
The Falling Man - kareemm
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a48031/the-falling-man-tom-junod/
======
chiaro
“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself
doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that
life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems
suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain
unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will
eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about
people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great
height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing
speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of
falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s
flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the
slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror
of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling
‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to
have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way
beyond falling.”

\- David Foster Wallace

------
richardw
It's surprising that people would criticise those who jumped. Wow.

A focus on the idealised view of the jumper ("they would never have killed
themselves!") blocks people from feeling the sheer terror and pain the jumper
must have felt. The focus on some abstract concept like "suicide is bad,
m'kay" rather than right-here-and-now burning flames and the terrifying
strangle of unbreathable smoke.

The fact that so many jumped despite all our fears of heights and certain
death, is proof of a greater horror in those floors. Society skews our
perspective so we focus on the trivial, punishing those whose family members
were lost, rather than learning something about the situation those poor
people must have been in and empathising with their families.

~~~
rawfan
My little brother is a fire fighter. He tells me it's involuntary. At a
certain point the heat and smoke get so intense that you can't do anything but
jump. He's seen his trained collegues do it.

~~~
truth_sentinell
I wonder why most business buildings don't have some sort of mechanism on the
outside that allows people to climb off? That would have save many many lives.

~~~
refurb
You mean a fire escape? Most buildings do, but some are internal.

Nothing like that would have helped in the wtc.

~~~
celticninja
Parachutes next to a window with a hammer. Would have helped some, but of
course you could not store enough for everyone. And whilst training may
usually be necessary, shoulder and leg straps aren't that hard to work out and
a bright coloured mini chute thrown to engage the main chute would be
feasible. And of course the perils of crashing into the building etc are still
there but for the sort of situations we are talking about you would be almost
certainly dead if yiu didn't jump.

~~~
gbajson
Good luck. BASE jump without _many, many_ practice parachute jumps before
means almost sure dead. Also, parachutes need to folded and unfolded from time
time.

~~~
celticninja
As I said these are for the situation where you are dead if you don't.

------
jessaustin
As a culture, we really have a misguided attitude about suicide, stemming
largely from the insidious just-world fallacy. It's a comfort to many of us in
this fucked-up world, to think that maybe it's not as unfair as it seems. As
persistent as that warped logic is, it doesn't withstand suicide. We don't
want to imagine we could ever face a truly intolerable situation, so instead
we imagine a world that doesn't allow such, and we damn those whose deaths
would contradict us.

~~~
rdtsc
> As a culture, we really have a misguided attitude about suicide

A lot of it is religious. It is considered a great sin in popular religions.
Even though many don't follow religion it left this ingrained idea in the
culture.

Also perhaps is seen as shameful. Part of the desire to censor the images was
probably not purely to respect the victims, but also to hide the act, because
it is shameful ("don't show this to the children" type thing)

The reason it is shameful is that it is seen as the most radical act of
"giving up". And that doesn't jive with the "you can overcome anything with
hard work" culture.

You can read this in how people talked about it -- "they were forced out"
instead of "they decided to jump". Both are correct at some level. But first
seems more appropriate in our culture.

One other level, perhaps even unconsciously we understand there is a
possibility of contagion. It has happened and actually has been observed
(someone in a high school does, and then usually a string of suicided might
follow, the more talk and media coverage the more suicides follow etc). Maybe
at some point in that past that fear of contagion got codified as a taboo...

~~~
sullyj3
I think that the just world fallacy is an enormous contributor to the
existence of religion in the first place.

~~~
merpnderp
I was under the impression most religions don't believe the world is just or
fair and that it is people's jobs to attempt to make it more so.

~~~
jessaustin
The religions I've endured attempt to tiptoe the line. They admit to life's
unfairness, but they still pretend that by praying in the right way or
donating to the right televangelist one can make it a little more "fair" for
oneself. Also there's the whole heaven thing, which has been a great
distraction from the ills of this world since its invention. Really, 'sullyj3
has it exactly right.

------
Spooky23
A former colleague was there and witnessed this. He struggles with it for a
variety of reasons, including that he would have been inside a few minutes
later.

The way he put it, which says it all for me, was that the jumpers were a sort
of testimony to the fact there was no way out and no hope for the people
trapped up there.

There's lots of cultural stigma to suicide, and one of the reasons for that is
there is always reason to hope. The poor souls up there ran out of reasons.

~~~
Waterluvian
The thing that sticks with me beyond anything else was that there was so much
horror that day, it couldn't be kept off TV. I grew up with the understanding
that you simply don't see death live on TV.

