The Childfree Movement

Forum Sponsor
killerkeith said:
Again...you have a clear hate on for Christians...You'll believe any negative garbage. Show me the story CBS, NBC, ABC, BBC or even the religious hating CBC ran about about Mother Theresa being proven a fraud.
Click to expand...

Articles in the New Statesman, a Channel 4 documentary, Stern magazine (German) article on finances among others.

Interesting quotes from Teresa too (from Wikipedia):

Hitchens described Mother Teresa's organisation as a cult which promoted suffering and did not help those in need. Hitchens said that Teresa's own words on poverty proved that her intention was not to help people. He quoted Teresa's words at a 1981 press conference in which she was asked: "Do you teach the poor to endure their lot?" She replied: "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people."
 
awyala said:
I don't dissagree with you. Civic duty is a moral (read long term selfish - I am tapping into Ayn Rand here) act. It is very complex. 2 children and a reduced life standard may be the civic thing to do....or maybe 1.5, and increased immigration, and reduced lifestyle. But in all cases....leased luxury car vs a child seems less "logically selfish" and more plain old selfish then other options.

That being said, a small anti-child movement, or select individuals who opt out of children wont rock the system too badly. Every system has its exploiters and mooches, and a good system can handle some expoitation. The problem is when the movement gains too much momentum as is the case with many Anglo-European countries at the moment. It breeds xenophobia, racism, wars, social unrest and disharmony more rapidly than expected.

North America is built on a dream. I say dream rather than reality because it is this hope that keeps people working hard and being productive, rather than actuall realized rewards from the system. When this dream breaks down, productivity is crippled and the source of power, the engine of the empire collapses with it. North America needs luxury cars putting around rubbing it in everyone's faces to motivated the poor, blue collar and immigrant masses. There is certainly a place for no-children-luxury-car-households, but when everyone finds the easy way out, the culture and system will collapse.

It is better to have a luxury car and pretend you have the nuclear family then openly admit you had to sacrifice the family to get the luxury car. This admission is the beginning of the breakdown of the American, and by extension Canadian, societal engine.
Click to expand...

In my own naive way I think there's not much wrong with thinking about the rest of the world when contemplating life's choices. I certainly didn't think "well...this spinning rock has too many people on it, I'll not procreate" when deciding not to have kids, but that thought is there somewhere there way down in the pecking order. I don't feel selfish for not having kids, far from it. I just don't like them much, to me the argument is like "you're selfish for not eating broccolli ice cream". There are some great added bonuses for not having kids and we really don't see any downside so rationally, for me (us), it makes sense. For others, that rationale is different and for whatever reason, their choices are different too.
 
jc100 said:
Articles in the New Statesman, a Channel 4 documentary, Stern magazine (German) article on finances among others.

Interesting quotes from Teresa too (from Wikipedia):

Hitchens described Mother Teresa's organisation as a cult which promoted suffering and did not help those in need. Hitchens said that Teresa's own words on poverty proved that her intention was not to help people. He quoted Teresa's words at a 1981 press conference in which she was asked: "Do you teach the poor to endure their lot?" She replied: "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people."
Click to expand...

Theresa came to the realization that suffering is inescapable, that she could not alleviate their suffering. Despite the media attention she received globally, still there is not enough money, compassion, desire, will to elevate the lifestyle of the "untouchables", let alone all those who suffer in this world. But what she did do was highlight their suffering to the world, to provoke as much compassion as possible, and to alleviate the stigma brought onto them through the caste system in India, and the defacto caste system of globalization.

She also tapped into the shared understanding of the honour of suffering in Budhism, which through understanding, suffering can be mitigated, via the mind. Willful suffering is not the same as imposed suffering in ignorance.

To chastise her for lacking in her ability to change their situation is a strange approach. It is from this same perch that people have attacked Communism or Chinese national / socialism in their attempt to equalize living standards. Those that attempt to socialize the wealth are chastised and those that attempt to live within their means are seemingly chastised also. So what remains? Your lifestyle? Pray tell, how can the world's masses live like you and acquire the educational and moral acument to slander others in worse circumstances? Do you think the likes of you would tolerate 90% of India taking it upon themselves to move over here to get jobs as taxi drivers and gas station attendants to start a new lower middle class life? Or would you support the economic and military rise of 1 billion people in their own land, as they then expand outward and seek resources to sustain an American style of life? I suppose you would not support a global war that seeks to limit their expansion in 3rd party countries either?

