Ideological Fault Lines in (Post-)Mormonism

[Kishkumen]

There are so many wonderful contributions to this thread that I just want to thank everyone for the enlightening conversation thus far. It seems to me that a lot of people are really hitting on the nose the problems that drove me to start the thread in the first place. I am learning a lot from what you have to say, and I thank you for it.

[Mayan Elephant]

Mayan elephant, I am puzzled enough to find these comments a real stumbling block to understanding your point. As you note victims do exist but I do not see democrats all thinking they are victims. I am a long term democrat liberal sort and do not think of myself as a victim, no good reason to. I have not heard liberal friends speaking about being victims or indicating that they think they are victims.. It appears possible that you are imaging crap going on in other peoples heads which is not actually there.

Thank you, huckelberry.

I was responding to a post that I quoted that referenced democratic supporters righteousness in this thread. Forgive my lack of grace or clarity. I was addressing the righteousness that was also highlighted in that post.

I will gladly beat up on Republicans, but the blind faith of this thread's many Democratic supporters in their own righteousness is reflective of this turn in the culture that we are all supposed to believe is about politics yet is manifesting itself as something that has the feeling of a religious dispute.

My reference to the victimization among the party is more of a reference to the foundational and propaganda arguments being made contemporarily, and not specific to one person's claim of victimization. I think that these arguments of blaming and blaming and blaming and shaming and shaming and shaming are so entrenched in the media and the campaigns that it is beyond the point of reconciliation. I also do not think this is unique to democrats. I like to point out the same behavior from both sides.

The range of victimization is wide. It can vary from how victimized people were by the deplorables that voted for Trump and allowed him to be president, to the pandemic, and on and on. Specifically, there is a mantra that people are victimized by systemic racism. While that may be true, or not, depending on one's individual experience, there is certainly a massive campaign around this. By the way, I do not think that self-victimization is unique to a single ideology. It is a rallying cry among ideologues, however. We was wronged.... and it is not our fault. We are being wronged.... and it is not our fault. We are about to be wronged.... and it will not be our fault.

One side thinks it was wronged by Fox News and the other thinks it was wronged by NPR. One side thinks Facebook/Twitter should not censor dialogue and the other thinks they can never censor enough - both are being wronged. In almost all these examples, there is a collective cry of what is "unfair to us/me." It is why silos are the only place where anyone can catch a breath. Hell, someone would have to be out of the everloving effing mind to join this board and try and have an opinion, if, for example, they disagreed with the CDC, Fauci and the failure of public facilities to address infection control parameters. Here, there is ONE acceptable tone. Trump mishandled the pandemic and people died - we are victims of that - end of story. The details or possibilities of something nuanced and different are not well received.

I am not, huckleberry, in any place to judge any single individual's victimization (except for Gunnar and Icarus of course). If I have done that, it was unfair and unkind. I am, however, making a loud declaration that the conversations between the ideologies are too often anchored in this nonsense. The exmormon ideology discussions of acceptable liberal anti-Trump and anti-Trump-voter views in this thread (and its sister thread) are a good micro-view of what is happening out there on a larger scale.

[Lem]

I participate in several forums where I'm somewhat anonymous, and a few where my real name (and picture) are shared (FYI, I'm a white guy). I think I'm pretty good at treating everyone the same; I'll needle and joke with a woman (or racial minority) just as much as I will with a white man, and I'll question something a woman (or racial minority) or says just as much as I'll question a white man. But I'll never say anything that is specific to their race or gender; I'll only respond to what they actually say. Certainly, I've spent the most online time at MDDB, and I think Juliann and the other women there can attest to that.

But one thing I've noticed is that in exMo forums where my race and gender are known, women can be very quick to respond and end the conversation with something like "Cisgender white guy sayz" or something equally illuminating. Oddly, this happens in discussions about things that have nothing to do with race or gender issues (apart from everything being about race or gender, of course).

For example, in one forum someone brought up a historical incident where a white, (presumably) cisgender LDS man said something else to a white man. We were discussing what his statement meant, and finally a woman participating in the discussion said she refused to listen to me because I'm a white guy. I could understand if we were discussing, say, the experience of black women in the US or something like that, but it was two white guys talking to each other (and they weren't talking about race or gender).

So there is definitely an impulse to silence certain voices and views in the exMo community (perhaps a reflection of the larger liberal culture), which I find a little odd.

I'm not sure how this thread became the place to make this post, maybe I missed something, but I would definitely agree with most of your assessment, cinepro. I understand it's your experiences, so I would just like to note my agreement, and add in some of my observations as well, if you don't mind, because I've had some similar experiences with inappropriate responses.

For example, I agree that "[some people, but certainly not all,] can be very quick to respond and end the conversation with something like [an inappropriate stereotype that comments inappropriately on another's race or gender]."

I would also agree, mostly, that "Oddly, this happens in discussions about things that have nothing to do with race or gender issues [even though not everything is about race or gender]."

