Quantifying the Tragedy of Death

I spent some amount of time today pondering over whether any human death is more or less tragic than any other. What, if anything, makes the deaths of the 17 students in Florida more tragic than the deaths of those who died in car crashes during the 17 minutes of silence? As I pondered, I came to the conclusion that there are many factors that can make a death more or less tragic.

One factor is age. A young person dying is more tragic than an older person dying because the younger person had more of their life ahead of them. Had their untimely death been prevented, they would have enjoyed more years of "borrowed time" than the older person.

Another factor is cause. Death from natural causes or from the deceased's own stupidity is less tragic than a death caused by evil choices.

Pain and duration can be a factor. Suffering is tragic, but that's more of a function of the suffering itself, not the death that it precedes. If anything, the death itself might be considered a blessed release from the pain of whatever condition caused the death. Still, when one considers the pain and the death together, they will probably conclude that a quick, painless death is less tragic than a slow, painful one.

Another factor that can make a death more or less tragic is the extent to which the deceased will be missed. The more people who knew and loved the deceased, the more sorrow there will be for that person when they die, which makes their death that much more tragic.

However, I think that the greatest factor of the measure of the tragedy of a death is the deceased's personal righteousness. We know that there is an afterlife and that heaven is much, much better than Earth, while hell is, presumably, worse. If one is reasonably confident that the deceased is heaven-bound, then one can be reasonably certain that the deceased went on to a better place, which should be celebrated, not mourned.

I cannot speak for the righteousness of the high school students. I didn't know them. But I do know that they were young people whose lives were cut short by a sudden, violent, evil act, leaving many mourners behind. Given that, I can logically claim that their deaths are more tragic than that of a reasonably righteous but not well liked man experiencing a painless, natural death of old age. I would be lucky to have such a death, though I would hope to have enough people miss me that my death would be at least a little bit tragic.

What should be done about such deaths as occurred recently in Florida is a question fro ethicists and politicians, but two things that are no longer questions in my mind are whether those deaths were more tragic than others and how one might quantify the tragedy of death.