About the astronauts? I do feel badly for them, and their families and friends, but no more so than anyone else I know about that get’s killed. I feel much worse if someone I know dies. Seven or more people get murdered every week in some communities. People die every day, under many circumstances, and their deaths are just as tragic as those of the astronauts.
Aren’t they?
Am I a sicko?
Peace,
mangeorge
I was telling my mom I have no empathy, because I feel so little about this whole thing… at least I’m not alone!
But I do respect them and their sacrifice.
You both don’t feel worse because they were doing what they loved, and they knew the risks.
It doesn’t make it any less awful that they died, but at least they were doing something that they loved and were committed to…and something that they KNEW had risks.
If they had gotten shot on the street when they were coming out of a restaurant, for instance, when they had NO thought that they WERE at risk, when they had NO chance to WEIGH the risk factors…because they didn’t KNOW there WERE risk factors…then to YOU it would have been much more sad.
I am mourning the loss of such fine people. But I don’t fault you for feeling the way you do.
Loss of life is always sad and horrible. If you KNOW the people, of COURSE it is going to be much more of a visceral pain for you. As someone said, (John Donne?..probably wrong) each man’s death diminishes us. But if you know and love that person, it is a whole different situation than if you didn’t. At least these people died in pursuit of something they believed very strongly in. As opposed to, say, Matthew Shepard. Who died because of hate.
Just my thoughts, of course.
I feel much worse if someone I know dies.
Sounds normal to me. We only have so much time, money, and emotional energy. It’s impossible to share them with everyone on the planet. We naturally lean towards spending them on those we know best.
I’m not sad about it at all. If you have to die, what a way to go! So much better than dying on the way up - they got to spend their time in space and die in a spectacular way (that was probably very fast). They knew the risks, and a glorious death is one of the possible rewards for performing heroic tasks.
Not sicko.
(Well, no more than the rest of us, which ain’t exactly a testament to great mental health. (->dreary smile<- ) Dunno about you, but sometimes the full freight of human grief and tragedy can reach overload. There’s just too much of it. Cry us a river.
There aren’t any “little lives”. Every single one is a novel that could have been written, but wasn’t. If we didn’t have shields against the onslaught of loss we’d all go crazy. Everybody dies sometime. We’re surrounded by it. Some particular deaths, far outside our immediate circles, pierce our shields for reasons that may or may not be “legitimate”.
IMO it’s not either/or. There’s plenty of grief to go around.
Veb
I guess I feel the same way. I mean, I’m not happy the astronauts are dead, but it doesn’t bother me either. It’s something I’m a little embarrassed to say though, because I turn on the tv, and see all these upset people, then I come to the boards and see all these upset people, and I just feel outnumbered by sadness.
Well, you’re not really OBLIGATED to feel a certain degree of sadness. I am all the time reading posts by people who cry about things that would never so much as make me twitch an eyebrow, like sad movies, and I get the impression that they think their tears make them better people than people like me who are not so easily moved to tears.
Last I checked, crying, feeling depressed/sad did not constitute a virtue in and of itself.
I’d say accept your response as what’s appropriate for you.
All day I’ve been thinking “Man, that’s really awful” but not really being sad. Then the news footage was showing some of the debris on the ground, and it included one of the patches for the mission that the astronauts wear. I must confess, that made my eyes a bit moister.
But then I read a story about another avalanche in BC today that killed 7 people - all 16 year old high school students form the Calgary area : http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/02/01/avalanche_030201 and even though I didn’t know any of them, I found it heartbreaking 
So, to recap: seven strangers die suddenly on a space shuttle, sad but not really moving to me; Seven strangers die suddenly in an avalanche, very sad to me.
Human emotions and reactions can run the gamut form nonchalance to devastation and every spectrum point between, even when dealing with seemingly similar events, so no, your lack of sadness certainly doesn’t reflect on you as some cold monster in my eyes.
Gretchen
(who was treated like a freak for lack of tears at Princess Di’s death a few years ago)
Yowza, I swear that I don’t usually write crazy run-on sentences. Please blame the late posting hour!
Evil Captor, is it possible that you are mis-reading these people feeling superior to you? I, for one, am very easily moved to tears by someone else’s pain. Reading a thread about the shuttle yesterday, I was crying a little, not for the astronauts, but for the people who loved them and will now miss them greatly. I cry when someone in the room with me cries. I cry at sad, toching, or happy movies. Hell, when I was pregnant I could’ve cried at long stoplights! But I don’t think this makes me superior in any way. I (and others like me) seem to have all emotions closer to the surface than some other people do. I laugh readily, too, and feel great joy over seemingly minor things. But it’s not better or worse than anyone else’s reaction. We’re just all wired differently, I guess. YMMV.
