher. And here in the States, I don't know where he is these days, but Robert J. Lifton, the psycho-historian, yeah, they're both of my view, which I hope is, by the way, wrong. Me too. Yeah, no, but between...”
2020-08-20 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #117 – Sheldon Solomon: Death and Meaning · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source