COLUMN: Sorting out senselessness

From Tom Nessinger's, "Inseparable My Nose and Thumb," Fall '96 From Tom Nessinger's, "Inseparable My Nose and Thumb," Fall '96 Well, here it is, my last regular column for the DP, and I'm here to talk to you about? death. Probably the most unnerving episode was the very public suicide of Kathy Change. Many came forward afterward to praise her for her ideals, trying to bring meaning to an otherwise horrific act. I can't help but wonder if Change had as many fans in her life as she had after she took it. I understand that people want to make a seemingly senseless act less of an enigma. Nevertheless, I have to wonder about the people who stopped just short of praising the late Change's belating her own life. The best and worst thing I can say of her is that she lacked imagination. Think about it: If your stated goal in life is to bring about world peace and global democracy, and the only two ways you can come up with to achieve that goal are (a) dance around College Green in a bathing suit and (b) immolate yourself in front of Van Pelt Library, it seems to me you're missing the whole spectrum of means to your end that lies between (a) and (b). This isn't to belittle Change's goals -- or even to mock option (a), which to most of us seemed ineffective but harmless. But you have to wonder what kind of bad cerebral wiring could lead someone to think she could win the game by taking herself out of it, permanently. Yet there are those who apparently subscribe to the idea that her suicide was a final, heroic act -- some going so far as to challenge us with "What would you die for?" Which brings us to the second, and I think more tragic death of the semester, that of researcher Vladimir Sled. He did not seek death; it came looking for him in the form of a would-be purse-snatcher who decided on the spot to upgrade to murderer. Sled died instinctively, trying to protect a loved one. And what was the reaction to his death? While many were shocked and dismayed, others thought to use this incident as a cautionary tale of how properly to react to a property crime, as though Sled caused his own death by resisting. Within days we heard various law-enforcement officials on the radio, telling us not to resist crimes like purse-snatching -- instructing us, in essence, on how to be better crime victims. I have to agree with DP Executive Editor Adam Mark, who wondered on this very page where the outrage over Sled's murder was. Many, after Sled's death, asked the question "Is a purse worth dying over?" In my view, the proper question is "Is a purse worth killing someone over?" We should be outraged that someone would be killed over something so trivial. I hope the killers are caught and convicted, and rot in jail for the rest of their lives. Yes, you heard right -- life in jail. Not the chair. Not that I have any particular sympathy for killers, especially those who would stab someone for having the audacity to try to resist them. Anyone who would, without legal justification, take the life of another -- any other (not just academics or "good" people, as has also been suggested on this page) -- should be estopped from asserting his own right to life. Yet my experiences in the same legal system that taught me a big word like "estopped" also taught me that, as much as we might think ours is the best system of justice in the world, it is still run by flawed human beings and, as such, is an imperfect tool with which to determine guilt. You shouldn't use a system that, at best, gives you 95 percent confidence someone is guilty to make him 100 percent dead. There are those who believe death is an answer of sorts. Jack Kevorkian has become a sort of macabre folk hero by helping people end their lives, and people applaud. Better no life than a life filled with pain, they say, as though they could possibly know what moments of joy or redemption or tranquility could lie among those days of pain. We terminate human lives before birth, arguing (sometimes) that it is better not to be born than to be born into poverty or hopelessness -- as though we could ever know what that never-to-be-lived life could hold. Increasingly, people seem to accept the idea that our lives are our own to do away with as we please, as though we brought ourselves into being or could create life on our own. (Humans procreate, we don't create; there is a difference.) I'll probably catch hell for this column, but so be it. While I have opinions, many of which I've had the privilege of sharing over the past year, I don't profess to know everything. But I do know this: Death is the end of possibility. Once you're there, you're nowhere, at least in this world. Remember that before you lightly praise or condone someone whose best or only answer was to take a life.