Rant: The Pope, Schiavo and other tediousness
5 Apr 2005 by Paul Davies
- Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality
Few things are more cringe-worthy than an outpouring of grief from a bunch of people battling against their own insecurity and sense of worthlessness, desperately clinging to anything that could instil a sense of belonging and a reason for breathing.
Anyone who caught a glimpse of the lachrymose masses surrounding the final throes of Terry Schiavo and the Pope surely couldn't help but be moved. Not moved to tears so much but to thinking: "haven't they got anything better to do?"
From Florida to the Vatican, the streets were paved with bawling wastes of space attempting to give their lives a semblance of meaning by attaching themselves to fleeting notions of celebrity.
The big issue here, however, isn't about the 'Right to Life', or even whether JP was the best Pope ever. It is simpler than that: whose death was more tiresome? Whose wearisome exit from this world was the most excruciatingly tedious?
It's a tough call.
The Pope drew a bigger crowd, but he was aided by thousands of years of religious propaganda and scare-mongering on a level George Bush can only dream of. Mrs Schiavo only had foolish sentiment and a nation's love for a good televised court case to work with.
Also, in a match-up such as this, quackery is more important than quantity. Plenty of tears were shed for John Paul II, but a huge proportion of his crowd conducted themselves with a disturbing level of dignity. The Schiavo case, on the other hand, drew a crowd united by Fox News-brand hysteria which exhibited truly impressive levels of sanctimonious delusion from people only slightly less brain-dead than the unfortunate Mrs Schiavo.
In most circumstances, this would be enough to win it. But as all the horrors of history have shown, you simply can't compete with the blind madness of organised religion. And when it comes to drawn-out ceremonies and a global populace and media feeling that they should be doing 'something', the Pope takes it hands-down. Not only did he completely steal the Schiavo thunder, but when the Pope's funeral finally gets going it's due to last for nine whole days. In nine days time, no one will even remember who Terry Schiavo was, not even the professional protestors and complete strangers who deemed themselves the best advocates of her wishes.
Ultimately however, even the Pope's protracted passing can't match the soporific circus that surrounded Princess Diana's sudden death in 1997. Give it a few weeks and there'll be another Pope, another few weeks and he'll be off doing whatever it is Popes do beside praying, and the world will get back to being mad in private. But as the furore that threatened to stifle the weekend's royal wedding shows, Diana's legacy haunts us still. A nine-day funeral is nothing compared to almost nine-years of nonsense.
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