"We're all weeping now, weeping because there ain't nothing we can do to protect you..."
Perhaps some of you have heard about the plane crash that occurred yesterday in Russia, in which an entire hockey team died. There weren't only Russian players in that team, as you might have guessed, some of them were from Germany, Slovakia, and three from the Czech Republic. All of them dead.
I'm not a huge fan of hockey, but even in spite of my lack of interest, I've heard about those three Czech players before, as they were a part of the national team and won several championships etc. It's a terrible tragedy and I feel for their families (they all had young children) and friends.
However, to the actual point of this entry... Throughout the whole day yesterday, browsing facebook and various other social sites, I kept wondering what's the 'right' thing to do. Do I mourn for them? Do I join those facebook groups that say 'RIP blah blah blah'? Should I be sad or should I move on with my normal life? I mean, I've never met those people, I've just vaguely knew about their existence. And I'm sure the same goes for at least half the people who were posting mournful statuses yesterday, joining facebook groups and publicly professing their grief. If they didn't die, half of those 'mourners' would never even give those hockey players a second thought.
Somehow, this reminds me of Fight Club. "In death, a member of project Mayhem has a name."
I hate living in a world, which makes me feel obliged to care about the deaths of certain people, but not others. And this is not a 'celebrity' thing. I'm not saying people shouldn't mourn for celebrities. I'd sure as Hell be pretty devastated if one of my favourite actors/musicians/writers/etc died. I'd be sad, because I have some emotional attachment to their work, because they made some sort of impact on my life, because I cared about them during their lives.
However, why should I mourn for somebody just because the media tells me to? Or because my peer group jumps on the bandwagon of grief? It is very sad. I acknowledge that and move on.
Hundreds of people die every day. People we've never heard about before. I barely knew those hockey players even existed before yesterday, so I put them on the same level as everybody else in the world, who died yesterday.
(Feel free to express your opinions on this topic, I'd like to know what others think.)
I'm not a huge fan of hockey, but even in spite of my lack of interest, I've heard about those three Czech players before, as they were a part of the national team and won several championships etc. It's a terrible tragedy and I feel for their families (they all had young children) and friends.
However, to the actual point of this entry... Throughout the whole day yesterday, browsing facebook and various other social sites, I kept wondering what's the 'right' thing to do. Do I mourn for them? Do I join those facebook groups that say 'RIP blah blah blah'? Should I be sad or should I move on with my normal life? I mean, I've never met those people, I've just vaguely knew about their existence. And I'm sure the same goes for at least half the people who were posting mournful statuses yesterday, joining facebook groups and publicly professing their grief. If they didn't die, half of those 'mourners' would never even give those hockey players a second thought.
Somehow, this reminds me of Fight Club. "In death, a member of project Mayhem has a name."
I hate living in a world, which makes me feel obliged to care about the deaths of certain people, but not others. And this is not a 'celebrity' thing. I'm not saying people shouldn't mourn for celebrities. I'd sure as Hell be pretty devastated if one of my favourite actors/musicians/writers/etc died. I'd be sad, because I have some emotional attachment to their work, because they made some sort of impact on my life, because I cared about them during their lives.
However, why should I mourn for somebody just because the media tells me to? Or because my peer group jumps on the bandwagon of grief? It is very sad. I acknowledge that and move on.
Hundreds of people die every day. People we've never heard about before. I barely knew those hockey players even existed before yesterday, so I put them on the same level as everybody else in the world, who died yesterday.
(Feel free to express your opinions on this topic, I'd like to know what others think.)