Raven on 2/3/2008 at 23:05
OH YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!! I JUST SPENT 30 MINUTES COMPOSING A REPLY - I PROOF CHECKED THE SPELLING AND EVERYTHING, BUT MY STUPID LAPTOP DID SOMETHING AND NOW IT IS GONE!!!!
Okay a summary... and I will let you work out the details.
You do realise that you are saying that a woman born in 1910 who went out into the world to love, help, and administer to the sick and the dieing is a BAD THING!
You call me ignorant for not thinking that funds could have been used else where...
1. Catholic nuns take a vow of poverty - this fact is not hidden.
2. Catholics (the majority of donations probably) think that religious orders are a good thing.
3. A catholic goal is to live your life as an example of Christ's love - not be an administrative genius. MT would have realised that after fame her life would be seen as such.
4. Her organisation is probably inefficient with funds and probably poorly organised, as many organisations are.
5. Governments can't get through the corruption in aid giving - you are expecting a 90 nun to be able to?
6. I can't imagine the logistics of setting up a nation health service in a foreign country. She never said that was what she was trying to do.
"She superficially dealt with poverty in such a way that did not actually help, and funds that could have been used to really alleviate suffering, or even better, prevent it, were instead used in furtherance of spreading her own personal dogmatic beliefs."
I have never comforted someone on their death bed, I have never directly fed a starving person or bandaged puss infected wounds. I can't say if she only superficially alleviated suffering or not. I have never suffered like the people she was trying to help.
And I give it to you again to please think about what you are say...
You do realise that you are saying that a woman born in 1910 who went out into the world to love, help, and administer to the sick and the dieing is a BAD THING!
jtr7 on 2/3/2008 at 23:26
What this argument sorely needs are accounts her ministry from the sick that were there. Did they cry out "Back off, witch! I don't want or need your brand of help!" "God, get this woman away from me, and send me someone who knows what the hell they are doing!"
I have no idea how the suffering perceived her ministrations, but if she did more harm than good, than I'd like to hear it from those who were diseased and dying, and not filtered through yet another agenda to the point of hypocritical propaganda.
I do see the point that her time and energy would appear wasted on perpetuating a myth, and making excuses to drag out suffering, when she could have spent her life easing the physical suffering. But to take it so far sounds pretty black and white, to me.
Scots Taffer on 3/3/2008 at 00:36
We can't really be forgiving people for their ignorance with one hand and yet punishing them for it with the other - let's just chalk it up to yet another poorly delivered yet well meant idea from the greater Christian community who never seem to learn that the best result does not always arise from the best of intentions.
jtr7 on 3/3/2008 at 00:58
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. And it's a terrible travel experience anyway.
Aja on 3/3/2008 at 03:24
And I'm pretty sure it's a fact of life that the funds could always be spent better elsewhere.
Epos Nix on 3/3/2008 at 04:27
For some reason RBJ's post reminds me of Vietnam's first lady Madame Nhu in response to (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thich_Quang_Duc) Thich Quang Duc's
self immolation in 1963: (
http://youtube.com/watch?v=d_PWM9gWR5E) here
Obviously the reason the monk was able to stay so disturbingly still during his immolation was because he was intoxicated! Actually, I'd rather imagine that even while intoxicated, being
burned alive would still be pretty darn painful. Its too bad some people delude themselves so severely to the marvels mankind is capable of for no other reason than to protect their own egos.
Quote:
She did not alleviate the suffering of most that she came into contact with, in spite of the overwhelming ability to do so due to the outlandish sums of moneys donated to her.
Because clearly, as we in the west have shown, money alleviates suffering...
...until it runs out.
jtr7 on 3/3/2008 at 05:01
How much money has been spent on cancer research, and diabetes research, for examples? That money could be better spent researching purer food and water sources, to find ways to eliminate preservatives, and artificial anything, and chemicals from the packaging, and so forth. I once read that the amount of money women spend annually on cosmetics is more than the amount of money spent on the space program in total. How about a 1-cent tax on cosmetics to be used to fight skin diseases? Just add it to the sticker price. This is assuming agencies aren't corrupt, though. :erg:
piano-sam on 3/3/2008 at 08:51
TBH, I don't fscking care if it exists, as long a shit gets done.
Is starving people across the ocean our problem? No.
Should we try and do something about it anyway? Yes.
Why?
Because it's nice.
And we should be nice to eachother, because like it or not, we're all stuck together on this rock, at least until a GMB or something hits too close.
Some days I think it's overdue.
