Lessons from Abroad

The following essay comes from a discussion about the nature of healthcare policy in the United States.  I started out wanting to talk about healthcare, and wound up addressing the entire Spanish economy as an illustration of problems we deal with in healthcare, education, employment, and government--i.e. economic and politics generally.

My personal feeling is that the USA is simply too large to have a coherent, consistent public health agenda that extends nationwide. Europe benefits from smaller administrative regions, with more homogeneous culture(s). In my experience, Europe is a gated community built to exclude outsiders (who respond by seeking to replace rather than assimilate: immigrants from the Third World do not become French, or Spanish, or Scandinavian, by and large). America is the opposite (though we keep trying to repent and become more European; unfortunately, we need cheap labor, too).

When I was living in Spain, there were serious political movements in every place I stayed whose central goal was complete autonomy. I did not meet a single population in northern Spain (over two years, I lived in these provinces: Castilla y Leon, Galicia, Vizcaya) without a significant minority who wanted nothing to do with Spain or Madrid. Some parties even wanted autonomy for smaller regions (there was a party that wanted to get Castilla out of Leon). People grew up in small regions, in neighborhoods where they could point to the house their great-grandparents occupied (which often as not was a cottage predating modern civilization). There was a very strong trend to shut the world out, to suspect "growth" and "progress" as cloaking devices for "rape" and "pillage," and to distrust outsiders permanently (because they are not from here, they do not know this place, they will take our stuff and make good with it somewhere else, somewhere we cannot follow). In America, I can move thousands of miles to a neighborhood where people have never seen me before, and the common reaction is, "Hello! Welcome to the block!" In Europe (Spain anyway), this reaction is still there (particularly if I am talking to foreigners or people who live in the city), but it is supplemented by another: "You're not from around here? Fuck you! Go back where you came from. We don't need foreign shit. It is hard enough to deal with all our own."

Everything is different (healthcare, economics, religion) in areas where people have deep-seated distrust of the novel, the foreign, the unusual. America thrives on imagining the novel optimistically: "This new treatment could work wonders for me! I might survive this illness and even come out stronger than before!" In my experience, Europeans imagine it pessimistically: "This new treatment is probably going to make me die even faster than I was already, smoking two packs a day. Fuck it, and the white horse it rode in on." My experience is colored by the reality that I have never lived in the "really cool Europe" that American Leftists like to gush over. While I met plenty of German, Dutch, and Scandinavian tourists (who were invariably tall, healthy, and very articulate in English), the local populations I met were Iberian (short, not so healthy sometimes, and incomprehensible in English). I know that Spain is not Germany, or Holland, or Sweden (or Finland: man, I love that place, though it does have a rather high suicide rate for being so awesome in so many other ways). If there is anything I learn from my limited experience with Europe, it is that poor people (in particular) do better trusting authority and novelty less. The less we aim at "wealth" (move to a big city, get a nice job and a fancy-ass house, settle down) and the more we aim at "competence" (move to a quiet place, acquire skills that make any particular job unnecessary, and live in the cheapest hovel you can afford)--the happier we will be.

Happy Spaniards knew their neighborhoods (their grocer, their doctor, their teachers), and were busy building those neighborhoods themselves--they did not trust you to come in and fix them. Even when your motives were entirely pure and you had no evil track record, they wanted you out of the way so that they could keep planting and building what they wanted, not what you wanted to give them. My purpose living in Spain, as readers of this blog know, was offering folks a chance to become Mormons. Needless to say, that did not go over very well. But I learned a lot--including two really important things about myself: I am a terrible salesman, and I hate sales. I did not sell the Spanish on Mormonism, but they certainly sold me on hating sales. That visceral distrust and dislike of advertising is something I think Americans could stand to learn.

