Shameful MDD thread

[_Blixa]

Oh, Blixa, I am so sorry for what you are going through! Is your home OK? Did you guys have to evacuate? I forgot that you lived in NY. You and your family will be in my prayers. Facebook me if there is anything you need, OK?

I have not read the thread on MDD. It sounds like it is not worth a read. I can't believe how insensitive those comments are. Unbelievable!

Thanks, liz. We're fine. Fortunately we live on some of the highest ground in the area (there is a statue of Minerva here in Greenwood Cemetery that is situated at the highest point in Brooklyn which looks over the water to salute the Statue of Liberty). We had some tense moments with a dodgy skylight, but we didn't even lose power, just some scary flickering of the lights for a few hours.

But all around? Terrible devastation. Lots of damage along the Brooklyn shoreline (we're only a scant four or five blocks from the shoreline) and some toxic overflow of the Gowanus canal a couple of blocks away. Coney Island and the Rockaways were really hit bad: cut of from all rescue during the storm and a hospital fire on Coney Island, too. A former student who now lives in Canarsie (and has a two month old baby) was on Facebook asking for donations of clothing for her and her husband. The baby's gear was one flight up, but they lost all their clothes (and other possessions).

Lower Manhattan flooded out, the damage was probably less than it could have been because Con Ed shut off electricity before the worst part of the storm to prevent overloaded transformers. The worst part now is the salt water damage to the subways. Some service is starting up today, but it's very sporadic and intermittent. (Our roommate who works in Queens has been off work simply because her commute is impossible. She's still waiting to see what the extent of the damage is to the archive she works in).

My worst fears are for my students and colleagues on Long Island. Most are still without power (heat and light) or transportation. I've only gotten return emails from 3 students out of over 100 I've emailed to check up on.

[_Chap]

At a moment like this, two kinds of thought arise:

1. What can be done to help those in immediate need?

2. What can be done to minimize the chances of such disasters happening in the future? Two parts to that:

(a) Think of flood defenses - how much is one willing to spend to obviate what class of risks (20 year? 50 year? 100 year?).
(b) Think about the possibility that human activity may perhaps be playing a contributory part in the chances of such disasters recurring. What are the chances that investment in changing technology now will bring future returns by reducing the chances of economic disasters on an increasing scale? ... And lament the fact that discussing such things in the US political sphere in an objective way is currently more or less impossible, particularly during this election.

[_zeezrom]

This must make God so sad to hear his children talk this way. I feel sorry for God.

[_Sethbag]

The most offensive thing about tying these kinds of natural disasters to God is that it implies that the victims of the disaster somehow deserved it.

It won't surprise me in the least if we discover proof eventually that we (meaning humanity) brought some of this on ourselves through human-caused global warming changing the climate. But to imply that God decided to smite people with a hurricane/tsunami/superstorm/earthquake because they were masturbating, or having sex with the wrong gender, or looking at naked ladies on the internet, or drinking coffee, or saying "God damnit!", is quite simply a huge turn-off. That notwithstanding, those who really believe this crap will get all butthurt by comments like mine and retort with something jerky like "the truth hurts doesn't it?"

Bah. What say the fatheists? Are we being too rude, or striking the wrong tone, criticizing believers saying the victims deserved it because of some sin they committed?

[_Stormy Waters]

I think it depends on who your audience is, and that is affected by timing. People who lost family members, even grandparents, in OKC bombing for example, would likely feel the sting of unsympathetic comments even 40 years after the fact.

I doubt anyone today, that might read comments made now about Noah's flood being God's will would have emotional impact from those drowned in that flood.

Commenting about Hurricane Sandy today being God's will seems rather callous given, for example, the impact directly on people that read internet message boards, such as Blixa who lives in the midst of Sandy's destruction and is now dealing with impacts of it on her life and that of the people she deals with daily, like her students.

Not talking about what it all says about an 'eternal' and never changing God--there's lots of changes between God of Old Testament and God of New Testament and God of Mormon 'restoration' anyway. I am referring to what it suggests about MAD posters, who did not live in Old Testament times but are living in the time of Hurricane Sandy.

