«

[Sebatianos]

OK, so I'm guessing this is the "serious" topic opened for this.

Let's see where to start, to develop a possible discusion...

Personally I take death as a part of life, the part of life that everybody (even Disney although some won't admit it) reach in the end. There is therefore nothing unusual about it.

Deaths may be tragic, a relief or a natural way of time passing humanity.

A tragic death would be, if a family with young children dies in a car, because a drunken fart crashed into them and killed them all.

A relief would be if a person has been suffering with no chance of improvement and couldn't function in life anymore (example a person turning into a vegetable who couldn't move - sorry, if you ask me, I'd prefer to die, then to lay on bed and be able to do nothing but blink and feel pain with every breath I take).

A natural way, when a person passed from living to dead due to a natural cause of events. I count deaths of different illnesses in the same category. If your lifestyle included risky sexual relationship and you got AIDS and died in your thirties, I still consider it a natural death (it was your lifestyle). I'd call it a tragedy if you'd gotten AIDS during a routine check-up where a careless nurse didn't change the needle to take your blood sample and you got infected.

The way of your death does not (or at least doesn't ot me) effect my way of feeling about it.

Grief is a comletely different thing.

I'd grief if I'd feel a personal loss over the death of a person, and would not grief if I didn't feel it.

With that being said, I completely understand why people feel grief with celebrity deaths and not because some unknown people died. It's a big difference.

If I hear about an airplane crash and dozens of people die, I might get upset, I would feel sorry for the families and I would - if I could - try to prevent it from heppening again. But I feel no grief. Those people were not less importaint, but I knew nothing about them, I felt nothing towards them (except the interhuman respect I feel for all people, and even most of the animals and plants, simply because all are living creatures).

On the other hand I would feel grief (although I might not be shocked) when a celebrity dies). Good example was the recent death of Luciano Pavarotti. I don't care how he died. He was of an age that death wasn't a shock and he (at least I hope he didn't, because I wish it for no-one) didn't really feel much pain. So his death wasn't tragic, but I did feel a personal loss. I admired the person and his art. I enjoyed his singing and the person was able to stir up emotions within me. That is why I felt a certain loss with his death (I never had any feelings stired by those unknown people in the plane). and that's the difference.

And I guess that there isn't a single celebrity, who wouldn't stir up some feelings (honestly I can't imagine a person becoming famous by not doing things - even millionare children, who basically did nothing to be famous but appear in the newspapers, envoke some feelings; if nothing else envy for their wealth, or resent for their spoled lifestyle).

And I believe that is why people react differently to celebreties dying. Off course it always depends on the celebrity and the target group of the fans how it would manifest itself. Example if Justin Timberlake would die, there would probably be thousands of teenage girls crying publically - and the rest of the public probably mocking them for being so silly. But when Osvaldo Cavandoli died most people didn't even notice (or knew who he was), but those who did silently payed thei respect and went on their way (with mases being ignorant about it). And I'm convinced you're mostly bothered by the reactions of masses to the deaths of certain celebrities, than of people acctually feeling grief for certain people they never really personally met.