Harry Lime in "The Third Man" said, "In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace--and what did that produce? Cuckoo clocks."

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And more creative? More accomplished? More willing to fight against the odds? Hungrier?

No Lion goes out to hunt on a full stomach. No one ups their game when they think they've already won.

The worst of Mormonism isn't the falsity. The worst is the blandness and the exhortation to not only accept the blandness but to exalt it. Aspire to it.

ExMormons are a lot more than a cuckoo clock that rings on the hour. Mormons? I don't know about the clock, but Cuckoo for sure.

How long can you take Mormonism if you are on fire on the inside? In hindsight, wasn't your time bomb always ticking--long before you knew it. Mine was.

Sometimes scars are just dares.

In all fairness to the Swiss we also get chocolate and darn good knives.

Mormonism promotes stagnation.

Females from day one are second class citizens good only for breeding, domestic service and scapegoats for men who cannot control their urges.

Everyone is told how to think, groom, dress and with whom to interact.

Questioning is punished.

Individually is punished.

Bishop interviews strip a young person bare and expose their innermost thoughts and urges to judgment.

Families are held hostage and divorce from a non complying spouse seems a commandment.

Maybe once enough light is shown on their works and knowledge of their doctrine is widespread the whole thing will collapse. The truth setting millions free.

Consider a novel or movie about a man who goes through college and grad school, and becomes a CPA, gets married, raises a family in a nice subdivision. That might make for a satisfactory life, but as a movie it would be dull as dirt. No conflict, no character growth. Yaaawwwwn. First he's a bishop, now a stake president...

You need something exciting for a real story. Make him Al Capone's accountant or something.

Part of the time bomb is the age of the current leadership. Within ten years, many will be worm food.

The blandness was not always there. In my lifetime it went from a milenialistic church to the one you see now. That took away the excitement and motivation.
General conference was more exciting when you were trying to glean any info that gave you a clue to the second coming etc. Yes the local wards got a little wild with the sunday school classes but it was a lot mre fun.

Phil — what decade were you a teenager?

I grew up in the 1980s, when the millennial thinking was pretty dissipated already...

RG

60s Even the know your religion seminars harped about it. Thats why everybody strived for a two year storage and proudly put it on display.
It peaked in the late 70s then died in the 90's.

All the futuristic things we were supposed to be proud to know about while the other religions had no idea were coming have been abandoned. And the things from the past that made us a peculiar people are quickly being erased from the history books. What's left?

Speaking of more fun in Sunday School, this really happened in my ward when I was a teenager in the 60's.

The county sheriff barged into the gospel doctrine class one Sunday morning and "arrested" one of the men in the class and physically took him outside. The shouting and noise was heard all up and down the halls and most of us in other classes all came out to see what was going on.

Only later did we find out that it was all an object lesson in the class. It was a lesson on sustaining the law or something like that. I think the teacher of that class got into a bit of trouble for the disruption, but man, it sure spiced up the atmosphere in our ward for weeks!

When I was a kid in the fifties and sixties speakers in Sacrament meetings used to use props sometimes. One put ink in a glass of water and then a chemical to make it clear again to demonstrate forgiveness with true repentance. Another wrapped a strand of thread around his hands and then broke it easily. Next he wrapped a lot of thread around his hands and tried to break it and couldn't. This was to demonstrate how Satan gets a hold on us little by little. It may have been the same old indoctrination, but at least you could stay awake during it. And there were road shows, and hayrides and dancing in Mutual. Different church now.

I prefer my brainwashing with a side of fun.

My time bomb was always ticking, too. No matter how hard I tried to fit in in mormonism, it wasn't possible. I was the "good girl" while all my "friends" were out doing other things. I always knew I believed different than they did. When I finally met nonmormons (not Utah bred) at Thiokol, it changed my whole view of life, but not soon enough to marry one of them. I also had nonmormon friends who weren't just single guys.

"scapegoats for men who cannot control their urges." Yep. That was my assignment in life. They still think I failed. Of course, not him, ME. I'll never forget being told by a good friend it was my fault that he was cheating on me as I obviously wasn't giving him enough sex--he told me that. I remember as a young girl being taught that I had to keep my man happy. We learned it in mutual. We also had to keep them from doing anything sexually. I did a good job of that. ha ha ha ha ha ha Too funny.

I don't want a mormon life, but I sure didn't want what I got. People talk about things like this making you stronger. I don't want anything else to make me stronger. I'm just done with all that. I've had enough.

Now that I've been out for a few decades, I see mormonism like a dystopian future, except it's not in the future. It's happening now.

The renaissance Swiss gave us Leonhard Euler and a whole herd of Bernoullis, some of the greatest mathematicians in human history. Plus expensive watches.

And Swiss Air. I love flying with them. I love the country actually, especially Lake Geneva. I woke up one morning to hundreds of Swans just off the deck. They were so white and fluffy you could almost mistake them for a session in the Temple--except they were elegant.

And Brown Swiss cattle


(I was raised on a farm - but we had Black Angus cattle.)

What doesn't kill me maims me.

Laughing so hard. Why can I relate so much to that?

Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Harry Lime in "The Third Man" said, "In Italy for
> 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare,
> terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced
> Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the
> Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly
> love, they had 500 years of democracy and
> peace--and what did that produce? Cuckoo
> clocks."

Correlation isn't causation :)

Correlation isn't causation?

What? Are you trying to burst my bubble? :)

Just trying to make you smile on a Friday morning!

Did it work? :)

Made me smile. Partly because I remembered the correlation meetings the church used to have. Heard that word so much when I was still in ages ago. But they dropped it. Apparently correlation was causation for the wrong stuff?