I also empathize with your assessment, and would mostly agree, with my one major caveat in brackets, that "there is definitely an impulse [by some] to silence certain voices and views in the exMo community." As a woman, I have experienced the effects of that impulse just as you have, as a man. I agree there is no place for it, regardless of the gender and or race to which it is inappropriately directed.

In a thread like this, I feel its important to acknowledge the experiences of all members of this board, so it seems necessary to note that making such a sweeping statement as:

"in exMo forums where my race and gender are known, women can be very quick to respond and end the conversation...,"

without adding the qualifier "some" in front of "women" seems unnecessarily stereotyping and divisive, although I am sure you didn't mean it that way.

In fact. a far more inclusive and infinitely less offensive statement might be to leave stereotypes about gender out of it entirely and just say:

"in exMo forums where my race and gender are known, some people can be very quick to respond and end the conversation..."

[Morley]

I do still think that there is a certain preponderance. It may be out of date but I think of C.P. Snow's two criteria from "The Two Cultures": "Can you define acceleration?" is the counterpart question to, "Can you read?" and the counterpart question to, "Have you ever read a play by Shakespeare?" is, "Can you explain the Second Law of Thermodynamics?" Practically every scientist I've ever met has read some Shakespeare, even if they weren't educated in English. Quite a few scholars in the humanities have also had a clear grasp of thermodynamics—but not as large a proportion.

Having read Shakespeare is not the same as understanding Shakespeare.

CP Snow or not, the counterpart query to "Can you read?" would not be "Can you define acceleration?" It would be "Can you do math?"

Likewise, the counterpart to "Have you ever read a play by Shakespeare?" would not be "Explain the Second Law of Thermodynamics." It would be "Have you ever read about Newton and the theory of gravity?" If you're going to ask someone to explain the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the counterpart would be to ask them the meaning behind Marc Antony's soliloquy about Julius Caesar.

Math and science are alien to human nature in a way that nothing in the humanities or social sciences is. I think it makes sense to push people harder to learn a bit of them, in much the same way that people all over the world are all pushed to learn English. You can't afford to ignore it and it's a weird enough language, for the majority of humans that don't speak any related languages natively, that you can't just pick it up in passing. Soon we'll all be saying the same thing about Mandarin and Hindi and Swahili: hasten the day.

Listing the things that are alien to human nature is an odd thing to do. It's a strategy used to justify all kinds of prejudices. If humans, in any significant number, are engaged in a given activity, it's probably not "alien to human nature."

Math and science are as old as language. They're not alien to human nature, anymore than using fire is (science). Math and science are not harder than the social sciences or humanities, except in the minds of scientists and mathematicians who are trying to explain how smart they are.

If the social sciences are, as you suggest, more natural to learn, why did Galileo precede Freud?
.

[Mayan Elephant]

If the social sciences are, as you suggest, more natural to learn, why did Galileo precede Freud?

one of the greatest lines I have read in a long long long time. very well done and very well said.

I don't know enough about the sciences, galileo or freud to contribute a thought to this conversation, but, i damn sure like that line.

[huckelberry]

The range of victimization is wide. It can vary from how victimized people were by the deplorables that voted for Trump and allowed him to be president, to the pandemic, and on and on. Specifically, there is a mantra that people are victimized by systemic racism. While that may be true, or not, depending on one's individual experience, there is certainly a massive campaign around this. By the way, I do not think that self-victimization is unique to a single ideology. It is a rallying cry among ideologues, however. We was wronged.... and it is not our fault. We are being wronged.... and it is not our fault. We are about to be wronged.... and it will not be our fault.

One side thinks it was wronged by Fox News and the other thinks it was wronged by NPR. .............

Mayan Elephant, I can see that if one is widening what can be called victim then a whole bunch of liberals may be complaining about it. Why even I have things I am unhappy about. I am obligated to live in a country which is not as good as I would like it to be. Decisions are made which I do not agree with. I do not think there are very many people of any group or persuasion who do not share some sort of victimhood like that. I think that you and I may be agreeing that as those feelings get ratched up then understanding gets ratched down.

[Mayan Elephant]

I do not think there are very many people of any group or persuasion who do not share some sort of victimhood like that. I think that you and I may be agreeing that as those feelings get ratched up then understanding gets ratched down.

Fair. Well said. Thank you. I agree that we agree.

I would only add that silos exist to amp up the angst and validate the feelings. I would class Fox News consumers and Fox News products as a unique silo that thrives on ideology. I would also add that victimization is a core part of the energy within that silo. I would absolutely say the same about CNN, the NYT and Atlantic, NPR and others.

Twitter, Facebook and forums use these ideological silos to generate velocity.

Campaigns and political parties use these silos to gain and exploit power. (which was not the point of your post and you may not agree)

[Symmachus]

If the social sciences are, as you suggest, more natural to learn, why did Galileo precede Freud?

