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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rick Julian who wrote (25940)	11/14/1998 8:09:00 PM
From: E	Respond to of 108807

Why on earth are you talking about pitying Sam? Why would one pity him? Because he's missing his goddam legs? He is fortunate to be alive, and is enjoying his life greatly, for heaven's sake. My best friend's husband is a quadriplegic from multiple sclerosis. Can't move, not at all, from the neck down. Numb. I don't pity him, either (though I do deeply wish there were a cure for MS)-- He reads, he writes criticism and reviews, he is still a "presence" in the New York literary scene, he has many friends who come to visit him and read to him-- he enjoys his life quite a lot! (Now, if he didn't have money, I might pity him just a little because it might be a whole lot harder if not impossible for him to be productive and remain in such good cheer. In fact, if he didn't have money for round the clock exquisite nursing care, he would be dead.) <<When I rue others' situations I deny them their power, and in doing so assign them victim status. >> Oh, please. Anyway, you don't have to "assign" Pinjira Begum, the arsenic- poisoned Bangladeshi wife, "victim status." That little matter has been taken care of by plain old bad luck and the son of a bitch who's her husband. And if you decided, for some odd reason, to go so far as to "rue" her situation (I really can't believe you don't "rue" it, it seems unnatural to the point of being more animal than human not to) that would hardly be the force that is "denying her power." To me, that was a very strange post, Rick. [In my Edit window]: << Pitying him would dishonor his bravery, his struggle, his work, and the fruit it bore him.>> No say nothing of being an entirely foolish and misplaced and bizarre a response to a happy guy with a good life. Sam is hardly Pinjira Begum, Rick.

To: Rick Julian who wrote (25940)	11/15/1998 1:11:00 PM
From: E	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

More re karma: It's hard not to see karma theory and Original Sin in the Christian tradition as twins. Their inner (psychological) function is to exculpate the God-force from any charges of indifference or cruelty, which would be awkward traits in a God-force also omnipotent and omniscient. In karma, past actions of the sufferer are to blame. The concept of Original Sin was explicitly developed by Augustine as an answer to the question of why innocent infants so often suffer horribly. His devised answer was that Adam had sinned and the taint of that sin passed down the generations. Thus Augustine was permitted to love God as unreservedly as he wanted to, and as he had before this little problem had begun to torment him. Karma and Orginal Sin are mental devices to allow credulists to continue in a desired, lulling, love-condition while in worshipping mode toward a God-force they must believe is simultaneously all powerful, all knowing, and constitutionally benign.