Why I am not a Mormon

[_marg]

I'm admittedly just an observer here but here goes. What if you had acted on the philosophy of "first do no harm".

I did.

I'm very familiar with the Latin medical adage Primum non nocere ("First, do no harm"), cite it often, and try to follow it.

QFT. Is DCP satirizing himself here? One does hope so.

Jersey Girl states a well known medical maxim in English, the language in which it is usually cited in the US.

DCP states the same maxim in Latin - and then gives us an English translation identical to Jersey Girl's original statement, presumably in case we have missed the point. He tells us that he cites (it would seem) the Latin version frequently.

We are all, no doubt, impressed, and feel ever more keenly what a privilege it is that DCP should lower himself so far as to come amongst us so very, very often.

Oh yes, I'm very impressed. It reminds me of my mom who when someone would use a French word in a sentence typically to sound exotic or impressive would say to them, "why are you doing that when there is a perfectly good English word meaning the exact same thing you can use?". But I grew up in Quebec where there is some English-French antagonism going on and she is British.

[_Jersey Girl]

Okay, the birds are singing the sun is rising, I'm still awake and decided to drop in to have a look. You know, I don't see Daniel's Latin as being intended to impress. He's a teacher. Teacher's often naturally include additional information in their communication that extends the knowledge of the reader/listener. I can't read Daniel's mind of course, however I don't see it as being any different than when I might (and I haven't done this recently) include a field related term such as "scaffolding", "formal operations" or "primary circular reaction" and such as that, that others may not be familiar with in the context of child development. I don't see it as being the pretentious move that others do here. If he's got the academic background to use a term, why not use it?

Are we now haggling over the use of foreign languages? Sheesh.

[_Jersey Girl]

Daniel,

Please under no circumstances never again, show any evidence of your level of education in your posts. Dumb it down to the lowest and basest language useage that you can. And while you're taking orders would you please include a number of typo's and spelling errors in your posts so folks around here don't get the idea that your elevating yourself above the masses?

Thank U,
Jerzee Gurl

[_Yoda]

Daniel,

Please under no circumstances never again, show any evidence of your level of education in your posts. Dumb it down to the lowest and basest language useage that you can. And while you're taking orders would you please include a number of typo's and spelling errors in your posts so folks around here don't get the idea that your elevating yourself above the masses?

Thank U,
Jerzee Gurl

LOL

You forgot grammar.

[_Yoda]

My opinion on this matter is that I don't think Dr. Peterson was maliciously trying to hurt GoodK. I think he simply saw it as trying to help his friend.

Would I have done the same thing? More than likely not, after weighing the factors, such as readership of the board, etc.

Then again, who hasn't acted out of pure emotion?

Also, the LDS is a large group of busybodies. When your dealing with Mormons, you kind of need to know that going in. LOL

We don't have exclusive license in it, though. I've seen a lot of tight-knit religious groups here in the South that are no different.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Thanks, Jersey Girl, for being a voice of sanity and moderation here. And that goes for Liz, too.

QFT. Is DCP satirizing himself here? One does hope so.

Jersey Girl states a well known medical maxim in English, the language in which it is usually cited in the US.

DCP states the same maxim in Latin - and then gives us an English translation identical to Jersey Girl's original statement, presumably in case we have missed the point. He tells us that he cites (it would seem) the Latin version frequently.

We are all, no doubt, impressed, and feel ever more keenly what a privilege it is that DCP should lower himself so far as to come amongst us so very, very often.

I'm aware that foreign languages offend and irritate you. Everything I do and say irritates at least somebody (and usually several people) on this wonderful board, and everything I do or say (along, sometimes, with what I haven't said and haven't done) is plainly thought to deserve public sneering and condemnation at great length.

Oh yes, I'm very impressed. It reminds me of my mom who when someone would use a French word in a sentence typically to sound exotic or impressive would say to them, "why are you doing that when there is a perfectly good English word meaning the exact same thing you can use?".

Certain foreign languages, though, are my important daily tools. They're an unavoidable part of my workaday life.

My point was, simply, that I'm very familiar with the saying, that I've thought about it a lot, that it isn't a new concept to me, and, finally, that I've adopted it not only for advice to others but primarily as a rule for myself. To illustrate how familiar it is to me: I know about its purported origin in the Hippocratic Oath (it isn't there, and, anyway, the Oath is in Greek) and the alternative suggestion that it comes from the maxims of Galen (where, thus far, it hasn't been found, and which were, anyway, written in Greek). For several years, I've been editing and publishing Moses Maimonides' Arabic/Hebrew commentaries on Galen's "medical aphorisms." This is a significant part of what I do for a living. And, yes, I'm a teacher. I like to share additional information. It's what I do. I've never thought of it as dishonorable.

