I have been thinking I should post a list of books that really speak to my soul. Here, in no particular order, are books that I find uniquely inspiring as I pursue moral excellence.
Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth). This book is the only part of the Old Testament that I still take really seriously as an inspiring commentary on the human condition. (Some of the Proverbs and Psalms are good, too, but others are not. I can also appreciate aspects of some of the prophets, especially Isaiah, but they also contain a lot of old-school mythology that doesn't really speak to me any more.)
Epistle of James. This is the only book in the New Testament that I really like any more. It is all about real ethical problems and workable solutions. (The Gospels contain a lot of myth disguised as history, as does Acts, and Paul is a bit too polemical for my taste. Revelation is an interesting kookfest, but its ethical relevance is pretty much nil, at least for me.)
Doctrine and Covenants 121. This section of the D&C is a favorite of mine. I still like the image of leadership that it presents (one that strives to inspire emulation rather than demand obedience). If Joseph Smith had done a better job of living up to this, he might not have died so early.
Seeds of Contemplation. This gem from Thomas Merton (published in 1961) has been a real source of inspiration for me. Every chapter is quotable (and useful in real moral dilemmas that I have). The Christianity practiced by the author is an ethical system that I definitely believe in.
What Makes You Not a Buddhist. This introduction to Buddhism by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse (from Bhutan) has become another book that I look to repeatedly for insight into the human condition. I have really enjoyed reading it over and over again, noting my reaction to the four truths: (1) all compounded things are impermanent; (2) all emotions are pain; (3) all things have no inherent existence; (4) nirvana is beyond concepts. If I have an old-school credo (map of "ultimate reality"), this might be one of the most accessible statements of it that I have stumbled across.
War and Peace; Anna Karenina. I have read both of these books multiple times over my life (especially the former, but the latter is also really, really good). I am always impressed at the insight into humanity (rich and poor, working and lazy, intelligent and not, civilized and savage) that both contain. Of the Russian writers, Tolstoy is the only one that has always spoken to me (though I really like Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov, which should probably also be in this canon). War and Peace is everything one could want in a book: comprehensive, entertaining (light-hearted at times, but deadly serious too), and very long (it is one of the few books over 1000 pages that I routinely wish were longer). Anna Karenina shows us all aspects of sin, including the humanity (and human goodness) of the sinner. Together, I think they provide more useful insight into your average human reality than any ancient mythology.
Dao De Jing. This ancient Chinese text is a recent addition to my canon. (I would not have understood it as a young[er] man, back when I approached everything in terms of Platonic forms, confounding the abstract with the concrete.) I discovered it while working on the problem of organic wisdom (as opposed to absolute knowledge), and I have really fallen in love with it. Life (and human ethics) is about process, not results, and everything we do is fluid. Nothing is ever set in stone (unless it is meant to be broken).
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. As a young college student, I was drawn to the Greeks and Greek philosophy, and I could never figure out why. I also wanted to achieve a kind of personal excellence in other fields of endeavor that were important to me, but was not really interested in competition or what most moderns categorize as "success" (money, power, prestige, technical brilliance, etc.). Robert Pirsig's book (published in 1974) is one of the clearest expressions of my own longing for "quality" (my own authentic, integral experience with reality) that I have ever found. As I read it, something inside me said, "Yes! Yes! That's just what I have been feeling. That's precisely why I hate my relationship with machines and am obsessed with studies that yield no obvious external rewards!" The book is excellent.
Never Let Go. This quirky collection of strength-training tips and life advice created by Dan John (and published in 2009) is included here because it speaks to my conviction that human ethics involve the whole individual, with physical health laying the groundwork for moral excellence (and all other emergent properties of the human condition that we sometimes refer to with words like "spirituality"). Dan believes this too (as far as I can tell), and his book is refreshingly honest, simple, and packed with great strength-training advice (including knowing references to most of the other authors I have read in my search for top-notch health tips). Rather than pad my list with a bunch of stuff about strength and health, I include Dan as a concession to that part of my life (which continues to be important). Also, I find his brutal honesty and humility as refreshing as they are funny. (Seriously, how many strength books do you know that give you real insight into being healthy and strong and make you laugh at the same time? Not many, I'm guessing.)
Fooled By Randomness; The Black Swan; The Bed of Procrustes. I have read Taleb's books several times (including the last, a collection of modern proverbs). I find them continually entertaining and insightful (despite what some critics think). They never fail to put me in touch with the reality of my own ignorance (which is what every good book should do, in my opinion). I really like them.
