What are you stitching next?

If I don't think they should be debated, what am I doing here? I don't think that a person as intelligent as Karen claims to be should be making wide-assed generalizations like the one she made, but I certainly have been debating the validity of the statement.

Elizabeth

I think discussions like this are debates, not necessarily argumentative. It's how I come to my own conclusions and it is as if I'm talking to myself finding what is the right thing to do. Right view, correct view. Each view may be completely different than another between people, but the thing is debate without anger. That's when it turns into an argument.

Debate about morality is interesting. For me, it's how I learn about my own sense of morality. If it's different than someone else, it's okay. I can make decisions based on my view of things and incorporate into relationships with others of the same or similar view. It's not snobbery, but it makes sense. If something is toxic to our sensibilities we have a moral obligation to ourselves to exit that relationship. Sometimes this is with friends, sometimes family.

I have had both experiences. I was friends, best friends with someone since she was 15 and I was 19. We were inseperable. We grew up and stayed in touch over all the years. She became a born again Christian after marrying. She was very upset that I was living with my husband before we married and I respected her opinion and tried to comfort her without judgment. She was the judgmental object in the friendship.

A few years pass and she is pregnant with her fifth child. She gave birth and afterwards was very depressed and crying all the time and I was trying from a few thousand miles away to comfort her. Phone daily. Finally, one day she told me she had an extra marital affair while five months pregnant with her fifth child. All that time in judgment of my situation. That was the last time I spoke to her. We were friends for decades. Toxic. Bye. When.

So, the moral of the story is, take what we need and leave the rest and either work it out through healthy debate or pull back. It's better to do that than to allow anger to uprise.

Just my two cents...maybe my dollar!

Victoria

(...)

While I would love to go to India, I cannot imagine how I would deal with the intense poverty and sickness. It must be very difficult. Westerners have no idea what poverty is. I mean extreme poverty. Even in the Ozark mountains where there is poverty, it is nothing like that of India, or many other nations. It's overwhelming.

Wow. So you're saying she trusted you with something that caused her extreme anguish and you cut her off. Ok, then.

Elizabeth

I thought you were arguing that people shouldn't make or possibly shouldn't make and express judgements about other people, which can then be used as an impetus for change. That's why I was pointing out that it's impossible to avoid doing so if you are to engage with the world at all. I suppose the will of the majority moderated by human rights is a reasonable way to try to decide which judgements can actually be imposed on another person, although I have extreme reservations with the extension of human rights from the negative to the positive, if I remember the terminology correctly. You don't get very far down the road to positive human rights (ie freedom to) before you start infringing other human rights (freedom from). And that's a debate that isn't going to be settled soon - if ever.

Cheryl

That's the idea. I got it from someone who has spent a lifetime helping people who are suffering, more recently almost always those who are grieving the death of someone close to them. People learn to grieve. The first time someone close to you dies, you don't know how to deal with all the feelings that arise - and today, in the west, that first time can come when you are in your 20s, 30s or even later. The next time it happens, the grief won't be exactly the same because your relationship to each person you lose to death is individual. But this time, you know that however much it hurts, you are not going insane, you can get through it, and you know what kinds of support from your friends and family is most helpful. You've learned how to mourn. And while it's never easy, it is easier if it's not your first experience with death; if you have gotten used to grieving. (There's a generalization for you!)

Cheryl

Precisely the reason that I tell people India, or similar, should not be the first "out-of-country" place to travel for most Westerners. These are extreme differences, with extremes in their society. We have such a relatively large middle-class that has space, housing, food, transportations, and luxuries (items not of necessity to live) - where the society in a place like India or Africa has such disparity - it's hard to comprehend. We would spend a lot of time talking with my SILs, DMIL, aunts, etc - about how they deal with the poor, working class. My classmates, all these educated women warned me not to be overwhelmed and throwing rupees at all the beggars, etc. They (my friends) spent time working in clinics, essentially planned parenthood, doing education, trying to give aid, help with getting the poor subsidized, to understand getting their children to stay in school - at least through age 10, 12 - trying for more - even giving birth control aids. At the same time, there was a beggar at the entrance to the subdivision where the Ils lived, and my SIL told me "don't give him anything - his son is a doctor, the other an engineer - and they've gotten him a flat in one of the apt buildings - but this is is occupation" .