To end this interminable comment en pointe: the official policies coming from Madrid make Spain sound like utopia (or at least, like France): free healthcare, job security, political democracy, etc. But the reality on the ground is rather different. You see, making this utopia real requires more economic strength than the nation has (leading some of the least economically depressed regions, e.g. Catalunya and Vizcaya, to produce large numbers of citizens who openly, loudly, and even militantly desire to secede from Spain). This is because there is a high ceiling for legal employment (meaning that employers and the state together have to be able to guarantee healthcare, wages, votes, and acceptable living conditions to legally employed persons, such as I was during my stay). But crap jobs still need to be done, so as we do in America, the Spanish hire foreign slaves (Africans and South Americans, and some Eastern Europeans)--who are willing and able to work for pennies that people have as opposed to the euros that dreamers (officials, humanitarians, managers, EU bureaucrats, Spanish bureaucrats) want to give them. There is this perverse dynamic at play whereby native Spanish youth have nothing to do (employing them would be exploitation, i.e. illegal and punishable as a criminal offense), so they must sit around on the street and in their parents' basements collecting pensions from the state (mostly; it occasionally cannot pay!) while Africans, Arabs, native Americans (many from Ecuador and Colombia), Bulgarians, and Albanians keep everything running for wages. The Spanish folk in my age bracket, while I was there (as a 19-, 20-, and 21-year-old) spent most of their time walking around town, smoking, making out in street-corners, getting drunk, playing video games or watching TV, and harassing people like me. Were they better off than I, health-wise, job-wise, education-wise (tuition was cheap)? In some ways, yes. In others, no. 

Musings on Racism

Recently I took part in a very interesting conversation about racism (tribalism, factionism, whatever it is that makes people pick a side to defend or attack in social situations where something important seems to be at stake).  Here are some scraps of ideas I was not willing to throw away into the dark bowels of the NSA's storage crypts.  Comments adapted from people other than me are in bold.

[A] Some amount of inter-tribal animosity is human nature: we can't change that, and thinking we can is a dangerous utopian illusion (that plays out badly in history, as people claim to transcend their tribalism only to come up very short). On the other hand, the harm and injustice caused by this unfortunate trait is magnified hugely if there's a macro-level system in which some tribes hold disproportionate amounts of power.

[B] As one who typically has no answers, I must wonder about education.  But I am not sure what that means. The phrase walk a mile in another's shoes rings in my mind, but I am tilting at windmills. 

Walking in another's shoes is a good exercise, until one thinks one has done it and discovered the one true road for someone else to walk.

The problem I see with all "naive" attempts at liberalism is that they fail to see how they set themselves up to devolve into more and more restrictive tyranny (as the people's champions encounter tribalism and fight to eradicate it rather than minimize its capacity to do damage). Any attempt to build a heaven in which humanity responds to one good (one universal Platonic Form of goodness) in one way (the way of the philosopher-king) will always produce damaging authoritarianism, even when we call that one good "liberty" and the way we choose to pursue it "democracy" (vel sim.). The words don't matter as much as what they signify, and that is always going to be something bad to the extent that we imagine situations in which I tell you what to do, how to behave, etc., without leaving you clear, legal, respectable options for protest, rebellion, and dissent. Every person is tribalist. Every person will reach a point at which she breaks and goes for the jugular. The utopians (liberals, Marxists, religious fundamentalists, supremacists, fascists, it matters not what they call themselves) who imagine that this can be bred out of us, that we can be effectively broken and domesticated out of our humanity, are dangerous lunatics--most especially when they manage to appear sane.

What is dangerous is not their individual motives, which may be excellent (indeed it is always best to give them the benefit of the doubt here), but the dangerous practical imbalance these motives historically create when they become implemented as public policy.

I can learn to suppress my tribalism where it appears obnoxious to me and society. I cannot learn to unmake it (and transform myself into the holy saint that the utopians require to make their pie in the sky edible). Note that tribalism as I use it here is more than any historical instance of racism: it is the general category behind all particular instances of racism. Human beings have always been divided into competing hostile factions. We can improve relations between factions, enlarge factions, redefine factions, etc., and we have done so repeatedly in history. We cannot erase the faction as the bedrock of humanity--a source of both good and evil, both of which are requisite for our survival. Another way to say this: the evil that we call "racism" (or "tribalism" or "faction") is the same thing as the good that we call "community" (or "family" or "tribe" or "culture"). We can get better at prescribing the drug of culture (modifying its content and varying the dosage with historical circumstances), but we cannot engineer it to be utterly non-lethal. That would destroy its utility (and doom us to destruction).

