Default state of being for a person, in your mind: Dead or alive?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Weird question, I know, but I didn’t want to threadshit in the dead celeb thread. So I figured, what the heck, might be worth a thread of its own. (Or, maybe it isn’t. Could go either way, I suppose. Maybe we’ll see.)

My answer to the question of what celebrity death would upset me is “none”. This is no doubt partly because I’m a cold and heartless bastard who doesn’t have emotions. But it occurred to me that it’s also partly because I tend to think of “dead” as sort the default state for a person.

Most people are dead. Most people that I admire are dead. Most people that I read about, think about or even watch on a movie screen are dead, usually long dead (hey, I’ve been reading a lot of history lately, and I like old movies). And it doesn’t seem to be doing them much harm, frankly. If someone happens to be alive at the current moment, that’s more an unlikely coincidence than anything else. And in a while, they’ll be dead. That’s what people do: They live for a while, do whatever they do, then die. A living person is just a dead person who happens to be not quite dead yet.

Sure, if someone that I love were to die, that would suck big time. And* I *don’t want to be dead. Or at least I don’t think so. But someone that I don’t know personally? Dead yesterday, dead today, dead tomorrow, dead in ten years from now, dead a thousand years ago: Basically irrelevant. If they die young, or gruesomely, that might be a sad thing, I guess. But I’m not more or less upset if it happens to someone today than if it happened to someone hundreds of years ago.

As a result, I’m always puzzled by the threads that ask people to list their favorite “currently living [artist of some kind]”. What does “currently living” have to do with anything? Just seems like an odd and arbitrary criterion. Might as well ask for people’s favorite blond, dark-haired, tall or short [artist of some kind]. Does not compute.

However, I suspect that some people may feel differently about this, hence those “currently alive” lists. Although, I’m not sure if I understand if what way.

So, is “alive” an important criterion for you in how you think about someone? Do you consider people to be more real, or more important, or more something, if they are alive rather than dead at the same time as you? Does being alive grant someone a special status in your mind?

I don’t know, maybe the question doesn’t make sense. If so, maybe you could help me come up with a better question. I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this.

2

I think of people as alive. John Wayne and Jayne Mansfield are “alive” to me, because that’s how I visualize them. I see them, in my mind, the way they were at their best. My deceased family and friends still “live on” in my thoughts.

Even figures of ancientry: Napoleon, Shakespeare, Caesar, are alive in my thoughts.

(Francisco Franco, however, is still dead…)

(ETA: a bit more seriously, some figures, like Cleopatra, who are famous for their death-scenes, are closer to dead in my thoughts…but not wholly consigned to death. I just can’t think of them without thinking of the death scenes.)

3

Although I understand where you’re coming from - and it’s certainly the more logical point of view - I think of people as alive. I’ll be watching old movies, and there will be this weird moment when I realize everyone laughing and dancing and talking in front of the cameras are just skeletons now. Then I go back to watching the movie, and thinking of them as alive. Even historical figures somehow seem living to me; I know they’ve all rotted away, but it’s hard for me to always be aware of that.

4

You know, I think you guys are onto something. And you’re right. Thanks for helping me sort this out in my head. Maybe I was wrong in describing it as “dead”.

Maybe the way I actually think about it is more the way you’re describing it. Everyone in history is alive, but everybody is equally alive, for a given number of years, and those years may be located anywhere in history (past, present or future). I suppose what I mean (maybe) is that no one is more alive to me because they’re alive now.

If someone’s life span happens to coincide with the present moment, it doesn’t give them special status in my mind. It’s just sort of a coincidence, and a matter of timey-wimey logistics.

5

Alive. Personhood implies life. When you die, you stop being a person, because you stop existing. What is left is a corpse.

6

Alive artists, writers and entertainers can produce more cool stuff for you to read/watch/experience. Dead ones, you’re stuck with what you’ve got. That’s the main difference, AFAICT.

7

I know what you mean. But with the living ones, you’re also stuck with what you’ve got, or rather what you’ll get. It’s just that they haven’t necessarily gotten around to delivering it yet, chronologically speaking.

All moments existing simultaneously, in a sense…

Huh. It this something like what it feels like to be a Buddhist, I wonder? Or a stoic? Or a physicist? Or just a blithering idiot? Not sure, in my own case…

8

I think people often do favorite currently living because of the higher performer of a dead celeb (particularly one that’s been dead for a while) being idealized. The crap movies/songs they had have been forgotten while only the good ones are remembered. And the OP just doesn’t want to wade through the rose-colored opinions.