Or perhaps, you would espouse maintaining your lifestyle at the expense of your own future generations? Would you really spread the wealth to some poor Indian suffering kids, when questioning doing the same for our own kids has become a popular trend? And yet it is open season on Theresa?

Interesting approach.
 
Last edited:
awyala said:
Theresa came to the realization that suffering is inescapable, that she could not alleviate their suffering. Despite the media attention she received globally, still there is not enough money, compassion, desire, will to elevate the lifestyle of the "untouchables", let alone all those who suffer in this world. But what she did do was highlight their suffering to the world, to provoke as much compassion as possible, and to alleviate the stigma brought onto them through the caste system in India, and the defacto caste system of globalization.

She also tapped into the shared understanding of the honour of suffering in Budhism, which through understanding, suffering can be mitigated, via the mind. Willful suffering is not the same as imposed suffering in ignorance.

To chastise her for lacking in her ability to change their situation is a strange approach. It is from this same perch that people have attacked Communism or Chinese national / socialism in their attempt to equalize living standards. Those that attempt to socialize the wealth are chastised and those that attempt to live within their means are seemingly chastised also. So what remains? Your lifestyle? Pray tell, how can the world's masses live like you and acquire the educational and moral acument to slander others in worse circumstances? Do you think the likes of you would tolerate 90% of India taking it upon themselves to move over here to get jobs as taxi drivers and gas station attendants to start a new lower middle class life? Or would you support the economic and military rise of 1 billion people in their own land, as they then expand outward and seek resources to sustain an American style of life? I suppose you would not support a global war that seeks to limit their expansion in 3rd party countries either?

Or perhaps, you would espouse maintaining your lifestyle at the expense of your own future generations? Would you really spread the wealth to some poor Indian suffering kids, when questioning doing the same for our own kids has become a popular trend? And yet it is open season on Theresa?

Interesting approach.
Click to expand...

Her organisation raised enough money to build fully functional large hospitals in India...she chose to build convents instead and spend on evangelism.

A strange approach.
 
Here is another solution....

Have 1 kid (maintain domestic population growth and cultural hegemony)

Adopt a poor third world kid (or lease), thus spreading the wealth and your own culture.

And supe up / kit out both kids to gain (luxury car) status and recognition so desired, in said domestic local AND global culture.

Let's face it, luxury cars are about bragging rights and status....why not making adopting poor third world children cool and elitist?

It is a form of immigration control also, because it filters out unwanted cultural baggage from mass immigration. It also alleviates the social drag on emerging developing nations, actually netting them a proffit...and as well it is global moral leverage if they refuse to allow the practice, thus making them seem like they encourage "suffering" in their respective countries.

It's propaganda, expansion, elistism, cultural domination......you name it, it is as selfish and self centered as can be, all the while it is actually wonderfully "altruistic".

Don't lease a foreign car....lease a foreign kid! Selfish and selfless all at the same time! Satisfy all your emotional needs at once.
 
awyala said:
Here is another solution....

Have 1 kid (maintain domestic population growth and cultural hegemony)

Adopt a poor third world kid (or lease), thus spreading the wealth and your own culture.

And supe up / kit out both kids to gain (luxury car) status and recognition so desired, in said domestic local AND global culture.

Let's face it, luxury cars are about bragging rights and status....why not making adopting poor third world children cool and elitist?

It is a form of immigration control also, because it filters out unwanted cultural baggage from mass immigration. It also alleviates the social drag on emerging developing nations, actually netting them a proffit...and as well it is global moral leverage if they refuse to allow the practice, thus making them seem like they encourage "suffering" in their respective countries.

It's propaganda, expansion, elistism, cultural domination......you name it, it is as selfish and self centered as can be, all the while it is actually wonderfully "altruistic".

Don't lease a foreign car....lease a foreign kid! Selfish and selfless all at the same time! Satisfy all your emotional needs at once.
Click to expand...

Lol. You're onto something.

Personally, if I adopt a kid it's going to be from skinny genes, hairy and will be good at climbing. With the looming energy crisis I'm banking on more sustainable wood burning fires and hence a big market for chimney sweeps.
 