[A] On a genetic level, ideas of "race" are pretty much noise. In terms of cultural and historical identities, however, they are very relevant. My appearance does affect how people will react to me on an everyday basis, and the appearance of my ancestors affected the future opportunities of their progeny since it was a factor in what society gave them economically.

Whether it's "socially programmed" or not doesn't matter, because whether I personally ignore people's "race" or not does not change that there existed at some point biases and chain-reactions (their parents were given less opportunity, so they themselves grew up less affluent) with a significant influence on where they stand now.

There are males who see "us and them" when it comes to females. But I call BS on "male culture" as something coherent. Of course hormones influence behavior (in generically categorizable ways even), but I don't share any meaningful culture with some other dude merely because we both have balls (and/or elevated testosterone levels).

Talking about "male culture" as something particularly real--something responsible for coherent causes operating on a discrete individual, such that my opening the door for somebody with a vagina means that I must endorse your intention of raping her--is ludicrous, obscene, and the opposite of empowering (for anyone). "Black culture" is the same. As is "white culture." (I utterly reject the idea that I must share sympathy with someone because we both have relatively low melanin levels. How are Beethoven and Eminem alike? How is their likeness more important, more real, than their unlikeness?) And of course "American culture" (vomit). These are words people like to burp out, words that occasionally even seem to mean something--an unfortunate semblance when we confuse it with verity (enshrining it in statistics, where it can live on in the mind of the faithful determined to see me as nothing more than a pawn in the invisible hand of "the media" or "the neo-con movement" or "the Tea Party" or "corporate Mormonism" or "right-wing America" or some other impossible chimaera). 

[A] I agree with some of your points, but I'm wondering if you're suggesting that all distinctive cultures are bullshit.

I don't think they are. But I do think people mischaracterize (misgeneralize, jump from true particular instances to false general conclusions). When people say the words "white culture" or "male culture" or "black culture," they are referring to something individually, particularly real (something they know from their experience). When they look at me as a stranger and assume I must match their experience (i.e. when they generalize from the particular), they go wrong. Attempts to correct what is wrong with their particular experience via generic conversations that rely on unexamined false identities are doomed (when blacks aren't black, whites aren't white, and I am not a male). 

To me it seems that many invocations of racism (whether by proud neo-Nazis or penitent progressives) come from a perspective antithetical to justice.

It isn't unjust if 100% of prison inmates in some random locale are white, or Irish, or Catholic, or left-handed, or male, or 6 feet tall, or illiterate, or whatever. It is unjust if one of those inmates is falsely accused, negligently tried, and fraudulently convicted--no matter what he looks like and/or who finds him creepy (criminal: "kill the creeps!") or socially maladjusted (pitiful: "but this little guy was only a small boy looking for some harmless fun!").

That said, people who cry "racism!" are not always bad (working against justice) or wrong (misperceiving what justice should be): there are legitimate times to push back against people making unfair and unnecessary generalizations, generalizations that hurt innocent individuals.

Rosa Parks had a point, a good one, and she made it well. I hope I would have been brave enough back in the day to stand with her when idiots made the argument that black people (or brown people or yellow people or tall people or short people or skinny people or fat people, etc. ad nauseam) should be refused common human courtesy (e.g. a seat on the bus that you pay for and occupy peacefully to the obvious pain and detriment of nobody who isn't perfectly willing and able to bear it) merely because they carry some external characteristic (melanin, a tattoo, a turban, a mustache, balls, birth defects, etc.) that some fool associates with criminal activity or social ickiness ("You're on your period? Unclean! No menstruating women allowed in grocery stores! Where's my congressman! Where's the police! Somebody pass a law and give me the hand-cuffs!").

