I read your response to my post about Mother Teresa and serving others. Wow, you have a very messed up view of Mother Teresa. Sounds like you've been watching some seriously biased documentaries (possibly anti-Catholic in nature) bend on making her out to be a total twisted psychopath. From the way you talk about her, you'd think she was Elizabth Bathory or something.I have never even heard the slant on her story you going off on. I'll search the internet to find your side and where it comes from when I have a little more time. Maybe you youself should look at some sources on her coming from the other side. She did a lot of good in her time, and while she wasn't perfect (she never claimed to be) she inspired many others to live selflessly and go around doing good. I have never seen any evidence that she was selfish or had a deep fixation on death or some sort of fetish that made her desire to watch people suffer and die. I never knew her, I have no idea what she was really like, all I can go by is what has been writen and recorded by others. But the account of the extremely disturbed woman you talked about, I have never heard, and even after a brief google search (I'll try harder later), I turned up nothing.
As for the discussion with LJ, I didn't read your last two posts, just skimmed over them. I must have totally missed the part where LJ thought you accused him of being a terrorist, sounds like and amazingly humerous misunderstanding, maybe I will eventually go back and see if I can find it.
I dunno man, but it seems like sometimes you just feel like locking horns with some of us, finding something to nitpick the hell out of, and going at it until the other concedes to your views or does hours and hours of research to refute your every claim and meet your every challenge ("I challenge you or C3PX to prove that my replies have been longer, or more off topic than yours have been"). I don't really care to go around doing a word count on every post or coming up with some standard to judge off-topicness. The point is you drug this discussion off into some bizzare realm pointlessness, seemingly just to fill your own need to argue, insult, and triumph. You may enjoy it, but when it comes down to using sentences like, "I've gone out of my way to try and simplify your worthless crap and bring you back to my basic, starting question (the one I think you keep purposely misunderstanding)" a lot of us lose interest in the discussion. If LJ views are just worthless crap to you, then why the hell should he waste his time writing more of what you will simply dismiss as more worthless crap for the sake of continuing this discussion? I, for the life of me, am pretty confused as to where you are trying to take this, I seem to get the vibe LJ feels the same way. Maybe it is time to consider the fact that your posts and purpose are not as clearly represented as you'd like to think they are.
I agree with you on the idea that discussing things on the internet is not completely pointless. FF is a good example of someone who uses the internet to educate and spread his ideas. Often times when some political issue comes up, he makes a post clearly describing the problem and asking people to do their part it working against it. You mentioned the bloggers and their successful mass effort in supporting Obama. I think those bloggers have their game down pretty good. A good example would be the soldiers throwing the puppy off the cliff. If I have my facts straight, in that case people posted the soldier personal information online, and his family got continuous phone calls about what an evil son they raised and how it would be good if he was KIA, which in turn earned the incident a lot of coverage. I could very well be mixing my facts up from multiple stories, but my point is, these guys often manage to take issues that concern them and pull them into the mainstream by being very vocal and going through lengths to do things like provide contact information for where people can contact somebody and let them know how they feel.
With my original post, I intended to get discussion going about the differences between America's youth and youth of a place like Uganda, and how the one in a seemingly hopeless plight manages to be hopeful, and the one with a whole world of opportunities open to them manage to be depessed, suicidal, and hopeless. I made this thread because it was something I had been considering in my own mind for much of the evening, and was interested to hear what others thought on the topic. Had I been more interested in spreading knowlegde and increasing awareness of the situation in northern Uganda and the Sudan, I would have taken the lead of guys like FF, and made a well written informative post giving the most important details of the situation, then informing people of how they could help, who they could contact, or what website to go to to find out more information and make donations. Even in just one or two of us had gone to that site and donated a couple of bucks, it would have made a difference. Five years from now someone could be google searching the Uganda and come across my post, read that information, and go to the website and make a donation themselves, making another small difference.
So yeah, I most certainly think discussing things on the internet can make a difference and increase awareness. BUT, I don't think most of our discussions would make a difference to anyone, it is just mindless speculation and considerations spiced up with a heated argument here and there. I don't think anyone could go into our politics thread, read through all the pages, and come out the other end saying, "you know what, these guys are right, modern liberalism is stupid, I am going to be a libritarian or a conservative from now on." Our methods simple do not promote this sort of a conversion. Had we spent time discussing Mumbaj, it wouldn't have given anyone out there anymore information on the matter, they could easily read yahoo news and get more information than we would provide here, all they would get would be our views and opinions on the matter, which would not be likely to sway their own views regarding the matter.