Mother Teresa

[helene_t]

It is about Mother Theresa's morals, that were (and still are) shared by a large part of the population of this planet. These morals are widely accepted, whether you like it or not.

 

I don't believe that. The fact that she chose to hide her practices and pretend to help her clients in their earthly life and not only in the afterlife shows that she expected donors, volunteers and potential clients to disaprove of her practices if they knew what was going on.

 

But even if you were right about this I would still agree with Stephanie. FGM, for example, is approved by millions but it is still morally reprehensible. In my houmble opinion.

[barmar]

But even if you were right about this I would still agree with Stephanie. FGM, for example, is approved by millions but it is still morally reprehensible. In my houmble opinion.

This is the age-old problem of moral relativism. Philosophers have been debating this for centuries. I'm not sure we're going to resolve it here.

 

What distinguishes MT is that her value system was consistent with those of the majority religion in the west, so she's less likely to be viewed as deviant. And even those who don't share those specific religious beliefs can recognize that "her heart was in the right place". She may have been misguided by her religious beliefs, but there didn't seem to be any evil, hateful, or even selfish intent. They donations that weren't going to help the suffering weren't going into her pockets, either.

[Vampyr]

But even if you were right about this I would still agree with Stephanie. FGM, for example, is approved by millions but it is still morally reprehensible. In my houmble opinion.

 

This is the age-old problem of moral relativism. Philosophers have been debating this for centuries. I'm not sure we're going to resolve it here.

 

I was going to post soon and mention both FGM and moral relativism.

 

When I first heard about FGM I was horrified and wished that something was being done about it. But that was about 30 years ago, and it was very fashionable to say "but it's their culture". Now, though, everyone cares and their are campaigns and activism etc. So I have been thinking that moral relativism is, thankfully, going out of fashion.

 

Anyway I don't know that very many people feel the same way or would react the same way to suffering as MT did.

 

And about her being evil, hateful, selfish, there is a lot wrong with the enjoyment she got from watching people in mortal pain.

[Trinidad]

But even if you were right about this I would still agree with Stephanie. FGM, for example, is approved by millions but it is still morally reprehensible. In my houmble opinion.

I share your opinion... and will add that I have the same opinion about MGM. But, just like you, I don't share the views of the Catholic Church on anticonception either.

 

But that is an entirely different discussion. We will need to work to reduce FGM, and MGM, and the lack of anticonception. We can do that by educating people and a whole lot of other measures, and we should certainly do so.

 

I have never argued that we shouldn't do anything. The argument is about whether you can judge someone. That is an entirely different discussion.

 

Mother Theresa lived from 1910-1997. That is pretty much the same time frame my grandparents lived in. My grandparents were not religious fanatics at all. They were mainstream, perhaps even somewhat liberal protestant city people. But their believe in God and Heaven, and everything that comes with it was absolute. Anticonception was a sin and got you to hell, suffering was purification for the soul and got you closer to God. Subjects that we are currently debating in society or have already okayed (e.g. divorce, abortion, euthanasia, same sex marriages) were so horrible that you would go to hell just for bringing up the subject.

 

Mother Theresa got the Nobel price in 1979. My mother's parents divorced just a few years earlier, I guess in 1973. They were condemned by: My father's parents and his entire family, as well as by 4 of their own 6 children. (Fortunately, my mother was in the set of 2, but it meant I have never seen the other 4 of my mother's siblings or nieces and nephews since 1973.) They broke all contacts to the divorcees and anyone who would be willing to be in contact with them, since otherwise you would go to hell. That was the culture Mother Theresa lived her life in. Those were the morals she was taught, and they were normal at the time.

 

That is why it makes me so angry when someone yells that "These moslims are living in the Middle Ages" when they condemn homosexuality. Those people completely forget that their grandparents (you know, those nice old guys that brought toys and candy) did exactly the same. That doesn't mean that I agree with the moslim view on homosexuality or my grandparents' view. It just means that I realize that in a different time, or a different place, people have different morals.

 

And the aim is to change these morals, not to condemn them or the people who live by them in a place and time where they are mainstream.

 

Rik

[Winstonm]

 

 

When I first heard about FGM I was horrified and wished that something was being done about it. But that was about 30 years ago, and it was very fashionable to say "but it's their culture". Now, though, everyone cares and their are campaigns and activism etc. So I have been thinking that moral relativism is, thankfully, going out of fashion.