I’m not feeling a great deal, either. I mean, I have sympathy for the astronauts and their families, and I acknowledge that a sad thing has happened. But they were people in a dangerous profession who died in the performance of their duty, and that is a situation that happens all the time. These seven get to be on the news because the space program is newsworthy, especially when things go wrong, but there are military people, police officers, etc who make the same sacrifice and don’t get much news time at all.
I’m sorry for them, but I can’t mourn them all.
That pretty much sums it up for me.
P.S. Are you a fan of the move The Fisher King?
I generally have flat affect for things that have no direct personal impact. It takes a whole lot to make me cry. It takes a whole lot to make me laugh. I can recognize the shame and the badness of a situation, but as far as feeling genuine sadness, it has to be really awful. 9/11 took me to that level. The Columbia disaster hasn’t (so far).
I know the feeling - I’ve just been staring blankly at the computer screen, reading about it, but it just isn’t affecting me. I just sit here thinking, “Oh. People died. Oh well.” I guess other people’s deaths just don’t get to me that much, even if they’re family members. My grandmother died a little over two weeks ago, and I was upset for maybe 2 days, but I’ve been completely fine ever since. Well, it’s sad to hear about the astronauts, but at least they aren’t suffering any more.
I think folks that more invested or are closer to those who died will naturally feel worse than those less connected to the program.
Me? Other than the fact that I’ve been a space-geek all my life, I have no special connection to the crew.
But there were times that I cried like a baby yesterday. Today once too.
In my case, I think part of it’s just basic human empathy - but I can tell you that part of it is the engineer in me thinking that we’ve let the crew down, that we’ve failed them in some way.
But unless you feel some connection to this event, I think it’s perfectly normal not to be overly distraught. There’s an awful lot to be distraught about in the world these days. Sometimes you just can’t cry about EVERYTHING.
See, I’m a bit of a space geek myself, and the shuttle breakup didn’t make me sad so much as worried that this will be used as an excuse to abandon the space program. It’s effect on me is nothing like 9/11, which didn’t bother me for the first day or so but led me to tears a few times in the weeks after it.
I’m a bit burned out on grief, though. I was extremely depressed over my wife leaving me last summer, so much so that when my father passed away that fall it didn’t bother me nearly as much as I thought it would. I understand part of it is that I had been grieving for my father for the last couple of years because of the deterioration of his mind and his death was something of a release, but I feel part of my lack of reaction was because I had simply used up all that emotion grieving for myself in the prior months.
It’s a good empty feeling, though. May be part of why I don’t feel sad over the shuttle at all.
I agree with Badtz Maru. I’m sad those people died, and I feel terrible for their families. I cannot imagine how horrible they must feel. Losing your loved ones is a dreadful thing.
But
A) I can’t be PERSONALLY saddened by this, 'cause I didn’t know them.
B) They died doing what they loved, doing something they knew full well had a not-insignificant chance of killing them.
C) They died doing something we all know is very dangerous, but that has a very noble and daring purpose behind it. Indeed, I would say this is even LESS a shock than when police officers die in the line of duty. Astronauts are pioneers at the very limits of human capability, and they know it, and they have chosen that vocation for that very reason - because they feel they’re the right people to advance our race in that direction.
and,
D) I’m concerned their memories will be dishonored by NOT pursuing their dreams. I am sure that if you had asked these people on January 31 what should be done if they didn’t make it back, they’d say they would want people to just try even harder to get into space.
Contrast this with, say the seven kids who were killed by an avalanche in British Columbia (irony of ironies) on the very same day. That’s sad. They died for no good reason doing something they thought was relatively safe.
I agree.
When the Challenger exploded I was … 9. I remembered realizing that this was terribly significant, maybe a moment I’d remember for the rest of my life. (Which turns out to be true.) But I do not remember feeling sad, I remember thinking ‘Hey, how many people die every day? Why aren’t they in the news?’ And at the time I thought it was one of those things I didn’t yet understand: that seven people dying in a space ship was for some reason sadder than seven people dying otherwise. But I haven’t figured it out yet. I think the reason I remember the moment is because of the profound confusion (‘I really don’t understand grownups at all’) rather than sadness.
I am significantly sadder that 60 people died in a train wreck in Zimbabwe, that same day as the Colombia crashed, and still I have had to put up with two days (so far, hopefully tomorrow will be better) of nothing in the newspaper but shuttle news. Is nothing else happening in the world? Isn’t anything else important?
Also: I keep seeing the word ‘unthinkable’ in relation to this tragedy. Um … no. It’s like the tragedy of dying when your snowmobile breaks through the ice, or of a bullfighter being mauled by a bull. Tragic, yes; unthinkable, no. Space flight is risky.
Knowing that they probably didn’t experience paralyzing fear or suffer long helps me accept the loss. Plus, it was viewed from such a distance and was so surreal in it’s nature.
Doing what you love, a lifetime of achivement, a quick, painless death and going out like a comet. Some might opt for such a departure.