You are aware of your own life. Somebody else will be aware of your death. In this episode I walk through what self-awareness needs to exist (a shape, a body, a brain capable of perceiving itself), why we can never imagine our own non-existence (because imagination requires the self we're trying to imagine away), how we construct our notion of personal death from observing the deaths of others, why animals are trapped in the present while humans are trapped between past and future that don't exist, how Ernest Becker's Denial of Death argues that fear of mortality shapes everything we do, and what the disciplined response to mortality awareness looks like. The closer: the best thing in this life is to preserve the curiosity of a child against the cynicism that age tries to produce.

My book Mythos: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX2ZN1TK

My Blog https://kirillkhrestinin.com