DQ writes:
I have far more respect for doctors and nurses who provide a similar service. For them, it has nothing to do with compassion or serving a spiritual ideal or anything like that. It is simply their job, for which they are rewarded both financially and emotionally.
I used to believe as you do, believing I was the only one who saw this. This belief lasted about five minutes, due to its inherent inanity.
Doctors and nurses arguably provide a superior service, based on their training and resources available to them. This I agree with. In fact, I laud "Doctors Without Borders" efforts. But what the hell does this have to do with Mother Teresa?
It is all this extra "spiritual" layering projected onto these activities that I have issue with. This is where the self-indulgence comes into play.
Projected by whom? Not by me, certainly. You object to all the fuss spent on adulation of the Mother Teresas of the world - not that there are so many. Well, so do I. But again, what does this have to do with her or her mission? You can say, "Stop with the fucking Nobel Peace Prize awards ceremonies and spend that money on constructive activities if you want to help the poor." I would agree with that as well. But first, let's get rid of the other awards ceremonies. There are plenty of self-congratulatory spectacles to condemn in this world.
Creating the pretence that Mother Teresa's activities have something to do with God or wisdom or virtue, coupled with the sheer denial that their very beliefs and values are contributing causes of the sorry plight of those they are dealing with, is not something that should be respected or admired. On the contrary, it should be condemned very strongly.
Calm down, Florence Nightingale. Again, there are enough things in this world to condemn. It obviously rubs you the wrong way that Mother Tersea got the press she did. It says volumes more about you than it does about her. To suppose that giving a thirsty person a glass of water is somehow enabling him to be thirsty is unforgivably twisted thinking. You are so far removed from M.T.'s activities, you are not thinking straight. How do you know what her motives were? How do you know she didn't labor
in concert with doctors and nurses? I wonder what these doctors and nurses would say about her?
If we saw a heroin-dealer working on the streets at night giving blankets and food to suffering drug addicts, we would immediately think that he was either a hypocrite of the first-order, or else has more than a few screws loose.
Who is this "we"? If I saw someone I knew to be a heroin dealer (never mind how I came to know that!) feeding a hungry person, not in front of news cameras or reporters, just doing it, I in no way would think him a hypocrite. What - he has to be consistently heinous for
your benefit? Just so he doesn't ruffle your feathers about what drug dealers are
all supposed to be like? No. I would think he had at least one screw very tightly screwed in, indeed.
When someone like Mother Teresa does the same thing (her Christians beliefs being her preferred drug of choice), we see nothing amiss and praise her to the skies. There is something terribly wrong there.
My, how terribly sophisticated you are, recognizing that Christian beliefs are a drug.
So everyone who devotes a life to unselfish works of charity is really exhibiting symptoms of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.
This displays a level of "enlightenment" that surely must be somewhere out in the stratosphere. Excuse me, I'm wanted back down on Planet Earth.