So I heard about Steve Irwin dying last night. I haven’t posted about it yet because I was formulating my thoughts. I know that this is going to be just another one of the billion posts out there right now talking about it.

I’m kind of glad I waited to talk about it till today because frankly I’m a little put off by the way some people are treating his death. I’m not surprised by it, but it still bugs me.

Of course it’s no surprise that Steve was killed by a dangerous animal. That was inevitable. I wish it hadn’t happened so soon, but it was definitely going to happen. He died doing what he loved, and that’s more than most people can expect.

Someone in another journal made a good point. He was reacting to people saying that Steve deserved to die the way he did, and that he was irresponsible for putting himself in a position where he could leave his wife widowed and his children fatherless. His reaction was this (paraphrased):

“He deserved it in the same way a firefighter deserves to die in a fire and a cop deserves to be shot by a crook and a soldier deserves to die in the field. “

Someone then responded saying (again paraphrased) that the comparison isn’t right because firefighters and cops and soldiers die protecting people, and Steve Irwin annoyed dangerous animals.

I think that the basic problem here is a lack of understanding of what Steve Irwin really did with his life. Yes, he hosted a TV show where he went out and fucked with deadly animals. Yes he routinely put his life at risk for the benefit of his show and his passion. What he also did was devoted his life to the preservation of these animals. He spent his time on this planet doing everything he could to not only protect these animals, but to educate people about them. His philosophy was to teach people not to blindly fear these animals but to cautiously respect them. To understand them, and ultimately, to grasp exactly why these animals are important and the role they serve in the grand scheme of things. Steve Irwin was passionate about all animals, dangerous or otherwise, and he made it his mission to make sure that they maintained their place on this planet.

Whether or not you agree with his views or the way he went about teaching people, there is no getting around the very decent and good and respectable intentions behind what he dedicated his life to. Sure, he put himself potentially in harms way, but he only did so for what he believed to be the greater good.

And in the end, it killed him. I can’t fault him for the decisions he made or the way he conducted his life, because he actually dedicated his life to trying to make the world a better place, which is a lot more than I can say for myself or most of the people talking shit about him right now.

That’s my two cents on it.

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 4th, 2006 at 5:22 pm and is filed under celebrities, death. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.