Cover image for essay: Celebrity Death and the Secularization of Mourning by KimBoo York

Can we, as atheists with no real common denominator other than what we don’t believe in, use celebrity mourning as any kind of guide or measure for more personal tragedies? I think so. The thing that strikes me about the events I bring up here, from Princess Di to Robin Williams to Leonard Nimoy, is that the mourning was public. That seems incredibly obvious to point out, but think about this in comparison to personal losses. People refrain from bringing up the names of dead family members, don’t refer to their deaths, and generally help us build a wall of isolation around our losses.

Full essay at: http://www.atheistrepublic.com/blog/kimboo-york/celebrity-death-secularization-mourning