Faced with the painful awareness of death’s finality, individuals try to recreate a parent or parents in other people, groups, or institutions, or they search for a personal savior on earth or in the heavens. Just as the imagined merger with one’s family once provided its members with an illusion of immortality, group identification offers… Read more »
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Watch and read our exclusive interview with Jon Kabat-Zinn. In a sense, if the great yogi Bob Dylan, said, “If you’re not busy being born, you’re busy dying,” we’re all busy dying. The question is not, “Is there life after death?” but, “Is there life before death?” Because a lot of the time, we could… Read more »
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Human beings are cursed with a conscious awareness of their own mortality. Human beings, unlike other species, are cursed with a conscious awareness of their own mortality. I believe that the tragedy of the human condition is that people’s awareness and true self consciousness concerning this existential issue contributes to an ultimate irony: Human beings… Read more »
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When I was a teenager, I realized that most people were living as though death did not exist. I saw men and women trivializing their relationships and lives with petty arguments and melodramatic reactions to insignificant events, while failing to notice basic issues of personal identity and ignoring existential realities. Their passivity, conformity, and inward… Read more »
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Dr. Sheldon Solomon on Sexuality & Death Awareness
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Dr. Sheldon Solomon on Death Awareness and Psychological Growth Dr. Sheldon Solomon talks about death anxiety and life affirmation. SS: …we like our work but we’re kind of sick of death denial and we’re more interested in life affirmation. And, you know, so we think we understand in quotes how death anxiety can be malignantly… Read more »
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Dr. Sheldon Solomon on Defenses Against Death Anxiety Dr. Sheldon Solomon talks about common defenses against death anxiety. LF: In your work, you focus on defenses against death anxiety that help keep it out of people’s awareness. I was wondering if you could describe those a little bit of what you see as the main… Read more »
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Dr. Sheldon Solomon on Death Awareness and Culture Formation [SlideDeck2 id=13293] Sheldon Solomon talks about Ernest Becker’s description of how death awareness fashions the formation of culture. SS: These are ideas we kind of, I think, borrowed or maybe extrapolated a little from what we gleaned from Ernest Becker. As you know, his argument is… Read more »
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See more video interviews with Dr. Sheldon Solomon
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The following transcript contains part of an exclusive interview with Dr. Lisa Firestone and Dr. Sheldon Solomon. Sheldon Solomon talks about sexuality and death awareness. LF You know, you’ve written some, too, about how our feelings about death affect how we feel about our bodies and really, you know, sort of the problem with sex… Read more »
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