The Civil Rights Movement, in my eyes, was about pushing past stupid barriers blocking our political and civil discourse--stupid barriers like the idea that all black people are evil hooligans and/or lesser forms of life that shouldn't be allowed to mingle peacefully with "decent folk" (as though such a category were clearly defined in reality: "Please collect your 'decent human being badge' at Window 8, citizen, and remember to display it prominently on your person at all times!"). The Civil Rights Movement aimed to get us past seeing a guy and thinking, "Ooh! He's wearing a turban! Must be an evil Arab terrorist! Attack!" It was about process (treating all folk as equally innocent until proven guilty), not results (counting up the 'proven guilty' at the end of the day and making sure each demographic in society is appropriately represented: we all know that criminals get together with Satan every Tuesday down at Larry's nightclub and determine how many blacks, Latinos, and whites are going to commit felonies that week, making sure that there are no communities where any single 'race' is ever responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime).

I support the Civil Rights Movement (as outlined above). I do not support people whose idea of it is diametrically opposed to mine, such that we become more focused on results than process, more keen to entrench stupid notions of collective culture as something permanent--and diagnosable: "I see you have some white culture there, my friend! Let me help you carry this burden!" The point is that the burden is impossible, idiotic, and immoral. There is no white culture that applies universally to all of us (Irish, Scottish, English, French, German: my ancestors hated each other every bit as much as competing African tribes). There never was, not even when a bunch of nitwits got together recently in the Deep South and tried to claim "the Bible says so!" (my Bible says you are full of crap, idiots). There should not be. Individual people should not be presumed guilty because of some random characteristic they share with other people whom somebody else finds threatening (for whatever reason: some reasons are good, and some are total garbage).

[C] There is no white culture but there is undeniable white privilege. As long as you "pass" you are afforded it. 

I think we should make a point of sending young people abroad somewhere they cannot pass. I spent two years in northern Spain doing obnoxious door-to-door saleswork at a time when many people over there were very angry at Americans. My skin color was not an issue, but I did not pass, and it was not fun. It was a really good learning experience. 

[C] Agreed. I spent a very uncomfortable week in the West Bank and not knowing the language, looking different (and evil), can definitely afford some perspective.

Personally, I think outcomes are most likely to improve systemically as we consciously refute and throw mud on the human tendency to draw lines in the sand that are unnecessarily harmful.

The existence of "black culture" as something actionable, something that sets "young blacks" apart from the rest of America (with whatever intention), seems to me fundamentally evil. Sure, some people will separate them. Some people will say they are creeps who should be shunned (or shot when seen "acting suspicious" and/or physically confronting somebody in a threatening way). Others will say they are poor persecuted infants who should be kissed and hugged and cradled. I say no to both parties. If I were black, I wouldn't want your irrational hatred or your irrational love: I would want the freedom to live as free of you and your misconceived notions about me as possible. Keep your love and your hate, and let me be. I would want some human decency, some respect, something more than a beat-down or a hand-out "because you're black." This, incidentally, is precisely what I wanted from the Spanish people, in real time. I don't care if they hate Americans or love them, personally: all I want is the freedom to do my work in their society without having to be the poster-boy for America (whether that means taking a physical beating because of my Americanism or getting a pat on the back and a rousing speech about how great George W. Bush is). 

[D]  Personally, I found out rather late in life that I had a black great-grandfather. Does this mean that I'm "black"? Does this mean that I'm not "white"? The reality is that I was brought up thinking I was entirely white (inspite of only having to look at my mother and grandfather to see the obvious), when I really am partially black.  I think that we're talking about random, irrationally created thought constructs that have nothing to do with reality. Why can't we allow each individual's experience to be their own?  

