If you could have dinner with anyone dead or alive, who would you choose? You probably think I would choose somebody alive because a dead person isn't likely to contribute much to the conversation. However many living people are so dreadful that in many cases a dead person would make preferable company. Dead people are the coolest. No seriously they are because their bodies are no longer regulating their core temperature - you shouldn't be learning that only now.
There are lots of dead people who would make the world a better place if they were still alive. Ten years ago this week the world lost Steve Irwin. I don't know which dead person I'd choose to have dinner with, there are too many to choose from, but Irwin would certainly have been interesting to meet. If you are wondering whether or not he would have ate meat for dinner, the answer is yes he might have as somewhat surprisingly it turns out he wasn't vegetarian. One of the traits I admired in Irwin was his ability to put a positive spin on anything. I personally do not feel right about eating meat and would like to find an alternative solution to this most pressing of moral dilemmas. Irwin's stance was that vegetarianism takes up more natural resources, especially land, than a meat-inclusive diet. It was in the spirit of conservation that he didn't become vegetarian. I disagree with his position but if you read his comments on vegetarianism in an interview with Scientific American, I would like to think that conservation was at the heart of his reasoning:
"I went through a big stage of my life where I thought, you know, maybe it would be better to be a vegetarian, so I researched it. In no uncertain terms did I research it. Let's say this represents one cow, which will keep me in food for, let's say, a month. Now that cow needs this much land and food. Well, you can imagine, that cow needs x by x amount of land, and you can grow trees in it. Around that cow, you can have goannas, kangaroos, wallabies. You can have every other single Australian animal in and around that cow. If I was a vegetarian, to feed me for that month, I need this much land, and nothing else can grow there. Herein lies our problem. If we level that much land to grow rice and whatever, then no other animal could live there except for some insect pest species. Which is very unfortunate."
Having seen Irwin only through a camera lens, it is difficult to imagine him having undertaken any task with anything other than passionate enthusiasm. What would he have been like as a dinner guest? I can just imagine him tucking in to a nice portion of beef all the while looking down at his plate saying 'you're alright mate, you're alright'. His passion made for brilliant TV. I seem to remember him leaping off of a moving quad bike in the middle of a desert somewhere when he spotted something he wanted a closer look at. It was an eccentric manoeuvre as he could have just stopped the engine and gracefully walked over to whatever creature it was. But where would the fun have been in that? This was a guy who loved his job and it showed. Can you imagine how much brighter society would be if all school teachers showed as much passion for the subjects they teach as Irwin did for nature? By the way that is not to say that I think all teachers should be extroverts or as in-your-face as Irwin. There are many ways of inspiring young people through passion. You can easily be an introvert and inspire people with your passion. You can inspire through writing for example. And of course David Attenborough is much less extroverted than Steve Irwin bur certainly no less passionate.
For those that say Steve Irwin was just a showman, I think I would respond by saying they are missing the point. Yes it was pretty spectacular to wrestle with crocodiles but it got people's attention and once he had your attention, he would then set about educating you. And boy did he have a lot to say. Irwin knew his subjects inside out and personally I always learned something new every time I watched him.
I don't personally agree with recent efforts of people putting a positive spin on death, there was nothing positive about such a talented man dying at the age of forty-four. However, in thinking about Steve Irwin for this piece, I mostly feel like smiling because his antics were crazy but unique with a positive benefit for the world around him. And I'm going to be honest, some of his behaviour made me laugh.
I don't believe in life after death but in terms of his legacy, I'd like to say this to Mr. Irwin: "You're alright mate, you're alright!"