 

 

The very fact that over 30 years there has been a change in how these activities are viewed from a moral consideration confirms rather than denies moral relativism.

[Vampyr]

Well, whatever. I think that the above was a lot of nonsense, but in any case if being against family planning were MT's worst sin there would be less of an issue. A lot less, especially as she was not involved in denying contraception or abortion to anyone.

[Vampyr]

The very fact that over 30 years there has been a change in how these activities are viewed from a moral consideration confirms rather than denies moral relativism.

I am not sure. I think that people knew 30 years ago that it was abhorrent, but that it was really cool and liberal to say that it was OK for them to have different values and morals from us. Then maybe later it dawned on people that "they" are humans too. And that you could say that we are right and they are wrong. Because there really is a right and a wrong, no matter who you are.

[nige1]

To take your slave owner example: You are entirely correct if you are talking about slave owners today. There is nobody nowadays (give or take a few loony's and perhaps some exotic tribes that I don't know of) who considers slavery morally acceptable. So, we can and should condemn anybody who owns slaves in 2015. You are utterly wrong if you are talking about the slave owners in the 17th century or the slave owners in the Roman Empire. In those days, it was considered morally good to own slaves in the societies that these slave owners belonged to. The idea that all people were created equal had not been invented yet. (And one might wonder whether they considered there slaves "people".) So, it is anachronistic to condemn those slave owners based on today's morals. (Note that this does not mean that I am saying that the slaves weren't severely wronged. They were, without a doubt.)

When I was a teenager, my hair was cut at home by a man, who traveled village to village and house to house. He had been a slave but now he made a reasonable income as a barber. He was an intelligent man and was nostalgic about the relative advantages of his former settled life with a kind owner.

[mikeh]

When I was a teenager, my hair was cut at home by a man, who traveled village to village and house to house. He had been a slave but now he made a reasonable income as a barber. He was an intelligent man and was nostalgic about the relative advantages of his former settled life with a kind owner.

Incredible....one reads about people like you, usually members of the right wing of the US Republican Party....but here we have a real, live, breathing apologist for the institution of slavery. I feel ill.

 

Please don't try to wiggle out of this by denying the implications of your post. Why else did you mention this?

 

Humans can adapt to almost anything. Witness the phenomenum of instiitutionalization, where long- term prisoners sometimes commit crimes after release, just to get back to prison. So this poor man looked back to being a slave? To ask us to infer that therefore slavery had its good points disgusts me.

 

Of course, the bible strongly endorses slavery, just as it does genocide, prostituting one's daughters, and not eating pork!

[helene_t]

The very fact that over 30 years there has been a change in how these activities are viewed from a moral consideration confirms rather than denies moral relativism.

It confirms the trivial fact that prevailing moral views vary with time and place. If that's moral relativism then we are all moral relativists. But that's not how I understand the term.

[nige1]

Incredible....one reads about people like you, usually members of the right wing of the US Republican Party....but here we have a real, live, breathing apologist for the institution of slavery. I feel ill. Please don't try to wiggle out of this by denying the implications of your post. Why else did you mention this?

 

Humans can adapt to almost anything. Witness the phenomenum of instiitutionalization, where long- term prisoners sometimes commit crimes after release, just to get back to prison. So this poor man looked back to being a slave? To ask us to infer that therefore slavery had its good points disgusts me. Of course, the bible strongly endorses slavery, just as it does genocide, prostituting one's daughters, and not eating pork!

As usual, Mikeh is wrong about my motives and attacks me for opinions that I didn't express and don't hold.

[nige1]

Ì was slightly inaccurate, and you refuse to understand. It is not about Mother Theresa's morals. It is about Mother Theresa's morals, that were (and still are) shared by a large part of the population of this planet. These morals are widely accepted, whether you like it or not.

 

To take your slave owner example:

You are entirely correct if you are talking about slave owners today. There is nobody nowadays (give or take a few loony's and perhaps some exotic tribes that I don't know of) who considers slavery morally acceptable. So, we can and should condemn anybody who owns slaves in 2015.

You are utterly wrong if you are talking about the slave owners in the 17th century or the slave owners in the Roman Empire. In those days, it was considered morally good to own slaves in the societies that these slave owners belonged to. The idea that all people were created equal had not been invented yet. (And one might wonder whether they considered there slaves "people".) So, it is anachronistic to condemn those slave owners based on today's morals. (Note that this does not mean that I am saying that the slaves weren't severely wronged. They were, without a doubt.)

