Don’t worry, America, about Mormonism. There’s really no cause whatsoever to feel threatened by this culture. Rest assured that, just as is the case everywhere in America and, increasingly, the world, cultural differences are being absorbed, digested, and paved under asphalt and concrete and glass and neon colored kitch and rendered into a generically uniformly bland dead consumerist wasteland. Go ahead. Try and tell the difference between your town and mine. Go ahead. See? We’re not so very different after all, are we, you and I? Why, just like you, we too are numbing out and losing ourselves into a blissful forgetfulness that there ever was anything before the liquidation sale. The fix is in here too. Those nice folks doing the liquidation sale, aren’t they nice? They just keep getting better and better at it. Why, I laugh when I think I ever even considered saying no to them.
He said with bitter sarcasm.
I never thought I’d find myself becoming nostalgic for the racist, sexist, superstition ridden but sort of agrarian wholesomeness of Mormonism of my youth. At least it had a bit of albeit flawed character, an albeit often malevolent personality, and some sort of albeit rooted in the Dark Ages cultural identity. Hey. We had our share of flaws, but I tell you this. We weren’t bland. We weren’t all wandering around like a bunch of danged zoned out zombies. No wonder our mass culture is obsessed with zombies these days. To quote Mad Magazine of sometime in the 1960s, words to the effect, "Horror movies reflect the emotional climate of their times."
I do miss the sweetness of the earth there was back before the fix was entirely in. I miss the view of the infinite we had at night back when the Milky Way was still visible. That view of the infinite, of course, had no practical value and we were lucky to have gotten as good a price as we did for it.
Then again, what does it do to a culture that liquidates its view of the infinite?
Do you suppose we could have gotten a better price for that worthless bit of view of the infinite? Dang.
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Comments: 51
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But when?
perhaps a JOKE might help
the PONTIFF's Secretary rushes into his presence, without announcing himself; obviously excited about something...
it seems there is GOOD news, & BAD; the Pontiff asked for the GOOD stuff first
"Jesus is on the phone for you..."
confused about what could possibly be BAD on such a day, the Pontiff asked...
"Your Eminence, ...HE's calling from Salt Lake City!"
Nicely done, Charles.
I don't understand why this should be. Here is a culture that cherishes clean living, self-sufficiency, minimal depedency on the wicked world outside. Here are people who still plant gardens and orchards. Here are people make a lot of their own clothing.
You'd think the most natural extension of this in the world would be to put up some solar panels. To develop a code of conduct that fosters reverence for the temple on which we live.
But no. There's maybe a spark here and there of that but by and large all that seems to matter here is what seems to matter anywhere. A nice set of wheels. Trendy clothes. Cheap gas. Oh, above all, cheap goes. The price of gas goes up and that most certainly does get peoples' attention here. Cheap gas is a Constitutionally guranteed right.
What about the grandkids? Don't grandkids matter?
Maybe I'm just at that age when the world no longer makes sense to me anymore.
Our world is being liquidated before our eyes. And for what? A nice set of wheels. Some trendy clothes. Cheap gas.
As to you post title, it doesn't worry me at all, ha!
Here is this one of a kind world of ours turning to shit before our eyes.
There's a world of improvement that could and should have gone into a simplistic thought such as that. Believe you me, I shall work on that.
In the meantime, however, there's our one of a kind world turning to shit before our eyes.
Maybe I'm crazy but then again, I live within a society that watches and could care less about it as this one of a kind world turns to shit before our eyes. How sane is that?
A risk management problem. Now there's a thing that could be right up the alley of - please excuse the stereotype - Republicans and a whole lot more consistent with conservative philosophy than playing ostrich.
Since when did playing ostrich become an element of conservative thinking?
If our toilets were as filthy as Cache Valley air is at the moment, we'd be ashamed of ourselves.
You said
I don't understand why this should be. Here is a culture that cherishes clean living, self-sufficiency, minimal depedency on the wicked world outside. Here are people who still plant gardens and orchards. Here are people make a lot of their own clothing.
I can't claim to know enough about Mormons to find them good or bad, I admire their self sufficiency and find it strange that they'd allow more then one wife, but as far as Mitt Romney goes I don't consider him president material whatever his faith.
I think the upcoming movie "Branded" will be an interesting take on what is happening around the world. Selling our soul and our planet for money to buy schtuff and a new, unhealthy way of living can't be the answer.
It's sad, it's hard to be proud of our generation it seems we have done nothing but screw up and crowned the corporations as the new gods. At least it appears that way sometimes, but there are people and even corporations that run counter to the current wave of greed and gluttony.
That old commercial it's not nice to mess with Mother Nature may come to haunt us when we fight for water rights.