People will profile you. They have to. Life has built profiling into our DNA (with good reason: I fear gangs of young people hanging about in public places to this day because I was physically assaulted by one such mob and threatened by others). But this reality doesn't have to be destructive. I can learn to hold back my feelings of irrational anger when I see teenagers together at the mall. I can refrain from following them around waiting for something, with a gun in my pocket. I can even be nice to them when occasion offers (as I was, in fact, when attacked: I think that may be part of what saved me from getting some serious injuries).

PTSD is real. People who are raped or otherwise violated have issues, justifiably and unavoidably. But the solution is not to mark and remove anything that might be a trigger to those issues. We have to deal with them--as individuals more than as communities, it seems to me. The community helps best when it emphasizes solidarity ("we are all in this together!") rather than factionism ("look at those awful/pitiful weirdos over there! kill/kiss them!"), and process ("you do X in this town, and the result is Y--no ifs ands or buts") over results ("well, you are a special case, since people take a shine to you: the rules don't apply any more!"). That is my opinion, which I don't expect anyone else to hold (necessarily) or blame anyone else for not holding. Life would be boring if we all thought the same way. 

[A] How can the individual feel that society denies him access to his own identity? 

In Spain, I was an American. In Spain, all Americans hate Iraq. That's why we all got together and appointed Bush II absolute dictator and then took voluntary tours of duty with the Army to kill Iraqi babies. People didn't see me. They saw this thuggish G.I. Joe stereotype and reacted with disgust, hatred, and occasionally violence.

(And of course not all Spaniards saw me this way. Far from it! I would go back if given the chance, and I find many things to love about Spanish culture, not least among them the fact that there is no such thing that all legal Spaniards agree on.) 

[D] Personal experience is all we have and the only thing that counts. Everything else is the narrative fallacy. We have to get back to this ultimate reality, since that's the only thing that really matters. All of this discussion of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin doesn't matter at all. 

Martin Luther's Mad Dogs

Eric W. Gritsch.  Reformer without a Church: The Life and Thought of Thomas Muentzer, 1488 [?] - 1525.  Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967.

Hans-Juergen Goertz.  Thomas Muentzer: Apocalyptic, Mystic, and Revolutionary.  Trans. Jocelyn Jacquiery.  Ed. Peter Matheson.  Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993.

Peter Matheson, trans. & ed. The Collected Works of Thomas Muentzer. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988. 

"Truly, the person who has seen Muentzer may claim to have seen the devil incarnate in his very worst raging. Oh, Lord God, wherever such a spirit is abroad among the peasants, it is high time they were destroyed like mad dogs! For the devil too senses the Last Day, and so he stirs up the evil brew to show all the powers of hell at once."  Martin Luther, Ein brieff an die Fuersten zu Sachsen von dem auffrurischen geyst (quoted in Goertz, p. 8).

"One thing pleased me about Muentzer, that from the beginning he sided with the ordinary man, and not with the bigwigs."  John Agricola (in the character of Wolf Schwermer, quoted in Goertz, p. 9). 


I complain a lot about the LDS Church Education System here, so I am happy to be able to say something nice about it now.  Several years ago, before I left to serve a two-year mission in Spain, I attended a really good Institute class.  It was a class in the history of Christianity before Mormonism, with special emphasis on the Reformation and its aftermath.  Where most of the CES classes in scripture that I attended were shallow and boring (confusing fervent testimony with accurate understanding, and operating under the tacit presumption that all students are morons), this one was not.  I was actually interested in this class, which opened my eyes to a lot of information I had not encountered before.  It was really nice to learn something real at church, to come to class and get something other than the obligatory testimony book-ended by "faith-promoting" kitsch.  Even as a believing Mormon, I liked both breadth and depth in my religion: my faith was intellectually stimulating, challenging, and open--the same way my doubt has been.  This class was a breath of fresh air, and it provided my first introduction to Thomas Muentzer, sowing seeds in my mind that are still germinating today.