 

And for the sake of completeness: the morals of today's terrorists are not shared by a large part of the world's population. And Hitler's morals were not shared by a large part of the world's population when the Holocaust was going on.

Rights and morals usually accord with our instincts, feelings, and current scientific theories but, IMO, they rely on beliefs not facts. As Trinidad says, they vary with time and place.

 

Some mores and taboos (e.g. against murder) seem common sense to me and are more persistent and widespread.

 

For other beliefs (e.g slavery, homophobia), I guess that people had to cling to flimsy justifications.

 

IMO, morals similar to Hitler's were and are shared by a large part of the world's population, although sometimes there's a convenient local substitute for Jews (e.g. Kurds, Lower castes, Muslims, indigenous peoples like Aborigines, Palestinians, and Incas).

 

A council-worker, trying to stop FGM, explained to me that, paradoxically, the most vociferous defenders of the practice were women, who had suffered it .

 

Nevertheless, in all these latter cases (slavery onwards), then and now, I guess that the more intelligent proponents suppress awareness of their rationalization and hypocrisy.

[hrothgar]

When I was a teenager, my hair was cut at home by a man, who traveled village to village and house to house. He had been a slave but now he made a reasonable income as a barber. He was an intelligent man and was nostalgic about the relative advantages of his former settled life with a kind owner.

 

I seem to recall that Britain banned slavery back in the 1830's...

 

Story really doesn't sound at all plausible.

[PhilKing]

Back to the original question:

 

No = 10 points, other = 7 points, Yes = 1 point.

[nige1]

I seem to recall that Britain banned slavery back in the 1830's...

Story really doesn't sound at all plausible.

I rarely lie, Hrothgar. (Family motto "sto pro veritate"). Recent documentaries confirm that there's still plenty of Slavery in Britain. I was born in Zambia, however, and spent some of my youth in Africa. The barber worked in Northern Nigeria, when we lived in Kaduna.

[nige1]

Back to the original question: No = 10 points, other = 7 points, Yes = 1 point.

:) :) :)

[mikeh]

As usual, Mikeh is wrong about my motives and attacks me for opinions that I didn't express and don't hold.

Then what was the point of your post about the former slave being nostalgic about being a piece of property?

 

Either you lack some basic writing skills or you were being intentionally provocative. I make my living using the English language, and interpreting written statements. The natural meaning of your post was that you were asserting that slavery was not all bad. That stance is repugnant to me. While I hold to few moral absolutes, the ones to which I do hold deal with a mix of human obligations towards each other, and human integrity, which latter excludes the notion of any human being owned as a piece of property, even if one such person later had good things to say about being a slave.

 

You may not hold the opinions I inferred from your post but you most definitely implied that you do. Of course, I fully expected your response. Your 'debating' style is pretty obvious.

[WellSpyder]

Back to the original question:

What??? Do you seriously expect us to remember what we are arguing about?

[kenberg]

The Godfather was on television last night. It's been a long time since I last saw it.

 

Perhaps the strongest feature of the movie (I never read the book) is its full portrayal of a way of life. Within the given culture, the actions were completely understandable, perhaps even, within their code, moral.

 

This does not mean that we cannot, ourselves, reject that way of life. Not just reject it for ourselves, but also assert that it is "wrong". I put "wrong" in quotes, as I am not at all prepared to write a treatise on moral choices. "Wrong", to me, basically means "wrong".

Side comment: Many years back I saw a Tom Stoppard play where the relativity of values was under discussion. The main character was adopting a similar attitude toward "better". His line was something like "It isn't better because some bearded judges decided it is better, it is better because it is better".

 

Anyway, I try to appreciate the vast array of possible human arrangements. Historically, tribal arrangements were common, the strong dominated the weak, and so on. Not that this has changed all that much when you come down to it. And it is just good sense to realize that however wrong or stupid or whatever the choice others make seem to be, there is often precious little we can do about it even if for some reason we think we are entitled to intervene. So butting out is often both proper and practical. This needn't keep us from declaring that some ways of life are better than others. Better because we say so? Well, yes. Or, otherwise put, better because it is better. But most often, we can just butt out.