These are all the obvious titles that come to mind today. Of course I may expand the list, as time goes by. My canon is completely open.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Losing Religion, Gaining Faith
Life has me completely tapped out at the moment, but I found an essay that really speaks to my spiritual experience over the past few years. Like the author, I too feel a new connection with people of all kinds since losing my old religion, and I have had profoundly moving experiences whose power depended on acknowledging myself as profoundly weak (helpless even) and temporal (with no clear prospect of continuing on past death as I am now).
I feel like I am open to the human experience as had by people in all walks of life, in all countries, in all religions (including those individuals who fall outside any institutionalized faith tradition). I also confess that I feel alone and terrified sometimes, especially when it seems that institutions are betraying me all over the place. But at the end of the day, I realize that it is better to be calm and take each situation as it comes up, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst as best I can. Existentially, I feel like I have more real, honest-to-goodness faith than I have ever had: I am really trusting a universe that I do not know very well at all. I am also learning to trust other people more (as I believe human institutions less). I may not entirely approve every thought or action undertaken by my family or friends, but I trust their motives to be good, and I support them no matter what (until they give me really good reasons not to). I have little trust for politicians, presidents, CEOs, religious leaders (especially those who claim special access to divinity), journalists, news pundits, and others who speak for corporations (who often have them bought and paid for). In general, I find it is better to have low expectations of insitutions: they cannot deliver much more than nice words and minimal interference with real people living real lives; to the extent that they do this, I am happy with them.
I feel like I am open to the human experience as had by people in all walks of life, in all countries, in all religions (including those individuals who fall outside any institutionalized faith tradition). I also confess that I feel alone and terrified sometimes, especially when it seems that institutions are betraying me all over the place. But at the end of the day, I realize that it is better to be calm and take each situation as it comes up, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst as best I can. Existentially, I feel like I have more real, honest-to-goodness faith than I have ever had: I am really trusting a universe that I do not know very well at all. I am also learning to trust other people more (as I believe human institutions less). I may not entirely approve every thought or action undertaken by my family or friends, but I trust their motives to be good, and I support them no matter what (until they give me really good reasons not to). I have little trust for politicians, presidents, CEOs, religious leaders (especially those who claim special access to divinity), journalists, news pundits, and others who speak for corporations (who often have them bought and paid for). In general, I find it is better to have low expectations of insitutions: they cannot deliver much more than nice words and minimal interference with real people living real lives; to the extent that they do this, I am happy with them.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
The LDS Articles of Faith from a Female Perspective
This comes from a feminist friend (who shall remain anonymous). It was too good not to post, and she had no objection to my publishing it here. It is sacrilegious, of course, but it is also funny (and even embarrassingly true):
(1) We believe that the divinity of God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost gives them power and authority, and that the sacredness of Heavenly Mother makes her effete and silenced.
(2) We covenant that all women must be punished for Eve's transgression.
(3) We believe that through the atonement of Christ, all temple-recommend holding, sealed, heterosexual couples (or triples...) can be saved through obedience to the laws and ordinances of LDS doctrine.
(4) We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the gospel are, first, faith in the current prophet; second, obedience; third, possession of a temple recommend; fourth, correlated study of correlated scripture.
(5) We believe that women are called of God to bear and raise children through eternity, but only at home under the presiding direction of their husbands.
(6) We believe in the same organization that existed in the primitive church, namely: men are in charge. [Actually, some early Christians gave women some kind of authority in the movement: see Romans 16:1. This does not undermine the historical truth that men have been largely responsible for running the Christian movement.]
(7) We believe in the gift of balls, testosterone, hairy chests, five-o'clock shadows, and so forth.
(8) We believe the King James Version of the Bible to be the word of God, as long as it is correlated correctly. We also believe the opinion of the bishop to be the word of God.
(9) We believe versions of what Joseph Smith revealed, some of what Brigham Young revealed, and we believe correlation has now established all important things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
(10) We believe in the Republican (Grand Old Party) version of the Constitution, and in restoring the Founding Fathers' true intent; that Zion, the New Jerusalem, has been built in Salt Lake City, Utah; that fifteen old, white men reign personally upon the earth; and that they rightly influence members' votes to raise the Constitution to its paradisaical glory.
(11) We claim the privilege of sending missionaries throughout the world to teach all men how, where, and what to worship.
(12) We believe in being subject to prophets, seventies, stake presidents, bishops, husbands, or even twelve-year-old boys, rather than obeying, honoring, or allowing any woman to preside in her own home.
(13) We believe temple-recommend holders to be honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and that temple recommends are good for all men; and so, we may say, temple-recommend interviewers may ask and admonish as they will: they may ask all things, they may pry into all things, they may demand any things in hopes to be able to control all things. If there is anything uncorrelated, unorthodox, or sexy, they seek after these things.
(1) We believe that the divinity of God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost gives them power and authority, and that the sacredness of Heavenly Mother makes her effete and silenced.