Ha! Well, one could counter that Homer preceded Euclid. I take Physics Guy's point, though perhaps with a slightly different formulation. I would say that is more like the difference between learning to play the piano as compared to the violin. The piano is much easier to learn in the beginning because one only needs to press the finger against the keys to make a series of sounds on the scale, which is a motor action one does all of the time. Someone with no training can do that just by going one after the other and putting the fingers in the right place, though not as smoothly or with the control of someone with years of finger training. One cannot do that on a violin, however. Just to play a scale requires a certain amount of training. But when it comes to playing either well and at a high level, that initial difference does not matter at all.

Here is the problem though, the self-righteous instigators are showing that they do not care about credibility and would rather roll the dice and hope for that extreme submission from their opponent. They are underestimating the populists, who find no credibility in either side. When the populists (which are BOTH left and right) choose fight over flight, we will have a problem. I truly believe that this is what the combined McConnell-esque/Schumer-esque cabal want. They want it BAD! They hope the populists fight each other for a long, long, long, long time.

I think the people are good. The people will figure this out. The people have always been good. Eventually, the left populists and the right populists will fight the cabal. But, in the meantime, we just lob self-righteous grenades across these fault lines and wallow in our righteousness.

Well, it's true that elites are always hostile to populism—not exactly an easy phenomenon to define—essentially by definition but also too just in terms of practical politics: populist surges are not easy to harness precisely because they are so amorphous. I find it hard, then, to see any cabal; Schumer, for example, is a deer in the headlights of an oncoming Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He has no idea what to do. McConnell is more skilled, but also doesn't face the same pressure at the moment. I can easily imagine where a lot of your dissatisfaction might come from, but I don't think there is an any kind concerted effort like this. I don't see it in terms of "bad cabal of elites" and "good ordinary people" as answer to the question of why there is such a disconnect in the first place.

The reason I say this is because the political ground is shifting but no one really knows in what direction because beneath the shifting political ground is a seismic cultural change. Hardly anyone seems to realize this is happening and just about everyone prefers to see it through the lens of traditional party politics because that is more familiar and comfortable and gives the illusion of control over events. This, however, only exacerbates its worst features—because politics means access to power—and exposes fault lines we hadn't realized might be there (hence the OP, in my view) or that have been newly created. Conservatives feel it most keenly in certain areas—issues to do with family religion—and I am nauseated by the gaslighting done by organizations controlled by liberals that move the culture from A to B, then treat B as the default whenever conservatives complain that it was A just five minutes ago. But conservatives have been a part of this themselves in areas that are not associated with the family and their own religious practice—if they even have either—and their sudden appeal to traditions they don't even preserve or care about is no less nauseating. We can get into this on another thread, perhaps, and as I say: I can't quite put my finger on all of this because we are all right in the middle of it, and I'm just not that capable. But to connect this to Mormonism: this is why I repeat this refrain about the Church's culture being more significant than all of the business about the Book of Abraham and archaeology, etc. People don't leave for those reasons; those things undermine the Church's authority for those Mormons who respect it (which is a small percentage of all total Mormons), but most Mormons leave because, once that authority is undermined, they see that the Church does not provide a satisfying alternative to the cult of individual autonomy and hedonistic liberation the wider culture has on offer and which now is replicating itself in the organs of state power. It participates in those things in many ways. But, like most churches, it has failed to provide a meaningful alternative. Perhaps that is impossible. But where I differ from most ex-Mormons I have encountered is that I don't believe that that is a good thing in the long term.

The decline of churches and of Christianity is not the decline of religion. I take Charles Péguy as instructive here: everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics. Anyone who familiar with the intellectual history of the post-war 20th century can see how this is playing out now in the 21st.

Likewise with Calhoun and the mob he championed. Of course they were bald-faced in-your-face racists, but the story to which they stuck was that Black people were naturally and divinely ordained to be slaves because they were inherently incompetent to direct even their own lives, let alone hold any power over others. Racism isn't just my-subgroup-right-or-wrong clannism. There has to be an excuse.

Well, yes, there is always a reason stated for everything, but I'm not sure what you are getting at: you wish they had used a different excuse? Or that if they hadn't discovered one that they would have given up their racism and confessed the equality and brotherhood of man? I am not sure that "clannism" (surely an unintended pun) should be so easily dismissed. Thinking of racism as a response to perceived competency signals (or a lack) is an attempt to rationalize it, but I don't think it is so rational. Or at least, it is not an interest-based rationality like competence.

[Philo Sofee]

Mayan Elephant
I do not think that self-victimization is unique to a single ideology. It is a rallying cry among ideologues, however. We was wronged.... and it is not our fault. We are being wronged.... and it is not our fault. We are about to be wronged.... and it will not be our fault

You forgot the one that says "We are about to do terrible wrong, but it is not our fault....

[Mayan Elephant]

You forgot the one that says "We are about to do terrible wrong, but it is not our fault....

you forgot to call that THE one.

excellent catch. i think this is what smarter people would call being the self-declared victim and paying it forward.

kudos. well done there.