
The Marriott Family's Civil War - prostoalex
https://www.washingtonian.com/2018/01/10/bill-marriott-john-marriott-familys-civil-war/
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AskewEgret
This reminds me of how the family that owned the Hyatt hotels broke apart.

[https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2003/05/andrews200305](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2003/05/andrews200305)

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walshemj
Its quite common for family owned firms to break up in this way most don't go
beyond 3 generations.

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Osiris
As a Mormon myself, I can sympathize with the son's anxiety over not meeting
expectations.

Religion, in general, is about helping individuals become "better" people. In
the case of Christianity (including Mormonism), this comes down to encouraging
the development of attributes like love, compassion, empathy, hope, virtue,
integrity, honesty, knowledge, patience, humility, etc.

One way to do that is to develop rules (or commandments) to help people
identify actions that would help to develop those attributes.

People can get so caught up in the "rules" that they miss the whole point,
which is really just trying to be a better person. This causes people to judge
others based on their adherence (or lack thereof) to the rules. Rather, what
the religion is really trying to get us to do is to lift one another up
because no one is perfect.

The quote "rather he come home in a pine box than engage in premarital sex" is
an example of this problem. You cannot help someone be better if you are
always pushing them down.

I have family members that don't practice the religion anymore, but no one in
the family has any less love for them.

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erric
>Religion, in general, is about helping individuals become "better" people.

Humans don’t need a religion to become better.

Religions exist only to demand and collect money and to grow ever larger.

>this comes down to encouraging the development of attributes like love,
compassion, empathy, hope, virtue, integrity, honesty, knowledge, patience,
humility,

Religion has no monopoly in these attributes, and indeed isn’t the source of
them either.

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tomohawk
What's with the bouncing arrow?

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knodi123
they want to be sure you know to scroll down

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Washuu
To make up for the shortcomings of a bad web site design.

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jessaustin
The worst thing a father can do to a son without getting arrested, is to
deprive him of his own name. It isn't as though "John Willard" is such a
wonderful moniker that it must be inflicted upon the third and fourth
generations.

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ww520
Hope they don't screw up the SPG program over this.

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dexterdog
Strictly religious family turning its back on the child who sees the belief as
nonsense. It's an old story.

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simula67
A reverse case :
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Murray](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Murray)

> William J. Murray III was born in Ohio in 1946, the son of William J. Murray
> Jr. and Madalyn Murray O'Hair, an atheist activist

> Murray became a Christian in 1980. Learning of his conversion, his mother
> commented: "One could call this a postnatal abortion on the part of a
> mother, I guess; I repudiate him entirely and completely for now and all
> times. He is beyond human forgiveness."

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dexterdog
That is equally crappy. To me the great crime of most religions (those that
are thought of traditionally as religions as well as just philosophies) is
that they brainwash the young in the most deceitful manners who become members
by the sheer chance that they were born to believers.

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zajd
Am I supposed to feel bad for the tax evading repeat substance abuser who's
still sitting on 8 figures but didn't get to cash in on the nepotism fueling
his family's fortune? Everyone involved in this story sounds like a horrible
person.

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IronKettle
Maybe?

Bad people can still be the recipients of injustices or undue hardship. For an
extreme example, you can still feel bad for a thief who gets tortured
extensively.

You can even feel sorry for people who are led to ruin by their own
hubris/etc. For an actual example: It's not insane to feel sorry for Travis
Kalanick. Yeah, he sounds like a bad person. It would still really suck to see
your "magnum opus" swept away from you. Did he need to be removed? Yes. Would
I like to be friends with him? No. Do I still feel bad for him? Yeah, kinda.

Sure, the guy from the article kinda sounds like a dirtbag. Still, he was
shunned from his family (and a close family at that) and is essentially losing
all of his close social network because of staunch religious beliefs that most
of us would call silly. That sucks.

People don't have to fall into this binary classification of "sympathetic" or
"unsympathetic". I can feel bad for him losing his family and wife, but feel
no sympathy for his financial situation.

As an aside, this is also part of what makes leaving cults so hard: The
thought of losing your entire social circle, including your immediate family,
is daunting. If you want to know why more people are involved in cults despite
being seemingly normal, this is a big part of it.

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zeveb
> Sure, the guy from the article kinda sounds like a dirtbag. Still, he was
> shunned from his family (and a close family at that) and is essentially
> losing all of his close social network because of staunch religious beliefs
> that most of us would call silly.

Do most of us _really_ consider 'don't leave your wife for your mistress' a
silly belief? From the article, that really sounds like the reason he was cut
off.

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IronKettle
Silly in the sense that it's considered an unforgivable offense relative to
how mild it actually is (in the realm of "ways you can screw up your life and
others"). It's the staunchness that makes it silly.

If my sister cheated on her husband, I wouldn't stop talking to her forever or
kick her out of the family (to the extent that I have that power). I'd be
disappointed and it would affect our dynamic, sure, but it's not even close to
a shunning offense.

Thinking on it, there's actually relatively few things she could do to warrant
that kind of treatment.

