Tim doesn't FTR

[John A Swartz]

> Hardman DK writes:
>
> > "Sadly"?  Does anyone really want to watch someone kill themselves? Why?
> > Leary's idea to commit suicide on the net was, to my mind, pretty
> > ghoulish, and I hope he was simply trying to stir up controversy rather
> > than really intending to do it.  Actually doing it would have been really
> > sick, though not as sick as anyone actually wanting to get some
> > voyeuristic thrill by watching him do it.
>
I may seem ghoulish on the surface, but wouldn't the idea have been
to poke fun at our whole concept of death?  I think TL was simply
saying: we have this morbid fixation with death, but death is nothing
more than another human function, like breathing.  And, of course,
the whole DFTR idea of life as cyclic experience--one life ends as
another begins, the inevitablility of death, our need to come to
grips with it, etc...


Well, I agree with DK - I don't think there's alot of merit in watching
someone die.  While we perhaps should not fear the reaper (even though
most of us probably do on some level), I don't think observing someone
else's encounter with the reaper is necessary beneficial to any of us,
and I certainly don't think there's any humor involved -- if you can
laugh at your own death fine, but laugh at someone else's?  Personally,
I thought the whole idea of broadcasting your death (be it over the
internet, radio, or cable TV) is both dumb and useless -- death is a
personal experience, and as much as we might have loved ones all around
us, I think when it comes right down to dying, we go at it alone - and
neither BOC's most famous song nor someone's broadcast of their own
death will fundamentally change that ultimate moment.

At least that's what the Three Men in Black told me . . .

John