Most people tranquilize themselves with the trivial | Sheldon Solomon and Lex Fridman 

Man, these are some beautiful conversations with some serious utility. Keep doin' what you're doin' Lex.

Quote at 12:10: "Turning away from a flight from death, you see a horizon of opportunity that puts you in state of anticipatory resoluteness with solicitous regard for others that makes your life seem like an adventure perfused with unshakable joy." Many hours and long walks will be spent pondering this one.

I believe death anxiety comes from believing that we are some grand construct that is significant and independent from nature. We fear the death of our identities, which society urges us to develop our entire lives, more than death itself. I believe people that live in balance with nature, those who have not been conditioned to build intricate identities as we have, have an easier time facing death.

"Turning away from a flight from death, you see a horizon of opportunity that puts you in a state of anticipatory resoluteness with solicitous regard for others that makes your life seem like an adventure perfused with unshakable joy."

he looks like a hippie ray dalio. interesting conversations

Very insightful and a thought provoking conversation with Dr Solomon. Thank you for sharing the interview, Lex. You are a role model for being an excellent listener!

I loved this interview. Solomon seems like such a nice guy

'Guilt of unlived life'. Looks back at youtube history. Oh dear....

greatest quote i adopted much later in life was, "regrets will chew away your life and it will come from indecision, not the decisions you'll make in life." That is what haunts me but also makes me happy with current self. Great convo.

At 6:45 Heidegger was like "yo!" I would be really cool if he actually talked like that. But in all seriousness. Loved the interview.

Thank you! I'm a senior studying psychology who wants to become an academic and this conversation reignited my passion and love of the field and its intersection with philosophy.

One major difference between Peterson and Solomon: Solomon is so much more in harmony with his own fears and anxieties and it allows him to live kindly ambitiously and heroically. Peterson seems so constantly controlled by his own hang-ups, anxieties and fears (and check his earliest videos in his trilby hat ranting about men and it’s *not* a change in his character due to criticisms after getting famous) that he is constantly lashing out, finding relatively inexperienced uneducated straw(trans)men to engage with to make himself seem smarter or more heroic. He hasn’t wrestled with his own terror and so he is constantly lashing out at a minority to make himself grander in the face of his own mortality. Peterson’s unhinged anxiety and aggression are such a purely tragic example of what Ernest Becker/Otto Rank were talking about. And if more people have heard of Peterson than Solomon, it’s because more people are like Peterson, they haven’t faced their own terror of death and gain vicarious heroism from Peterson’s anxious breakdowns and angry outbursts.

I love that this guy sounds like such a surfer bro

The ultimate goal is to create. What you create is up to you.

This is truly inspiring! I feel nourished by listening to this conversation.

This was an amazing guest I am a huge Peterson fan and this guy is the perfect counter balance, i love the healthy disagreement here and I am now a huge Sheldon Solomon fan now too.

"One must imagine Sysiphus happy." - Camus

Blown away by this complete discussion, but this portion is utterly mindblowing. Thank you both.

You're doing a great job Lex. Really enjoy listening to your podcast. Keep it up!!

It's the obsession with death and anxiety that is dumb. Shopping, drinking and watching TV is the right way to live.

The words of Heidegger are so beautiful I seriously started choking back tears after Solomon said them. Just finished my first Burroughs book, I know who I’m reading next!!!

I'm definitely more of an Epicurean than what Solomon, Kierkegaard, or Heidegger in their perspective. To me, worrying about state on which you have no control (your death) is an idle worry in anticipation! The way I see it, death is only 3minutes. The rest is all life. The less we think about death the more we can live life. You may achieve more if you have this dark passenger constantly reminding you of your limited time; but you haven't achieved much if you live in constant anxiety. If life is meaningless, then it's equally meaningless to worry about your death. It's best to focus on life until it ends.

The idea that we are insignificant is also a cultural trap, it's just the modern current one. We decide the measure of significance.

I'm fighting my angst by watching these videos lol

"When your identity is defined by society, you cannot resist it. You don't have the knowledge, you don't have the wisdom, you don't have the resources to understand that something is being put over on you. You cannot but help believe the definition of you as a free agent. But you believe yourself to be a free agent as a result of not being free, that is to say, of being hopelessly unable to resist society's identification of you. So, in the whole sense of our personality there is a contradiction, and that is why the sense of ego, of being oneself, is simultaneously a sense of frustration." ~Alan Watts

17 minute conversation felt like it was 60 seconds. What a powerful mindset.

Awesome podcast! Thank you!!!

When this guy said you have to die to be reborn there is alot of truth to that. I was a drug addict for years. Overdose a few times. Got sober starting going to 12 step programs. I had to experience so much suffering to be reborn! I know longer play the victim in life. And just grow as a human.

I'm addicted to this podcast. Love this guy😊

Glad to see Sheldon get his day, Ernest Becker as well. Cheers to yall, Tom, and Jeff.

Heidegger is like:"Yo! ... LOL

'You could die at ANY moment." He's says that like it's a bad thing.

