Happy Valley Photo Essay

[_DrW]

Last evening there was a post on a MADBoard thread on the LightBox photos (in which DCP had participated) asking Daniel Peterson if he believed that the apologists with their comments had been successful in "moderating the impact" of the Time LightBox photo essay.

This morning the post had been removed by Minos with a warning not to bring "online scuffles" over to MDD. So, it would appear that the moderators at MDD are not all that happy with DCP's performance when it comes to his Time LightBox comments.

[_Kishkumen]

Never mind that this whole theme (that the photographer made his family look "poor") is entirely manufactured. I can't for the life of me figure out how anyone could look at those photos and come to those conclusions. Whatever one thinks of the posing, scenes, general aesthetic or captions, the people in the photos look like pretty "average Americans" to me.

My only explanation is that this reflects what has long been a part of Peterson & Co.'s rhetoric about their "enemies:" you see it not just in the long running "trailer park" motif, but also in heavy handed gestures toward their own supposedly refined cultural tastes. It's something more than just run of the mill American classism, too, especially when you consider that taking pride in the early pioneer's hard scrabble lives of desert deprivation and struggle has always been widespread in Mormon culture.

Do you suppose it is a kind of Prosperity Gospel thing? I mean, it is OK for the pioneers to sacrifice because they were robbed, persecuted, and forced to flee to the West. But now that God has blessed the Mormon people for their righteousness and past sacrifices (look at Romney, the Marriotts, et al.) those who remain poor must have something wrong with them, i.e., they must be sinful people. So this family must really be to blame for losing Shumway to Nietzsche. It wasn't the Nietzsche, obviously, but the same moral and faith failings that left the family looking like a pack of hillbillies in the eyes of LDS apologists. I agree with you that something is up, and it is more complex than one might suppose at first.

[_Kishkumen]

His pathological defensiveness makes him seem unhinged.

The funny thing is that in real life Dr. Peterson is the most normal man you would ever want to meet. He has many, many friends, and he is generally regarded as a pillar of his community. It seems to me that the long practice of defending the LDS faith against critics, which was very emotionally rewarding in the past, has been accelerated to a furious pace because of the technology.

Dr. Peterson, a man of great intelligence and energy, gets his cup of Joe by fighting the dragons of anti-Mormonism. It is very exhilarating, but the internet gives it an accessibility to the broader public that makes it more perilous, I think. It was one thing for Daniel to exchange blows with the Tanners in the days of print--that remained largely an inside-community affair, but when you hit TIME's blog, then you have leaked out into the wider world, where, as Brother Otterson well knows, public scrutiny awaits... and it can be very unkind.

[_Dr. Shades]

Wow, I missed the memo where pre-marital oral sex was okay. I guess when I was 14 I should have 'taken a closer look', as our apologist friends would say. My teenage years would have been much more enjoyable.

OOPS! My bad. Make that four forms of pre-marital contact, not three.

Methinks that, like a few other people, you are taking this blog entry a little too seriously.

You don't have to take it seriously to notice the inaccuracies.

Sure, someone might imagine all kinds of goofy things given the casual and brief nature of the piece. I doubt, however, that they will take it as an assault on Mormonism.

Perhaps not, but "imagin[ing] all kinds of goofy things" is bad enough by itself--sans assault--if such imaginings are false, brought about by inaccuracies and/or slopiness.

And frankly, if you think this makes Mormonism look strange by being imprecise, there are many other plain facts about it that are more strange to outsiders. So, I really don't get all the fuss.

I know. But with so many plain facts to get the job done, it is intellectually untenable to mislead people through inaccuracies and exaggerations.

Ed Decker says a lot of things about Mormonism that make it look bad. Just because Mormonism looks bad enough on its own doesn't absolve him of his inaccuracies, though.

[_Spurven Ten Sing]

Or he is using critics to manage his anxiety.

1. P, on some level, understands that Mormonism is essentially false. The evidence is lacking or contradictory.
2. P needs to create a situation where Mormonism can be bolstered.
3. P seeks critics out, not to communicate ideas, but to passively aggressively prompt them to attack him personally. All posts by him must eventually become about him, and the more unsettled the critic the better. But P cannot initiate the hostilities, the critic must take the bait. Why?
4. The critic attacks P "unfairly, showing P that they have nothing to say worth hearing, that exmoism produces bitter people, that Mormonism must have something to it, otherwise why make it personal instead of talking issues?

If true we would expect:

1. P will especially seek out the most unbalanced critics to interact with.
2. P will avoid calm critics who only talk issues.
3. All interactions with P will either end in him going somewhere else and leaving the conversation, or the critic will attack him, whereupon P will reinvest MORE time encouraging more attacks. (This would be limited to interaction concerning Mormonism. Anyone can talk to him about politics, the Jazz, or the weather.)
4. P will find it very, very hard to stay away from disrespectful critics, and will be bored (disturbed?)by respectful ones.

How close am I?

[_Kishkumen]

You don't have to take it seriously to notice the inaccuracies.

My take on this is that you are nitpicking. I am not surprised that you are, since you have a habit of very closely scrutinizing. I think the question is not how thorough and painstakingly accurate the captions of the photos are (they are captions, so get a grip!), but rather whether they seem calculated to misrepresent or harm the LDS Church. I think you would be hard pressed to come to such a conclusion, unless you are accustomed to overreacting to representations of the LDS Church that do not fit the positive-PR mold.

Perhaps not, but "imagin[ing] all kinds of goofy things" is bad enough by itself--sans assault--if such imaginings are false, brought about by inaccuracies and/or slopiness.

