Aaron Swartz. aaronsw.

I didn’t know him. I should say that right off the bat. I think I met him, once, in the flurry of brilliant and bold people that happens when a community built on new communications methods explodes. But it seems that everyone I know did know him, in one way or another. Some people very close to me were very close to him. And, of course, I knew him by his work, by the way that the work of people who build important tools touch all of us, become a part of our ecosystem. Because I am sometimes active on reddit, and because I use RSS daily, and sometimes we forget that the infrastructure that we all take for granted was once just a brilliant crazy idea.

There are a lot of people saying what needs to be said right now about Aaron. People who knew him far better than I, and who can express better than I the love that they have for someone who affected a community so much that I literally cannot open a new tab today without seeing his name somewhere. I am not going to eulogize a man I know in only the most distant sense, no matter how much I am upset by the loss of someone I may have met, once. Other people far more qualified than I will do that admirably. Other people will talk about how kind, and giving, and brilliant he was.

I’m here to talk about how angry I am.

Aaron’s case is complicated, as all stories are. And more reasonable people will say more reasonable things about the nuanced causes of this, and, usually, I would be right there with them. Usually I feel it is important to not make broad generalizations about causality, because they’re almost never accurate. Well, not this time. I’m pissed. And I will say, in the baldest terms possible, what I think happened here.

The greed of the copyright industry, combined with our current attitude toward emotional health issues, killed Aaron.

He died because someone in the halls of power wanted to send a clear signal about what happens to people who interfere in the ability of old guard systems to make money.

Well, you sent a signal, you faceless bureaucrat, you greyface, you moneylender in the temple of information that is the internet. That signal is: We will destroy brilliant, beautiful people in order to safeguard our sources of income.

The signal has been received, loud and clear.

He died because it is impossible to talk about depression in a reasonable way today. I myself have chemical depression, mood swings that often make it nearly impossible for me to deal with the world with any clarity. And of course I can’t speak for Aaron, but I feel that what I go through is probably only a fraction of what he had to endure. I am also, any friend will tell you, the sort of person who is not afraid of looking like an idiot in public. And even still, with my relatively mild issues and lack of public grace, it is excruciatingly difficult for me to reach out to someone when I need help. The internet, today, is full of calls to speak up, and I can only echo those. But, at a base level, it’s about more than just telling your friends you will be there for them. It’s about creating a culture where we can talk about these things openly, without being thought of as crazy in a pejorative and dismissive sense.

It’s about creating a culture where the needs of a human being to say “I need help” and get it are respected, and the needs of a structure made up of increasingly indistinguishable governments and companies to consolidate power at the price of those human beings are reduced.

When you are in a war, and you are marching at someone’s side, then you are qualified to say that you knew them. But when you are way back from the front lines, like me, when you are invested but not in the path of the bullets, and a leader in your cause falls, your job is to get angry, and get back at the bastards who took away the man who bore your flag.

But we’re not going to get back at them by firing someone, or suspending them without pay, or denying tenure, or shooting them or blowing them up or yelling at them. These are attacking the wrong target, because if you cut off the hydra’s head, two more grow back. I use the war metaphor with some hesitation, because it sounds overblown. But what else do you call it when people die because they did what they thought was right, and are persecuted and hounded for it until they see no other way out? So. I call it war. And the nature of war is such that victory is ultimately assured, not by destroying people or institutions, but by changing the field of battle.

And that is what we must do, here, I think. Yes, those who fight against corruption on an organizational level should do so, and, yes, those who offer assistance to sufferers of depression and other mental health issues should by all means continue. But underneath and around all of these things that we do to help in the immediate sense, we should be looking at ways of changing the field so that these sorts of things do not happen again. Find ways of changing the cultural norms so that help to people is the rule, not the exception. Explore mechanisms for creating technical and legal structures that allow reasonable relationships between dissemination of information and payment to creators. Shift the balance of power.

Create a world where what is now commonplace tragedy becomes unthinkable. Create a world where those who want to create a better world are not reduced, afflicted, and sometimes destroyed for it. Create a world where we will never again have to mourn the loss of someone simply because they were brilliant.