--Albert Einstein

Okay, let's start with the facts: John F. Kennedy, Jr. has apparently gone to join his parents, his uncle, Mary Jo Kopechne, and assorted others, in the great big Country Club in the Sky. Along for the ride were his wife and sister-in-law, and George magazine can be expected to join them shortly. The media have been playing the story for all it's worth, and then some.

I confess that I was initially rather mystified by the wall-to-wall media coverage -- news radio WINS, which virtually never dwells on a single story, spent just about all its time repeating the few known facts about the matter during the half-hour or so when I listened to it on Saturday night, and the newspapers have had to print special wrap-around sections to deal with the matter (Newsday had 24 pages on Sunday) -- but the whole thing fell into place once I read Columbine's first two journal entries on the matter. Nothing like seeing somebody else articulate something pretty close to your own position to help you see the flaws in it. :-)

I'll try to sum up the relevant points within this entry, but it's best to read Columbine's original remarks before going on. It starts with Shed no tears at Gay Head, but if you're short on time, you may proceed straight to Flight plans, feague, and Fandom, which, for my purposes, contains the most important bits. The follow-up, Don't read this, is relevant for the last part of this entry, but is not strictly necessary.

To sum up briefly:

• She asserts that Kennedy's decision to fly when and where he did was an incredibly stupid move on his part, and brings in quite a bit of evidence to support that assertion.

• She then goes on to say that the real problem she has is with the scale of the massive search effort, which seemingly implied that JFK Jr.'s life was more important than that of everybody else.

• And, finally, she questions the warm, fuzzy feeling some have at SF conventions, or other gatherings of their peers, declaring it to be hollow at best, as it comes from opting out of the "real world."

Which is to say, has any of us not made at least one dumb, potentially life-threatening decision somewhere along the line? I doubt it. In fact, I suspect that all of you reading this have managed to cheat death on a number of occasions, despite your best efforts to the contrary. I certainly have. Frankly, it's part of life; close shaves are where most of us Learn Our Lessons. And, sometimes, it's part of death. The division isn't between the stupid and the non-stupid; it's between those who have survived so far, and those who haven't. Kennedy's number came up this time around.

This is not to say that one should blithely go through life laughing in the face of death, or, alternately, that one should take a fatalistic attitude toward the whole thing. And, certainly, there are lessons to be learned here on flight safety, among other things. But Columbine's description seems to imply that the man was really much more stupid than the rest of us, which seems unfair.

And to anticipate one more objection... yes, this means that I'm saying that virtually all people do stupid things at times, including myself. Really stupid things, even. Does that imply that I believe that most people are stupid? Absolutely not. Which, I suspect, is a crucial point being missed in Columbine's third entry in the series. Of course people on the whole are intelligent, and capable of making decisions for themselves. Which is precisely why you need to grant them the right to make stupid decisions at times.

It seems to me that not allowing people to fly solo with Kennedy's level of certification -- as Columbine advocates -- because they might make stupid decisions, ultimately implies that people aren't capable of making such decisions for themselves... in other words, asserting the very notion of general stupidity that she detests.

I don't think JFK Jr. was stupid, and deserved to die as a result. I think he may have made a stupid decision, and the odds worked against him, and he died. I think his relatives made the decision to trust him -- whether that decision was stupid or not is more debatable, and not terribly relevant -- and the odds worked against them, and they died. Being rational people, they had the right to make those decisions. As for the result... it happens. It doesn't imply any sort of moral judgement on any of them. People don't "deserve" to die; they just do, when the laws of physics demand it.

In precisely the same sense, in fact, that the final Women's World Cup game was more important than, say, a street game of soccer, or a Yankees game is more important than a pickup game of baseball after school.

What, after all, is the difference? In both cases, in each of those pairs, the same game is being played. It's distinctly possible, in fact, that the participants in the sandlot games put hours of practice into their play, and take the game just as seriously as their big-league counterparts, and pull off some truly impressive plays.

What makes blocking a penalty kick in the one case more important than in the other?

Why do people watch athletes, anyway? Why form attachments to teams? What's the point?

There are any number of answers to this, and I'm not even going to try to cover them just now. But part of it is that our chosen objects of fanhood represent us in some ways, are our champions. When the U.S. women's soccer team succeeds it is, in some measure, a victory for Americans, and particularly for American women.

Over here in the States, the same applies for celebrities in general. It's a much more involved sport, and the rules are both murkier and more complex. (As an almost complete aside, my long-neglected Rogue Market portfolio hasn't done nearly as well as Columbine's. My stock in Christina Ricci and Wynona Ryder went up, but Janet Reno and Billy Joel went down, and Sheryl Crow plummeted like a stone.) But the basic principles are the same. Our chosen celebrities live out their lives for us, act for us, sing for us, and sometimes die for us. Which isn't terribly fair to them -- check out Olivia Goldsmith's Flavor of the Month to see just how unfair it can be -- but that doesn't change matters any. And, like it or not, John-John was a celebrity of the highest caliber. From the evidence, it seems to have been his calling, in fact.

