Robert Jay Solomon Death Analysis

Dr. Solomon in the beginning of the lecture quoted Robert Jay Lifton, saying that we are responsible for our own extinction. He was relating to the growth of weaponry in the 20th century; yet, I believe that some of the points he made about “death” throughout the lecture, they could also be applied to the statement about extinction. To me, this lecture was not just about death, but life as well. Depression and substance abuse is a current— or even past—problem for many Americans. I am currently taking the Psychopathology class here at Grand Valley, so a quote Dr. Solomon said really stood out to me: “America is a petri dish of psychopathology.” This metaphor was interesting to me because I had never really thought of it in that context before. I …show more content…
Soloman mentioned in the lecture that we could honestly die at any moment, we really have no control over it. This is where I think he got the term “death anxiety” from. He mentioned it many times and he said that we minimize this anxiety in a few ways. For example, through believing life has meaning. As he was explaining how we must believe the meaning to our life, I instantly came back to the idea of depression. I imagined people who do not think they have meaning to their life and normally they are depressed. I was actually surprised because then shortly after he pointed out that same idea. Another way is through value. I liked the illustration he gave by saying that when we were all little we inspired to do something great, as in cure cancer. When he was explaining this I thought back to when I was little and the things that I inspired to be, I remember it made me excited about my life and growing up. I never really had death anxiety and still do not. I agree with Dr. Solomon on the fact that our death anxiety is minimized if we are certain of our meaning and value that our life