I apologize as I communicated my point very poorly if at all. I think the reasons we are offended when people suggest that recent events are God's punishment is all about familiarity.
In the cases of recent traigic events we are familiar with the faces and the stories of the victims. Even with events that are well before our life times such as the halocaust, we have read their diaries, we've seen their faces. Who doesn't remember the picture of the firefighter holding the burned child after the Okaholma city bombing? So to say these events were God's will offends us.
I guess that was the point that I entirely failed to make. It's not so much about timing as it is the familiarity that has bred empathy.
The people whose stories we don't know. Whose faces we haven't seen. Obviously we won't have as much empathy with them. But it doesn't make it any less of a double standard.

[_Chap]

The most offensive thing about tying these kinds of natural disasters to God is that it implies that the victims of the disaster somehow deserved it.

It won't surprise me in the least if we discover proof eventually that we (meaning humanity) brought some of this on ourselves through human-caused global warming changing the climate. But to imply that God decided to smite people with a hurricane/tsunami/superstorm/earthquake because they were masturbating, or having sex with the wrong gender, or looking at naked ladies on the internet, or drinking coffee, or saying "God damnit!", is quite simply a huge turn-off. That notwithstanding, those who really believe this s*** will get all butthurt by comments like mine and retort with something jerky like "the truth hurts doesn't it?"

Bah. What say the fatheists? Are we being too rude, or striking the wrong tone, criticizing believers saying the victims deserved it because of some sin they committed?

Yup. We know that if Yahweh is really, really annoyed with people he can always pay a house call, like he did with Tobin that time he was doing something really bad with a panda in a locked apartment.

It worked like a charm with Tobin - I mean, just listen to him today! No reason it wouldn't have worked with those people in Sodom and Gomorrah, and all the other victims in the Old Testament too: I bet they didn't get up to anything worse than Tobin did that one time.

[_Sethbag]

When a hurricane spontaneously destroys all of the Romney campaign headquarters where they cook up the turd casseroles like his latest "OMG! Obama is moving Jeeps to China!" spot, then I'll maybe start taking the whole "God did it!" theory more seriously.

[_zeezrom]

What about people that really hurt someone and got away with it? Will God issue vengeance on them? How do you feel about that?

Case in point: Guys living in mesoamerica throw women and children into a fire for believing in God and to make a point to a couple of missionaries. Those guys who did this ghastly deed deserve vengeance, right? The Book of Mormon even says their blood cries out.

I think some people see non-believers and others who don't follow their path the same way. They are "hurting" God or "hurting" society by being gay or wearing short skirts or voting for Obama or protesting the free market or watching the Godmakers or whatever. Somehow, they also deserve God's vengeance. Isn't this how it works?

[_sock puppet]

...it is the familiarity that has bred empathy.
The people whose stories we don't know. Whose faces we haven't seen. Obviously we won't have as much empathy with them. But it doesn't make it any less of a double standard.

Yes. It is easier to feel empathy with and for the familiar. It is easier to talk about standards in the abstract, not putting a face or faces on it.

I cringe and personally feel bad seeing my elderly parents losing abilities, much more than I can for my great-great grandfather whose journal reveals he faced life-threatening travails as a Mormon pioneer doing the trek from Nauvoo to SLC. (But a diary helps us get in touch with someone who has died, such as how the Diary of Anne Frank has made it easier to sympathize with her plight than if she had not written it or it had not been found.)

On the other hand, if I were to not have my parents' faces to put on the topic of geriatric decline, I would in the abstract certainly weigh it as less significant of a human malady than what an 1840s Nauvoo-SLC trekking pioneer faced.

Perhaps proximities rather than familiarity would be a more appropriate term. Blixa is in closer geographic proximity to the Sandy victims than I am in the mountain west area. We are all in closer chronological proximity to the Sandy victims than to anyone that was drowned in Noah's flood.

[_Blixa]

I've been chatting this morning with a student who is very shook up. His family has not heard from his grandparents who live in a particularly badly hit part of the island that is still without damage. So far I've gotten reply emails from 8 students. This is likely because of lack of power and hopefully they are all ok. I sent mass emails out asking for them to check in if they can---so I know they're safe---and also to reassure them that they needn't worry about pending classwork or grades (some of them were worried about such things).

I also just learned of the death of a colleague and friend in the storm.