 

Does all this generality actually apply to MT? Maybe. One can pursue a couple of different questions:

 

1. What is it she actually did?

2. What are our views about these actions?

 

I never paid much attention to her life at all. I can say with confidence that no matter how much study I gave the matter, I would not conclude that she performed miracles. As long as I stay away from LSD and certain mushrooms, I don't ever expect to see anything that would make me believe in miracles. That's me, it just is. On other aspects of her life I would have to do more of a study than I am prepared to do, but I think you could color me as skeptical of her goodness. I believe that some people are much better people than I am, and I also believe that some who are thought to be very good people are in fact charlatans. Sorting out which is which can be a task.

[barmar]

When I first heard about FGM I was horrified and wished that something was being done about it. But that was about 30 years ago, and it was very fashionable to say "but it's their culture". Now, though, everyone cares and their are campaigns and activism etc. So I have been thinking that moral relativism is, thankfully, going out of fashion.

What I think is changing is that the word is getting smaller and smaller, due to technology.

 

A century and more ago, we didn't have very much interaction between very different cultures. We knew they existed, and that they had different customs, but most people didn't really know the details. Now the world is all connected, and travel to formerly "distant" lands is relatively easy. We see what's going on there, they see what's going on here, and we form strong opinions about how other cultures compare to us.

 

And as it becomes easier to communicate and travel, it's harder to consider them to be separate cultures. When we see a culture that appears to be "primitive" or "savage", I think there's a feeling that they just didn't know better (the "stuck in the middle ages" metaphor), and we hope they'll become enlightened through continued interaction with the rest of the world.

 

But cultures, like people, can be very resistant to change when it seems to be imposed by others.

[nige1]

Then what was the point of your post about the former slave being nostalgic about being a piece of property?

 

Either you lack some basic writing skills or you were being intentionally provocative. I make my living using the English language, and interpreting written statements. The natural meaning of your post was that you were asserting that slavery was not all bad. That stance is repugnant to me. While I hold to few moral absolutes, the ones to which I do hold deal with a mix of human obligations towards each other, and human integrity, which latter excludes the notion of any human being owned as a piece of property, even if one such person later had good things to say about being a slave.

 

You may not hold the opinions I inferred from your post but you most definitely implied that you do. Of course, I fully expected your response. Your 'debating' style is pretty obvious.

My style is straightforward and I rarely hold the bizarre opinions that Mikeh imputes to me. Also, In a legal context, when witnesses confront a lawyer with awkward facts or arguments, then impugning skills, motives, and character may be acceptable. In friendly discussion, however, I feel that such tactics are inappropriate.

[Vampyr]

My style is straightforward and I rarely hold the bizarre opinions that Mikeh imputes to me. Also, In a legal context, when witnesses confront a lawyer with awkward facts or arguments, then impugning skills, motives, and character may be acceptable.

 

In friendly discussion, however, I feel that such tactics are inappropriate.

 

Could you maybe explain why you brought up the former slave?

[nige1]

Could you maybe explain why you brought up the former slave?

I was endorsing Trinidad's point about morals changing slowly with time. I feel that bad old attitudes and practices (e.g. racism, FGM, slavery) are widespread and persistent. See my previous post #137.

 

More slavery examples

• A case-study from a conference on Human Trafficking, a few years ago: A girl was rescued from miserable sex-slavery in London. After treatment, she was set up with a new identity in the Midlands. Tragically, a year later, a follow-up study revealed that she had voluntarily returned to her pimp.
• More recently The government's "Tied Visa" legislation condemns foreigners to domestic slavery.

[diana_eva]

I was endorsing Trinidad's point about morals changing slowly with time. I feel that bad old attitudes and practices (e.g. racism, FGM, slavery) are widespread and persistent. See my previous post #137.

 

More slavery examples

• A case-study from a conference on Human Trafficking, a few years ago: A girl was rescued from miserable sex-slavery in London. After treatment, she was set up with a new identity in the Midlands. Tragically, a year later, a follow-up study revealed that she had voluntarily returned to her pimp.
• More recently The government's "Tied Visa" legislation condemns foreigners to domestic slavery.

 

You're mixing separate issues IMO. There is a psychological trauma where victims voluntarily return to their abuser or develop some other emotional connection with them -> mental issue (individual perception), and there's society morals widely considered as "normal" which change over time (collective perception of "good" and "bad"). I wouldn't put these two in the same bag at all.

[mgoetze]

Back to the original question:

 

No = 10 points, other = 7 points, Yes = 1 point.

nige1 would rate the answers like this: Yes = 10, other = 9, No = 8.