Do you feel bad when people you don't know die?
When you hear about a politician or actor who died, do you genuinely feel bad? I'm not talking about how you think you're supposed to feel, or how you act. Obviously you're not going to make jokes about it to a family member, for example. But do you genuinely, deep down, honest-to-Zeus feel sad?
Am I the only cold-hearted bastard who doesn't feel sad? Or are the rest of you just pretending?
<img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
Am I the only cold-hearted bastard who doesn't feel sad? Or are the rest of you just pretending?
<img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
Comments
<strong>When you hear about a politician or actor who died, do you genuinely feel bad? I'm not talking about how you think you're supposed to feel, or how you act. Obviously you're not going to make jokes about it to a family member, for example. But do you genuinely, deep down, honest-to-Zeus feel sad?
Am I the only cold-hearted bastard who doesn't feel sad? Or are the rest of you just pretending?
<img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
its sad, but honestly i really don't feel much at all either...hearing that one or two people died really doesn't bother me much at all, and that type of stuff is in the news, think of all the people that die per hour around the world...and u are supposed to feel bad for one person? its not cool that people die but it happens, one day i will die, u will die....everyone will die eventually...take in the good while you have a chance to and enjoy your life
ps...glad to see there are others
Just human nature, I think. Don't equate lack of sadness with lack of respect for the deceased, IOW.
Sometimes when a celebrities is dying, you have the strange feeling that a part of you vanish. i have the odd feeling that i am getting older. But i am not very worried, like Brussel or Moogs.
<strong>"Colored people absorb the light, whereas we white devils reflect it back to blind and oppress the colored people."
-BRussell
</strong><hr></blockquote> <img src="graemlins/lol.gif" border="0" alt="[Laughing]" />
Thanks for the quote. I'm not sure it's something I'd like to be known for saying, but hey, being famous for something is better than not being famous at all.
i feel sad for people who die murdered, in terrorist attacks etc, it doesn't matter if i knew them or not.
i feel sad also for the elderly people who are not allowed to die, as some doctors understand their work as keeping the human life alive at all costs. even when the patients don't want to have their life anyomre.
after 12 years, i have accepted the death as a natural part of life. it will not make the life go upside down anymore.
do you feel happy then when people you don't know are born??
When poor little rich boy over shoots his flying skills and offs his, wife sister in law and himself....Darwin Award time.
When some musicians die, in particular Cobain and Staley, it got to me a little more. I didn't know these people, but their music meant a lot to me, and just so happened to mean an awful lot more because of the period of time in my life. So when I know these people won't be able to continue to do that, I sort of feel like a piece of me has left.
What usually gets me more is the people that didn't die. By this, I mean, people that came close, but are now permanently disabled. My mother had an aneurysm, and came close to dying, and thank god didn't. But still, you live seeing tha condition of that person every day. Often times that is worse than death itself.
But naturally as human beings, we have a WANT to live. We strive for life. We run from death. It's kind of natural that we feel a little bad about death in general. But really, I don't feel too bad when someone dies. I'm usually not a terribly emotional person though *shrugs*
for most of the news stories tho, i just think, "glad it wasn't me or anyone i kno."
Somehow it comes as no surprise to me that AI is filled with antisocial personalities.<hr></blockquote>
I have to wonder how many of those who claim / will claim to be completely unaffected or indifferent, have had someone close to them die unexpectedly....
Like I said though, even that behavior is just human nature. People don't like thinking about death or letting a death get them down. Life is for the living, as they say.
Though some catharsis usually comes from getting your emotions out when someone important to you dies (whether related or not), the flipside is that some people can get into a real funk thinking about the deceased, death, etc. Best to not let it ruffle your feathers at all, then show your emotions and be depressed for a week.
[ 10-28-2002: Message edited by: Moogs ]</p>
Cobain's suicide really affected me when I was 13, that was tragic.
I'm still young enough that it's not time for my real heroes to die yet.
I'll hole myself up in my room the day Kurt Vonnegut Jr dies. It's gotta happen sometime, he's getting old and I can't think of anyone that I've never met that had so much influence on me.
<strong>
I have to wonder how many of those who claim / will claim to be completely unaffected or indifferent, have had someone close to them die unexpectedly....
[ 10-28-2002: Message edited by: Moogs ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
My father died of a heart attack when I was 16. My mother was felled by a stroke three years later. I grieved for them. I felt a momentary twinge for Senator Wellstone and his family. I felt a "gosh, that's too bad" for the victims in Moscow. I felt a hearty "poor guy" for the bus driver in Virginia.
If that makes me anti-social, oh well. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
I don't see how not being affected by someone you don't know dying makes you anti-social, it doesn't make sense.
In the past year, I've felt particular sadness for the death of US Senator Paul Wellstone last Friday and the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in January. But every now and then I'll hear on the radio about someone like you or me killed and it will feel stunning, if only for that moment.