(2) We covenant that all women must be punished for Eve's transgression.
(3) We believe that through the atonement of Christ, all temple-recommend holding, sealed, heterosexual couples (or triples...) can be saved through obedience to the laws and ordinances of LDS doctrine.
(4) We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the gospel are, first, faith in the current prophet; second, obedience; third, possession of a temple recommend; fourth, correlated study of correlated scripture.
(5) We believe that women are called of God to bear and raise children through eternity, but only at home under the presiding direction of their husbands.
(6) We believe in the same organization that existed in the primitive church, namely: men are in charge. [Actually, some early Christians gave women some kind of authority in the movement: see Romans 16:1. This does not undermine the historical truth that men have been largely responsible for running the Christian movement.]
(7) We believe in the gift of balls, testosterone, hairy chests, five-o'clock shadows, and so forth.
(8) We believe the King James Version of the Bible to be the word of God, as long as it is correlated correctly. We also believe the opinion of the bishop to be the word of God.
(9) We believe versions of what Joseph Smith revealed, some of what Brigham Young revealed, and we believe correlation has now established all important things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
(10) We believe in the Republican (Grand Old Party) version of the Constitution, and in restoring the Founding Fathers' true intent; that Zion, the New Jerusalem, has been built in Salt Lake City, Utah; that fifteen old, white men reign personally upon the earth; and that they rightly influence members' votes to raise the Constitution to its paradisaical glory.
(11) We claim the privilege of sending missionaries throughout the world to teach all men how, where, and what to worship.
(12) We believe in being subject to prophets, seventies, stake presidents, bishops, husbands, or even twelve-year-old boys, rather than obeying, honoring, or allowing any woman to preside in her own home.
(13) We believe temple-recommend holders to be honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and that temple recommends are good for all men; and so, we may say, temple-recommend interviewers may ask and admonish as they will: they may ask all things, they may pry into all things, they may demand any things in hopes to be able to control all things. If there is anything uncorrelated, unorthodox, or sexy, they seek after these things.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Reclaiming Eternity
Shunryu Suzuki. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Boston: Weatherhill, 1970. ISBN: 0834800799.
One of the hardest things about falling out of my original Mormon faith was losing what Latter-day Saints like to refer to as "the eternal perspective." As a Saint, I knew who, where, and what I would be forever, pending my performance on the test that is this mortal life. I dealt with pain in the present by imagining a glorious future where it would not matter (or might even provide the same kind of pleasure that veterans get from showing their scars and reminiscing). Part of what destroyed this perspective for me was seeing how bad some suffering is for people, and how callously some LDS (and Christians in general) can be toward that suffering as a result of their conviction that isn't real (like heaven) or doesn't matter (the way heaven does). I realized that focusing on the future at all costs not only alleviates pain in the present (for some people); it also causes (or amplifies) it (at least in certain circumstances). It was hurting me, since in the present I could never convince myself that I was living up to the standard that would guarantee my eternal future (or receiving the grace that would secure that future in spite of anything that might happen: either I wasn't good enough, or Jesus wasn't there for me; either way, the result was the same: I was continually anxious about my eternal salvation). Still, I clung to that (imaginary) future as my one hope, my solid anchor in a world always changing and often unfriendly. When exploring my own psyche and Christian history (in which I include the history of the LDS) completely severed this anchor, I was pretty devastated.
Suzuki was one of many people who threw me a lifeline at this point. If I could summarize what he taught me in Zen Mind, it would look something like this: past and future are illusions; the only real thing is the eternal now. Eternal relationships are vital now, at this very moment. They do not depend on yesterday, or tomorrow, or anything outside of the breath that comes in and goes out right now. You cannot be good in the past or the future, but you can be good now. You cannot be married in the past or the future, but you can be married now. You cannot repent of the past or the future, but you can repent now. Birth, death, and the whole cycle of life in between is at once real and unreal: things do change, but they also stay the same. I enjoy waking up in the morning, seeing the sky, smelling the flowers, listening to the birds, and being alive in the moment. If for some reason I cannot see, or smell, or hear, or otherwise perceive external phenomena, I still enjoy thinking. I also enjoy sleep, a different kind of thought, and when it becomes the sleep from which none wake (as far as we know), who is to say that I will not enjoy that just as much? Death is just another alteration in consciousness, unreal until we meet it in the eternal now. As there is no use being scared of birth, so there is no use being scared of death. Meaning outside of the present is dangerous, because it leads us to ignore the one thing we have, which is this very moment. Carpe diem!
