An Interview with Sheldon Solomon
On Coming to Terms with Death in the Anthropocene
As part of our goal to grow our YouTube channel, we are releasing the video versions of our interviews. We’re excited to share with you this interview we conducted with Sheldon Solomon in the spring of 2021, which you may have already listened to in podcast-form.
In this interview we discuss all things death denial. We discuss the ways in which our modern separation from the life/death/life cycle has allowed us to wreak havoc upon the environment, and how our neurotic fear of death also causes us to distrust one another. We discuss self-esteem, and we also discuss dread and awe, which seem to be uniquely human emotions. We also talk about how the blind belief in the inevitability of progress is taking us down a dark road, and how the acceptance and awareness of our mortality can help us turn our attention to the vistas of awe and enchantment necessary to create the more beautiful world we all want to live in.
We hope you enjoy the video version of this old conversation which still has so much resonance today. This interview is was also featured prominently in our first short film, What is the Human Animal? Sheldon’s interview provided the perfect amount of humor and earnestness to end-cap that video, so we’re very grateful we captured this interview.
Be sure to check out Ernest Becker's book, The Denial of Death and Sheldon's book, The Worm at The Core.
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