He’s caught between a rock and a hard place. How do you be a “Good Christian” while also defending Mormonism? Moreover, how do put together an impressive publishing portfolio in the midst of all that?Gadianton wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 12:22 amThis is an innovative way of thinking about the publishing problem. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, you're a few moves ahead of me, like usual.Doctor Scratch wrote: ↑Thu Feb 09, 2023 11:19 pmEdited out, with no acknowledgement! He ought to thank Tom for alerting him. And he ought to apologize to his readers for his carelessness.
But, of course, he won’t, and for that reason, he will never be able to finish any of his books.
Simply put, DCP is flailing. He doesn’t really know where to turn or what to do, so he adopts a “shotgun” approach where he’s going to make movies, blog about his travels, oversee a half dozen “foundations,” and still try to find a way to wedge actual life in there somehow.
But what does he care about most? If he is as committed to the Church as he claims, then behaving in a kind, Christlike way should matter to him, and it should matter *a lot.* So how is he faring in that department?
If he actually has a Christian conscience (and I am not fully convinced that he does), then his past behavior and treatment of others will be eating at him non-stop. There is evidence to support this idea—namely, his obsession with this board. Why does he care what we say? He has claimed in the past that it’s a matter of “reputation,” but this is a relatively obscure board, so why give it extra air time?
He reads here because he’s worried that we are *right.* What if it’s true that he lied about his compensation for Mopologetics, that he deliberately tried to hurt critics via smear campaigns, and that he cheated Dr. Moore out of money? If all of this was just made-up nonsense, then he wouldn’t care. But he *does* care. And it eats at him.
He won’t ever finish any of these writing projects because in one way or another, they all tie back to his Mopologetic aims, and his role as a Mopologist conflicts with whatever he’s got left of a Christian conscience. So every time he embarks on one of these new “notes for a new book!” blog posts, he’s inevitably dragged back into his role as a Mopologist. And he did inarguably bad things as a Mopologist. He hurt people: this cannot be denied.
I would be willing to grant the idea that he could finish a book if he could manage somehow to not read this board or any other critical comments for three or four months, but he’s as incapable of doing that as a smoker is incapable of laying aside the cigarettes. So you have to ask: Why can’t he keep himself from looking? Again: he claims that he’s “worried about his reputation” and that’s why he looks in on this board, but how is what we are saying any worse than his posts? Or his plagiarism? Or his support of Neville-Neville Land? Or his emails on SHIELDS? He could make amends, but he won’t. And so he will always get dragged back into the fundamental morass he has created for himself.
Writing books is, to no small extent, a matter of mindset and endurance, and Dr. Peterson, so long as he has to live with the reality that he has hurt a lot of people (and he has—this is indisputable), he’s never going to be able to complete a book. His mindset/conscience (if he still has one) is always going to be interrupted by the worry that he needs to apologize and attempt to make things right.
He can start by telling Steve Smoot that it’s time to shut down Neville-Neville Land.