#240 - Sheldon Solomon - Does The Fear Of Death Drive Everything We Do?

“Nicholas Humphrey, who's a British guy. He wrote a book called Consciousness Regained, I think, in the 1980s. And I favor his view, which is that consciousness may have evolved in social settings.”

“Hannah Arendt, in a book called The Origin of Totalitarianism, after written in the 1950s, she just points out that, you know, it's pretty much the same playbook.”

“In a book called Escape from Evil, which is after the denial of death, Becker discusses the potency of culturally constructed beliefs and the reality of death anxiety.”

“when you said, you know, why is it so important that we come to terms with death, like Albert Camus, come to terms with death thereafter, anything is possible.”

“we use a phrase from a guy, 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.”

“The work that we do is derived from a cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, who in the 1970s won a Pulitzer Prize for a book called The Denial of Death.”

“Virginia Woolf, in a room of one's own, she just says, if necessary, we'll hate somebody for the shape of their nose and for the color of their shirt...”

“The book discusses the prerequisites for human awareness and the capacity for joint attention, which distinguishes humans from great apes.”

“I always loved George Bernard Shaw, on your side of the pond a century ago in a heartbreak house, one of my favorite plays.”

“Another guy I like a lot, Eric Hoffer, wrote a book called The True Believer. They talk about existential anxieties.”

“Sheldon discusses their book 'The Worm at the Core' on the role of death in life, aiming to present ideas conversationally.”

“Sheldon mentions another book called 'The Birth and Death of Meaning' as a source of their ideas.”