Excellent as is the entire full Podcast Great clip! Thank you for all your great work and stimulating varied guests.

This is better than Joe Rogan, straight up real conversation. Real philosophy.

RU-vid videos are my tranquilliser

I find this very interesting and helpful during this pandemic. Have some anxiety about death, but it spurs me on to pursue my lifelong passion for making art. It keeps me focused on joy.

Great things Lex thank you so much. QUALITY CONTENT

Sontag said our death is the only thing that's really ours. Derrida wrote of death, and I had no idea what he was driving at. Govinda said death is a transition one must prepare for, and embrace--Vonnegut called it a return to being "an undifferentiated wisp of nothingness." Anybody read the Lapham's Quarterly on Death? I cherish those quarterlies.

Tony Hawks father. Great interview Lex! I Could not unsee Tony Hawk

Yes, they do, understandably. However, unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. It's fundamentally true of existence, yet we think as if we are self-created and self-sustaining, and outside of life somehow.

Very practical advice. So much Self Help available online - so little ability for people to apply it

If you’ve been born in a Western European nation or the US in the last 70 years you’ve been born into one of the most advantageous times and places in human history so far-plenty of security, opportunity, entertainment, cheap oil, sugar, travel and easy currency. Things might be about to get quite a bit worse but so far you’ve won life’s lottery. And or course peoples experiences within that cultural and historical window will vary massively-some will have had a very hard time, others much less so-but you can’t deny the periods advantages compared to almost any other time in human history...

Awesome conversation, more like this please.

How many people watched this video to distract themselves from their own death anxiety for a while? :D

As I heard this interesting interview and the thoughts flying between thinking minds in different times and ages , the central thought that I have struggled , examined and reflected for most of my life , which by the way is now over 7 decades is this . Death is the absolute and final end of this bodymind construct . Further , what we call living is an ever changing phenomena where death is ever present too . Everything is happening right now . This now is all we really have . Its now that we live and make choices . The rest is some memory or speculation which we call past or future . When we accept that death can happen now for me , then I simply understand that reality and accept it fully . As such I don't have any choice in this matter . Accepting death fully brings a great sense of relief . In all this process of thinking one becomes aware of a sense of awareness in the ever present now . This sense of awareness takes one above the endless thought process . One feels and experience a sense of timeless and spaceless sense of beingness . In this state one feels free from the daily trivial , everydayness . Will end here as my sharing has become abit lenghty .

attended several family members deaths. Those that resisted and those that embraced death died.

Great conversation, Lex continually blows my mind! Kierkegaard, Heidegger, I believe we can throw Camus into the mix because he is on the same train. Has Lex done the Dostoevsky podcast yet? I can't wait for that one.

The Hermetic writers wrote well on the illusory nature of death

I think the missing component of Kirkegaard, if this summary of his work is correct, is Carl Jung. Because the way it's portrayed here is that human's cling to a religious motif that's a product of their culture to transcend the death problem and other issues of nihilism. If you turn to Jung though, you would not include your "cultural moment" as a throwaway thing because the cultural moment you are born in is merely one of billions of expressions of the archtypes of the Collective Unconscious. So in fact we do NOT cling to cultural motifs of the time. Those motifs are merely expressions of the SAME archetypes EVERYONE across time that humans share. Regardless of if youre Christian, Jewish, aboriginal, prehistoric whatever. The Gods are the same and the archetypal pitfalls are the same. So the thing we "cling" to isnt special to our time, it's ubiquitous. Its not that different cultures believe in similar Gods, they believe in the same Gods, just different forms. And Jung would also add, WE dont cling to it, IT clings to us. So to apply Jung to this case, while Heidegger APPEARS to ground his "life force" into the brilliant horizon of choices and kindship with man, instead of lets say "Christian redemption" grounded in the body of Christ, they both are in fact the same thing to Jung. The "Christ body" is just a container of those elucidated things. The "light", the "horizon" or "choices" or "kinship" are all actually other ways of describing the Christ figure, who himself is the Light and transcendent one and symbol of kinship, and you have Eros the God of love and Logos the God of Thought and decisions and choosing. And death and rebirth and redemption and purpose. It may appear that one is secular and one is religious, but theyre not. Theyre both religious. It's just secularism breaks down the Gods to their symptoms (and as Jung would say, loses them in that process, hence the sadness of mankind and Nietzsche saying God is Dead). Jung would argue that the proper way to live is to look forward to the horizon but also internally to detect Archetypes floating around in us and one of those will grab US and either drag us forward in life or drag us down. We'll be interested in a calling, a life purpose and within that calling is an archetype: say of a doctor, teacher, father, surfer, professor whatever and that "calling" will grab us and drag up along. and then we grow up and go to the next, maybe the grand father or retiree or knowledgeable old man like Merlin.

Life does not require a leap of faith. You're in it son!

Definitely going to have to listen to the whole conversation!!! Thanks Gents!!!

Brilliant clip, brilliant speaker, brilliant podcast. I am hooked. Thanks Lex!

