Death all around
With David Bowie, Victoria Wood, Prince and many others, there's a lot of it around. Some argue George R. R. Martin is scripting 2016; others point to more prosaic factors, like it being about the time you'd expect Baby Boomers who came to fame in the explosion of celebrity in the 60s to die off. (Although that doesn't work for Victoria Wood or Prince.)
Never mind celebrity: it's happening more and more to people I care about personally. But again, that's at least partly a timing effect. The death rate is very low for people under 25, and only starts to climb notably around 45 ... which is my age cohort. And, of course, the people in the generation above me are getting to the stage where it's nowhere near unusual.
I take some comfort from this not being a new problem. On the celebrity side, I remember my parents noting that a lot of famous people (that I'd never heard of at the time) were dying when I was young in the 70s and 80s: I think that was the early Hollywood stars reaching that age.
And it goes right back, possibly as far as humans. Ecclesiastes is among humanity's older written texts, and it's good on this, as on so much that's gloomy. There's the opening chapter, which makes essentially the complaint I'm making here, only more articulately: "4. One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. [...] 7. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. [...] 10. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us."
It's not the good ones who live long, nor the bad ones who die off:
"All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongs his life in his wickedness." (7:15).
Never a good sign when I'm reminded of Ecclesiastes. It's an astonishing thing to put in the middle of scripture. I do like the Wisdom literature, but Ecclesiastes is the best. And gloomiest.
This entry crossposted to http://doug.dreamwidth.org/316939.html, where there are
comment(s) not shown here.
Never mind celebrity: it's happening more and more to people I care about personally. But again, that's at least partly a timing effect. The death rate is very low for people under 25, and only starts to climb notably around 45 ... which is my age cohort. And, of course, the people in the generation above me are getting to the stage where it's nowhere near unusual.
I take some comfort from this not being a new problem. On the celebrity side, I remember my parents noting that a lot of famous people (that I'd never heard of at the time) were dying when I was young in the 70s and 80s: I think that was the early Hollywood stars reaching that age.
And it goes right back, possibly as far as humans. Ecclesiastes is among humanity's older written texts, and it's good on this, as on so much that's gloomy. There's the opening chapter, which makes essentially the complaint I'm making here, only more articulately: "4. One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. [...] 7. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. [...] 10. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us."
It's not the good ones who live long, nor the bad ones who die off:
"All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perishes in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongs his life in his wickedness." (7:15).
Never a good sign when I'm reminded of Ecclesiastes. It's an astonishing thing to put in the middle of scripture. I do like the Wisdom literature, but Ecclesiastes is the best. And gloomiest.
This entry crossposted to http://doug.dreamwidth.org/316939.html, where there are
comment(s) not shown here.