022 "If I Die Young" - The Band Perry

So I was listening to "If I Die Young" by The Band Perry and for the first time I actually stopped to think about the lyrics. And there's this one line: "Funny when you're dead how people start listening..."

And I guess the worst part is that this true. In The Fault in Our Stars (I know I reference this a LOT, but bear with me here), no one really pays much attention to Augustus until he gets cancer. Then, when it turns out he lives, people still fuss over him, but after a year or so, they slowly lose interest again. And finally, when he finds out he's (surprise!) going to die, everyone goes back and visits him, gives gifts, et.c. I find it sad that in order for you to be special and important to your friends, you have to be on the verge of dying. Of course, we can't pay attention to every small detail about everyone's lives, and we can't be everybody's bestest friend, but it still irritates me so much when people you thought were your friends ignore you and take you for granted until you're about to die (or worse, be expelled!).

You can also take this another way. Is it okay to manipulate someone's death to guilt people into doing things? "Augustus loved animals so you should donate to animal charities." "Hazel has cancer and she really wants to end world hunger. Can you donate something so she can help?" "It's his only wish to go to Disneyland, and he's about to die any day soon. Do you think you could give us a couple tickets?" Is there a line, a yes or no, for things like that? Is it okay for charities like This Star Won't Go Out to advertise using someone's death? (I'm not hating, I'm just speculating here, I fully support TSWGO). Is it okay to use someone's death for personal gain? Does it work? Does using the fact that someone died help others listen?

Say Mr. Example died of cancer. During his life, he kept trying to tell people that teenagers are people, and they should be treated like normal humans rather than hormonal, emotionally explosive butterflies during a 'sensitive stage of life'. He wrote books, published papers, contributed to articles, but no one really listened to him. And suddenly, now that Mr. Example is dead and people are mourning for him and sympathizing with the family and such, people find out about these articles. Suddenly, his quotes are posted on Facebook and his novels are bestsellers. Is it okay for us to do that? I don't even really know what I'm asking here, but I'm not blaming people for that. You can't keep track of 7 billion people at once. But I still feel bad seeing us ignore people until something drastic happens. What even is the philosophy about that? Why do we sympathize and understand dead people better? Maybe Nargles can clear that up.

I'm sorry for the huge jumble of words. I'm not very clear, but this isn't a very clear subject. It's an interesting quote, for sure, but there are so many ways to analyze it. I'm depending on you, Nargles, to make everything all better.

- Quibbles 8/11/14