It's a lesson to see how overwhelming that great level of poverty, and living conditions is - the efforts are gargantuan, and slow to change. My friends and family weren't oblivious because they were financially very stable - the FIL had been quite poor as a youth - but from upper caste family - and got ahead by very hard work, and brains. You feel like asking

- how can you stand seeing this around you? - but then you must respect that change is slow. Personally, I think a lot of things have to do with societies run by religion. At the same time - you can see amazing work and artistry done by people who just live such a different life - especially out in the less urban areas. Honestly - for the most part - while in India there is some kind of emulation of a lot of British ways, there is no love lost for the "days of the Raj" . I've had many a lengthy, or not, argument given to me that the Empire has cost them much in development - by surpression into that susbervient state during the great industrial revolution and economic growth of the west.

I can imagine. For a lot of people I knew- growing up in Miami - it was the first trip to Haiti- which is so impoverished. Or even Mexico.

Honestly, even travelling in Britain, Europe - places where the towns have been in place for long periods of time and grown that way - can be a bit of an eye-opener. With respect to personal space. For the most part - we're so used to large refrigerators, lots of space between homes, room space, wide streets, etc. It can be a shock when you're in someone's 2 or 3-up.

Ellice

I think you'd probably find it fascinating - and overwhelming. My experience is if you're only going once - choosing carefully where you visit

- as to what is important to you. My extended family Aunt & Uncle (who generally drive me crazy) and had become quite upper-middle class, country club type people went there in the early 80s. Now, I will say, said uncle, a businessman, very intellectually capable (and will tell you), well-read, etc, and my aunt - who takes good care of herself and is always on some crazy (IMHO) spiritual or material journey - are an interesting couple. They LOVED it. Granted - she'd been to the Orient, they'd been to Europe, Mexico, etc. They went on a 2.5 wk trip - with a group - I think through a University travel (alum club or the like). He couldn't stop raving about Varnassi - the holy city - and spending time observing the people doing their holy/spiritual rituals - going to the Ganges. That said, they primarily travelled in the North - which is easier - IMHO - with their only southern stop being Bombay, now Mumbai.

It is a sensory overload. But, for me - it's seeing past the first layer of difference, and seeing what is behind. Give your charity $$ to a shelter, an organization, and then you sort of do the blinders thing and go beyond the street beggars to see what amazing art, culture, etc is there. That said - when visiting temples - it's good to make donations to the religious order, and at least some of those on the steps....For me, some of my most treasured trips were to places way off the beaten tracks - temples built nearly a thousand years ago - with amazing carving - in relative jungle, etc.

Ellice

I totally disagree with that idea - my mothers family was very large and now it is down to my aunt and I. Most likely she will go before me (she's 15 years older) but I know the pain will be no less than when my mother was one of the first to go in 1976.

Quantity and experience makes it no easier unless of course, you are an uncaring person.

One wouldn't go there now but the same countryside with sudden temples was in Burma - some absolutely fascinating, beautiful ones. It made me think of the Roman (if not them, the Greeks) household gods because all the temples seemed to be isolated, not part of towns of any size. I suppose it appeared that way because the humble housing had long disappeared whereas the temples of stone construction remained for us to see.

One of my cousins, a mining engineer, is frequently up jungle rivers in Burma/Myan Mar and he has seen incredible things.

Agreeing. I think it's not "easier" precisely, but the learned coping skills help in dealing. OTOH, some people react the opposite, and become more distraught as losses continue in their life. It's very individual. However, there is the commonly accepted stages of grieving - along with the commaonly accepted thought that the first death you deal with as an adult is the "new" and difficult experience, while those that come later don't have that difficulty of newness. Personlly, I think this is a very individual thing. Losing my DM somewhat unexpectedly was difficult. Losing my DF 10 weeks later, slightly more unexpectedly, was much more difficult - perhaps a compound situation. I think as we age, and deal more with our own mortality, and survival as those close leave us alone (so to speak) the grieving can go from that acceptance, ability to deal with, to become sharper and more difficult again. Such and individual thing.

