Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Saint Recently Deceased Public Figure

The old line is don't speak ill of the dead. Lately, however, it feels like we have gone to the opposite extreme, at least with public figures.

A politician has just died in Canada and the instant canonization is amazing. I'm not making a point about the guy himself, which is why I don't name him here. He was a politician and neither an especially good nor especially bad guy.

The thing is the reaction. People are making tributes, holding vigils, setting up little memorials and so forth. We keep doing this. It's sad that the guy died and it's sad that there is a family without a father but people die this way everyday.

I think the Serpentine One put her finger on what drives this: it's a denial of the value of suffering and the inevitability of death. The tributes are all overcompensating because we don't want to face these things.

 We praise this life to the heavens because the death of a public figure at the height of his career seems so unusually pointless. But this is the way of all flesh.

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