So I'm sure all of you by now know about Robin Williams, he hung himself yesterday aged 63. The man had a long fight with depression which he unfortunatly lost and now the internet is filled with tributes to him and a lot of people are emotional about it, he's been in a lot of my childhood movies and always manages to make me laugh when I see one of his standups or interviews.
So I've seen the typical things come up, "You people care more about thing X than this Crisis: Garza, the war in Iraq, people starving in Africa whatever. I hate this argument, people try to seem smug and superior and label you a hypocrite just for feeling what you feel and you can't control your emotional reaction to things so that's unfair.
Here's my opinion on this. There's 7 billion people in the world and a lot of them have problems, ranging from not being able to pay the bills all the way across the spectrum to murders rapes starvation disease all that bad shit. If I could actually feel an appropriate emotional response like these people seem to want I'd go insane.
Which would you say is more upsetting to you, your dog dieing or a massacre in another country? Emotions are stronger for your dog because it's near and you've ascribed a personality to it.
We feel for Robin because we've watched him for years and even if it was just his persona we assigned a personality to him. It's kind of like losing a friend(though much less harsh, I've actually lost a close friend to a car accident and I'd never say a celebrity death was just as bad)
So this just turned into a rambling rant but I think there's a point in here somewhere. What do you think escapists?
So I've seen the typical things come up, "You people care more about thing X than this Crisis: Garza, the war in Iraq, people starving in Africa whatever. I hate this argument, people try to seem smug and superior and label you a hypocrite just for feeling what you feel and you can't control your emotional reaction to things so that's unfair.
Here's my opinion on this. There's 7 billion people in the world and a lot of them have problems, ranging from not being able to pay the bills all the way across the spectrum to murders rapes starvation disease all that bad shit. If I could actually feel an appropriate emotional response like these people seem to want I'd go insane.
Which would you say is more upsetting to you, your dog dieing or a massacre in another country? Emotions are stronger for your dog because it's near and you've ascribed a personality to it.
We feel for Robin because we've watched him for years and even if it was just his persona we assigned a personality to him. It's kind of like losing a friend(though much less harsh, I've actually lost a close friend to a car accident and I'd never say a celebrity death was just as bad)
So this just turned into a rambling rant but I think there's a point in here somewhere. What do you think escapists?