Split: Christopher Reeves dead (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter baggio
- Start date
I just don't subscribe to the idea that giving people false hope is better than giving people no additional hope at all.
Don't get me wrong. Indirectly, he did challenge the medical community to break out of some stunted thinking, which lead to some improvements in care. All that has been great stuff.
But what I don't quite follow is all the hero worship he got -- standing ovations for just showing up someplace. He became a de facto spokesperson about paralysis, almost of no choice of his own, because people wanted him -- even needed him -- to be. It's just a really curious social phenomenon. Not in any negative way at all -- more of an observation. There sort of has been this innate public need to make a hero out of him -- a sort of focal point for even able-bodied people to stave off the dark reaches of their own psyches. It's as if society needs examples to believe that they too can cheat death and overcome obstacles, and so we put people like Christopher Reeves on a pedestal because we need that.
You ever see the movie Being There with Peter Sellers? There's almost an element of that to it. It becomes less about who the person is and more about what they personally represent to everyone else.
Because of that, Christopher Reeves became less about Christopher Reeves and more about what everyone else needed him to represent to them personally.
Don't get me wrong. Indirectly, he did challenge the medical community to break out of some stunted thinking, which lead to some improvements in care. All that has been great stuff.
But what I don't quite follow is all the hero worship he got -- standing ovations for just showing up someplace. He became a de facto spokesperson about paralysis, almost of no choice of his own, because people wanted him -- even needed him -- to be. It's just a really curious social phenomenon. Not in any negative way at all -- more of an observation. There sort of has been this innate public need to make a hero out of him -- a sort of focal point for even able-bodied people to stave off the dark reaches of their own psyches. It's as if society needs examples to believe that they too can cheat death and overcome obstacles, and so we put people like Christopher Reeves on a pedestal because we need that.
You ever see the movie Being There with Peter Sellers? There's almost an element of that to it. It becomes less about who the person is and more about what they personally represent to everyone else.
Because of that, Christopher Reeves became less about Christopher Reeves and more about what everyone else needed him to represent to them personally.
Put it that way, every person on the planet pretty much falls into this category if you're fortunate enough to live long enough.
Here I definitely agree.
But we should respect and admire him for what he's accomplished... not for his disability.
As an aside, I think Hawking has been an unfortunate "best available" when it comes to the need to popularize scientific thought and advancement. I would argue that there are clearly better theoretical physicists and astrophysicists alive today, but none of them have been able to bridge the gap between esoteric science and the layman as well as Hawking has (in part he has, I think, because of his disability). And at that, society needs a better bridge than Hawking. Carl Sagan, for example, fit the role better. And with scientific ignorance and skepticism ruling the U.S. White House right now, setting policy and advancement back by decades, the need is greater than ever.
Here I definitely agree.
But we should respect and admire him for what he's accomplished... not for his disability.
As an aside, I think Hawking has been an unfortunate "best available" when it comes to the need to popularize scientific thought and advancement. I would argue that there are clearly better theoretical physicists and astrophysicists alive today, but none of them have been able to bridge the gap between esoteric science and the layman as well as Hawking has (in part he has, I think, because of his disability). And at that, society needs a better bridge than Hawking. Carl Sagan, for example, fit the role better. And with scientific ignorance and skepticism ruling the U.S. White House right now, setting policy and advancement back by decades, the need is greater than ever.