One of the hardest things about falling out of my original Mormon faith was losing what Latter-day Saints like to refer to as "the eternal perspective." As a Saint, I knew who, where, and what I would be forever, pending my performance on the test that is this mortal life. I dealt with pain in the present by imagining a glorious future where it would not matter (or might even provide the same kind of pleasure that veterans get from showing their scars and reminiscing). Part of what destroyed this perspective for me was seeing how bad some suffering is for people, and how callously some LDS (and Christians in general) can be toward that suffering as a result of their conviction that isn't real (like heaven) or doesn't matter (the way heaven does). I realized that focusing on the future at all costs not only alleviates pain in the present (for some people); it also causes (or amplifies) it (at least in certain circumstances). It was hurting me, since in the present I could never convince myself that I was living up to the standard that would guarantee my eternal future (or receiving the grace that would secure that future in spite of anything that might happen: either I wasn't good enough, or Jesus wasn't there for me; either way, the result was the same: I was continually anxious about my eternal salvation). Still, I clung to that (imaginary) future as my one hope, my solid anchor in a world always changing and often unfriendly. When exploring my own psyche and Christian history (in which I include the history of the LDS) completely severed this anchor, I was pretty devastated.
Suzuki was one of many people who threw me a lifeline at this point. If I could summarize what he taught me in Zen Mind, it would look something like this: past and future are illusions; the only real thing is the eternal now. Eternal relationships are vital now, at this very moment. They do not depend on yesterday, or tomorrow, or anything outside of the breath that comes in and goes out right now. You cannot be good in the past or the future, but you can be good now. You cannot be married in the past or the future, but you can be married now. You cannot repent of the past or the future, but you can repent now. Birth, death, and the whole cycle of life in between is at once real and unreal: things do change, but they also stay the same. I enjoy waking up in the morning, seeing the sky, smelling the flowers, listening to the birds, and being alive in the moment. If for some reason I cannot see, or smell, or hear, or otherwise perceive external phenomena, I still enjoy thinking. I also enjoy sleep, a different kind of thought, and when it becomes the sleep from which none wake (as far as we know), who is to say that I will not enjoy that just as much? Death is just another alteration in consciousness, unreal until we meet it in the eternal now. As there is no use being scared of birth, so there is no use being scared of death. Meaning outside of the present is dangerous, because it leads us to ignore the one thing we have, which is this very moment. Carpe diem!
Friday, April 22, 2011
Not with a Bang, but a Whimper
The following is my commentary on someone's idea that religions create problems and then offer solutions. Someone else responded to this idea by suggesting that the artificial problem-solution dynamic occurs outside of religion proper. I pick up where this comment left off.
I agree with the comment that points to this dilemma (a more or less fake problem with a more or less fake solution) outside of religion: it is endemic in politics (which subsists on chronic fear and incompetence), education (which subsists on chronic ignorance and incompetence), the health-care industry (which subsists on chronic illness), and the stock market (which subsists on chronic ignorance, fear, and incompetence).
To be brief, almost all of the people who minister to our human needs in any capacity these days instinctively do so in such a way as to make us parasitically dependent on them. They want to keep us as a regular customer (or voter), and to that end they buy us off with promises to save us from otherwise irredeemable deficiencies in our individual and corporate selves. If we were to wake up tomorrow healthy, intelligent, self-reliant, and fearless, they would suddenly have nothing to do (and would have to confront a drastic alteration in their own way of being, which depends on our chronic dependence). The real problem with modern civilized life, as I see it, is that we have lost sight of health, goodness, wholeness, and integrity as objects to be pursued for their own sake. Instead of going for complete human development (as many people as possible relying as little as possible on outside input to survive), we go for minimal human development (as many people as possible as reliant on others as possible without pushing the others beyond what they can bear). All of our institutions are becoming the kind of dead-end trap that the LDS church currently is. "Check your brain at the door, take a number, and do whatever the nice man in the suit says: everything will be fine."
This is my real problem with life at the moment. My faith crisis is not confined to one particular institution or mode of being: I am suddenly looking at the whole ruddy mess of human society and seeing the same stupid cancer of nonsense eating everything. How can I speak out against this while feeding my family? Where can I work without feeling that my integrity is being sold to dupe people out of their human dignity? How can I achieve the level of moral independence necessary to come clean to my supervisors about how I really feel when they talk to me in serious tones about "the demands of the profession" (which I increasingly see as code for "we must protect the status quo, no matter what")? These are the tough questions that keep me up at night. These are the issues I would like to hear a prophet (or anyone) address openly.
I agree with the comment that points to this dilemma (a more or less fake problem with a more or less fake solution) outside of religion: it is endemic in politics (which subsists on chronic fear and incompetence), education (which subsists on chronic ignorance and incompetence), the health-care industry (which subsists on chronic illness), and the stock market (which subsists on chronic ignorance, fear, and incompetence).
