The Promise of a New Year Defeats the Fear of Death. A Shot of Optimism from Jason Silva

What’s the Big Idea?

Unlike other animals, human beings are deeply neurotic. We possess the knowledge that one day we are going to die. We struggle with the idea of our own mortality, and therefore have created a complex culture with an engenius array of diversions. 

One of those diversions is Jason Silva, the remixer of optimism who we have described as “part Timothy Leary, part Ray Kurzweil, and part Neo from The Matrix.” Silva offers up videos “as an antidote to existential malaise.” What culture can offer us, says Silva, is an avenue to “transcend death temporarily.” 

Watch the video here:

What’s the Significance?

How do we rid ourselves of anxiety, or at least provide ourselves temporary release? According to Silva, it through inspiration. 

We’ll need plenty of it for the New Year.

“To be beheld by awe…aesthetic arrest, wonder, inspiration…” Silva says these are ways that we “defy entropy, by creating beauty and order and complexity.”

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