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I have been following all the Khephra threads and thinking about why it is that the death of someone I never met and who I didn't really know very well seems to have affected me so much. I know it's at least partly because I see so many of you grieving for him, and because I have come to think of DU as a kind of extended family, I can't help wanting to be able to make it better, though I know I can't. I thought maybe I should say something about how his life and his death have affected me, one of the people farther from the center of this loss.
When you toss a stone into the water, the effect is most obvious near the point of impact. But as the ripples spread, it changes more and more, in ways that are not as obvious. I am one of those ripples. Spending as much time posting here as I do, I inevitably got into conversations with Khephra, and you could always tell two things about him: that he had a big heart, and that he deeply cared about what was happening to his country. I didn't know until I started reading the tribute threads how important he had been to establishing and maintaining the Latest Breaking News forum. In that way, he has had and will go on having an enormous impact not just on my life but on the lives of people who don't even post here.
I don't watch TV much any more. Figure skating, the Cubs, the World Series, and that's it. Since the bombing of Baghdad started, I just can't take the TV news. After the election, I lost NPR too--or more accurately, after their stupid fucking piece on "Kerry die-hards," about which I have ranted lustily elsewhere. And yet, to not keep up on what's going on would be irresponsible and, for me, impossible. So I got to Latest Breaking News. Basically, at this point, that's the media, for me. It pulls together sources from all points on the political spectrum, it brings in articles from the international English-language press (even the occasional translated foreign-language story), and it's constantly being updated. IMHO it's the only news portal anyone should ever need, and it is a mammoth achievement.
Building that up must have involved an enormous amount of time and effort. Now, LBN is strong enough and robust enough to go on without him, as an enduring and I hope damn near immortal part of his legacy. It will certainly always be an important part of my life, until the government shuts us down or I get sent to a re-education camp in Nebraska.
The DU community is some 50,000 strong (plus or minus the lurking freepers and curiosity seekers). But through LBN Khephra's impact goes further than that. I remember my partner telling me a few months ago that her younger sister, who has also gone through a revulsion against TV news, told her that my livejournal is now her sole news source. I get my news from LBN, as I said. So Khephra's legacy passes through me to Jane and through her to whoever she's going to talk to about what she's heard that day and through them to whoever they process their news with and on outward toward the ends of the ocean.
Watching all of this has reminded me of what drew me to the Internet in the first place. It has always been one of my pet theories that the foundation of ethics is imagination. You cannot always see and touch the people that one of your actions might hurt; you have to be able to imagine them. Meeting people through the Web involves the same kind of faith; you believe in them even though you can't see or touch them. Approached in the right spirit and used with the right intentions, the anonymity of the internet can help train us to do the most important thing we can possibly learn, which is to consider, understand, and respect the rights and feelings of people who are not physically present to us and who are not--at least as far as we know--part of whatever we consider our tribe. When people talk about Khephra as being a pillar of this community, it seems to me like what they're saying is that he was able to make online interaction good for people, even at times when the rest of us often yielded to the temptation to fire up the flamethrower and toast away.
The loss of the ability to care about imaginary people is, from what I can tell, what has allowed our countrymen to accept the Iraq war, and many of the other abominations this administration has perpetrated. At its best, DU nurtures that ability, by helping us care for each other as well as acting on behalf of all the people who are being hurt by the goons who run our country. From what I can tell, Khephra was DU at its best. And for that, I will always be grateful to him.
My heart goes out to everyone for whom this loss is deeper and more personal than it is for me. I love you all, and I hope that you will find comfort in each other, and in the knowledge that Khephra will live on as long as we keep this community alive.
Peace,
The Plaid Adder
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