CP3S said:

So, talent makes someone more valuable? Slightly more tragic when the ten year old kid who is totally badass with a violin dies than when the ten year old who doesn't do so well in school and just want to play video-games in his free time dies?

It does a bit doesn't it, collectively speaking?

If you know the someone personally, their talents and achievements are just window dressing but if talents are the only point of interaction you have with someone it's that you miss along with some vague perception of their personality filtered through those cultural relics.

I didn't personally know John Lennon or any of the Beatles or their families.

I know his songs and some of the music he created, I've seen his films, his drawings and read some of his poems and that conveys some of his personality.

The potential for him to create more of that is all I could miss of him because that's all life has permitted me to see of him.

There are plenty of equally complex people I also have never met who don't leave a trail of easily accessible artifacts who also die tragically young but I don't feel as connected to them so their passing feels less of a loss because I haven't invested as much in their life because our paths have not in anyway crossed.

It doesn't make them less human or their passing any less tragic on an individual level.

Mortality sucks, if I had my way it would be banned.