One thing that really annoys me is when a woman says something and than tells you her opinion means more than yours cause "she's a mom"! I literally want to burst out laughing at her face when I hear this.

In general though, I don't judge or look down on people that make different life choices than me, as long as they show me the same courtesy.
 
jc100 said:
Her organisation raised enough money to build fully functional large hospitals in India...she chose to build convents instead and spend on evangelism.

A strange approach.
Click to expand...

Who do you call at your death bed, a doctor or a priest?

Her job was to help their minds deal with the inevitable. The "doctors" job was over. Do you blame the priest for not trying to administer CPR? Do you blame the priest for not becoming a doctor? We each have our jobs and roles. Society (the doctor) failed those people, and she came to give them their last rights. You really think a hospital would have saved them? To do what, to be discharged and go back to comsuming filth and die of a preventable (in Western society) desease next week?
 
jc100 said:
Can I just add a little fuel to the fire at this point and say that Mother Theresa was no saint at all and in fact some of the things she did could be construed as downright evil.

Carry on.
Click to expand...

There sure appears good evidence that she was a nutjob. She didn't believe in anaesthetics for example.

From her Wikipedia entry.....

"...She felt that suffering would bring people closer to Jesus.[80]
Sanal Edamaruku, President of Rationalist International, criticised
the failure to give painkillers, writing that in her Homes for the
Dying, one could "hear the screams of people having maggots tweezered
from their open wounds without pain relief. On principle, strong
painkillers are even in hard cases not given. According to Mother
Teresa's philosophy, it is 'the most beautiful gift for a person that
he can participate in the sufferings of Christ'."[81]..."

Now if that isn't crazy, what is? I'd rather be left to die in the street than be tortured.

There's no shortage of people who do some good and then some bad and people remember only one or the other. I would say that the bad always overpowers the good. Doesn't matter how much good Jimmy Jones did before he invented 'drink the Koolaid' and his was a pretty mainstream church before he offed everybody.
 
awyala said:
Who do you call at your death bed, a doctor or a priest?

Her job was to help their minds deal with the inevitable. The "doctors" job was over. Do you blame the priest for not trying to administer CPR? Do you blame the priest for not becoming a doctor? We each have our jobs and roles. Society (the doctor) failed those people, and she came to give them their last rights. You really think a hospital would have saved them? To do what, to be discharged and go back to comsuming filth and die of a preventable (in Western society) desease next week?
Click to expand...

She had the means at her disposal to help with prevention, it appears by all accounts that she actively chose not to do that. Hence the "cult of poverty" claims which coupled with her devout beliefs and statements seem to make sense.

If I'm on my death bed and I know I'm dying I'm not going to call for a priest or a doctor...I'm calling a stripper.
 
jc100 said:
She had the means at her disposal to help with prevention, it appears by all accounts that she actively chose not to do that. Hence the "cult of poverty" claims which coupled with her devout beliefs and statements seem to make sense.

If I'm on my death bed and I know I'm dying I'm not going to call for a priest or a doctor...I'm calling a stripper.
Click to expand...

The caste system was the cult of poverty. The suffering of Christ (and I am not Christian here) is the same "suffering" many societies profess in times of need..."Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country". National patriotism, armies, taxation, and so on are all forms of "suffering" we are often demanded we make for the greater good. Western society fought tooth and nail communist nations when they attempted to spread wealth and equalize all reward and suffering. We said it was against human nature, we advocated a free market capital market, we advocated less social safety nets, we criticise European socialism (even in today's forms) for stifling human growth and motivation.

I once had an emergency op when I was 6 years old in a Toronto hospital. The doc told me he ran out of pain meds because it was a particularly bad day for the emegency ward. He asked me if I could undergo the op with out pain meds. My father by my side encouraged me to take it as a "big boy". The doc then gave me upwards of 20 stitches and sewed up my fingers and arm. The reality if that is that in a Western hospital, I was SOL and had to "suffer". My father and doctor mentally coaching me through it got me through it. I have no ill will to either of them, and it really wasn't that bad.