Thomas Muentzer reminds me a lot of Joseph Smith.  Muentzer participated in the Reformation alongside his contemporary Martin Luther, with whom he associated as a friend and ally before they quarreled over theology.  Preaching a Christian gospel that was at once mystic, anti-clerical, and apocalyptic (with a serious idea of founding heaven on earth), Muentzer anticipated many things in Mormonism.  Like Joseph Smith, he was ultimately put to death by people who found him obnoxious (and like Joseph Smith, he put up a real fight before they took him down: he was taken prisoner on the field at the Battle of Frankenhausen, tortured until he recanted, and ultimately put to death by the German nobility whose authority he threatened).  The one thing he did not do, as far as I can tell, is attempt to coerce young girls into marrying him using religious blackmail (though, like Luther, he went against the religious standard of his day by marrying a runaway nun).  To be honest, this actually makes him more attractive: in many ways, he is what I used to imagine Joseph Smith being--an upstanding moral iconoclast who championed the cause of the common man (weavers, miners, peasants) against that of the establishment exploiting him (Roman Catholic clergy, secular rulers in bed with Lutheran clergy).  Consider the following excerpts from the published work of both men.

Muentzer, "Prague Manifesto" (1521, German version)

"St. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3[:3] that the hearts of men are the paper or parchment upon which God with his finger inscribes his immovable will and eternal wisdom. This script not being written in ink, no man can read it ... unless God himself opens the human mind.  This he does in his elect from the very beginning, so that they are no longer uncertain but have invincible testimony from the Holy Spirit" (quoted in Gritsch, p. 56).

Muentzer, "A Manifest Expose of False Faith" (1524, written against Martin Luther)

"If someone had never had sight or sound of the Bible at any time in his life he could still hold the one true Christian faith because of the true teaching of the spirit, just like all those who composed the holy Scripture without any books at all; and he could also be completely certain that he drew such faith from the undeceivable God, not from the cunning devil or from his own human nature" (quoted in Goertz, p. 143). 

Joseph Smith, "Try the Spirits" (editorial published 1 April 1842 in Times and Seasons) 

"If it requires the Spirit of God to know the things of God; and the spirit of the devil can only be unmasked through that medium, then it follows as a natural consequence that unless some person or persons have a communication from God, unfolding to them the operation of the spirit, they must eternally remain ignorant of these principles; for I contend that if one man cannot understand these things but by the Spirit of God, ten thousand men cannot; it is alike out of the reach of the wisdom of the learned, the tongue of the eloquent, the power of the mighty. And we shall at last have to come to this conclusion, whatever we may think of revelation, that without it we can neither know nor understand anything of God, or the devil; and however unwilling the world may be to acknowledge this principle, it is evident from the multifarious creeds and notions concerning this matter that they understand nothing of this principle, and it is equally plain that without a divine communication they must remain in ignorance" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, ed. Joseph Fielding Smith [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1976], pp. 205-206). 

Like Smith, Muentzer believed in the supremacy of Spirit over Word (a standard trope in Christian mysticism, which Muentzer inherited from old medieval tradition).  For both men, the religious experience is fundamentally an individual encounter with God -- an experientia fidei that need not be mediated by external texts or creeds (though these may prove helpful: Muentzer used the Bible, and Smith did too, adding his own revelations as interpretive guides for the more ancient scripture -- modern equivalents for the ancient midrashim).  Both men had little good to say about the religious teachers of their day.

Muentzer, "Prague Manifesto" (1521, German version)

