More Travel and Dining Expenses for "Bowdlerizing Brigham"?

[drumdude]

Light refreshments

[huckelberry]

DP's diet has its shortcomings but it may be more healthy than 15 pages of re-chewing folks' frustration with the continuing life of some guy in Utah.

None of us are walking with a cane.

OK so the obsession has not been physically debilitating. Perhaps the fifteen pages are pushing back on persistent boredom.

Or are they feeding an addiction to boredom? I may really just be missing the point.

[drumdude]

None of us are walking with a cane.

OK so the obsession has not been physically debilitating. Perhaps the fifteen pages are pushing back on persistent boredom.

Or are they feeding an addiction to boredom? I may really just be missing the point.

This some guy in Utah is one of the most prominent defenders of Mormonism and this website exists to discuss, well, Mormonism.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

None of us are walking with a cane.

OK so the obsession has not been physically debilitating. Perhaps the fifteen pages are pushing back on persistent boredom.

Or are they feeding an addiction to boredom? I may really just be missing the point.

Who’s bored? Yesterday I finished a book about the history of the Brazilian state in which I reside. It took me two months because I read it in Portuguese, which was a challenge for me. I’m low key proud of that. We also finished our house, which was an assload of work.

Like drumdude said, this is a Mormonism discussion board. Mormonism includes Mormons being Mormony.

[I Have Questions]

None of us are walking with a cane.

OK so the obsession has not been physically debilitating. Perhaps the fifteen pages are pushing back on persistent boredom.

Or are they feeding an addiction to boredom? I may really just be missing the point.

How about you start a thread on a topic of which you approve?

I thought this was interesting from the Afore:

Biblically speaking, humans have been commanded from the very beginning to take care of the planet on which we live: “And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15). That responsibility is ongoing.

In what way is cross crossing the planet multiple times a year on airplanes and cruise ships the sign of someone taking that commandment seriously?

[Gadianton]

I missed the first time I read that quote who it was coming from for some reason, I guess I wouldn't expect the great apologist for neoliberalism to request the opposite from his lifelong commitments. I guess we wait and see how he interprets pillaging the earth for its resources and driving species to extinction, and turning a blind eye to poverty, is actually what the Lord commanded us to do. This is, what, the invisible self-healing hand of the earth?

Hugh Nibley had a weird perspective on all of this. On the one hand, he criticized his grandfather for becoming rich logging and tearing down forests. He believed the highest calling of man was to literally garden and raise crops. He never did it himself but confided in his cultist friends that this is where he failed most in life -- he failed to live the Rechabite(?) principle to separate himself from Babylon and till the soil. I mean, here's the thing here, IHAQ, tell me if I'm asking too much: in another thread, I mentioned that FARMS made its name republishing anything that Hugh Nibley ever wrote. I bought -- with money from temp jobs I was working pre-mission -- most of them. If there was one thing I could tell you after reading thousands of pages of Nibley, is that Dan's neoliberal order is wrong, that money is evil, and that we should leave civilization behind and till the soil and have all most things in common.

It would be fair to say that through FARMS, there is no ideology that Dan has pulpit-pounded more, indirectly, than that of being stewards of the earth. Now, I went into all of this pretty much a blank slate. I read Skousen prior to Nibley and even before that, I assumed that I was a free-market Republican, but there were no serious commitments here. I didn't take school seriously and didn't know much having only read science fiction, which is pretty right-leaning on the balance, and my views greatly changed after reading Nibley. Was I the dupe, IHAQ? Because I get the feeling that FARMS didn't believe a word of what Nibley wrote and just used him to make money. And I get the feeling that members likewise never actually read anything he wrote, they just liked having his books, as trophies, displayed in their book cases. But here I thought I was supposed to take it very seriously, as this was literally the smartest person on the planet speaking, and so I read what he wrote pretty carefully.

That civilization is evil and we must escape it and return to the earth and be its stewards is literally Nibley's overarching theme. It all starts with the first essay, per Dan's direction (?) published in volume 1, "The Arrow, the Hunter, and the State" where civilization arises directly from the Mahan Principle along with all of its evil contracts such as money, which allows Dan to live a life of leisure and avoid work. Yet here he is, an eternal vacationer, soft and feeble, and relying on sophistry to prop his lifestyle up, which is the second most condemned thing by Hugh Nibley. I think that is essay two.

Well, on the other hand, Nibley also used to make the point that species go extinct independent of man and that new species of infinite variety will arise in the future and I guess there's no need to become environmentalists (?) I can't recall it clearly but I saw it as a tension in his thinking. Now, Nibley is very right about this. Mankind will likely burn itself out quickly in geologic terms. Dan's only true church will be lost to time, not even the faintest blip, and Dan's life, like mine I'm not saying it's just him, matters about as much as a giant dragonfly from the carboniferous period. Can you imagine how many of these creatures lived over the ~80 million years of their reign? How insignificant is Salt Lake City in comparison?

How ridiculous the Mormons are for believing that God sat there aloof through hundreds of millions of years watching greenery reduce to coal deposits just so one specific species would arise to drive automobiles for a few hundred years (and power cruise ships). Yes, as Nibley said of Abraham, who contemplated the insignificance of man, man is insignificant when you think about the millions and billions of years of life that existed before and that will exist after. This one short life is what he's got, and he's lived a comfortable one. But it seems to me it's been one of self-deception and beneath that veneer resides a terrible fear that it's all going to end. And, that fear is justified, it will all end. And how silly it is to fantasize about stretching out such unsustainability for such long periods of time let alone for eternity.

[I Have Questions]

I’m not saying that Nibley is the ultimate arbiter of how life should be lived. I don’t think that’s your position either. I think it’s common sense to take an approach that consumption of natural resources at a pace whereby they aren’t sustainable smacks of selfishness. A lack of concern for the generations that are to follow. Surely we should exist and subsist in a manner conducive to the greater good of both the population now, and the populations of the future. Now take Dan, as he’s extolling the position that we should take sustainability seriously. His travel lifestyle is consciously expending his own share of resources, plus the resources of his children, and his grandchildren. The more he flies and cruises extensively, the more he diminishes his grandchildren’s and great grandchildren’s futures. The problem is that he is suggesting people other than him solve the problem so that he doesn’t have to amend his own behaviour. All the better that he can get donors and travel companies to fund a lot of it.

Now I’m not familiar with Nibley, but I’d guess he’s nearer my take on things than the Afore’s. I suspect Farms used him for their own ends and not because they had Nibley’s interests at heart. Dan’s pulpit beating on being good stewards of the earth is counsel for other people. He has not intention of taking action to reduce his own personal carbon footprint. He’ll not be going vegetarian any time soon.

If he took his own counsel seriously, if he cared about his grandchildren’s future existence standards, he’d own an electric vehicle, be a vegetarian, travel on a plane only when absolutely necessary, and travel on a cruise ship…never. But no, he will simply spout off at other people instead of setting an example. He has, on occasion written about the benefits of the Word of Wisdom, does he strike you as an adherent of the Word of Wisdom? The Afore is able to preach without practicing many things. Stewardship of the earth is just one example.