malkie wrote: ↑Thu Oct 28, 2021 4:34 am
Other than that, he said, it was a huge amount of travel, freezing hotels with no heating and with foyers that smelled of urine (he spent several years in the former Soviet Union), and long days of counseling and meeting from morning often into the night.
I'm not sure if it matters, but there appears to be an ambiguity here.
Everyone seems to be assuming (it's a cultural thing) that "foyers" refers meeting houses.
As expressed in the quoted sentence, it seems to me more likely that it refers to hotels - i.e., hotels with no heating and with smelly foyers/lobbies.
That's an interesting point, malkie, though as Consiglieri points out, "foyers" in an LDS context typically refers to the entry-room in LDS meeting houses. But could it instead refer to Soviet-era hotels? Perhaps. But it still doesn't change the basic issue here, which is that Dr. Peterson was essentially "ratting out" this General Authority, who, in his privilege, was whining about how his calling was so burdensome--and this was being said amidst a claim that there is no "caste system" in the Church no less!
I noticed that DCP has tried to backpedal:
My friend was talking about large but provincial Russian cities that had no decent hotels (by which he meant not luxurious lodgings but, for example, places with reliable plumbing). He spoke about having to step over sleeping drunks at the hotel entryways and about once spending an entire night sitting on a heating unit in a hotel room with another member of the Seventy, afraid to go to sleep lest they freeze to death.
Incidentally, my friend spoke Russian, loved Russia, adored the Russian Saints, had been professionally trained in Russian studies, and treasured the times that he was assigned to Russia. But his experience with both Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, far deeper than that of even quite adventurous tourists, had left him clear-eyed about its problems.
(Sidenote: Why didn't the GA attempt to get some help for these "drunks" who were passed out "at the hotel entryways"? He indicates that it was sometimes so cold that he and his pal had to sit on a "heating unit," and yet he just abandons these "drunks" to fend for themselves and possibly freeze to death? Perhaps the assumption was that these people were atheists or communists or both, and thus that they 'deserved it'?)
In part, I think this is just DCP's way of trying to argue that capitalism is superior to a command-style economy. The air of superiority here is unmistakable--just swap out academic accomplishments for the bits about Russia:
"Incidentally, my friend loved to go mudding, adored the working class, spoke with a "hick" accent, had done research in rural parts of the US, and really enjoyed hanging out there. But his experience in those regions--far more extensive than all but the place's own residents--had left him convinced that getting a PhD and globetrotting around the world was far superior to the hardscrabble lives that these yokel Latter-day Saints lived."
"If, while hoping that everybody else will be honest and so forth, I can personally prosper through unethical and immoral acts without being detected and without risk, why should I not?." --Daniel Peterson, 6/4/14