Again, Shades, you are demanding that captions under photos be written in such a thorough and painstaking fashion so as to prevent any possibility of misunderstanding the stances of a Church that cannot even be consistently and coherently accounted for by the apologists themselves. In essence, this is an implicit gag order on anyone who does not fawn on the LDS Church and/or have a well-crafted PR-style message.

I know. But with so many plain facts to get the job done, it is intellectually untenable to mislead people through inaccuracies and exaggerations.

Think about what you are saying, Shades. You have got it back asswards. He started with photos. He did not start with a list of items he wanted to praise or smear the Church with. The statements were written in such a way that they could tie the pictures to his experience of LDS culture. In that, they do not do such a bad job.

If you want to, you can go find pictures of Moroni, the gold plates, and polygamists in order to put together your own photo essay that really is designed to make the Church look weird. It seems to me that this is almost the opposite of what Shumway was trying to do.

Ed Decker says a lot of things about Mormonism that make it look bad. Just because Mormonism looks bad enough on its own doesn't absolve him of his inaccuracies, though.

You are grossly inflating the significance of the inaccuracies because you are picky, and you wrongly assume that he was trying to ridicule or criticize Mormonism. What he was doing--expressing in photos and words his own tense relationship with his family and the religious culture he grew up with--is much more nuanced and really has little to do with making the LDS Church look bad.

[_DrW]

Or he is using critics to manage his anxiety.

1. P, on some level, understands that Mormonism is essentially false. The evidence is lacking or contradictory.
2. P needs to create a situation where Mormonism can be bolstered.
3. P seeks critics out, not to communicate ideas, but to passively aggressively prompt them to attack him personally. All posts by him must eventually become about him, and the more unsettled the critic the better. But P cannot initiate the hostilities, the critic must take the bait. Why?
4. The critic attacks P "unfairly, showing P that they have nothing to say worth hearing, that exmoism produces bitter people, that Mormonism must have something to it, otherwise why make it personal instead of talking issues?

If true we would expect:

1. P will especially seek out the most unbalanced critics to interact with.
2. P will avoid calm critics who only talk issues.
3. All interactions with P will either end in him going somewhere else and leaving the conversation, or the critic will attack him, whereupon P will reinvest MORE time encouraging more attacks. (This would be limited to interaction concerning Mormonism. Anyone can talk to him about politics, the Jazz, or the weather.)
4. P will find it very, very hard to stay away from disrespectful critics, and will be bored (disturbed?)by respectful ones.

How close am I?

Very close indeed, I would say.

As I recall, DCP left this board when he was put in a position of having to defend several of his own statements and past actions with regard to issues, and not because of any personal attacks.

[_Kishkumen]

Or he is using critics to manage his anxiety.

I would be surprised if most of us were not, on some level, using these conversations to manage our anxieties, whether they be anxieties about faith or lack of faith, or completely unrelated anxieties.

Words have the capacity to calm or exacerbate anxieties, and they fulfill this function every day for most everyone. Only sages and ascetics who are greatly disciplined manage to avoid the endless chatter that most of us indulge in to manage our anxieties.

Even then, sages and ascetics use a more disciplined and repetitive form of language to do exactly the same thing. The purpose is to avoid the exacerbation of anxieties through speech and cultivate the calming mechanisms of the right speech.

[_Blixa]

Never mind that this whole theme (that the photographer made his family look "poor") is entirely manufactured. I can't for the life of me figure out how anyone could look at those photos and come to those conclusions. Whatever one thinks of the posing, scenes, general aesthetic or captions, the people in the photos look like pretty "average Americans" to me.

My only explanation is that this reflects what has long been a part of Peterson & Co.'s rhetoric about their "enemies:" you see it not just in the long running "trailer park" motif, but also in heavy handed gestures toward their own supposedly refined cultural tastes. It's something more than just run of the mill American classism, too, especially when you consider that taking pride in the early pioneer's hard scrabble lives of desert deprivation and struggle has always been widespread in Mormon culture.

Do you suppose it is a kind of Prosperity Gospel thing? I mean, it is OK for the pioneers to sacrifice because they were robbed, persecuted, and forced to flee to the West. But now that God has blessed the Mormon people for their righteousness and past sacrifices (look at Romney, the Marriotts, et al.) those who remain poor must have something wrong with them, i.e., they must be sinful people. So this family must really be to blame for losing Shumway to Nietzsche. It wasn't the Nietzsche, obviously, but the same moral and faith failings that left the family looking like a pack of hillbillies in the eyes of LDS apologists. I agree with you that something is up, and it is more complex than one might suppose at first.

I think that is part of it and another part is the current institutional management of the church's history (which is itself part of its broader PR calculations and campaigns). And this is an interesting moment in the history of that history! There is a complex argument here that I can't do justice to in a few board posts, but I think that strands of this discourse ("the other as apostate white trash") that we see here and elsewhere in online mopologetics speak to something bigger than just individual snobbery.

[_Spurven Ten Sing]

Or he is using critics to manage his anxiety.

I would be surprised if most of us were not, on some level, using these conversations to manage our anxieties, whether they be anxieties about faith or lack of faith, or completely unrelated anxieties.

Words have the capacity to calm or exacerbate anxieties, and they fulfill this function every day for most everyone. Only sages and ascetics who are greatly disciplined manage to avoid the endless chatter that most of us indulge in to manage our anxieties.

Even then, sages and ascetics use a more disciplined and repetitive form of language to do exactly the same thing. The purpose is to avoid the exacerbation of anxieties through speech and cultivate the calming mechanisms of the right speech.

Sure, why not? We all have damage. We all have insecurities. In this case, P seems to be very insecure about his cosmology, but what are his options? Accept his own judgment and respond with courage and integrity and ditch the church? he would lose his job, his family, his current identity. Just who is Daniel C. Peterson without the PhD and NAMIRS? Maybe he fears having to develop a genuine personality.