Significial Of Death, By John Solomon

In chapter 7, Solomon begins exploring and discussing the prospect of death. At one point or another, our lives will come to an end, and when that day comes, we tend to look more closely at our Adam II qualities more than ever. To start the chapter off, Solomon begins with a brief history about the denial of death. His basic premise comes from a writer by the name of Ernest Becker. In Becker’s final book, he pointed out that we--as Americans--had purposefully buried ourselves within our day-to-day lives in hopes of ignoring our ultimate demise. Of course, this isn’t the only time someone has pointed out this detail about humanity; Solomon claims that this idea has been discovered time and time again and even branched out beyond the US. he then starts to question on what it means to be in denial of death. Solomon starts to give reasoning for such denial through a variety of viewpoints and scenarios such as the time in history it took place and the way separate cultures dealt with it in their societies. After the brief history lesson, Solomon goes on to analyze the denial behind death. He starts of with this idea that we’ve essentially outgrown such fantasies of our personal life,and how we must deal with the aftermath. He gives a slight answer on what it means to deny death. To him, it’s when we make our mundane day-to-day
This idea came from several philosophers such as Lucretius and Epicurus where they insisted that once we die, we become nothing. One thing to be made clear is that viewing death as nothing isn’t to be misinterpreted as the denial of death. Instead, it’s the acceptance of death. However, this idea opens another can of worms where life is not only nothing, but meaningless. This leads Solomon to backpedal to how this notion of death being nothing came to be. It should be seen as nothing to worry about. He concludes that the meaning of death comes down to the meaning of