cantsin
Well-Known Member
or more potently, shaped by our own experiences of death in real life, away from the Spectacle.
Peaches Geldof is dead, age 25
- Thread starter _pH_
- Start date
or more potently, shaped by our own experiences of death in real life, away from the Spectacle.
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
Sorry if this is wrong but you seem to be saying that because you have had your own personal losses, you can't empathise with others'? Especially if they are famous. ??
cantsin
Well-Known Member
no need to apologise,but yes, totally wrong. You're talking about "empathy", but I was responding to someone who was "very sad "by the death of people he/she seemed to think he/she "knew", but it turned out didnt know. Or didn't "know" in the old fashioned sense.
I feel empathy for the Geldofs, and was no doubt momentarily "shocked", just as the media hopes/expects, but I guess the fact that I feel I (like millions of others) that I know what "very sad " means in real life, I can't easily equate my feelings for the passing of complete strangers, "famous" or not, with "very sad" . "
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Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
But you can appreciate how existent feelings of grief can be amplified by reading/hearing the reporting of other deaths?
cantsin
Well-Known Member
for me personally - there was no room for amplification as I remember it tbh, let alone by media reports of a strangers death - raw grief seemed to exist in it's own suffocating, existential bubble. But that was just us, then. Maybe nowadays that death would have been a social network event shared by all, including empathetic near strangers , as young deaths often are these days.
bmd
Island in the stream.
I don't think this is the same thing. He took a risk and it didn't work out for him. It's tragic but I feel the same about this as I would someone crashing whilst trying out a wing suit. Shit but not wholly unexpected.
Unless like me you have been emotionally numb after a relative dies. In fact I was reading something Peaches Geldof said about not crying at her mother's funeral and not properly grieving until five years afterwards. You seem to talk on the premise that we are all in touch with our emotions in a healthy way. It is kind of awkward to talk about but I kind of never really faced up to my mum dying. I was emotionally numb through depression in the first place. I think there is something in what you are saying, it just doesn't apply to everyone.
cantsin
Well-Known Member
not at all, there was no "in touch with our emotions in a healthy way " element about my experiences, "suffocating", miserable, isolated (wont go into it, but there was no poetic / collective solace etc) , it was fucking insane and horrible, from start ( copper in my gaff at 7 am sneerily asking me to put away the weed bag / other stuff on the table as he told me what he immediately / obviously assumed was the not wholly unexpected news) to finish ( which it hasnt,really).
But will say, a kid going is different to a parent going everyone says, natural way of it all etc. Our relationships with parents are naturally much more complicated, and responses vary massively ( not always a Richard Curtis scripted outpouring of warm, uncomplicated, elegant grief) - a youngsters death is I guess, at the very least, more straight fwd to deal with in that sense, perverse though that sounds.
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UrbaneFox
They've doubled in price
Dogsauce, thanks for the paperclip joke.
I think she was married to one of the Bee Gees.
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
I met her very briefly once, about 10 years ago at the Live Aid DVD event she must've been 14 or 15 with Bob and her sisters, I remember she was trying to get someone to give her some of the free booze IIRC Bob had told everyone not to. That's my very tenuous link anyway.
Like others I didn't have much of an opinion about her until the other week when she gave that horrid cow what for on this morning. She seemed to have come good, sort of. Very sad for all who were close to her, and the kids.
Like others I didn't have much of an opinion about her until the other week when she gave that horrid cow what for on this morning. She seemed to have come good, sort of. Very sad for all who were close to her, and the kids.
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
Russell Brand with some relevant thoughts on the media reporting/Peaches Geldof etc:
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
What a load of bollocks.
Total ARSEWEE
Total ARSEWEE
He can be an eloquent man, but he's also a huge fucking hypocrite. His Paxman rant was quality until you realize he's just bought himself a multi million dollar mansion in Beverley Hills, and I'm not sure he's quite the right man to bemoan the 'salaciousness' of the broadcast media when after all this is someone who humiliated a young conquest of his and her grandfather on national radio by telling us all exactly how he shagged her.