His tone of voice his mannerism his gestures somehow or another he is related to Ray dalio and one life for another.

Thank you for the beautiful insight.

Heidegger's like "Yo!" .. This is the translator of Being and Time I always needed..

"He's like yo" 😂

Philosophers make easy issues unnecessarily complex. Philosophy itself is a distraction from thinking about death. Philosophy isn't any better than shopping or drinking.

Becker “ you must go to the school of anxiety “ ………*Class of eternal here 🖐🏻

I love Worn in the core! Great Book!

this is a beautiful clip. I'm not great at reading Heidegger and Sheldon's exploration of the connection to all these ideas just gave me so much more than I could get from reading anything.

7:46 Sheldon gave Lex a stutter for a second

i like when smart people talk about Heidegger, its so rare

9:43 bye Felicia

7:40 - existential dread kicking i hard lol :D

The Denial of Death (Becker) is the most important book ever written.

Thanks for the video

This is spot on and layers upon layers I’ve faced myself. How FREE I feel now!

Banger

Jaheezus, why do I feel like I just I stumbled into the campfire scene from Point Break…got this dude juggling a spliff with one hand whilst taking a swig of ripple wine with the other, as he tries to “one up” Patrick Swayze on who dropped into the most idyllic barrel wave at Waimea. I keep waiting for Brody to come flying in like Wile E. Coyote ridin’ an Acme fire cracker to make the big bust.

Sheldon rocks

Great podcast 🔥

Sheldon reminds me of Steve Guttenberg, The Audiophiliac.

What a great video. I wasn't expecting this def watching the whole thing.

Awesome conversation!

thank you for the words this man spoke life changing

Facing death is the ultimate letting go, enabling us to see things as they are.

we attribute causality to random events and that is the meaning we put on it and science answers questions of non random events

The only problem with this beautiful piece of philosophical reflection is that it is all axiomatically built upon a conception of discrete personal ontology and free will, both of which are demonstrably false and so its a false solution to a false problem, that is, the conception of self as individual, limited, and separate from the totality of existence.

Mr Lex , I love that I have found you. My fav u tube channel now 🧜‍♀️

he's like: YO !! 6:44

Sheldon looks like Mike Rowe with long hair LOL

"an insignificant speck of respiring carbon-based dust.." That's kinda poetic, but I still prefer "incidental accretion of ambulatory protoplasm". It's juicier. Love this channel.

Help me, I have no idea why this relates to a need to embrace faith. I fully accept my death. I do not value my consciousness to the point that I think it needs to be everlasting, and I do not need faith to engage with death. I have peered past the precipice and into the idea of death and felt its gravity pulling me in or pulling in the fabric of my mental health. I have been lucky and learned to resist looking in too often. I did not need faith to do this. I also like, and can see some relevance in my life at least (excluding the intervention of an early death), the idea of engaging with the 'horizon of opportunity'. But, I do think it is often obscured by limiting environmental and personal factors for many people. It is too easy to say this is an option, in such an optimistic way, for all people.

We come into life with a limited energy supply, the goal is to take the best possible advantage of the opportunities afforded to us by our inventor, eventually our energy supply runs out and it’s over; would you prefer to never have seen this thing we call life? You familiar with the live fast die young approach? Many of my best friends took that approach, they were beautiful ❤️

Kierkegaard and Heidegger both related meaning and death. But Heidegger was broader, in a sense, because he essentially argued that all words, and therefore all aspects of existence, have meaning because of death. Because words arise from our coping with the world. God doesn't need language because he doesn't have to struggle and cope with other beings in the world.

We each are born into a culture we had no share in designing but that we will be expected to inhabit, implicate and in fact, pass on to our own progeny. This is our circumstance, individually and collectively. Thrown into being, Martin Heidegger said. We didn't ask for it. here it is, what are we to make of it? Much of it and money of it. -Terence McKenna.

The thought about death, seems very stoic.

this stuff is crazy fun... I'm addicted :D

Some good thoughts to ponder from this dialogue

I like to think "Maybe not me and maybe not now"

Dying isn’t the problem, it’s having a tormented living experience that is. I don’t call people weak for not facing the hells that await them in their own life, have you ever truly lived a nightmare? Dying is not the problem, a tormented life is

Living in "flight from death" can of course be debilitating / destructive to living. But being aware of it often can also push you to be and do your best. And to be more humble and caring. I wonder if Heidigger was saying we should completely ignore it in our minds or just to not be anxious about it?

'Is it silly, no? When a rocket blows up And everybody still wants to fly Some say a man ain't happy, truly Until a man truly dies Oh, why? Oh, why? Sign o' the Times'

The denial of death 💀

This is the most stereotypical "philosophy professor" person of all time

Almost everybody runs from the horror of existence, and tries to hide from it with lies.

Love this!! ❤️

David Lee Roth as a Psychologist in a parallel universe- Sheldon Solomon.

“Classic comic book rendering”. Whew, I’m okay 🍄

I love thegreatstory channel as well because they talk about post soon and death. Keep up the good work. We all need to speak on this especially in this time we live.