--- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> wrote:
> > I have to admit I never expected to see anyone
> trash Mother Teresa.
> > Who's next Gandhi? MLK? Your right about one
> thing and that is that
> > speaking poorly of Mother Teresa does carry a
> stigmatism with it. It's will
> > usually get you the same reaction as saying the
> Holocaust never existed. At
> > first I thought you must be speaking tongue in
> cheek but as I read on I found
> > that you were being quite serious and of course I
> found this quite
> > discouraging. I feel privileged to have lived in
> a time when she did live
> > and gave so freely of herself because if I did not
> I would think that she
> > were someone that people had made up as a modern
> day myth or legend. Her
> > example has made me demand much more of myself and
> my life and what I do with
> > it. It's people like her that make me stop what
> I'm doing and take a good
> > look a my value system and think about what I'm
> doing with my life. I'm not
> > attacking you about your opinion I just don't get
> it. The woman took what
> > she knew and did the best she could with it. Not
> too many people could leave
> > the sort of impact that she left in the world, not
> in a positive way.
>
> What impact? The idea that one should give up what
> might have been a
> productive, valuable, society-enriching life to
> instead preach acceptance
> of death, that most hideous of all evils, and
> justify it by belief in God,
> that most dangerous of beliefs. I certainly don't
> hold her as any kind of
> example except bad, and I'm surprized you're
> surprized one would say so.
>
> If you want to show true compassion to the dying,
> /do something/ about
> death itself. Preach defiance, not acceptance.
> Preach science and
> medicine, not mystical nonsense. Use your talents
> to earn money to
> build the economy to fund that science and find
> those cures.
>
> In case you haven't noticed, we're /all/ dying. I,
> for one, don't want
> sympathy--I want an alternative. Anyone who makes
> death seem any less
> tragic and wasteful and evil than it is will get no
> respect from me.
>
> --
> Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com>
> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
> "All inventions or works of authorship original to
> me, herein and past,
> are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may
> be used or modified
> for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or
> notification."--LDC
>
You're both right! See my earlier post for a nice,
safe paradoxical (but not contradictory) resolution to
your qualms.
Pedantically Yours, ;-)
=====
-------
Dan Adams
Boston College
617.782.4050
"I cannot articulate enough to express my dislike to people who think that understanding spoils your experience...How would they know?"
- Marvin Minsky
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:12:13 MDT