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SugarMyChurro -> RE: Mother Teresa's dark night of the soul (8/26/2007 8:09:58 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: SusanofO
"You have a right to your own opinion - but not your own facts" - Alan Greenspan. Think about this - and *try to really let it sink in (not being mean - I really mean this). Opinions are opinions - they are not facts.
You do realize that rhetorically that the quote is crap, right? Your condescending tone would seem to indicate just the contrary, however - you would appear to take this quote as some kind of deeply insightful statement. News flash: it isn't.
Alan Greenspan has to be someone that we all accept as an authority for the quote to carry unquestioned weight and I don't believe that Greenspan has that kind of authority. The minute the quote has to be scrutinized on the merits of it's content and meaning we have problems.
For one thing, I already covered the issue of facts basically being opinions. Sometimes "facts" are just lies given weight because they are spoken by a "supposed" authority.
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Something I tried to do earlier, which may have flown over your head is to show that almost ALL SOURCES (online, real world, etc.) can be called into question. There is no such thing as a final, acceptable source of information for all persons.
The news now has a series of other names it goes by, it can variously be called propaganda, a public relations release, product placement, disinformation, infotainment, and yellow journalism. In sum, a lot of it is crap most of the time because the powers that be are "manufacturing consent".
http://www.collarchat.com/fb.asp?m=1232091
Yup, I am citing myself as my own source. That's as good as anything that GE, Halliburton, BofA, ADM, Koch Industries, Blackwater, the Vatican, Time-Warner, Encyclopaedia Britannica, etc can come up with. In the end, every source is just someone at a typing machine giving their opinions about something. Didn't you know that already?
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I guess the main difference between sources of "facts" is simply where they are published and the credence people give to the speakers. That's to hang by a thread, BTW.
You might say: "Teresa was a good person." We would then have to investigate under what terms the idea of "good" is being discussed. It's not a fact of any kind. Good is a deeply subjective idea.
You might say: "The Vatican said Teresa was good." I would assume that the Vatican would be making a statement like that from a religious viewpoint. It's not a fact. It's an opinion.
You might say: "The Nobel Prize Committee said Teresa was good." Well, what precisely was their criteria in making the statement? What kinds of experts on goodness did they consult? Yup, it's just another opinion ultimately.
A funny thing about taking rhetoric courses at university is that you learn that finally there is no final irrefutable source for anything. It's all mainly opinions using different types of appeals to logic, emotions, and ethics. In that case you must:
Question authority!
So where does that leave us with the Alan Greenspan quote? The poor devil apparently doesn't realize that facts not only don't really exist for the most part, they are often irrelevant to a discussion. I suspect it might be more accurate to claim that Greenspan used the quote against someone and was able to therefore stylistically bluff a win with a losing hand.
[N.B. I source the quote as being from Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." This isn't a mistake like my own about the meaning of "Beatification" (which I think I can be forgiven as I am not a religious nutter- this is a sourcing problem. Your own in this case.]
In the case of Teresa I am wholly uninterested in her religious work - it counts literally as if she did absolutely nothing to me. My only interest in her is what she did to help the poor out of their misery with the funds she received so readily from an international donation pool that reached into the millions of dollars. I don't care how many religious orders she built - did she feed and medicate the poor? The answer seems to be: no, she did not.
quote:
ORIGINAL: SusanofO
****Why you intially bother posting on a thread that was obviously made by Level to allow folks to consider Mother Theresa's massive accomplishments - when all you intended, from post one, was to tear down the OP's thread - not participate in it, really?
You do realize that my first post is on page two of this thread, right? By that time there was a sub-topic, or subtext if you prefer. It looks like it was begun by farglebargle. That is the subject that is mainly under discussion now - the subtext. Should this have been broken out of the original thread as its own thread? Maybe. That's a moderator's job. Perhaps the OP author should have monitored the thread more closely and asked people to confine themselves to the original subject (I have done so elsewhere myself). Anyway, I am just part of the conversation - I didn't start it, I didn't start the discussion of the controversial subtext either.
I don't personally give a shit if Teresa was devout or sincere or whatever. I care whether she did or did not do the humanitarian things that are claimed about her. What she meant to do, what she intended, means nothing to me. What did she, in fact, accomplish?
The sources I give weight to say Teresa basically handheld the sick and dying until they expired. Traditional treatment consists of assuaging the symptoms of pain, even if not effecting a cure. Pouring salt on the wound, Teresa was taken to talking about the religious nature and meaning of physical torment - which to me seems quite perverse.
quote:
ORIGINAL: SusanofO
2) How does anything you've mentioned as a source, even begin to compare to the extensive vetting of the members of a Nobel Peace Prize Comittee in any way shape or form, for someone to even be nominated for that prize?
I have already trashed the Nobel Prize. If you disagree with my conclusions and the many questions that others ask in relation to this "prestigious award" then that's fine with me. I consider this asked and answered.
You mount all of this supposed information about how the Nobel committee works as if I am going to just fold up and say: "Gosh...golly, really?! I had no idea..." No, actually I did know and didn't care. I still think there selection process is capricious and I think there is ample evidence to support that opinion.
I consider the award largely meaningless and pay no regular attention to it whatever.
quote:
ORIGINAL: SusanofO
3) ...of a woman who worked for 62 years from 4:30am until sun-down, and beyond -doing the best she knew how, to care for the poor and dying?
Yeah, of what exactly did her "care" consist? That's the problem right there. Holding some poor, starving, and sick motherfuckers hand and whispering to them about the nobility of physical anguish and how god loves them etc. isn't really much help. Where's the palliative treatment one might expect? Observers cite a noteworthy absence of such traditional hospice care.
quote:
ORIGINAL: SusanofO
Everything you have managed to quote as a source is what is called Hearsay evidence.
Nope. Lancet is a direct source that was cited and quoted by myself and KittinSol in this thread. Dr Robin Fox noted that Teresa's "care" techniques were contrary to those of what is normally understood as a hospice. There are direct quotes, but no we don't have direct access to a paper version of The Lancet issue in question. Again, we are in an electronic medium here and you are acting as if we were all face to face in a courtroom.
It's silly.
You have called into question sources which I personally find sufficient to the purposes of making a cogent argument online. That's cool, I understand that people have their prejudices. I also understand that people misunderstand how technology can be used to tighten down the security of many things.
You abominate Wiki despite the fact that it is peer reviewed and has security measures in place to lock down a topic during times of heated editing and controversy. And yet on what basis is an alternative source, like say the Encyclopaedia Britannica, more authoritative? You might suggest that Britannica is locked down by default and resistant to surreptitious editing. At the same time, Britannica suffers from a lack of eyes - a decidedly finite number of reviewers of its content. By contrast, Wiki has the same advantage as open source code - millions of eyes looking at it and ideally maintaining a high level of quality. Both systems have advantages and disadvantages - neither is definitively more authoritative than the other. Anyone that has a different viewpoint most likely has a financial interest in their opinion.
quote:
ORIGINAL: SusanofO
And you have not answered any of these above points, really.
Uh yeah, I don't have to answer anything at all. I may find your positions weak and unworthy of further comment. I may find them uninteresting to me personally. There are dozens of reason I may not answer to your precise comments.
You are basically haunting this thread for some reason. You want to answer to everyone with an opinion contrary to your own. I am not going to be persuaded that Teresa was a very nice person. I tend to be deeply suspicious of religious figures and I haven't heard anything here that changes my mind about Teresa in particular.
One of the only reasons I find this discussion interesting at this point is because it has actually devolved down to a discussion of the terms of such a thread - the how and why and what counts as a valid source or argument. I don't think you've scored any truly compelling points, but I find your unrealistic expectations about how this discussion should take place of interest. I mean, you're sort of like a blind woman that hasn't realized that there is such a thing as eyes.
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