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

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello friends, welcome back. My guest today is Sheldon Solomon. I heard him on Lex Friedman's show and fell in love, reached out to him and he very graciously decided to join me today. We're talking about The Denial of Death, a seminal book by Ernest Becker, and then the subsequent work which has taken up most of Sheldon's life. You might not be aware of it, but death drives an awful lot that we do. Humans are a unique animal in that we are aware of our own mortality. One day we will die and we know it, and that fact has a huge impact on how we love our lives. Perhaps it's the most important fact that we know. So today, expect to learn how Sheldon's experiments have proven that death anxiety is a crucial driver of behavior, why we can hate somebody for the shape of their nose, how death anxiety causes people to be tribal, what would happen if a child grew up without any human contact, and much more. Very calm, existential conversation today. Definitely a multiple listener. I adored this and I'm definitely getting Sheldon back on. We only scratched the surface of how deep and weird I think me and him can go today. In other news, in other news, this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Woven. Woven syncs all of your calendars into one place and upgrades them with powerful scheduling tools. Share your availability directly from your calendar, rapidly build your day with smart templates, or tag every event and automatically see how you spend your week with analytics. Woven puts you back in control of your schedule and helps you spend time on what matters most. Woven is the all-in-one calendar. You don't need any third-party scheduling tools or add-ons or additional expensive subscriptions. You can do everything directly in your calendar. You can automatically send polls to people so that you don't have to deal with the awful back and forth of trying to find a time when you're free. And most importantly, the built-in analytics help you to continue optimizing and improving your schedule every week. Woven connects with Google, G Suite and Office 365, plus the app is available on Mac, Windows and iOS, so you can always optimize your time no matter where you are. If you've been struggling with your schedule in 2020, then Woven is the solution for you. And Modern Wisdom listeners get a 21-day free trial. Go and check it out, see how you get on. Bit.ly slash Woven Wisdom. Oh, there is a link in the show notes below. Just follow that link and you will get a 21-day free trial. No obligation. Go and check it out. See if it can fix your scheduling problems. I certainly know that this year time management has been a huge agenda for a lot of people as they've been in command of their own schedules a lot more. And Woven is the most powerful scheduling and calendar app that is available. Bit.ly slash Woven Wisdom. Or follow the link in the show notes below for a 21-day free trial. See if you can upgrade and fix all of your scheduling and calendar problems. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Sheldon Solomon.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I'm joined by Sheldon Solomon. Sheldon, welcome to the show.

**Sheldon Solomon** (3:21)
Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here, Chris.

**Chris Williamson** (3:24)
Really, really happy to have you on. Are we gonna talk about death today?

**Sheldon Solomon** (3:30)
I believe that we will, hopefully not for the sake of death per se, but in the interest of enhancing life.

**Chris Williamson** (3:39)
How does death enhance life?

**Sheldon Solomon** (3:42)
Well, at our best, the existentialists tell us since time immemorial, it is necessary to come to terms with the most basic fact of human existence, and that is that we, like all living creatures, are of finite duration. And theologians, philosophers, you know, people just sitting on a rock back in antiquity, have wrestled, frankly, with this idea. You know, every other form of life is unperturbed by the reality of finitude, but we necessarily are. And the claim, very simply, is that whether we're aware of it or not, death anxiety pervades every aspect of our existence. And malignant manifestations of death anxiety are arguably responsible directly or indirectly for a considerable proportion of human foibles. And so the claim is that both for the benefit of ourselves as individuals to get the most out of life, as well as for the benefit of society in general, it is necessary both individually and collectively to come to terms with our mortality.