People Are Fundamentally Breakable

I didn't know Aaron Swartz. I knew of him, and admired his work. It turns out that a number of people I know did know him, and his suicide has hit the community hard, not only in terms of friends and friends of friends, but in terms of all of the people who were inspired by him, and were horrified by the governmental response... and all the people who were just horrified that he killed himself, for whatever reason. I'm there, on all counts.

Even more than I am saddened by the dead, I am frightened for the living. And yeah, while I personally see Aaron as someone who was fighting the good fight, and who went down tragically (and I think it's entirely possible to do this even if you don't entirely agree with someone's aims) what haunts me is the near certainty that just as he was not the first member of my community to take his life, he also will not be the last. There are also plenty of ways of running around and taking a lot of damage that don't involve death. I've been holding off on writing this post for a bit now, hoping that I'd come up with a good way of saying what I want to say. Lacking that, I guess I'll just pound on the keyboard some.( Read more... )