I see the same thing with music threads sometimes - comparing the horrible music of today with the great stuff of the past. Except they only mention the biggest hits of the past, and particularly only mention the ones that endure. “Achy Breaky Heart” and “I Paid My Income Tax Today” aren’t going to be mentioned. Only the ones that are still widely liked after at least two decades. People often forget about the “filler” work when talking about deceased performers, but still remember it for the alive ones.

For me, default state for someone I don’t know anything about is usually alive. Unless I’m reading about the past. Any historical figures default state is dead. They don’t change, and I don’t usually perceive the nuances of shifting opinions and changing attitudes in them (such as Thomas Jefferson’s shift on slavery). I just evaluate at them as one big whole, and usually only the famous bits I know about.

9

IMO, this.

I see the situation as different as between somebody I know personally versus someone I only know by their reputation, their works, etc.

Now isn’t a privileged position in history. Except from my narrow POV, because I happen to be here now, and not in 1880 or (probably) 2175.

So when we’re talking artists, political leaders, statesmen, authors, it doesn’t matter whether they’re alive or dead now. I only know them via their works. Which aren’t alive and never were. A John Wayne movie isn’t alive. And never was. Neither were Rooster Cogburn and Colonel Kirby ever alive (to name two characters he played). John Wayne certainly was. I even met & spoke with him; we each spoke one whole sentence to the other. So I *know *he was alive. It happens he’s dead now.

I also know some of the works of Hulk Hogan. Those works are also dead and always have been. Although he’s very much alive today. And like Wayne, I even met & spoke with him too for one whole sentence apiece. But wiki tells me Hogan is still alive as I’m typing. Though that’s subject to change.

There’s not a hairs’-breadth of difference between my relationship with those two guys now in 2015.

The default state of them is neither dead nor alive. It’s a state where their aliveness is immaterial because I don’t have a relationship with them. I have it with their never-living works.
Now for people I know personally it’s very different. Family, close friends, etc. Somebody upthread said they live on in our memories after their death. IMO - Not really. What remains is a pale shadow, a set of ever-shrinking ever-fading memories. And maybe some physical reminders or mementos. But the thing that matters, the relationship, is forever altered from dynamic and growing to static and decaying the moment they die.

And for those people, the “default state” is alive; it’s the only state that matters for them and my relationship to them.

10

I think a lot of the caring about the death of celebrities is because they remind you that you are also mortal and that time is passing. If some actor has been a huge part of your life, the fact that they are no longer there only shows you how much closer you are too your own demise.

There’s also empathy for others, after having known people who have died, or even a type of empathy for the deceased, albeit before they actually die.

Knowing that there’s nothing more you will see from them is a relatively smaller part, I think. It’s much bigger with people you actually know.

11

Take the long-term view!

12

The simple version is yes. In addition to what they have accomplished to make them special to me are all the things they may do in the future to reinforce that. It may happen now and again that something new is learned about a deceased but that hasn’t been the usual case in the people I admire.

13

This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be!

14

then IMO there’s something seriously wrong / lacking in your life.

Overall I agree with the points of your post, but I couldn’t let that example go un-picked-at. :wink: Nor am I suggesting you were referring to yourself.

15

I would have just said that you have a less time-bound perspective than many people do: you’re less stuck in the present moment, and have more of a sense of the whole sweep of time.

And this may be a result, or a cause, or some other sort of correlation, of your love of history and of old movies.

(And it reminds me of this quote from G. K. Chesterton: “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”)

16

Alive. Unless I’m sitting vigil over the corpse or visiting their grave, my experience of any other person usually represents something they did while they were alive. I’m more conscious of Beethoven’s composing than his decomposing, if you like.

17

I commented on this once already, but something else occurred to me: Dead people are providing me with more new stuff than currently living people are. New to me, that is. There are more books written by currently dead people than I’ll ever have the time to read. There’s tons on music by dead artists and composers for me to discover. There are still movies with Audrey Hepburn or Humphrey Bogart that I haven’t seen.

From my perspective, dead people are productive as all get out.

18

That’s because there are so many more of them. And we’re making more all the time.

19

I maybe should’ve read your OP before voting, but the way the poll itself began, with an invitation to take on something a little odd, I figured I’d go with a gut vote and not try to overthink, only reading the OP (and possible explanation of intent for the poll!) after I voted.

I chose “dead” but not because I have a deathwish or am a particularly morose or macabre person. I just figured - again, not overthinking - that the “default state of being” would be dead rather than alive because “dead” is the closest to “potential is there for life but hasn’t quite happened yet” which is the “state” of all humans not yet conceived/safely born. If not exactly “dead” it is a state of nonexistence and categorically opposed to “alive”. People aren’t alive by default. They aren’t dead by default either. The default human state would seem to me to be “potential”.

That’s way more words than how it occurred to me in my head, which was rather more abstractly. Hopefully this makes sense! Interesting question.