But yeah. Romney seems to be politically tone deaf. He's good CEO material but maybe not so well suited to the presidency.
As someone who doesn't feel entitled to anything and I sure as heck don't intend to be a victim to some shysters out to liquidate the livability of the one and only home God is ever going to hand us and I most certainly have paid federal income taxes, I was a bit disappointed not to be included in Romney's list of Obama supporters to write off. What about us environmentalists? Don't we even rate highly enough to be included on the list of people to write off?
Story of my life. I missed out on being on Nixon's enemy list and now I've been dissed on Romney list of persona non-gratas.
How do people who start out with conservative philosophy end up behaving exactly like drug addicts?
How do religious people for whom their kids and grandkids mean just the world to them wind up pitching in and lending a helping hand to the shysters who'd liquidate their world?
How do these things happen?
I vanguard pro-abortion - a category so small it doesn't even poll.
Mormonism isn't so much about God as a sanctimonious facade for a biological strategy.
Broadly speaking, a couple of biological strategies: weedy and sparse.
For a weedy species, it's all about quantity. Basically, you overwhelm the odds against survival of your offspring with sheer numbers. Your environment going to heck? No problemo. It's not likely all your offspring will make it, but then again, it's also not likely that there won't be at least an individual here and there who will survive just about any calamity.
For a sparse species, it's all about fit offspring. At the price of concentrating more resources into fewer offspring, the offspring are individually more likely to survive.
Perhaps some of the cultural tension within America today can be explained in terms of tension between these two biological strategies.
This is way over-simplistic but may have a grain of truth to it: Basically, our fundamentalist religions favor a weedy species strategy. Our secular humanists favor a sparse species strategy.
I tend to think that social evolution has been steadily trending in favor of us secular humanists, but our Christian fundamentalists aren't taking it lieing down one little bit. They're pushing back and they're pushing back hard, with attacks on Planned Parenthood, abortion, and even basic contraception.
The hard wiring of our instincts, however, tends to favor some aspects the weedy species approach. We still retain extremely powerful instincts that urge us toward maximal reproduction and polygammy.
Having grown up within Mormon culture, I have observed some things about it that seem to me consistent with this theory that it's more about biology than God:
It would explain why polygamy often is a part of fundamentalist religions. Polygammy is consistent with a weedy species biological strategy. It's a male winner-take-all stategy. Males compete for harems, a few fit males win, and then they get to breed with as many females as they can. It makes a certain amount of biological sense. The downside of this, of course, in terms of human society is it works against males cooperating. The more energy males put into sexual competition, the less they have for cooperating for such things as building a civilization.
It would explain why fundamentalist religions tend to be patriarchal. It's a male winner-take-all stategy. We can't have females not going along with God's plan by which a few male winners take all.
It would explain why God wants us to have large families. It's not so much God telling us this as our own instincts dressed up in a God costume.
It would explain why you can't seem to get any traction with Mormons on matters environment. Mormon culture isn't concerned with preventing environmental collapse. Mormon culture positively prophecies it. What good Latter Day Saint would work toward preventing the latter days from being the latter days? That wouldn't make any sense.
It would explain the hositility to Darwin's theory of evolution. An understanding of our own biological heritage rather blows the effect of the God costume and reveals what is behind the God costume, biology driven instincts.
It would explain Mormon homo-phobia. We can't tolerate the possibility that biology isn't the pure God that we have dressed it up to be. Any aspect of biology that isn't consistent with our God costume of it must be suppressed.
Ok, so this is all just my own musing and I don't have what you could call hard evidence to support any of it. Still, there might be a tad of validity to some of it.
If not available - the sexual hummers, please.
But I'm not entirely lost. I still have faith. My article of faith: life is good.
Is that what you call the sinewy roughage in unstrained hummus?
To which I reply, I tend to think there was a good reason you provided me with my education and the freedom to use it.
Here we have this precious freedom that was hard won; now use it, I say. Use it or lose it.
That was one good aspect of my upbringing within mainstream Mormonism. There was a strong emphasis on education. And that's not the case by any means within all of fundamentalist cultures. I watched a documentary on an Amish community awhile back in which education ends at the 9th grade, which is considered adequate for running a farm.
Within even the rural Mormon community in which I grew up, there was a strong emphasis on education and without filtration. In those days, Mormonism was willing to risk it. And, in many cases, included my own, there was a short term downside in terms of sticking with the teachings. In the long term, I think, it will pay off handsomely in terms of the survival of this culture.
Within the last few decades, however, within Mormonism in my view there've been some troubling indications of a fundamentalist backlash to education and the freedom to use it. We're seeing attacks on evolution being taught in schools from our state legislature, for example. There've even been some attempts by our legislature to "provide balance" to instruction concerning the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions.
