<p>Yawn,
While I appreciate your comments about my picking up the hitchhiker, I have to wonder why should the intent of the stupid decision matter? My picking up a hitchhiker and a student scaling a wall were both stupid decisions, IMO. There is a tendency for young adults not to think a lot about the consequences of the risks they take. Does that mean if several had a negative outcome, only the death of the person whose whose risk was for a noble cause should be mourned as a tragedy? </p>
<p>I really wish I could find that thread from a few years ago of the stupid things we did in college. It was amazing many of the posters survived!</p>
I’m not saying whether or not I personally think this is tragic - I personally don’t think it matters - but there is a difference between altruism and simply playing around. I doubt few here would call Ghandi stupid for suffering beatings in order to defend the defenseless. Most people sympathized for Steven Irwin when he died doing something risky but ultimately for a good cause. A daredevil who’s stunt goes fatally wrong probably wouldn’t get as much sympathy as Ghandi, Steve Irwin, the firefighters who risked their lives in 9/11, or, indeed, an individual whose caring heart compelled him or her to pick up a hitchhiker.</p>
<p>Again, to argue whether this should be considered tragic or not is a matter of rhetoric and technicality, and quite honestly it doesn’t matter what you label it. A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet, and an accident by any adjective would still evoke the same emotional reactions.</p>
<p>The issue of whether the loss was “tragic” was the focus of the discussion for most of this thread. Thats why I brought it up. Some posters rejected the idea that the loss of a young life was “tragic” if it was due to stupidity (thats my quick summary of the posts in his thread. You might want to reread them yourself to get a good feel for why posters were upset with the comments of barrons and tourguide).</p>
<p>Anyways, weren’t you supposed to have put me on ignore? Please do so. I’d certainly prefer to avoid your smug “I-know-far-far-more-than-you-will-ever-know” attitude.</p>
<p>Did you ever say to your kids, “he’s only saying this to annoy you”? Or “If you don’t argue with him, he’ll get fed up and go away”? He wants you to react like this. He’s poking you with a stick. </p>
<p>Also, Tourguide is either as insensitive as he sounds, which has got to be pretty unlikely, or is trying to explain away bad things happening in a contingent universe so that they won’t happen to him. As when people hear of someone dying of cancer; the non-smoker will always hope, in some part of themselves, that it was lung cancer and that the dead person smoked 40 a day.</p>
<p>It has nothing to do with being insensitive. It has everything to do with calling a spade a spade. Stupid acts often yield bad resutls. I have no more sympathy for someone clowing around climbing buildings that I do for someone who drives crazily on a public highway or does dangerous drugs.</p>
<p>Of course stupid acts often yield bad results. Nobody is saying he wasn’t stupid in this instance. Does that mean we aren’t allowed to feel sorry for the people who loved him? Whether the empathy does any good is a different story. For instance, we can sit and bewail the fact that American dollars paid for the weapons which just killed children in the UN school in Gaza - assuming it is permissible to be sensitive to the needless deaths of children. But wringing our hands doesn’t help anyone.</p>
The frontal lobes control judgement, planning and problem-solving, and until this region has fully developed, some of the regulatory functions are handled by the emotional areas of the brain. So, some young adults may be more likely to do something because it is exciting and challenging, withough having the exectutive overlay to mediate this decision based on reasoning and good judgement.</p>