Besides that I had too many chocolate chip cookies with my coffee and I am still laughing at Baura's Trigger comment.

I thought it was correlation that leached the fun out of everything - having the same lesson taught every week, in every ward and branch, all over the world. Lockstep correlation.

How is it different now?

I remember the old ward correlation meetings, it always seemed to be a meeting about other meetings......

>> In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace--and what did that produce? Cuckoo clocks."

My only thought is....why are we so compelled to "produce", and if we aren't producing, we feel aren't succeeding or happy or something to that effect?

What does all this production really give us? I'm an artist and I produce art regularly and I enjoy the art of others. I'm an engineer and I do mechanical things, designing, building, testing, and appreciate the gadgets I can use in my life. I get that part. And I get that adversity can build strength and promote progression.

But it seems to me that we have lost the democracy, peace, and brotherly love that so many of us would like to have in our lives. All we've produced hasn't brought us closer or made us happier. I feel like its there, but we've buried it so deep beneath the ever mounting pile of things we produce that we think will bring us happiness, that we can no longer find it, and we don't seem remember how to create it.

500 years of democracy, brotherly love, peace, and the call of a cuckoo clock sounds lovely to me.

Yes. The quote from the movie is misleading in many respects and still thought provoking for me, but I think brilliance will always surface and break through either the resistance or the mundane. I just wanted to point out how numbing Mormonism can be.

I will say I don't like it at the time it happens, but I do appreciate after the fact when something rocks my world a little now and then. Just so no one gets hurt.

Agreed.....brilliance always outshines the lunacy.

Now you have me thinking about mormonism...its a very oppressive, negative reinforcing system. Always several fronts of war with the adversary and his minions going on.

A bit of a parallel with...."under the Borgia's they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo daVinci and the Renaissance.

Yet what brilliance has it produced? At least under the Borgia's, even the oppressors had a great appreciation for the brilliance that came forth. mormonism doesn't even have or allow that. It's more like when Hitler started creating his art for the people and built museums for it. The art was basically illustration art showing people working and being good German citizens. No one saw it as brilliance, but praised it anyway. Numbing indeed!

"Yet what brilliance has it produced? "

Donny and Marie

/s

This thread happens to be the best thread within exmormon dot org of all time.

Yes, I have read them all, and yes, I have been placing the very finest ones into competition.

Done & Done each and both deserve the Nobel Prize for Exmormons, which, due to a complete lack of the Holy Ghost Effect, doesn't yet exist.

Go figure.

And thanks, Done & Done, and the rest of you amazing spiritual artistic anarchists.

I love your wonderful thread!

https://www.scribd.com/document/341261228/The-Human-Crisis-Albert-Camus-Lecture

Makes me so happy that you "got it," mormon nomore. It took me years after leaving the Mormons to realize they had left me with no personality whatsoever and years more to somehow get one. Whatever I am now at least it's the real me this time.

But especially thanks for the link. I cannot tell you how much I loved reading those words by Albert Camus. So relevant today or perhaps even more so than when were when they were first spoken. His unique perspective and summary of, well, life, is brilliant and eye opening.

I remember the 70's as an exciting time in the church as people talked about how the Second Coming would be here soon, how we'd go to Missouri and build that wonderful Zion, and how fantastic the Millenium was going to be. I also heard about the two year food storage and keeping plenty of ammunition around to shoot off hungry invaders with. By the mid-Eighties, though, everything was bland. I think that Reagan and Reaganomics helped to kill the Millennial spirit. Everybody was more into getting rich and having a great mortal life with plenty of luxuries. Those who didn't prosper were supposed to have deserved it. At least they didn't talk about shooting hungry people anymore.

Maybe that's why they drum up so much false excitement over their doddering leaders. Nothing's really happening. The money keeps pouring in, and all is swell. But there's a crack in the dam. Wages are getting severely pinched. No money for tithing, in many cases.

This is an extraordinary thread. I believe this to be a good summary of Mormonism:
"The worst of Mormonism isn't the falsity. The worst is the blandness and the exhortation to not only accept the blandness but to exalt it. Aspire to it."

The boredom and the monotony of the meetings was certainly a significant catalyst in leaving. One poster once wrote: "I was a Mormon for 30 years and I just lived the same year over and over."

I am fortunate to be involved with some superb musicians. One toured with the Four Seasons, Chubby Checker, etc. Another was a soloist at Carnegie Hall. My band's vocalist is the current Ms Senior Tennessee who is a talented singer. I learn more about passion and from folks like these than any kind of passion I ever experienced in Mormonism. Mormonism generates the mindset of what is the minimum and not seeking the equivalent of finding the music inside the notes.

"The boredom and the monotony of the meetings was certainly a significant catalyst in leaving."

Such drudgery to go to church. Doing your duty. Being obedient. Having the life sucked right out of you. The same testimony over and over.

On Sundays even now I still remember sometimes that wonderful feeling of church finally being over, pushing the doors open, and walking out into the sunshine, into the light. Feeling human again.

troops in Europe, including some who fought in the wars fomented by the Borgias. The pope's Swiss guards are the vestige of those mercenary units. Ulrich Zwingli, father of the reformation in German-speaking Switzerland, hated the mercenary traffic, which he thought was draining the young manpower of the country. It was a major reason he broke with Rome. Switzerland thereafter endured a number of religion-inspired civil wars, the last of which occurred in the 19th Century.

Five-hundred-years-of-peace?-Hardly-ly yrs,

S