Ellice

You're entitled to your opinion - even to the opinion that those whose experiences don't match yours are uncaring.

Cheryl P.

first trip to Haiti- which is so impoverished. Or even Mexico.

-snip-

That's how I grew up in the inner city. We would have an excursionl to New Jersey, or Staten Island on the ferry, to see what looked to me like vast expanses of farmland.

How things have changed.

p.s. How are my turtles thriving? Are they old enough to leave the comfort of their home in the LNS and travel yet? lol

Lucille

The gorgeous bed upon which they will rest is sitting on my dining room table - where all good needlework stuff seems to be. Waiting upon the "paper" goods. Soon. Soon. And will of course come with bonus!

Ellice

Grief, as you say, is an individual thing, but losing a child is losing a part of yourself and I don't care how you live, or where you live or indeed in what socio-economic slot you fit, it's the most devastating of all because it simply isn't the natural order of things.

That's not to say that some people are more stoic and accepting and some people overreact and go into hysterics. That's IMHO just the way it is and it's that way with most things.

Some people go into hysterics if their sink is leaking and others withstand major damage to their homes from a hurricane with a smile and a we'll rebuild attitude.

I'm certainly no expert but I imagine that is the same world over and just another example of human nature..

Lucille

You're great! I don't know why this little project is so appealing to me, but it is.

It's the same in India. There are of course, tons of roadside shrines, but then there are ruins, or not so ruined old temples all over.

I bet. While I adore my DH, I do kind of miss the trips to India, etc with the XDH.

Ellice

I repeat: go back to my original post, before the dead babies were brought into the discussion.

I said "poor". Had I meant "destitute" or "half the family dying of starvation and the other half dying of AIDS", I would have said so.

My premise had people eating spaghetti (which is not standard African fare) and driving jalopies (which the poor in Africa cannot afford), therefore, anyone with any knowledge of international lifestyles should have been able to deduce that I was NOT talking about Africa.

People dying of starvation had as much to do with my original premise as cows jumping over the moon.

When the dying babies were brought into the discussion by someone else, I pointed out that Americans expect 100% of babies to live and other cultures expect a large percentage to die. That's fact and not open to argument. You can google up the infant mortality rates of various countries if you don't believe me that in some countries it is not an automatic assumption that every child will survive to adulthood. As CherylP more eloquently pointed out, when you have grown up in a culture that has more than its share of early deaths, you have a different attitude toward it than in the US where there are hardly any.

If everyone around you is wearing fig leaves, you don't realize that you're poor because you don't have a closet full of Christian Dior dresses. On the other hand, if everyone around you is wearing Dior and you're wearing Chez KMart, you realize you're poor, relatively speaking, even though you have more than the person who has only fig leaves.

And if everyone you know eats spaghetti for dinner, then you're happy with spaghetti, because you don't know you could be dining on lobster. That was all I was saying. I never said anything about dead babies until someone else dragged them into the equation.

Bingo! People have been dying around me since I was a child; three of my childhood friends didn't survive to HS graduation, and a friend's kid sister died at age 10. I won't say I was blase' about losing my last (and dearest) grandparent, but I wasn't totally falling apart, either. I pulled it together and went to work the next morning, and functioned, because I knew how to deal with the feelings.

One of my co-workers had never experienced death (not even a pet) until a friend's grandfather died when she was about 30. She sobbed the whole day and I don't think she accomplished anything other than filling the wastebasket with soggy tissues. It wasn't even someone she was particularly close to, just the first person she knew personally who had died and she had no idea how to get through it.

With repetition, you learn that life goes on and you have to go on with it. Like anything else, it gets easier with practice. Note: easiER, not "easy".