To be brief, almost all of the people who minister to our human needs in any capacity these days instinctively do so in such a way as to make us parasitically dependent on them. They want to keep us as a regular customer (or voter), and to that end they buy us off with promises to save us from otherwise irredeemable deficiencies in our individual and corporate selves. If we were to wake up tomorrow healthy, intelligent, self-reliant, and fearless, they would suddenly have nothing to do (and would have to confront a drastic alteration in their own way of being, which depends on our chronic dependence). The real problem with modern civilized life, as I see it, is that we have lost sight of health, goodness, wholeness, and integrity as objects to be pursued for their own sake. Instead of going for complete human development (as many people as possible relying as little as possible on outside input to survive), we go for minimal human development (as many people as possible as reliant on others as possible without pushing the others beyond what they can bear). All of our institutions are becoming the kind of dead-end trap that the LDS church currently is. "Check your brain at the door, take a number, and do whatever the nice man in the suit says: everything will be fine."
This is my real problem with life at the moment. My faith crisis is not confined to one particular institution or mode of being: I am suddenly looking at the whole ruddy mess of human society and seeing the same stupid cancer of nonsense eating everything. How can I speak out against this while feeding my family? Where can I work without feeling that my integrity is being sold to dupe people out of their human dignity? How can I achieve the level of moral independence necessary to come clean to my supervisors about how I really feel when they talk to me in serious tones about "the demands of the profession" (which I increasingly see as code for "we must protect the status quo, no matter what")? These are the tough questions that keep me up at night. These are the issues I would like to hear a prophet (or anyone) address openly.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Theory without Practice: Faith without Works?
The following is a thought I have been mulling over for some time. I expressed it as follows on a message board for unorthodox Mormons.
I think modern LDS Mormonism has an unhealthy obsession with theoretical abstractions. We are so caught up with (static) images and words that we have no time for (dynamic, evolving) reality. We approach other human beings as simple stereotypes--interchangeable, cookie-cutter widgets with slots and tabs for assembling endless iterations of the one true family (which is presided over by a man, fed and served hand and foot by a woman, and burdened with as many submissive kids as possible). When we meet someone without a slot (or with two tabs), we deny their reality: "You aren't really homosexual; you're just a sinner who won't get on board with the one true family. Pin on a fake smile and join us for another Family Home Evening on the evil of straying outside rigid stereotypes! It'll cure your gayness (eww!)." Because we tend to see people as abstractions (collections of slots and tabs), it is really no wonder that we have problems with things like honesty, integrity, and even (gasp!) pornography.
What do Mitt Romney and a hopeless porn addict have in common? They both are obsessed with heavily stereotyped images, images empty of unique personal content. Mitt tells the voters want they want to hear, keeping his own counsel about what he really believes. I have no idea what he really thinks about anything (and I admit I have not tried really hard to break the shells of conservative and Mormon armor that he wears). The porn addict relates to images rather than to people: he wants sex devoid of content. Morality without quirky personal content! That is what we are selling in LDS Mormonism (and much of the religious right in the USA). This is why our spokesmen come off as duplicitous, boring, and (ultimately) destructive. They are working to maintain a vision of humanity that is too simple to contain (let alone control) complex reality. They hate pornography because it provides a visceral, graphic indication of what is wrong with their approach to reality: some of their most faithful followers take their abstract approach to human relationships into the bedroom, with predictably awful results. (People get offended when you treat them like objects. Not just in bed. This isn't really rocket science, folks.)
The more we focus on theoretical abstractions to the exclusion of reality, the less thoughtful and introspective our religion becomes. Instead of examining our morality, criticizing it, improving it, tinkering with it, we do whatever we happen to do and then justify it with the right word. The word is more important to us than the reality. Witness our eagerness to defend "marriage," as though there were something monolithic out there going under that name. What do we mean when we say "marriage"? I think many LDS have this idea that most folks (at least most "good" folks, most "Christian" folks) have virtually identical relationships coming under this moniker: one man, one woman, several kids; no mistresses, no affairs, no fighting, no spousal abuse, no sibling rivalry, no inherent evil. (Is anyone pushing for a defense from marriage? Some people have good reason to get on that bandwagon.) Reality is messy: the word "marriage" covers a wide range of relationships between very different people. Some marriages are (always) going to be great, and some are (always) going to be terrible. I love my wife and make an effort to respect her and treat her as an equal. My neighbor is an angry drunk who beats his wife and treats her like a doormat. My other neighbor is happily married to someone of the same sex. How does breaking up the homosexual couple do anything at all to the other two? How does opposing no-fault divorce improve anything for the heterosexual couples? (The battered spouse does not always want to make a charge stick, for reasons that are obvious to anyone who has ever been battered or disappointed in love.) Defending "marriage" in the conservative vein is essentially opposing any measure that would upset the illusions (1) that every problem will be OK if we just ignore it long enough and (2) that all people are the same (in ethical terms). This is ridiculous. Ignoring problems does not make them go away, and my marriage is in no way, shape, or form any kind of absolute blueprint for yours: you have to make your own bed, live your own life, be your own person. I can't tell you how to be; all I can do is offer my own experience as something for you to consider, on your own terms, as you find it relevant.