That to my mind is the dark side of fundamentalist cultures in general, a tendency to foster ignorance within a delusional fantasy that it's safer that way.
than me.
So enamoured by one of your quotes, that I currently feature it on my profile page.
I trade out two small sections there late each day, or early the next.
For I have made up my mind and counted to three, not one single danged more decade is going to slip by without a whole lot of fuss being made over greenhouse gases.
Seems to me a big obstacle at the moment to those of us who feel that way, we tend not to be joiners much. Speaking for myself, anyway, organizational skill isn't my strong point.
I will say this for Mormons. Mormons know how to get organized. Their short second coming seems to be in identifying anything worthwhile to get organized about. They will get orgainzed like anybody's business but for what? Helping the cause of causing some disenfranchised misuderstood people to be even more disenfranchised and misuderstood. Thanks a bunch, Mormons, but could you like even notice just a little bit that the livability of your planet is well within the midst of one humongous going out of business liquidation sale?
Wouldn't it be great if there were some kind of a way to combine Mormons with some worthwhile causes?
Oh now. He's no more a throw back to the Dark Ages than oh say Newt Gingrich.
Our toxic house. A simplistic but so far perfect summary:
If it pollutes, it passes.
That is soooooooooo typical of a liberal limp dick such as yourself and the whole lot of you lefty whiners who when exposed truthfully can be explained by one thing: jealousy of real men.
Hey, you're right about everything. It is totally unfair that you couldn't make it with the women. That is so unjust. In a fair world, you fairly liberals would be honored for your spectacular high ideals that we lowly rednecks find stupid because we see right through them.
You're weak.
And you want everybody to be weak like you so you won't have to suffer so much of how real men treat you with the contempt you deserve.
Yeah, that's tough. I feel sorry for you, you poor little bag of shit.
Rednecks, or perhaps I should broaden it a bit and say human beings, what they do is they start out with a fine set of instincts, a fine set of instincts that were perfectly honed to perfection for the days before civilization. Our rednecks, I mean human beings, set out with their instincts and go from there. Starting from their instincts, they build their theology, philosophy, and politics around that.
It's a train wreck in progress, dear rednecks, I mean human beings.
There's nothing wrong with your instincts that can't be helped by your letting up a bit on pretending to yourself that they're an infallible guide to living in today's world.
People who tell you that are the people who really do love you. If you'd get your head out of your bum, you'd see that.
Or, more likely, kick my ass.
bitter apostate tea
Here is a sad old story you've heard
many
many a time
in your travels I'm sure.
The story of
the person who became arrogant with learning
so arrogant
that he turned his back on the gospel
of the true restored church.
Oh pity our fallen man
who has become
deluded
by the illusion,
the attraction,
of education.
Oh yeah,
here is our sad person
who has turned his back on the truth
and fallen
from grace.
He's singing the blues.
He's singin' the blues; that's all he's got left,
That's all he's got left,
the sad and lonely old blues of the bitter apostate.
The bitter apostate.
The bitter apostate.
The bitter apostate
lives in his lonely world of isolation
which he has made for himself
and no one else is to blame.
Oh listen to him sing the blues,
sing the blues,
the bitter apostate blues,
the bitter apostate blues,
the bitter apostate blues,
the bitter apostate blues.
Lord, have mercy on your wicked son.
Charles Ashurst
2012 9 22
all charlie tabernacle choir extraordinary rendition of:
http://www.indabamusic.com/sessions/966897579/892576
Well, there are shades of cultness. You could argue, I suppose, the United States of America is a cult, an arbitrarily drawn family of people who see themselves separate and distinct from the rest of humanity.
Mainstream Mormonism, I maintain, did start out as your genuinely classical cult organization held together by authoritarian rule, fear, intimidation, indoctrination but it has evolved into something less toxic today. For an albeit distorted view of how Mormonism started, see its fundamentalist offshoot, the FLDS.
The challenge for LDS leadership today is to do a delicate dance that pretends we're still hewing to the true restored gospel while having come a long way from it. It's all being managed today by a top notch public relations division.
These days, you could interchange the LDS leadership with that of oh say Coca Cola, and it’d be a seamless transition. Is Coca Cola a cult?
The goal these days is to gain market share. Catholicism is Pepsi and Mormonism is Coke. Or visa versa.
Which is just sooooooooooooooo typical of a bitter apostate to say.
Both Mormon Inc. and Republican Party Inc. are perfect recipes if all you want in this world is to make money hand over fist for the next 20 years or so and then beam us up from a looted polluted planet into the Celestial Kingdom.