My thoughts on Roger Ebert. Atheism, criticism, and gaming.

[xiphias]

1. Roger Ebert is one of those celebrities that feels like someone I know. Others on this list are Nathan Fillion, Felicia Day, P!nk, Jennifer Lawrence, Bruce Schneier, Nathan Silver, Paul Krugman, Brooke Gladstone. . . these are people who feel like One Of Us. Whether any or all of those people actually ARE people who, in real life, I'd get along with isn't the point: the point is that they all, in their public personas, seem like people the kinds of people who are like me.

You know, geeks.

Roger Ebert was one of the great geeks out there. I'd argue that he is the greatest movie geek to have lived to date. There might be other people in the running, but I can't think of any right now. So, I kind of take his death personally. I didn't really know jan howard finder or Hal Clement well, either, but I miss them, too. So it's like that -- people who actually KNEW the people obviously miss them MORE, but I feel some personal, selfish loss, too.

2. There are a number of stock responses in various cultures to hearing about a death. Some of them include, "Rest in peace/requiescat in pace", "may he/she be bound up in the bond of eternal life", "God is Great/Blessed is the Righteous Judge", and many others. Ebert was an atheist, and believed that, once he died, he no longer existed. Now, I rather hope he's wrong about that -- see point #1; I'd like a chance to get to know him, and since he's not alive now, my best should would be in some sort of afterlife -- but it would seem rather presumptuous of me to ignore his own existential beliefs in how I respond to it.

So which forms of elegaic formulation can be appropriate for an atheist? "RIP" seems a bit inappropriate: by his beliefs, there's nothing there than can rest. "The bond of eternal life" stuff, same thing. "God is great".

The formulations that I might find useful would be something like, if I met Chaz Ebert, telling her "May his memory bring you comfort and joy". The more general Jewish formulation would be something like "May his/her memory be for a blessing," and I think that's not inappropriate, if we define "blessing" broadly enough. If we consider "a blessing" to be anything that brings goodness, rather than a specifically religious/theological concept, then I think it fits. May the memory of Roger Ebert remind us how to disagree passionately with our friends and remain friends, as he did with Gene Siskel. May the memory of his impatience with bigots remind us to assume we have to put up with them. May the memory of his criticism remind us how to figure out what it is we believe, and to learn how to understand and express our opinions. May his mastery of snark continue to give us pleasure, and inspire us to be really genuinely creative if we're ever going to insult anyone.

3. On another personal note: so, everybody's talking about BIOSHOCK: INFINITE, and how it's actually finally using the form of a video game to tell a genuine story, with emotional depth and complexity. And as soon as people started talking about this, my first thought was, "I wonder what Roger Ebert has to say about this." And then he died.

I want to know what Roger Ebert would have thought about BIOSHOCK: INFINITE! Did people finally create a video game that Ebert would have considered art?

We will never know. That sucks.

And that's why I miss him, even though I never met him.

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I like "may his memory be a blessing." For me, that's the most important part.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I have never fully grasped why people assume that atheism implies no survival after death, or for that matter why theism implies survival after death. The two positions are not logically connected. It is true that many if not most religions aver belief in a positive life after death, but there is no reason why survival after death requires theism -- let alone monotheism.

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

I think it's more of a statistical thing. Most atheists are almost as sceptical about the afterlife as they are about God's existence. But yeah, atheists can believe in the afterlife, magic, the loch ness monster, the tooth fairy and the second coming of Elvis, with no contradictions involved. That's very true.

Of course, just as there are more dominant forms of theism that start dictating the norms of religious belief, so are there more dominant atheistic views that dictate the norms of non-belief. That's fine if you share the more popular of more publicised religious or non-religious views, but it can be downright embarrassing when you have to explain that those popular or publicised opinions have nothing to do with you.

I think Ebert is supposed to have specifically claimed that he would not survive his death. (Hmmm "survived death".. That's awkward phrasing isn't it? Well, you get the idea). So his brand of atheism would not have involved an afterlife.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

True. Atheism, religion, survival of the consciousness -- these are all separable concepts; indeed, I can name groups that split them out. Sadducee Judaism didn't believe in individual survival after death, for instance.

However, this was about Roger Ebert, who didn't believe in individual survival of consciousness after death, or a Divine figure, and didn't follow a religion. So, in this case, that's what I'm discussing.

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

Isn't "RIP" inappropriate for everyone if you take it literally? I always saw it as a euphemism. After all, surely it's referring to the dead body "resting" as if they were still the person you wish to pay tribute to. The person who you are paying tribute to is simply not there any more, regardless of what you think happens after death, right?

