Though you may get to it before I. It's the "last lecture" of a professor who has a couple months to live. Evidently, the "last lecture" is generally given as if the professor were dying. In this case, there is no if.
I've heard it's good. There's a transcript and a link to the video HERE.
I read in a Dilbert book, of all places, yesterday that we tend to sensationalize some deaths, like those caused by a serial killer, while ignoring others. That really, aren't 10 unrelated deaths more tragic than 9 caused by a single person?
Thursday, October 11, 2007
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3 comments:
Dave, did you see Ken and Alicia's blog. I think he posted this first. :) :)
Your sis.
Regarding the relative valuation of deaths, two deaths can be valued differently. So, for example, a quiet death in one's sleep is considered better than being burned at the stake. Similarly, a death in old age is more acceptable than a death at a young age because the older person has gotten to live out their 'natural life' but the young person has had their natural life cut short.
Of course, there's also the fact that people prefer reading about sensational events.
I guess, though, we could change the paradigm as Christians and see all death as tragic, since every death—whether from ‘natural causes’ or a brutal murder--is a result of our alienation from God.
But even allowing that different ways of dying may be more or less preferable, we can still say that 9 murders by a serial killer are more mourned and publicized than 10 individual murders, even if the means of death is the same. That may have been his point - it was just something I noticed in passing, as commentary on our love of the sensational.
Personally, I'm all for a paradigm shift. Death is an enemy to be destroyed, and a tragedy for all who are left behind.
In knowing of one recent death personally, and seeing no mention of it in the news... I wonder how many more tragedies happen that no one pauses to notice?
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