Edit:
Jtr - only improvised explosives.
Rogue Keeper on 3/3/2008 at 09:59
Quote Posted by Vivian
Stop talking balls.
Anyway, Cro-magnon man is the same species as us (it was only 10,000 years ago or so), not some hairy fucking beast-man. Anatomically indistinguishable, maybe slightly different to modern Europeans, but certainly within the current range of human variability. I would imagine that if you brought a child from that era up in modern times they would have little difficulty fitting in, yes. It would be like bringing up a child from one of those New Guinea tribes that were using Neolithic tech a few years ago in London - you'd still get a little smart-arse listening to music via his speakerphone on the bus.
Fucking beastman? You assume I think that - I granted him some sophisticated skill. Anatomically indistinguishable? As you have suggested before, their cranial size was slightly bigger and there are slight differences in skeleton build as well. They were taller and generally more muscular (even females). There are people among us who are similar to them, but then we have people among us who are similar even to Neanderthals. Some do see New Guineans as "fucking beastmen", too. On some level that's understandable, afterall they used to be cannibals. But a modern, humanized, so called "wise" man should acknowledge that their lower level of development shouldn't lessen the value of their lives.
But all these physiological details aren't much important right here - there is something else I had on my mind when I insisted that "Our psyche is much more sophisticated than psyche of a Cro-Magnon". Do you agree that their society was more primitive than ours? That's it. Individuals can be as much psychologically sophisticated as the society in which they live - and so they can develop the society into even more complicated sophistication of ethical rules. All people who were born in certain social system do reflect, more or less, some values and stereotypes of typical for this system - Erich Fromm has described it as "social character". And since our society is much more complicated than society of Cro-Magnons, it puts higher demands on education and different ways of thinking and thus more complex psychological sophistication of its individuals. The concept of humanity and value of life has been defined and re-defined thousand times since Upper Paleolithic epoch.
Quote Posted by Rug Burn Junky
Wrong. Try again.
Why not, here you are. Lots of work on these two-faced philantropists...
(
http://bwnt.businessweek.com/philanthropy/06/index.asp)
I'm sure Catholic activist David Scott and a right-wing pamphlet with religious roots, Alberta Report, had an agenda of their own to criticize. The reuse of hypodermic needles, poor living conditions for the patients can be part of a larger picture - insufficient fundation of the particular healthcare centres or lack of education of the workers, what is part of third-world reality. The Lancet journal is notoriously controversial for it's articles.
The most competent and objective critic of hers would be Eric Hitchens, Vatican has even invited him to make a summary of her actions. Why is he respectable? Because his critics is much more sophisticated than your overly emotional shortcuts.
Exceptional people do disputable things and little people judge them. You ate all the critics with it's dirty skin on. But your critics isn't careful enough to be based on true altruism - it's based rather on anti-Catholic/Antitheist agenda of your own - but you don't hesitate to adapt critics coming from religious sources? No instrument is bad if it serves higher purpose, I guess.
Quote Posted by Martin Karne
How is that pirate with delusions of grandeur, is someone who you should admire and want to meet with him, I don't know.
Hit him with a stone, flawless man.
Quote Posted by a flower in hell
Altruism is more dangerous than the ill-defined, nebulous "evil" that altruists claim to fight against. Besides, a perfect and orderly society of mindless sheep would be boring as all hell...
That's a beautiful excuse for doing nothing. But what guarantees that you can't be eventually perceived as a mindless sheep, boring as hell?
Morte on 3/3/2008 at 11:06
Quote Posted by Raven
You do realise that you are saying that a woman born in 1910 who went out into the world to love, help, and administer to the sick and the dieing is a BAD THING!
And you *do* realize that her actually helping is being called into question here, right? Now setting up places for people to come and die in is not something I'd term evil in itself. But soliciting massive donations for the purpose of helping people and then doing so little to actually combat suffering, instead opting to use the funds to proselytize is something that's at best grossly negligent and quite possibly fradulent. Mind you, she never hid her intentions that well, so she had a lot of help from credulous thinking on part of her donors.
In any case, intentions cannot be divorced from the outcome. Even if she did go out with the best of intentions (Which doubtful, considering her statements about the beauty of suffering. At the very least, her definition of good was significantly divorced from most other's.), she didn't actually accomplish much, and acted like a leech, wasting funds that could have been used to make a difference. She doesn't deserve her reputation, and the fact that it persists is just due to the fact that most people haven't critically examined her work.
And what does her being born in 1910 has to do with anything? Oooh, she was old, she had to be good?