For this reason, it seemed utterly appropriate to see the headline "Clinton Says JFK Jr. Loss, Soccer Win Unite U.S." on Yahoo! News. The two aren't incongruent at all.

To quote, 'cause past experience suggests that these articles don't stay online all that long:

``It is at times like this that we really stop to recognize that as big and diverse as our country is, we can come together as a national family. We can come together in sorrow or in joy if it reflects the values that we honor most,'' Clinton said as he greeted the soccer team on the White House south lawn.

``We all know this is both a moment of celebration and a moment of sadness for the United States, and our thoughts and prayers are with the families of John Kennedy and Carolyn and Lauren Bessette.''

I'm not articulating this as well as I should be, but it's past four in the morning as I type this, and I'm starting to fade a bit.

I think the main problem I have over here is with the assumption that there is, in fact, such a thing as "The Real World"; that is to say, one world in which we all live. The argument seems to rest on the belief that you can be part of that world, or try to block yourself off from it, but it's there all the same, and that fact must be acknowledged. It also suggests that to be part of a smaller subgroup of the Real World is to turn one's back on the Real World, to some degree.

I don't happen to believe any of that.

For starters, I don't think any of us really live in the same world. I don't, after all, believe in objective truth, for all intents and purposes; rather, I think we all have subjective viewpoints, which are more or less equally valid, provided that they don't infringe on the "realities" of others. (That last bit is something I've wrestled with in the past, although I'm not sure I've gotten into it here. I'll certainly return to it in future entries.) At any rate, there is no one objectively Real World out there, more real than any other, smaller version.

Saying this doesn't mean that I consider myself to be an outcast, or an outsider, or not part of something big. All of those imply the existence of something that I simply don't believe exists. Which doesn't mean that I'm turning my back on it; it just means that it's Not There. It is a meaningless, nonexistent abstraction. Got it? There's a difference here.

(Some would say that in making such a statement, I'm willfully ignoring the facts, but, then, some would say that by not accepting <insert random bit of dogma you don't happen to believe> you're doing the same thing, no?)

This doesn't mean that one is left to live a solitary life, though. We may all live in different universes, but those universes do have some points in common. Utilizing those common points, we can build interstellar alliances, as it were.

(Shmuel goes back and reads that last sentence.)

Right. It's 5 AM now, and I've been writing this for about three hours, and I think I've just stopped making sense. Please disregard the preceding sentence, and I don't think I'm going to try to make the rest of my case just now. Let me just make a few more miscellaneous statements, without very much elaboration, and I'll be off for now.

So. First of all, given that the starting point is with separate worlds, rather than One Big One, not only is going out and forming a smallish group in which to interact and Do Good and stuff a Very Constructive Thing To Do, it's quite possibly the most constructive way to effect change in the wider circle of people out there. If you have a pot in which the bottom is burnt, with lots of black stuff on it, you could try scrubbing the whole thing... but you'll get much better results if you start by concentrating on one small part, cleaning that completely, and then gradually widening the scope of your scrubbing.

Being part of a smaller circle is not necessarily turning one's back on the world; rather, it's doing one's part for the world at large, starting with one subset of it. Both by strengthening that part of the world, and by the impact it will ultimately have on the whole.

And being treated kindly by one's friends (and, I'd add, being respected by one's opponents) not only isn't "a very hollow victory," but it is, in fact, almost the only game in town, second only to one's respect for oneself, and, for those of us who believe in Him, one's relationship with God.

Tying this back together with the previous point... this is another function of athletes, and celebrities. They give us reference points, ground in common with one another, ways to relate, excuses to believe that we really are all in the same world. Sure, it's utterly arbitrary, but that in no way lessens their effectiveness.

The reason the Kennedys make the news is that more people follow them, in this country, than follow pretty much any other celebrities out there. (With the possible exception of the British Royal family, but they're not as useful for this purpose, as they're not One of Us.) Therein lies their value. If everybody of a particular generation can remember where they were when they heard Jack Kennedy died, then that gives them something in common, and grounds -- however tenuous -- for forging some sort of community. This is not something to be sneered at.

(Indeed, my mistake -- which caused my initial surprise at the public reaction -- was in dwelling on the fact that JFK Jr. never really did much of anything, thus missing the point. His mere existance was more than enough.)

I would argue that smaller groups serve a similar purpose. And that even if you do believe in an absolute Real World, such groups can be seen as cogs in a larger wheel.