Res Ipsa wrote:But isn't your argument, in substance, one of ethics? Distilled, it says something like it's ethical to mislead another person when that person is acting in bad faith toward you.
I don't think so. It is certainly true that my argument
is premised on the uncontroversial assumption that it is not necessarily unethical per se to mislead another party when that party is acting in bad faith (but not that it is affirmatively ethical to do so). The argument I'm making, though, is that at root, this is not fundamentally about
that question unless you shear the whole thing of the thick layers of contexts familiar to us all and turn this into a purely academical exercise.
In that lofty realm, I would agree with you. In the mundane realm in which this is actually occurring, I think it is a distraction created by the Church's attempted use of these instruments. Equality has pointed out that these are basically empty as far legality goes, which, if true, further suggests they are instruments of intimidation or at least manipulation, not legal hedges in which a sincere mediation occur. Quibbling over whether it is ethical to disregard them after signing them is, to me, like the ancient trope that fighting with bows and arrows from a distance was unethical—"cheating" in a sense—while fighting with a sword in hand-to-hand combat was not. I mean, I guess that's true, but so what?
But to get there, you have to make all sorts of judgments about how people are acting and their motivations. And, in my opinion, those kinds of judgments can't fairly be described as trivial.
I would believe that if these excommunication courts weren't purely pro forma and largely predictable, but they are. We are not talking about equal parties operating in a well-defined space with equal freedom of movement, and we all already know that. To Kish's comment, though, I too have no idea why Bill Reel would bother going to it, let alone recording it after claiming not to.
You focus on the Church as an organization, which I would do on your side of the argument, but what is revealed is not the inner thoughts of an organization but the words of the members in attendance.
And they are there to represent the organization through their words; they are there in no other capacity. The High Council members are operating and speaking qua High Council members and to that extent explicitly represent the Church organization in that setting. I would feel differently if he were individually recording the private words of High Council members when not speaking in an official capacity and when not speaking specifically about the Church: trying to get embarrassing details about their personal lives, or something of that sort.
It just seems to me that there are substantial ethical questions to wrestle with, as in almost every case in trying to figure out how to act ethically in a world that is often not ethical.
They are much less substantial when you appreciate the social reality of the situation out of which this artificial philosophical problem is made to arise. I return again to my analogy. If someone extorts a promise from me not to videotape their beating the crap out of me, focusing on whether or not I videotaped them in the act, despite my promise to, rather than the fact that they beat the crap of me is seriously to distort the immediate situation by focusing on an irrelevant question, no matter how legitimate it might be in the abstract.
Kishkumen wrote:I will reiterate that my concern had nothing to do with the NDA or Reel’s recording of the DC. I agree that the DC is an exercise to pressure the person in question to fold and submit to Church authority. My point always was about the perception of recording it and how that would impact his cause, and, moreover, what throwing caution to the wind might say about his motives in the first place.
If, as we seem to agree, the DC is a kind of authoritarian exercise to pressure Bill into submitting, then what is the purpose of showing up to record it? Especially when the Church does not require that you do so? You can always show your lack of submission by not going! That would seem to me to make the most sense if one has no intention of submitting. You go, you waste everyone’s time, you record your performance, publish it to the shame and embarrassment of all involved, including yourself, and . . . .
I don’t get it. If the situation were as things used to be, when we thought this was a court, we thought we had to go, we had no idea we could just resign easily and in peace (in fact we couldn’t), then this recording idea made some sense. Now it is pointless or even self-indulgent. One gets to play Galileo or Luther without nearly the consequences.
I totally agree with you on this. I think the goal for someone wanting to live a normal life after being a Mormon
should be to claim as much agency for oneself as one can. Ignoring their claims on your life and identity is hardly an insignificant means to achieve that. Buying into their program and foolishly trying to undermine the organization or pointlessly attempting to mold their views is just stupid if you want to claim independence from it. I have no idea what Bill Reel's goal's are, though, nor do I care.
The only two points I wanted to make is that that the ethics of this recording have no relevance on the main issue, which is that the Church is stupid and vicious, but at the same time they're not a reincarnation of the Nazis perpetrating a 2nd Holocaust against ex-Mormons (that fiery privilege belongs to the LORD alone, even Jesus Christ).
"As to any slivers of light or any particles of darkness of the past, we forget about them."
—B. Redd McConkie