Batboy
Trumpeting is good for you...
Yep, I got flamed on these boards at the time of the paxman interview for slagging Brand off for being a fucking hypocrite.
I think sadness is an appropriate word for what many people have felt here. It's not grief, it's sadness, probably a fleeting sadness for most of us. Apologies if this is presumptuous, but I don't think I'd use the word sadness to describe your experience, it's more brutal than that, it sounds to me closer to devastation, and it would be absurd to equate the two experiences, although the feelings you've been left with over time include sadness.
Batboy
Trumpeting is good for you...
I endorse what you say and I made a very simple comment yesterday about Geldoff, but it does drive me nuts when people and the media orgasm over celebrity deaths.
Yesterday I found out about two deaths of people I know, one was my best mates mum and the other was my sons, best mates cousin who at 18 died in a rock climbing fall in central America, their family are pretty devastated, I know the family really well. The young lad went to my kids school, many of the teachers were in tears. It totally diluted any thoughts of mine about the Geldof's loss. I now have possibly two funerals to go to in a week. The difference is there is not going to be a forty page thread about the whys, and how's and the ohs.
maomao
普費斯
There's been no such thing. There were a couple of pages of people saying 'crikey, that's rather sad' and then ten pages of arguing about whether it's alright to think it's a bit sad or not.
Batboy
Trumpeting is good for you...
There will be on other forums, probably a million postings id reckon
maomao
普費斯
Must be a billion I reckon. But not here. Somewhere else.
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
'Somebody died'
- Is it good that we don't know who she is?
'I don't know, I don't know who she is'
- Shall we go on the internet and find out?
'Okay, but won't we lose our superiority then?'
- Dunno, I reassess that when we find out who she is
Edit: I've just seen on another thread that The Ultimate Warrior has died. I really don't know who that is.
Wilf said:Edit: I've just seen on another thread that The Ultimate Warrior has died. I really don't know who that is.
I see loads of RIP threads where I haven't the foggiest who it is. I either ignore the thread or Google to find out more.
Saying 'Who?' really does just mean 'OMGz I can't believe you are having a RIP thread for this person.' Which is a cuntish thing to do on a RIP thread. Unless it's about Thatcher.
Wrestlers seem to drop like flies. It's a pretty depressing lifestyle by all accounts: by day entertaining rednecks who like violence, by night sleeping in hotel rooms on painkillers.
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
It means that reading about sad things in the news often invokes our own sadnesesses and feelings of loss.
i was thinking about this tragedy and didnt sleep well either Monday or last night. That will make sense to some and sound bonkers to others. It stokes up unsettling feelings in me, for all kinds of reasons. Some are personal but my strongest is a sadness I feel for a young woman robbed of her life, children robbed of their mother, and her family.
Doctor Carrot
Marxist Henchman
Have you felt the same in the past when you've read about, say, a 16 year old kid dying from a dodgy pill at a rave? Has that prevented you from sleeping too? Or do you think it's the personal reasons you've alluded to? Not criticising you just wondering why this particular death has affected you this much?
I guess I just find it interesting how we read about unspeakable horrors in the news on a daily basis, the bomb in Pakistan today for example, and just carry on eating while we're reading it or whatever but the death of a public figure in what are probably far less horrific circumstances affects some people so much. I myself even said 'oh shit Peaches Geldoff died!' and 'that's sad' when I read it but I had no reaction whatsoever to reading about the bomb in Pakistan today.
Mr Moose
What the hell are we supposed to tell the kids?
It's not easy to predict what will set off those feelings. My friend, whose father had recently died suddenly, lost it while watching Inspector Morse cop it a few months later. He knew in a way it was utterly absurd, but it evoked something real.
It's a fundamental emotion grief, always looking to bubble out when you have it.
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