"For a long time, the world--confused by many sects--has had a tremendous desire for the truth, according to Jer. [4:4].  There were many, and there are still many today, who have thrown the bread, that is, God's word and letter, just as it is thrown to dogs. They have never broken it. Oh, mark it well! They have never broken it for the children. They have never explained the true nature of the fear of God; they have never let it instruct them to become the immovable children of God. This is why Christians--to speak the plain truth--have become poltroons, saying that God has seemingly been struck dumb and no longer speaks with the people. They think it sufficient to read it in books, and then to spit it out like a stork spits out frogs for its young in the nest. They are not like a hen who gathers her young to keep them warm [Cf. Matt. 23:37, 3 Ne 10:5, D&C 10:65, et al]. They refuse to let God's real, true, natural word--which lives in all men--to the hearts of men like a mother offering milk to her child. Instead, they behave like the prophet Balaam [Num. 23-23]; they carry the letter in their mouths, but their hearts are one hundred thousand miles away from it! ... I have taken in the knowledge of this unbearable and evil disease of Christianity through a most diligent study of the ancient church fathers. I have found out that the immaculate, virginal church became a prostitute shortly after the death of the apostles and disciples, due to the scholars who always wanted to be at the top, as Hegesippus and Eusebius testify in [Ecclesiastical History] Book 4, 22. Moreover, no general council, I discovered, ever presented the inviolable word of God. It was all a childish prank. God's will permitted all this so that the work of all men might be revealed. Yet the monkish clergy shall never represent the true church. Instead, the elect friends of God's word will be instructed in prophecy, just as St. Paul was, so that they might really experience how amiably God speaks with his elect. I will, for the sake of God, sacrifice my life in order to reveal this truth" (quoted in Gritsch, p. 57).

"It is the shepherds who just eat, drink, and desire rich parishes. Day and night they are driven by one single ambition: to gorge themselves with food and fiefs, as Ezek. 34[:2] says ... These servants of Satan want to sell a piece of scripture. Yet no man knows whether or not he is worthy of the spirit and love of God! Such is the poison that emerges from the abyss where the priests, these messengers of the devil, reside, filled with the spirit of whoredom and fraud, according to Rev. [3]. They drive away the sheep of God, so that the church is left without a face ... The time of harvest is at hand. That is why God himself has hired me to labor in his harvest. I have sharpened my sickle; my mind is honed for truth; and my lips, hands, skin, hair, heart, soul, body, and life curse unbelief. Christ will give his kingdom to the elect in a little while ... Thomas Muentzer wants to pray, not to a dumb, but to a speaking God" (quoted in Gritsch, p. 58).

Joseph Smith, History of the Church 1.1-5 (1838) = Joseph Smith History (published in the Pearl of Great Price)

"Some time in the second year after our removal to Manchester, there was in the place where we lived an unusual excitement on the subject of religion. It commenced with the Methodists, but soon became general among all the sects in that region of country. Indeed, the whole district of country seemed affected by it, and great multitudes united themselves to the different religious parties, which created no small stir and division amongst the people, some crying, “Lo, here!” and others, “Lo, there!” Some were contending for the Methodist faith, some for the Presbyterian, and some for the Baptist.

"For, notwithstanding the great love which the converts to these different faiths expressed at the time of their conversion, and the great zeal manifested by the respective clergy, who were active in getting up and promoting this extraordinary scene of religious feeling, in order to have everybody converted, as they were pleased to call it, let them join what sect they pleased; yet when the converts began to file off, some to one party and some to another, it was seen that the seemingly good feelings of both the priests and the converts were more pretended than real; for a scene of great confusion and bad feeling ensued—priest contending against priest, and convert against convert; so that all their good feelings one for another, if they ever had any, were entirely lost in a strife of words and a contest about opinions ...

"While I was laboring under the extreme difficulties caused by the contests of these parties of religionists, I was one day reading the Epistle of James, first chapter and fifth verse, which reads: If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did; for how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would never know; for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible. At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in darkness and confusion, or else I must do as James directs, that is, ask of God. I at length came to the determination to “ask of God,” concluding that if he gave wisdom to them that lacked wisdom, and would give liberally, and not upbraid, I might venture ...

"My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be able to speak, than I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right (for at this time it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong)—and which I should join. I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: 'they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.'"