~~~
Spooky23
Everyone was just gobsmacked and the usual bullshit storymaking aspect of TV
coverage didn't happen. I remember all of the volunteers, doctors, nurses, etc
heading to one of the hospitals to help triage a flood of injuries -- but
nobody came.

I was 150 miles away in Albany. When the state government and banks dismissed
employees, people were literally running in a daze to go home. I stood on the
corner of the busiest street downtown waiting for my wife to pick me up --
everyone scurried off and the streets were utterly empty and silent at
lunchtime. It was literally just me and an art installation statue of a guy
reading a newspaper. The silence was eerie and bizarre.

------
Rhapso
I've allways found it odd that a culture that so values personal freedom: "the
right to choose what to do with your life" so activity denies the right to
choose how to end it.

~~~
sevenless
It doesn't really though. You have no choice on whether to participate in the
market economy, and forming labor unions is restricted. Compared to other
developed countries, work hours are long, minimum wage low and holidays short.
If you don't work, even if the only work available is horrible and degrading,
society thinks it's okay to deny you healthcare and starve you to death. This
isn't a necessity, but a moral norm we have, that people who don't work should
be punished, by death if necessary.

It's interesting that so many pro-market people claim to be individualists,
because the view that the market should dictate everyone's life is as
collectivist as it gets.

~~~
jomamaxx
"society thinks it's okay to deny you healthcare and starve you to death"

This makes no sense.

Society does not 'deny' you almost anything.

That someone cannot or choses not to buy something is not 'denial'.

"because the view that the market should dictate "

???? The market does not _dictate_ anything. The 'market' is just the sum
totality of 'individual choices'.

~~~
jomamaxx
I'm not making a moral or ideological statement, in fact, I'm trying to pull
the ideology out of it.

------
damienkatz
One very morbid question I have is were some of the jumpers actually pushed?
Some of the pictures you see people crowding to the few available edges, a
crush of bodies trying to breath. Wouldn't some of the people on the edges
have been pushed by those further inside?

~~~
kristofferR
It's possible. In this video you can see 8+ people jumping within a couple of
seconds of each other from approximately the same place:
[https://youtu.be/b9QN3AkydYY?t=344](https://youtu.be/b9QN3AkydYY?t=344)

------
bootload
The Falling Man has a name.

Though not officially identified, it is thought to be Jonathan Briley. A lot
of people were killed that day. This is just one story. [0] You can view a
documentary about this image here ~
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3gbxJ4xUDE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3gbxJ4xUDE)
(1hr 11m)

RIP Jonathan.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falling_Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falling_Man)

~~~
gilgoomesh
The source for that Wikipedia article – and the documentary you linked – is an
earlier (2003) version of the same linked article by Tom Junod.

Jonathan Briley is discussed in the article. While likely, it's not certain.

~~~
michaelcampbell
Which Wikipedia makes pretty clear.

> The subject of the image, whose identity remains uncertain,...

~~~
bootload
_" The subject of the image, whose identity remains uncertain,..."_

The uncertainty, if memory serves me from viewing the above documentary, is at
the request of the family for religious reasons.

------
amelius
Perhaps "depersonalization" can explain the state some of these people were
in.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization)

------
Lidador
How can the same link be submitted twice?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12467708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12467708)

------
nickthemagicman
Why were there no parachutes? It would at least have given them a chance.

~~~
tomjen3
Or tons of helicopters trying to save those stranded on the roof?

Seriously NYC doesn't have any police/rescue helicopters?

~~~
mgkimsal
" and there were no plans for helicopter rescues from the roof, as the NYPD
deemed it too unsafe to attempt due to dense clouds of smoke and rooftop
antennas."

If you're referring the 9/11 situation, this is the reason why it wasn't
attempted - from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Clark_(September_11_surv...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Clark_\(September_11_survivor\))

That said, I suspect that had they known the towers were going to go down
within 2 hours, there might have been some different decisions made. But
that's just hindsight. :/

~~~
tomjen3
Right it has been so long that I forgot it was a surprise that the towers
collapsed that day. I remembered it a as being obvious, which it is in
hindsight.

------
amelius
I'm not sure if it is mentioned in the article, but perhaps one of the
soothing parts is that most of these people probably didn't even know what
really happened that day.

