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

[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.