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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (11951)	4/19/2001 11:21:35 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

I am not sure why we need to make people into heroes and villains in the first place. Perhaps this "age" is the first step toward realizing that. If so it is a good thing. I find many people to be heroic. Quiet people. People not singled out, and people who never will be singled out. It annoys me who IS singled out. So if we pass beyond trumpeting people, I will be quite pleased. And if the first step towards the cessation of trumpeting is finding that most people have feet of clay, so be it.

To: The Philosopher who wrote (11951)	4/23/2001 10:45:08 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Our society today wallows in destroying reputations and searching for and eagerly trumpeting any negative in people. I consider the above an undignified response to my posting the information no one has denied that Mother Teresa, whom you would like to believe lived her life "suffused with love," actually insisted on "a complete avoidance of all human attachments, even with those being served".... ...And kept in bank accounts, or used to open nunneries, millions and millions of dollars given by those who thought they were contributing to assuage the suffering of the poor, very little of their money making its way to the suffering. To the starving. Mother Teresa couldn't be bothered even to use sterilized needles to administer injections to those who attended her clinics. Her hospitals did not deserve the name "hospitals." She banked millions and tossed those cruel, dirty places a pittance. She had millions in the bank, but if food wasn't able to be collected free, the "patients" went without. And she explicitly believed that suffering was a goodthing, for the poor. Her view was, "The more a person suffers, the more God is pleased." She withheld painkillers from those unfortunate enough to find themselves dying in agony in one of her "hospitals." (Do you think that when she was hospitalized for a broken hip, or for bypass surgery, she was treated in one of her primitive hospitals? Do you think she refused painkillers? Oxygen? No, she got state of the art care and she got pain killers and she got oxygen and she got sterile needles.) In spite of the estimated 73 million malnourished children in India, she believed birth control must never be used. Well, of course -- suffering is a good thing. Christopher, you wrote to me once, when I mentioned, in a list of values that you and I might both teach our children, the value of hard work, these words: ...What I mean by being honest is being honest to God... I value hard work in a good cause. Hard work can be turned to evil as well as good... I believe that hard work in pursuit of the right ends is a virtue. I think you should acknowledge that Mother Teresa's hard work was not in pursuit of right ends. That, as you put it, "Hard work can be turned to evil," and that in Mother Teresa's case, as much as in any case, it was. But I think you don't really care what Mother Teresa was in actuality, or what suffering she caused. I think you don't want to open your eyes to it. I think you prefer Disneyland to life. You wrote this: And frankly I don't mind if some of the heroism is historically questionable, The problem is, whitewashing evil creates cynicism about good.