 Joseph Smith, Revelation to His Father (1829) = Doctrine & Covenants 4

"Now behold, a marvelous work is about to come forth among the children of men.  Therefore, O ye that embark in the service of God, see that ye serve him with all your heart, might, mind and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day. Therefore, if ye have desires to serve God ye are called to the work; for behold the field is white already to harvest; and lo, he that thrusteth in his sickle with his might, the same layeth up in store that he perisheth not, but bringeth salvation to his soul; and faith, hope, charity and love, with an eye single to the glory of God, qualify him for the work.  Remember faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, diligence. Ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Amen."

In theory, both Muentzer and Smith recognized that the kingdom of God made men brothers, exalting the common man and bringing down the rulers (no matter what their institutional affiliation: Muentzer was as much opposed to Lutheran authoritarianism in the end as to Catholic).

Thomas Muentzer, "Vindication and Refutation" (written against Martin Luther in 1524)

"O Doctor Liar, you wily fox. With your lies you have saddened the heart of the just man, whom God did not cause to grieve. For you have strengthened the power of the godless evil-doers, so that they could continue on in their old way. Therefore your fate will be that of the fox that has been hunted down; the people will go free and God alone will be their Lord" (quoted in Matheson, p. 350).

Joseph Smith, Prayer and Prophecies from Liberty Jail (1839) = Doctrine & Covenants 121:39-46

"We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. Hence many are called, but few are chosen.  No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; by kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile--reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy; that he may know that thy faithfulness is stronger than the cords of death.  Let thy bowels also be full of charity towards all men, and to the household of faith, and let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews from heaven. The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth; and thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever."

The irony of Joseph Smith renouncing authoritarian excess is not lost on me, by any means.  (Smith should have let the Nauvoo Expositor speak its piece unmolested: in keeping with the words offered here, he said "Amen!" to his own authority when he destroyed that press.  His courtship of Nancy Rigdon and Helen Mar Kimball also falls far short of the ideal he expresses here.)  And I see that there is a positive side to the conciliatory stance Muentzer condemns in Luther (who opposed revolution in the interest of keeping society from unraveling completely).  But when it comes down to the wire, I believe that society works better when people are equals (with nothing but their natural gifts and circumstances to make them stand out from the crowd, for good or ill).  As long as people are going to believe in God, I believe that the Spirit should prevail over the Word: both are often incoherent and idiotic, but the Spirit is more honest, since it recognizes that human interpretation of the divine (whatever that is) is transient, fleeting, subject to error (and proof: people find it easier to resist the Spirit than the Word, I think).

Even more important, I stand against authoritarian big-wigs using their accidental social clout to dictate to the little guy, telling him what to believe and where to put his hard-earned livelihood (in their pocket, naturally, so that they can build the world's most expensive shopping mall).  I aspire to a society where individuals encounter reality (God) for themselves and make their own decisions (imposing on one another by persuasion that does not include blatant lies or renounce reasonable compromise).

In short, the Mormonism to which I converted looks a lot like the Christianity of Thomas Muentzer.  It had its problems: the eschatology was bad, but that came straight from some of the dumbest portions of Scripture, portions which continue to addle the minds of Christians today.  But it was not entirely bad: it embraced revelation, innovation, and a radical identity between spirit and flesh (Muentzer and Smith both thought that Christian doctrine needed to be applied in the world as it exists now, that the current order of things should not be accepted as God's inalterable will: I agree).  When I wear the hat of the believing Christian, I still think in the tradition of Muentzer and Smith (particularly in their mysticism and their anti-clericalism / anti-authoritarianism).  The fact that they both ended up falling short of the high ideals they espoused does not mean that they offered the world nothing useful.  The fact that both of them led failed rebellions against the orthodoxies of their day does not mean that those orthodoxies were without fault.

I find Thomas Muentzer interesting enough that I may post more about him in time.

Scott Crow on Anarchism

This talk is a good addendum to my article on play.  Scott Crow is a very interesting man, whose ideas I will have to look at more carefully.  I like his approach to community-building: small, responsible, non-violent, participatory, egalitarian.  This is what I wanted from the LDS church, really.  In Mormon terminology, this is Zion--a group of committed people who live together in productive peace.