Regardless of whether there's an afterlife or not, the best thing to do when they die is remember what was good about their life. Don't be greedy for more time with them. Be happy for the impact they've already had upon you. And I think most people, including yourself, are quite keen to pay tribute to Ebert by remembering his life as he lived it rather than speculating on a life beyond death.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

"Rest in Peace" comes from a tradition which includes the idea of bodily resurrection of the dead in a Messianic era. One of the theological frameworks around this idea is that good people lay quiet in their graves in a restful sleep-like state until it is time to be resurrected into a perfected world, while less-good people who are nonetheless still worth bothering with are tortured until they "pay their debt to society", after which they get to be resurrected, too, while TRULY evil people are either tortured without end, or, in some versions, simply cease to be.

So "Rest in Peace" is an affirmation that you believe that the person under discussion deserves not only to participate in an afterlife, but that he or she deserves to do so without paying any additional suffering.

Actually, I'm keen to pay tribute to EVERYONE by remembering their life rather than speculating on life after death. I was taught that we can know nothing about life after death, but we're pretty sure that life BEFORE death exists, so focus on THAT.

When my students in Hebrew school asked me about what happens after you die, I'd tell them about the process of preparing the body, burying it, and memorial. Because THAT we can know.

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

One of the theological frameworks around this idea is that good people lay quiet in their graves in a restful sleep-like state until it is time to be resurrected into a perfected world

You know as well as I do that the body lying in the grave isn't a person resting. The very idea is clearly either euphemistic or naive (and I give ancient civilisations enough credit to presume that at the beginnings of this tradition it was intended as a euphemism). Dead bodies rot away. Anyone knows this. The process of resurrection clearly involves a complete restructuring of the person, so the body that lies rotting in the grave is of extremely limited relevance to that.

The idea of the body resting is a nice image for those left behind, but in the end, it's a euphemism. Let's not kid ourselves, right?

Actually, I'm keen to pay tribute to EVERYONE by remembering their life rather than speculating on life after death.

Well yeah, that's what I meant.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I'm not telling you that a person IS lying in the grave; I'm merely describing the theological framework out of which the phrase comes.

Of course I'm oversimplifying for the sake of fitting it into a paragraph, and the actual theology DOES at least sort of address all -- well, most -- of the logical contradictions you mention. And, of course, these ideas only happen in times and places in which you typically have permanent memorial areas for the dead in which the actual remains are interred. So you get this sort of thing in the Roman empire, where you have necropoli outside of cities. You have these things in ancient Israel, where you have ossuaries -- you bury the person for a year or so, then, when the flesh has decayed, you take the bones out, put them in a jar, and store the jars in a cave somewhere. And you have it in Medieval Europe, where you have graveyards, mausoleums, and the like.

To what degree is this a euphemism? Well, that depends on the degree to which the particular society believes in the idea of bodily resurrection. If you believe that people's bones will actually re-connect, and be re-fleshed, and people will stand up and live again, then this isn't a euphemism -- and in a number of times and places (including right now, among some communities), people have literally believed, and do literally believe, exactly this. Heck, Jewish tradition lists the actual queuing order in which people will be resurrected -- if you want to be first in line, you get buried on the eastern slope of Mt Carmel in Israel, and there are people who, to this day, will go to great lengths to try to get their bodies buried as close to there as possible.

Of course, there are other communities who use the "death=sleep" thing more figuratively. Probably, there are SOME people who talk about "taking the big dirt-nap" who believe in bodily resurrection, but I doubt MOST people are making that claim.

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

I think once you've realised that at some point the remains need to transferred into a jar, you can forget the idea of "they're just resting". In fact the moment you start filling their blood with embalming fluid, I'd like to think that you aren't thinking of them as a sleeping person (because I sure as hell don't want embalming fluid pumped into me when I'm having a snooze!).

Like I said, I'm not dismissing bodily resurrection right now. I'm simply saying that it doesn't strike me as relevant to the idea that someone is "resting". The idea of 'resting' here seems clearly figurative regardless of the pecking order for a later return from the dead.

[phantom_wolfboy]

"May his memory bring you comfort and joy". The more general Jewish formulation would be something like "May his/her memory be for a blessing," and I think that's not inappropriate, if we define "blessing" broadly enough. If we consider "a blessing" to be anything that brings goodness, rather than a specifically religious/theological concept, then I think it fits.

I think those wordings are perfect.

[(Anonymous)]

Just because he didn't believe in an afterlife doesn't mean he isn't having one. Nor does it mean he is. You can wish whatever you want for and at him. It might be offensive to survivors and therefore kind and polite to not say it, but there it is. Maybe you get what you believed in, but i doubt it.

"I'm sorry. We'll miss him" is a good thing to say.


Can you tell I'm agnostic?


ps This is Fnordy.

[temima.livejournal.com]

I was going to suggest that, too.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I think "may their memory be a blessing" is not about the dead person's religious beliefs. The memory of a nonreligious person can still be a blessing. I would only refrain from saying it to a mourner I knew to be a devout atheist. A lot of people don't believe in G-d as such, yet they can still be comfortable with more general ideas of blessing or holiness.

Of course, when speaking directly to a mourner, "I am sorry for your loss" is always good.