In the church, we obsess so much over doing something wrong. And we go and do things wrong anyway! We get married too soon, have sex too early in a relationship, get caught pretending to be someone or something we're not. A good religion would help us figure out how these mistakes actually happen. It would point us to resources that helped us actually change our behavior, rather than pressuring us to cover our guilty asses with pious psychobabble after the fact and then browbeating the few who are caught red-handed or are too honest with themselves and others to "play the game." To do the LDS General Authorities justice, I think they sincerely believe in the power of their words: they think that the Family Proclamation is really defending families (instead of tearing them to shreds to save a lifeless, oversimplified definition). Packer means it when he says that (and I paraphrase), "a study of doctrine will do more to improve behavior than a study of behavior will do." His sincerity is irrelevant to the fact that he happens to be dead wrong. We need theory, of course. We need rules. But if theory is going to useful, it has to be responsible for the results it helps to generate. It has to be grounded in some kind of reality. As a people, we LDS have spent a good part of our history (particularly our recent, post-correlation history) drifting away from reality, turning the gospel into an empty shell of an ethic whose real-world applicability is nowhere near as good as most of us suppose. (I understand the Book of Mormon musical points this out with humor.) If we are going to offer a real city on the hill, a lighthouse that points people toward real improvement in their lives (as opposed to our vocabularies), then we have to snap out of this blue funk and call a spade a spade, even if it hurts our rapport with members short-term. At the end of the day, there is no viable corporate substitute for individual integrity. There is nothing faith-promoting about wrecking people's lives to save a bad definition, an ungrounded abstraction.
I think modern LDS Mormonism has an unhealthy obsession with theoretical abstractions. We are so caught up with (static) images and words that we have no time for (dynamic, evolving) reality. We approach other human beings as simple stereotypes--interchangeable, cookie-cutter widgets with slots and tabs for assembling endless iterations of the one true family (which is presided over by a man, fed and served hand and foot by a woman, and burdened with as many submissive kids as possible). When we meet someone without a slot (or with two tabs), we deny their reality: "You aren't really homosexual; you're just a sinner who won't get on board with the one true family. Pin on a fake smile and join us for another Family Home Evening on the evil of straying outside rigid stereotypes! It'll cure your gayness (eww!)." Because we tend to see people as abstractions (collections of slots and tabs), it is really no wonder that we have problems with things like honesty, integrity, and even (gasp!) pornography.
What do Mitt Romney and a hopeless porn addict have in common? They both are obsessed with heavily stereotyped images, images empty of unique personal content. Mitt tells the voters want they want to hear, keeping his own counsel about what he really believes. I have no idea what he really thinks about anything (and I admit I have not tried really hard to break the shells of conservative and Mormon armor that he wears). The porn addict relates to images rather than to people: he wants sex devoid of content. Morality without quirky personal content! That is what we are selling in LDS Mormonism (and much of the religious right in the USA). This is why our spokesmen come off as duplicitous, boring, and (ultimately) destructive. They are working to maintain a vision of humanity that is too simple to contain (let alone control) complex reality. They hate pornography because it provides a visceral, graphic indication of what is wrong with their approach to reality: some of their most faithful followers take their abstract approach to human relationships into the bedroom, with predictably awful results. (People get offended when you treat them like objects. Not just in bed. This isn't really rocket science, folks.)
The more we focus on theoretical abstractions to the exclusion of reality, the less thoughtful and introspective our religion becomes. Instead of examining our morality, criticizing it, improving it, tinkering with it, we do whatever we happen to do and then justify it with the right word. The word is more important to us than the reality. Witness our eagerness to defend "marriage," as though there were something monolithic out there going under that name. What do we mean when we say "marriage"? I think many LDS have this idea that most folks (at least most "good" folks, most "Christian" folks) have virtually identical relationships coming under this moniker: one man, one woman, several kids; no mistresses, no affairs, no fighting, no spousal abuse, no sibling rivalry, no inherent evil. (Is anyone pushing for a defense from marriage? Some people have good reason to get on that bandwagon.) Reality is messy: the word "marriage" covers a wide range of relationships between very different people. Some marriages are (always) going to be great, and some are (always) going to be terrible. I love my wife and make an effort to respect her and treat her as an equal. My neighbor is an angry drunk who beats his wife and treats her like a doormat. My other neighbor is happily married to someone of the same sex. How does breaking up the homosexual couple do anything at all to the other two? How does opposing no-fault divorce improve anything for the heterosexual couples? (The battered spouse does not always want to make a charge stick, for reasons that are obvious to anyone who has ever been battered or disappointed in love.) Defending "marriage" in the conservative vein is essentially opposing any measure that would upset the illusions (1) that every problem will be OK if we just ignore it long enough and (2) that all people are the same (in ethical terms). This is ridiculous. Ignoring problems does not make them go away, and my marriage is in no way, shape, or form any kind of absolute blueprint for yours: you have to make your own bed, live your own life, be your own person. I can't tell you how to be; all I can do is offer my own experience as something for you to consider, on your own terms, as you find it relevant.
