The Suicide of Aaron Swartz

I was reading emails from SumOfUs.org, a group set up in response to large corporations increasing power and often immoral decisions. One email was petitioning for Fox News to have an anchor fired after he called Robin Williams a coward for his suicide. Going after one man for an insensitive comment seemed a little out of place against their other campaigns until I saw the comment from the group’s founder, Taren Stinebrickner Kauffman, saying this one was personal because her partner, Aaron Swartz, had committed suicide 20 months to the day prior to Williams.

I’d not heard of him and I was intrigued about this so I searched for him online. This was the first article I read, and while it might paint a biased picture of the man and his idealism (or then again it might not; I never met him), this is terribly sad.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jun/02/aaron-swartz-hacker-genius-martyr-girlfriend-interview

To me, it feels sad any time I learn that someone felt that life was so unbearable that they had to stop but this has taken on a sort of symbolic poignancy for me. 

The article paints the man as ferociously intelligent, idealistic to a fault, and also determined to utilize both of these qualities in a realistic and meaningful way to make things better. When he fell foul of The System, which he was trying to make fairer for everyone, it stomped on him. Not long after he was dead.

This has just broken my heart a little.