Stop Dying, Dammit!

I just found last night that Richard Pryor died on the 11th. Why does nobody tell me these things? For those of you who don't know, Richard Pryor is one of the greatest comedians of recent history. He topped the list of Comedy Central's 100 greatest stand-up comedians, beating out George Carlin, who came in at #2. I personally think that was a mistake, I'd say they're about equal, but no one asked me. Anyway....

It seems like all the greatest people of this century are dying. We just went through the anniversary of John Lennon's assassination last week. George Harrison died a few years back. Ronald Reagan's been dead for a while now. I may not agree with his policies but I have to admit he was a great man. Ghandi was assassinated in 1948. I think I can consider him a great person of this century, right? Martin Luther King, Jr and Malcom X were both offed, probably by the government, just like JFK. Pope John Paul II died not too long ago. Mother Theresa died, probably of some bug she picked up in Calcutta or something. Isn't it great how all the people in the world we thought of as good and peaceful are dying off? What's going to be left? Warmongers like Bush, wimps like Kerry? I don't think we can have it both ways on this one. Jim Morrison died of heart failure or an OD or something. Douglas Adams, of course; possibly the one death in the last few years that has truly affected me in any way. Mitch Hedburg, another good comedian killed in the line of duty.

Of course, some great men don't do things we consider good. Stalin, Mao, Lenin, and the like are all great men, like it or not. A great man (or woman) is one who does something that spreads to, and effects, the entire world. I mean, you can't say that Stalin didn't have an effect on the United States. If a person is repeatedly in the news, for lots of different actions, then it's a safe bet he'll end up a great man.

Some of the people we value who are still alive are getting along in years, too. Will Shatner isn't as young as he used to be. I saw him on Comedy Central the other night, he looked a bit tired. Denis Leary's still fairly young, but he's chain-smoked for so long that I'm afraid he'll start coughing up bits of lung in the middle of his act. George Carlin.... probably a heart attack, and I'll be the saddest bastard you've ever seen when it happens. Lewis Black, poor guy, he's probably going to be screaming on stage and have an aneurysm. Paul McCartney's looking old too.

Of course, these deaths wouldn't bother us so much if they didn't make us question our own mortality. It may seem true that only the good die young, but everyone dies sometime, right? Celebrities sometimes seem immortal to us. The death of person who, like it or not, is a part of society, will bring death into our minds pretty clearly. Celebrities don't make as much of an impact as people we know, but people we know don't die that often.

At times it seems we're desensitized to death. We see people die all the time. I can watch Keanu Reeeves die in The Matrix: Revolutions on TNT, then flip over to E! (not that I'd really want to; proving a point here) to watch him prance down the red carpet at some inane premiere. For most of us death is not a constant worry. We don't need to worry about tuberculosis or the Black Death or cholera. We're not going to die suddenly from disease. Everything that kills us now either takes years, like AIDS, or is really rare, like Ebola, or is totally unexpected, like random food poisoning. We don't pay much attention to violent death anymore either, when we can turn on the news and watch home video snuff films, security cameraed bank massacres, and the like, all of which is called news but is really just sensationalism.

We're fascniated by death, folks. It doesn't really affect us anymore, because we see it so often... but that's because we want to see it. Death is a fact of life, yes, but it fascinates us. We don't know what's coming after, really. I mean, you can believe that you're going to heaven, or that you're going to be reincarnated, or whatever. But there's always that little bit of doubt, isn't there? Always that little bit of your mind, somewhere in the back where you try to hide it, to keep it quite. That little rational bit of gray matter that's thinking, What if I'm wrong? What if all the ideas I have are wrong, that when we die there's nothing left? That it's the end? It's the things we don't know, the things we don't understand, that draw us like the metaphorical moth to the candle flame (right before we fly right through it and come out nice and crispy). Bigfoot, UFO's, God, and the like are things we don't understand, and might never come to grips with. But the human mind is obsessed with discovery and comprehension. If we can't fathom something, we latch onto it like nothing else. Death is one of those things, or at least the afterlife. Probable afterlife. Possible afterlife?