In the church, we obsess so much over doing something wrong. And we go and do things wrong anyway! We get married too soon, have sex too early in a relationship, get caught pretending to be someone or something we're not. A good religion would help us figure out how these mistakes actually happen. It would point us to resources that helped us actually change our behavior, rather than pressuring us to cover our guilty asses with pious psychobabble after the fact and then browbeating the few who are caught red-handed or are too honest with themselves and others to "play the game." To do the LDS General Authorities justice, I think they sincerely believe in the power of their words: they think that the Family Proclamation is really defending families (instead of tearing them to shreds to save a lifeless, oversimplified definition). Packer means it when he says that (and I paraphrase), "a study of doctrine will do more to improve behavior than a study of behavior will do." His sincerity is irrelevant to the fact that he happens to be dead wrong. We need theory, of course. We need rules. But if theory is going to useful, it has to be responsible for the results it helps to generate. It has to be grounded in some kind of reality. As a people, we LDS have spent a good part of our history (particularly our recent, post-correlation history) drifting away from reality, turning the gospel into an empty shell of an ethic whose real-world applicability is nowhere near as good as most of us suppose. (I understand the Book of Mormon musical points this out with humor.) If we are going to offer a real city on the hill, a lighthouse that points people toward real improvement in their lives (as opposed to our vocabularies), then we have to snap out of this blue funk and call a spade a spade, even if it hurts our rapport with members short-term. At the end of the day, there is no viable corporate substitute for individual integrity. There is nothing faith-promoting about wrecking people's lives to save a bad definition, an ungrounded abstraction.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Follow the Profit
James Adams. Waffle Street: The Confession and Rehabilitation of a Financier. San Clemente: Sourced Media, 2010. ISBN: 9780984106851.
F. A. Hayek. The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. Edited by W. W. Bartley III. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. ISBN: 0226320669.
James Buchan. Frozen Desire: The Meaning of Money. New York: Welcome Rain, 2001. ISBN: 1566491800.
Here are three books that have contributed a great deal to my small understanding of the complex system of trade that delivers food to my table. While I hope to say more about each individually in the coming weeks (as I have time), here is what I took from each one in brief.
Waffle Street. As Jean-Baptiste Say recognized many years ago, production drives consumption. If you make nothing, you sell nothing, or whatever it is that you are selling is in fact nothing (and all attempts to found financial stability upon it are delusional, no matter how many PhDs may tell you otherwise). Unfortunately, people have a strong tendency to try and make something out of nothing: if we exercise enough faith in our fearless leaders (especially the late not-so-great John Maynard Keynes), we can enjoy brief moments of euphoric "prosperity" during which we treat ourselves to massive shopping binges financed by debt that we (or our shareholders, taxpayers, children) promise to pay it back later, someday, with something (in the vain hope that it is actually consumption that drives production: "if enough people cry loudly for this cool toy, surely someone will give it to them in exchange for pretty green paper").
The Fatal Conceit. You cannot have a stable human society that does not respect individual integrity (the individual's responsibility to answer for him or herself and his or her moral choices). Yes, people are idiots (and want to buy the world on credit sometimes), but all attempts to corral them into obedience to one true standard of non-stupid behavior end up failing miserably when the "smart" people in charge are (inevitably) revealed as fools. As Juvenal has it (Satire 6.347-348), Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? ("Who will regulate the regulators?"). The answer to moral problems in human life (including problems with what we call "the economy" these days) is not more external regulation: individual people need to realize that they are the only people responsible for their decisions, which they had better take seriously. All regulatory solutions are just stop-gaps for idiots: good in the short term (insofar as they prevent us all starving in the streets right away), and bad in the long term (as they accustom us to passing our moral agency on to government stooges who are no smarter or morally conscious than we are). The fatal conceit is thinking that we can prosper without individual integrity, that our regulation is better, that our leaders are smarter, that our collective ventures are somehow qualitatively different from all the others that have crashed and burned before us doing the same stupid things we are doing (making regulators responsible for our individual moral choices).
