I know I’ve asked this before following certain events, but do you consider this “tragic” and, if so, why?
Just this morning my wife described this as a “tragedy,” and I asked her why she thought so. She said she considered any loss of life tragic. Well, that statement strikes me as at least somewhat overbroad. I’m sure each of us could come up with at least 1 or 2 despicable folk whose demise we would not consider tragic.
In this instance, a bunch of wealthy folk dying as they voluntarily engaged in risky and unnecessary behavior does not strike me as rising to the level of what I consider tragedy. Maybe unfortunate, but I’m sure 100s - maybe 1000s - of folk die every day whose passing I would consider more tragic (or even more unfortunate). (Yes, I understand that the existence of 1 tragedy does not necessarily mean another event is not tragic.) I imagine some of the dead may have survivors who will mourn the deaths, but the bottomline is that these folk experienced foreseeable result of their voluntary undertaking.
Is the tragedy that some people are so wealthy that they can afford to do such crazy stuff? And that the rest of us are so lacking in meaningful interests that we want endless details about an unusual tragedy?
And, of course, there is the evergreen topic of the costs associated with the search efforts…
Personally, I woulda been fine with a brief news blurb saying, “5 people die doing something stupid.”