My father once explained to me, when I was very young and my 12-year old cousin had died of cancer, that the reason I was in pain and suffering was not because my cousin was dead and he would not be enjoying his next birthday, or that he would not be coming with us for the next vacation.
The reason I was in pain was because I was not going to enjoy him anymore. In the end, he was dead already. He could not feel or enjoy anything anymore, so why be sad for him?
So maybe when someone that through art or knowledge or whatever touches people in a certain way, and then that person passes away, it makes people sad because they will not be able to enjoy any new music, any new takes on life, any new works, etc.
Yes, we now have YouTube and digital media so we can keep listening to John Coltrane and Leonard Cohen, but the fact that we won't be able to keep growing up with them makes it painful. Even if they are not your friends, they are people you admire. They are people that will no longer produce any "new wisdom" for you to absorb and savor.
When someone like say, Dennis Ritchie died, we (HN, engineers, <other placeholder>) got sad because there would be no new insights coming from this great mind. He's not going to be able to comment on, say, SpaceX's first trip to Mars or whatever.
So in the end we are the ones deprived of these great minds' wisdom and thus we are the ones that ache and suffer.
That's my take on it at least. Maybe it's not what's actually happening but it kinda make sense to me :)
The reason I was in pain was because I was not going to enjoy him anymore. In the end, he was dead already. He could not feel or enjoy anything anymore, so why be sad for him?
So maybe when someone that through art or knowledge or whatever touches people in a certain way, and then that person passes away, it makes people sad because they will not be able to enjoy any new music, any new takes on life, any new works, etc.
Yes, we now have YouTube and digital media so we can keep listening to John Coltrane and Leonard Cohen, but the fact that we won't be able to keep growing up with them makes it painful. Even if they are not your friends, they are people you admire. They are people that will no longer produce any "new wisdom" for you to absorb and savor.
When someone like say, Dennis Ritchie died, we (HN, engineers, <other placeholder>) got sad because there would be no new insights coming from this great mind. He's not going to be able to comment on, say, SpaceX's first trip to Mars or whatever.
So in the end we are the ones deprived of these great minds' wisdom and thus we are the ones that ache and suffer.
That's my take on it at least. Maybe it's not what's actually happening but it kinda make sense to me :)