In this land of opportunity, they may or may not deserve to be down, but they certainly have many opportunities to get back on the right track. No one celebrates their failures; you are looney tunes.... A handout deserves a hand up. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it is better that way.
Why? Is his action so much different than any other suicide that we should expend so much energy on him when we don't over other suicides? Please.
If your death can somehow save the life of another (like in that movie, John Q). If you are going to die anyway and want to spare yourself the agony (your plane crashes 5,000 miles of course, the transponder is broken, and you have no access to food or fresh water, and your leg was badly broken, maybe you just want to put yourself out of your misery). Like I said, few exceptions.
I'm wondering how many of the people who have defended "dark humor" would have felt the same if someone were making jokes about the attacks on the WTC. Frankly, I could care less. Humor is humor. It's just interesting sometimes to see the hypocrisy. And I can hear you now: "Well the people that died on Sept. 11th didn't have a choice in the matter. This guy chose to kill himself." Does that somehow make his life less significant or his death less meaningful? Either respect the absense of human life, or be willing to make light of it. But let's not joke about this obviously troubled man killing himself and turn around and be upset about jokes made about the 9/11 attacks. Not that anyone has yet, but I'm fairly sure that jokes about the WTC attacks would be a whole different ballgame for you people. Personally, I think people should be allowed to joke about anything and everything they want. Humor is a coping mechanism. We dislike the things we see around us, and one way of dealing with that is to make light of them. Also, by forbidding humor concerning a certain subject, you increase the allure that comes with joking about that subject. Kind of the same theory behind the inefficiency of prohibition. If something is illegal, or you aren't supposed to do it, there will always be some people that do it to rebel or be cool. But as soon as something is legal, or encouraged, the attitude turns to one of "What's the point of doing something everyone can do?" It takes away the appeal of the act. Now you're not doing it to be different, because everyone's doing it. Now you're doing it because it genuinely brings pleasure to you, which is what we should strive for. Anything done for shock value should generally be ignored.
Ender: I'm not sure who you are calling the hypocrites here, but if you can't see the difference between a colossal event like 9/11 and a phantom event like this guy's suicidal protest, I don't know exactly what to say. Being victimized versus being self-inflicted is everything. Your "dictate" to laugh at nothing or laugh at everything pre-supposes that people are robots and they aren't.... yet. I saw a thing on TV recently which credits the 9/11 event with the spike in popularity of reality TV and correspondingly the dwindling of the popularity of the TV sitcom.
Sadly many people will wind up killing themselves because Bush won. Very few will do so in such a dramatic fashion. Thousands of the unisured will kill themselves as they can't stand the unnecessary pain that results when they can't get pain pills or as they get hopelessly sick and depressed without healthcare. We see returning verterans from an elective war killing themselves etc.
I wasn't really calling anyone a hypocrite. I wondered how many of you who defended dark humor in this case would not allow it were it applied to an event that hit closer to home like 9/11. And I wasn't about to make the jokes myself to gauge people's reaction. I really don't see the difference between Sept. 11th and this guy's suicide. Oh the WTC attacks are so tragic, think of all the families of the victims, blah blah blah. You don't think that this guy had a family? A mother and a father who will never see or talk to him again? If you can't see the similarities between the tragedy of a group of people being murdered and the tragedy of a man's depression driving him to end his life, then I don't know what to say. And I wasn't mandating that everyone laugh at everything or laugh at nothing, but instead that they either laugh at similar situations or don't laugh at similar situations. If you can laugh about this poor man's tragic death, then you should be able to laugh at the tragic deaths of the 3,000 people on Sept. 11th. And if you believe that those 3,000 people's deaths are beyond the realm of humor, then show this dead man the same respect. I think most of us can agree that the man was troubled mentally, which would tend to absolve him of much of the responsibility of his actions. And your comment about 9/11 causing reality tv to grow in popularity is really interesting. I'd like to hear/read more about that. If true, then it would be the third worst thing to come of 9/11 (behind the Patriot Act and our 50's Paranoia: Millenium Edition).
It's all about scale. Of course he had those who loved him and no doubt they are not laughing but that is not really meaningful to "us" because his death does not threaten us like the deaths of those who died on 9/11 does. 9/11 is ominous and portentous while his death is now just old news.
I don't believe that the scale argument is fair. If anything, 9/11 would exist as a warning to us that life is short and precious, and has very little to do with the individuals that died; rather it is focused on the fact that they died at all. And in that respect, this man's death can be just as ominous. This is what happens when depression goes untreated, or when potentially suicidal people are not looked after more closely. And I would like to exclude myself from your classification of "us", because personally, I feel fairly apathetic about the attacks of September 11th. I have never been to New York in my life, do not have family members that were put in danger, and do not feel that I am under any threat of terrorist attack. However, I do know people that have suffered from depression, and several people that have attempted suicide, and that would most likely be a source of bias. It's easier for me to relate to the tragedy of suicide than the tragedy of September 11th, and I'm sure you each have your own personal experiences that have shaped how you reacted to 9/11. All I'm saying is that you should be mindful of others' connections to tragedy, and either be willing to make light of your own tragic situations, or respect the feelings others feel concerning their own tragedies.