My opinion on this matter is that I don't think Dr. Peterson was maliciously trying to hurt GoodK. I think he simply saw it as trying to help his friend.

Precisely.

Would I have done the same thing? More than likely not, after weighing the factors, such as readership of the board, etc.

As I've said, I hesitated and pondered for a while before I sent the link to my friend. I still feel comfortable with my decision.

Also, the LDS is a large group of busybodies. When your dealing with Mormons, you kind of need to know that going in. LOL

We don't have exclusive license in it, though. I've seen a lot of tight-knit religious groups here in the South that are no different.

"Busybodiness" or "meddling" or whatever you want to call it is, I think, simply the flipside of what might be viewed more positively as "strong community."

There are two easy and clear extremes. On the one hand, you could, I suppose, have a society in which there were absolutely no interpersonal barriers and no expectations of privacy. Or, alternatively, you could have a society -- some urban areas approach this -- where nobody intervenes in anybody else's life or even notices anybody else. (The notorious Kitty Genovese case may illustrate this, or the recent instance of a victim of a hit-and-run driver who lay writhing in a major city street for a long time while people passed by on the sidewalks and did nothing. My parents' upscale California neighborhood, to which they moved after I left, had no meddling neighbors; nobody even knew anybody else's name.)

But any community that permits privacy while encouraging mutual support and caring will always strike some as too cold and others as too meddlesome and intrusive. Why should Latter-day Saints be any different on this score? And those hostile to the community's overall values and worldview will be least inclined to regard it charitably or sympathetically and most inclined to regard it critically.

[_Chap]

How may an education best be displayed?

Perhaps in the context of this thread (which is entirely about the intriguing topic of the character and attributes of a well-known Utah Arabist) one may refer to an Arabist of another time and place, Edward Pococke, who was also a priest of the Church of England given charge of a country parish.

In the story as I recall it, Pococke's predecessor had been an idle and ignorant curate, who had contented himself with reading a weekly sermon out of some obsolete collection, which while it may have failed to teach his parishioners much certainly impressed them with lots of learned quotations, many in Latin. But I can't find all that online, so here is a source which gives some of the story at least, and in a relevant context:

See http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200107/myers

(See also page 9 of An Oxford Arabist - but I would have to type it all out.)

In Aldous Huxley's Those Barren Leaves (1925) a character named Mr. Cardan makes a point that may explain today's state of affairs.

Really simple, primitive people like their poetry to be as ... artificial and remote from the language of everyday affairs as possible. We reproach the eighteenth century with its artificiality. But the fact is that Beowulf is couched in a diction fifty times more complicated and unnatural than that of [Pope's poem] Essay on Man.

Mr. Cardan comes off in the novel as a bit of a windbag, but there is at least anecdotal evidence to back up his observation. We know, for example, that European peasants were far from pleased when their clergy stopped mystifying them with Latin. Edward Pococke (1604-1691) was an English preacher and linguist whose sermons, according to the Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, "were always composed in a plain style upon practical subjects, carefully avoiding all show and ostentation of learning."

But from this very exemplary caution not to amuse his hearers (contrary to the common method then in vogue) with what they could not understand, some of them took occasion to entertain very contemptible thoughts of his learning ... So that one of his Oxford friends, as he traveled through Childrey, inquiring for his diversion of some of the people, Who was their minister, and how they liked him? received this answer: "Our parson is one Mr. Pococke, a plain honest man. But Master," said they, "he is no Latiner."

Whatever else he may be, DCP is undoubtedly a 'Latiner'.

[_Gadianton]

Thanks, Jersey Girl, for being a voice of sanity and moderation here. And that goes for Liz, too.

:LOL:

Just don't expect him to ever return the favor when an apologist is going to far with a critic on this board or any other board. Such a topic would likely just happen to be of no personal interest to him.

[_Daniel Peterson]

How may an education best be displayed?

Whatever the various opinions about this topic may be, one thing is certain and, so far as I can tell, invariable: I do it wrong.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Just don't expect him to ever return the favor when an apologist is going to far with a critic on this board or any other board. Such a topic would likely just happen to be of no personal interest to him.

The pressure is simply too intense. I must yield.

For Gadianton, with apologies to St. Cyril of Jerusalem:

I abjure thee, Will Schryver, evil and most cruel of posters. In other words, I no longer fear thy humor, for Gadianton has rendered this humor humorless and made me a sharer in this board's overwhelming condemnation of thee, whereby he destroyed my secret FARMSboy delight in thy sexual metaphors so that I might not always be subjected to slavery. I abjure thee, cunning and crafty serpent. I abjure thee, tempter, thou who didst bring about all forms of unpleasantness under the guise of apologetics and didst bring this otherwise sweet and collegial message board nigh unto perdition. I abjure thee, Will Schryver, creator and accomplice of all evil. I abjure thee. Amen and amen.