The Worship of Man...

So now that Gerald Ford is dead, people are going to be lining up in droves to walk past the casket of a dead man. Much like when the Pope died, hundreds--perhaps thousands--of persons will line up just to walk by the corpse of someone almost none of them knew personally from a distance probably of about fifty feet.

Never mind the paranoid view that Gerry really isn't dead and that Shrubya simply locked him at Gitmo and is traipsing around a mannequin of a corpse so that no one will ever fight for his civil rights after he lambasted Shrubya's moronic campaign to "free Iraq." I just don't get "mourning" the loss of the man, really.

It bothers me that so many will be visiting the coffin nonetheless. No one would argue that the masses in general are a bunch of stupid dolts whose insipid whims beget monstrous waves of terror and idiocy. Even when personally close loved ones have passed away, yeah, I was a little sad--but I cried more for the loss of my cats Spot and Pavement than I ever did for grandparents or great-grandparents. Not that I didn't love them; in fact, I was very close to my Grandfather Zartman! All us five kids were! But when he died, it was just--over. Granted, he laid in a coma for a year and a half, so the mourning process was dragged out over weeks and months. But I never really saw death as an "end," and I still don't, even with my non-belief in an afterlife. I certainly don't see crying over a dead body as worth my time, as the person I knew is gone from that corpse.

A person is always so much more than just their physical body. They are feelings, emotions, thoughts and deeds. They are more than just an oxygen-processing machine, I think on that we can all agree. Even I, as an atheist, can say that people are more than their physical parts--although that shouldn't be construed to be any more than what it is at face value. I appreciate what people do for the world at large and at small. But this parade of mourning and carrying-on just seems to me to be a waste. The man stood up for values, for ideas, for things that he and his wife hoped would better humanity. I don't see traveling cross-country in a casket as accomplishing anything for the greater good...

Am I a calloused bastard? Perhaps. But all of these shenanigans over a dead body simply looks like more man-worship at most, propaganda at the very least. Holding up a person beyond human status, making him a martyr almost. Was he a good and decent man? I think so, from what I've read and seen about him. But is it really worth all this pomp and circumstance? I don't think so.

I've told Rich several times, when I'm dead, give to science what they want and burn the rest. I'm not in the body any longer. I'm dead. If he really really wants to, he can do all the ceremonious stuff, but I'd rather he just let me go when I'm gone. While I cannot say if I'm going to end up in "a better place," I know one thing for sure--I'll no longer be using my body.

And it seems all that anyone is doing to poor Gerald--using his body, but I fear, not for the betterment of anyone...