Frozen Desire. The essential message of this book is that money is intrinsically worthless. It is just a symbol, a pretty bit of paper or metal with a logo on it that people in a very narrow time-frame use to attribute value to other things. When it cannot be traded for real things (food, clothing, shelter), it is revealed to be nothing (nothing but desire, the longing for things that one does not have). Buchan would agree with Adams (and Say) that the secret to success in life is producing real things rather than cultivating insatiable desire. But he goes farther than either of them in radically devaluing the concrete form of desire that is the lifeblood of our current economy. I confess that I am very sympathetic to him. (I like to think of the present world economy as someone with a very bad case of diabetes: the Keynesian approach to the disease keeps pumping the patient full of insulin to stave off increasing and increasingly severe bouts of glycemic shock; a more responsible approach is to radically cut the sugar supply, causing an immediate crash that hurts like hell but ultimately puts the patient on a much firmer footing, presuming he survives. I am not a doctor and have not made this metaphor perfect. Patience!) I look forward to the day (which I am still naive enough to envision as a reality) when money is just a toy for me, an idle curiosity that I play with, instead of the only thing standing between my family and starvation. Meanwhile, I think it is best used very sparingly, preferably no more than absolutely necessary (kind of like sugar!).
F. A. Hayek. The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. Edited by W. W. Bartley III. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. ISBN: 0226320669.
James Buchan. Frozen Desire: The Meaning of Money. New York: Welcome Rain, 2001. ISBN: 1566491800.
Here are three books that have contributed a great deal to my small understanding of the complex system of trade that delivers food to my table. While I hope to say more about each individually in the coming weeks (as I have time), here is what I took from each one in brief.
Waffle Street. As Jean-Baptiste Say recognized many years ago, production drives consumption. If you make nothing, you sell nothing, or whatever it is that you are selling is in fact nothing (and all attempts to found financial stability upon it are delusional, no matter how many PhDs may tell you otherwise). Unfortunately, people have a strong tendency to try and make something out of nothing: if we exercise enough faith in our fearless leaders (especially the late not-so-great John Maynard Keynes), we can enjoy brief moments of euphoric "prosperity" during which we treat ourselves to massive shopping binges financed by debt that we (or our shareholders, taxpayers, children) promise to pay it back later, someday, with something (in the vain hope that it is actually consumption that drives production: "if enough people cry loudly for this cool toy, surely someone will give it to them in exchange for pretty green paper").
The Fatal Conceit. You cannot have a stable human society that does not respect individual integrity (the individual's responsibility to answer for him or herself and his or her moral choices). Yes, people are idiots (and want to buy the world on credit sometimes), but all attempts to corral them into obedience to one true standard of non-stupid behavior end up failing miserably when the "smart" people in charge are (inevitably) revealed as fools. As Juvenal has it (Satire 6.347-348), Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? ("Who will regulate the regulators?"). The answer to moral problems in human life (including problems with what we call "the economy" these days) is not more external regulation: individual people need to realize that they are the only people responsible for their decisions, which they had better take seriously. All regulatory solutions are just stop-gaps for idiots: good in the short term (insofar as they prevent us all starving in the streets right away), and bad in the long term (as they accustom us to passing our moral agency on to government stooges who are no smarter or morally conscious than we are). The fatal conceit is thinking that we can prosper without individual integrity, that our regulation is better, that our leaders are smarter, that our collective ventures are somehow qualitatively different from all the others that have crashed and burned before us doing the same stupid things we are doing (making regulators responsible for our individual moral choices).
Frozen Desire. The essential message of this book is that money is intrinsically worthless. It is just a symbol, a pretty bit of paper or metal with a logo on it that people in a very narrow time-frame use to attribute value to other things. When it cannot be traded for real things (food, clothing, shelter), it is revealed to be nothing (nothing but desire, the longing for things that one does not have). Buchan would agree with Adams (and Say) that the secret to success in life is producing real things rather than cultivating insatiable desire. But he goes farther than either of them in radically devaluing the concrete form of desire that is the lifeblood of our current economy. I confess that I am very sympathetic to him. (I like to think of the present world economy as someone with a very bad case of diabetes: the Keynesian approach to the disease keeps pumping the patient full of insulin to stave off increasing and increasingly severe bouts of glycemic shock; a more responsible approach is to radically cut the sugar supply, causing an immediate crash that hurts like hell but ultimately puts the patient on a much firmer footing, presuming he survives. I am not a doctor and have not made this metaphor perfect. Patience!) I look forward to the day (which I am still naive enough to envision as a reality) when money is just a toy for me, an idle curiosity that I play with, instead of the only thing standing between my family and starvation. Meanwhile, I think it is best used very sparingly, preferably no more than absolutely necessary (kind of like sugar!).
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