Skip to main content

I Want You to Fail -- Writer's Poke #290

60 Minutes did a piece yesterday on Greg Mortensen, author of Three Cups of Tea fame, accusing him of fraud.

Mortensen's Central Asia Institute (CAI) has claimed to have built hundreds of schools, primarily for girls, in Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past decade. But 60 Minutes asserts that much of what Mortensen has described in his books were exaggerations or lies. And, that even that school which were built were 1) not built by CAI, 2) not maintained, 3) not supported, or 4) not used after a short period of time, or at all.

Less than a day after the airing of the story, some people have already made up their minds that Mortensen is a fraud. On Amazon.com, for example, Three Cups of Tea started receiving a number of one-star reviews, even though Mortensen and CAI has had little time to defend themselves against the accusations.

Whether Mortensen is "guilty" or not, some have already decided that he is, and it will be difficult for him to ever get back his good name. It seems that people are ready, and almost eager, to find out that a "hero" is a fraud. But why? What do we gain from losing the power of belief in the good work that humans are capable of?

How quick are you to judge others? Do you assume that others are frauds, and that some just haven't been exposed yet?

"Perhaps that suspicion of fraud enhances the flavor." -- C. S. Forester

Comments

  1. Haven't visited your blog in a while. Pretty. Shiny.

    I'm not terribly deep. (:

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Digging for the Truth" Experiment #1 - Real Coffee with Scott Adams

I've been curious about how others perceive reality. What is "true" and "real" to me is not necessarily "true" and "real" to others.  First stop: Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert.  He's currently 67, does a daily podcast called "Real Coffee with Scott Adams" which draws about 30,000 listeners on YouTube, with 172,000 total subscribers to the channel. Podcast is also available on all the usual places, with a 4.4 rating on Apple Podcasts. Each episode is about an hour long, or a little less.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15SFbr2vj8c 1. Basic format: Just runs through news articles that drew his interest. On the April 15 episode (link above), he ran through 28 articles. Often he'd laugh at something, sometimes to show his disbelief.  2. Adams is not a big fan of science. He's open to conspiracy theories. Believes that the government doesn't tell us the truth (although he seems to think the Trump administration is an e...

"Digging for the Truth" Experiment #2 -- Bald and Bankrupt

His first name is Benjamin, but he usually goes by "Bald." Bald has been posting travel videos since 2018. His passion is anything Soviet Union, but he will take the time to learn a language before he visits a place -- not only Russian, but Spanish, say. It's important for him to have the ability to speak to people in their native tongue.  On Friday, April 18, Bald posted a video called "Solo on Ukraine's Eastern Front." So far it's generated 2.7 million views, and based on viewer average, it will likely go over 5 million views. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3HRnwC6pso Most of his videos are in the neighborhood of an hour in length. In them, he usually establishes where he is and what his goal for being there is. He will start somewhere and then go seek out a place, without knowing exactly what he will find there.  For the latest Ukraine video, he starts at the Kiev train station. It's been 3 years, he says, since he last visited Ukraine, and he h...

The Unconventional Life

How conventional is your life? If you're in your 30s as I am, think about how much you and I have in common: Spouce? check Kid(s)? check Job? check House? check Debt? check Obviously there's nothing wrong with conventional living, but if that's all there is, it seems kind of robotic to me. We have our freewill, and yet we all go through similar life stages, and we all share basic common experiences. What makes my life any different, then, from a million other lives in the Western world? This bothers me, and I yearn to make my life more unconventional. Of course people that are "unconventional" often find themselves being unconventional in uniform ways. So, perhaps there's no way out of the box. There's no way to live a life that someone else hasn't already lived. And maybe that's okay. I would just like to be able to add some unconventional elements to the satisfactory conventional elements of my life. The question is: How can I do that w...