You think the slums of India have the ability to medicate literally millions of suffering? Can she really be criticised by the likes of us? Really? Or some ****** that made a life out of criticising her? Could he not have devoted his life to medicating Indian kids? Instead his role was to criticise the woman. And what of our roles? How useless and callous are we? How Roman are we? The idea of the suffering of Jesus is a contentious issue with me, for a much larger theological matter....but that withstanding, the idea of suffering in human society is a potent one, and often society calls upon members of its society to suffer for other members of society or at least accept their suffering when society is at a loss to aid them.

Wealthier societies just hold rememberence cerimonies after the fact for those that didn't suffer, in a pathetic attempt to have them suffer through empathetic proxy. Suffering is an intergral part of human society and often a character builder.

Even Budhism is often misunderstood as an absence of suffering, but rather it is an embrace of suffering, an understanding of it, that will in essence evaporate it.

Shucks, suffering is even the cornerstone of a godless idealogy manifested in a modern cult classic like "Fight Club". Forget Jesus....only through suffering and hitting rock bottom can you truly realize your potential....right? It made for a hit movie!
 
jc100 said:
Articles in the New Statesman, a Channel 4 documentary, Stern magazine (German) article on finances among others.

Interesting quotes from Teresa too (from Wikipedia):

Hitchens described Mother Teresa's organisation as a cult which promoted suffering and did not help those in need. Hitchens said that Teresa's own words on poverty proved that her intention was not to help people. He quoted Teresa's words at a 1981 press conference in which she was asked: "Do you teach the poor to endure their lot?" She replied: "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people."
Click to expand...

That's what I thought. A Left wing political rag with no hyperlink, Channel 4 couldn't hold a candle to the BBC and I don't speak German. What else you got?
 
Keith, I hate to break it to you, but there are things that happen/happened in this world that major media houses won't touch. I would definitely think that a negative story on Mother Teresa, a woman who was made a saint in 2003, would not be a good story to air in a world with over a billion catholics.

But just because the major outlets don't want to tell the truth, doesn't mean it didn't happen.
 
killerkeith said:
That's what I thought. A Left wing political rag with no hyperlink, Channel 4 couldn't hold a candle to the BBC and I don't speak German. What else you got?
Click to expand...

You should learn German then...Stern's pretty good, Chanel 4 isn't afraid to go where other's won't and the New Statesman is not the Toronto Sun. I'm not trying to convert you here (pun intended) but when it walks like a duck, and smells like a duck....it's probably a bird that quacks and tastes good roasted.
 
I didn't realize there was an actual movement associated with this. In my case, I've just never wanted kids.
 
Here I was thinking KillerKieth (nice name) is the GTAM badboy, but he's just a catholic school boy :p
 
jc100 said:
You should learn German then...Stern's pretty good, Chanel 4 isn't afraid to go where other's won't and the New Statesman is not the Toronto Sun. I'm not trying to convert you here (pun intended) but when it walks like a duck, and smells like a duck....it's probably a bird that quacks and tastes good roasted.
Click to expand...

The perception of Mother Theresa, Dalai lama, Ai Wei Wei and so on are often more powerful tools and vehicles of change and propaganda (be it positive or otherwise), than reality. Our own radically glossed over history, from the lineage of the Greeks, through Romans, skipping over to the Renaissance, and then Anglo collonialism is a testement to that. Despite heinous crimes against humanity it is often over looked and marginalized.

The truth doesn't suit some agendas, nor have the (even positive) desired outcome.

If Theresa put a spot light on the "untouchables" and Indian injustice that has positive effects on the future, then that may be her saintly legacy. Again, I am not Christian, nor Indian, nor do I believe in saints, so I have no personal stake in her saintliness, but her awarding of that status serves her less and the remainder of society more.

Human beings have an inbred need to hold up human and flawed members of society as super-human, assigning them god like powers or associations. The modern version of this is the celebrity culture. We make literally "idols" out of useless pop stars. In the grand scheme of human exaltation mother Theresa of all people DOES deserve it. I am sure you can find something negative to say about her, Jesus, Budha, Moses, Churchill, Britney Spears, Bieber, Washington, and the list goes on.

Back to the idea of children, to reallign the thread....

Adopt some "untouchables", style them in leather, chrome, the latest gadgets, and put Theresa to shame....Oddly enough I doubt she would mind, whether her soul still exists to appreciate it or not.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom