Mother Theresa's Advice

Tom Rapsas on Patheos descibes how John Templeton asked a question that stopped him in his tracks

Was the Earth a better place because you were born?

Mother Theresa apparently had some advice on how to achieve this noble goal.  Although Christopher Hitchens has made some allegations in a book (which I have not read) saying Mother Theresa deliberately increased the suffering of the poor for some religious reason, one might think this would be irrelevant since otherwise we would have an ad hominem fallacy.  On the other hand you'd expect she would take her own advice and thus make the world a better place but unless the allegations are false this seems not to have worked in Theresa's case.  

Her advice was to go home and love your family.  Taking this in spirit, this didn't seem bad advice as the proceess of caring other people would then one would expect make one sensitive to the cares and woes of people in general.  

Apparently she also thought our society was poor in spirit.  Being anti-religious this could ruffle my feathers a bit, but it could be interpreted as our society lacks empathy for those less fortunate than ourselves which I would agree with: we live in a society where people (mostly the fortunate) care more about money than other people.  For example, Gawker Media cares more about making money than avoiding ruining people's lives by spreading salacious gossip and rumour.  Apparently by caring for people at home this would make you a more caring person generally.  Maybe that's not necessarily so.  But then she talks about spreading love everywhere you go: leaving people who approach you happier.  A bit mushy: love is perhaps too strong a word for my tastte but the underlying principle might work.  Pratice would make perfect.  Also small acts of kindness seem more realistic tusually than grand plans to achieve world peace etc.  

Kaepernick's Protest

Today I'm going to ramble on about an article I read on Patheos which is available at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2016/08/30/answering-the-pseudo-patriots-on-kaepernicks-protest/?.   I shall present my view on whether Kaepernick's protest is justified although this view may change as and if I learn more about what's going on.  On the whole I have some sympathy with such protest.  Patriotism I think is over-rated because most countries seem to be doing bad stuff.  Should one be a patriot if one lives in Saudi Arabia?  My country is the UK which our former prime minister David Cameron insisted is a Christian country.  I'm not exactly wild about Christianity such as the part which says nonChristians burn in hell as I think that's not a good way to treat people who don't follow a particular religion.  I do admit there is a good part of Christianity which is to help people less fortunate than ourselves.  However, this part is probably ignored by many UK citizens especially those wealthy and powerful who might be inclined out of greed to squeeze every last penny from vulnerable people whose credit card was abused.  In all,  the UK contains a mixture of bad and good and singing or standing for the national anthem like Corbyn has been forced to do now by the media could be construed as endorsing the whole package, the bad as well as the good.  So if you don't think your country is up to scratch, why pretend that you think your country is wonderful?

The quibble I have with Ed Brayton is the claim "cops gunning down unarmed black men routinely".   The question is whether the worfd "routinely" truthfully describes the situation at hand.  The stats say more white people are shot though that is of course black people represent only 13% of the population.  More black people seem to be shot than you would expect from blacks being 13% of the population.  However this does not account for the higher crime rate amongst black people which presumably has something to do with black poverty.  Also my impression is that many of the cases of police shootings of unarmed civilians had some circumstances attached which made the shooting justified such as the so-called victim trying to use the police officer's gun against the officer.  So I am not sure and somewhat wary of the Black Lives Matter movement paricularly in view of slogans on banners or chanted inciting the killing of cops which in one case seems to have worked. 

But at least most of the David Cross video that Brayton presents at the end I identify with.