The “follow the Prophet” mantra leaves no room for dissent. I had a family member say how the new changes really shook her, but she was going to put her personal feelings aside and just follow the Prophet because he knows best.

This whole system is so unhealthy. I get deeply uncomfortable when people start talking about this topic.

Do what I tell you!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/2018 05:02PM by elderolddog.

Yeah, and EOD tips his caddies well, too.

But they are well trained in handling his iron rod.

There is no shame in golfers exulting in their use of their short irons! I have a special grip on my 65 degree iron and I love it!

But thankfully you don't have to follow suit.

I sooo agree. It is an ongoing stresser with me as I watch close family members ignore whatever the MormonCult tells them to ignore....facts and evidence do not hold a candle to what the dear leader admonishes them to do.

What is created is a gulf miles and miles wide between myself and them on life in general; a gulf that is deep and corrosive as it leaves nothing in common as everything on their agenda in life has to be in alliance with what the cult commands.

Trying to find common ground is like looking for that proverbial needle in a haystack. My whole body, not just my eyes, ache from trying.

Detach as best you can with your dignity intact.

That's something they cannot take from you is your self-respect and your dignity. Walk away with your head held high, and keep your wits about you.

Stay humble.

God may have led our forebears into Mormonism. For whatever reason he gave us the direction and insight to lead us out of there. I give thanks for that, if nothing else. He loves us too much to leave us in the underbelly of a cult.

It just occurred to me that my parents never said to us, "Do it because I said so." They always explained why. I always explained to my children, too. Sometimes, they would get impatient with me, but I kept on explaining, or "over-explaining." Now, I see my children over-explaining to their children, and I see it working!

Kids need to feel that they deserve an explanation. They are more than robots or slaves.

There's a reason they need to change their behavior. Helpful adults aren't just blowing off steam, but are really on the kids' side.

Along with this, the positive consequences of their behavior is discussed. Kids learn that they have the power to make a real difference.

I gave my children as much control over their lives as possible. Most often, I would give them choices, and not just orders. I let them figure out how to do things on their own, trial and error. I was very lenient (too lenient, the Mormon told me.)

This took more dialog and communication than Mormons would like, but by having motivation and purpose, my children accomplished more in the long run

Sorry to ramble. My point is that the Mormons criticized me for this! They always felt it was a waste of time to debate with children and other "underlings," and everyone should immediately and quickly complete a task, and to perfection. The Mormon church is not a good model for how to raise a family, or for how to deal with business employees.

Blind obedience takes away people's self-respect. If you don't respect them, they won't respect you as a leader. All the janitors are leaving!

So well said.

"Because I said so," is one of the ugliest, most dangerous phrases in the English language, or in any language. It is both an insult and a denial of information and understanding.

My mother adhered to that authoritarian style of parenting. I was precisely the wrong child for her. According to family legend, my first word was not "ma-ma" or "da-da." It was "NO!" Since both parents and both of my grandmothers related this to me, I have no reason to doubt it.

She would bark out an order, and I would give her a bunch of lip, and we would fight endlessly. At times when I wanted to be left alone to read, she would try to take my book away. I would finally get tired of the repeated interruptions. I found a place to hide, way up on a shelf that my father built for storage. I could crawl behind some of the big storage boxes, push the boxes back together so she couldn't see me, and just stay there for hours. There was a hole near the ceiling that provided air and light. When she hollered for me, I stayed quiet as a mouse. Never, to her dying day, did she ever know where I disappeared to.

She was an officer the the Army during WWII, and I thought that was where she got into the business of giving orders and expecting compliance, but her mother and sisters told me over the years that she was always "bossy."

It stung a bit on what turned out to be our final visit (and we both knew it would be) that she made the nasty comment of "You always DID have all the answers!" Just because I always had any number of ways to refute whatever she said.

My father, who was the only person who could rein her in to any extent, died when I was 15. The next 3 years were HELL. I applied to a university that was a 3-hour drive from our house, spent those years away from home, loving every minute of it.

I was an entirely different type of parent, and I'm closer to my kids than she ever was to me. As long as I was at least 1,000 miles away from her, we got along reasonably well, if you don't count that final visit.

It was my father and my grandmothers who taught me about nurturing. My mother didn't have a clue.

It's like watching a classroom full of children waiting for the teacher to give the "Simon says" cue and then get little star stickers on their forehead as a reward for slavishly following the authority figure's official "Simon says" instructions.

Sometimes I ask a Mormon about the cult-like submission and they'll give the standard BS about "free agency" and cite that quote about learning "correct principles" and governing themselves. But when questioned further, it becomes obvious that they 100% rely on the authorities to tell them how to exercise their free agency, and whether they are governing themselves correctly according to correct principles.

In other words, they think that the only correct way to exercise "free agency" is to do exactly what the leaders tell them to do and the only correct way to govern yourself according to correct principles is...you guessed it...to think and do exactly what the leaders tell them to think and do.

Sad to see people reduced to the level of programmed robots and trained animals.

They usually explain why there's a need for following instructions and most kids understand that as they accept rewards for following through with their work and learning.

I'm trying to figure out where you got the idea that I was attacking all teachers as being petty dictators.

With regard to the topic of blind obedience in Mormonism, it should be clear that what may be appropriate for schoolchildren ceases to be appropriate when it continues into adulthood. At some point, the student needs to grow up and learn how to discern between pursuing activities that are inherently worthwhile versus doing things solely to get cheap praise for blindly submitting to authority. If students never learn to think for themselves and learn for themselves the value of applying themselves to complete worthwhile tasks, then regardless of having the best of intentions, their teachers have failed to truly communicate anything of importance.

That said, I do believe that the "Simon Says" game is a technique for teaching mindless submission to authority. And the shiny star stickers on foreheads as a reward for obedience is something that children should grow out of by around age 7 or 8.

"Simon Says" is used to teach listening skills, something with which young children need a lot of practice. It's also used as a break from lessons.

in the very early elementary school grades. But if it's overdone and continues into higher grades, I think it really becomes a conditioned-response technique.

But I don't want this to get into a debate about games used in early childhood education. That wasn't the point of my comment. I was just making an analogy to adult Mormons essentially playing a version of "Simon Says" with the church leaders in the role of the teacher. It should be obvious that adult Mormons should be beyond that kind of slavish follow-the-leader attitude. It's cute when little kids are following along with the teacher and following along in a Simon Says game. Can even be fun. It's tragic if they haven't moved past being the child in a kind of teacher-child student relationship when they're adults.

I like your points. Perhaps Simon Says should come with a disclaimer reminding kids how important it actually is to know why you are doing what you are going to do and have it be your own choice.

Unless of course you are in a car hanging over the edge of a cliff and the police and firemen are instructing you on what to do step by step as you try to extricate yourself. Then it is best to do as Simon Says.

Even if they are too young to go it alone, no kid is too young to be told why we look both ways. I wish someone would tell that to the squirrels on my street.

If you are going to play "Simon Says" in line with how the Correlation program works then you don't ever use the word "why" because we are conditioned to obey and to not ask questions that aren't assigned for us to ask.

Thanks for keeping us on the straight and narrow.

Where I am at in my maturity of living life is a result of how the beloved Correlation program has conditioned me to think that life is just one big exercise in playing "Simon Says". The most incredibly mature experience possible for a true believer is to be given an instruction and then to obey without any worries about analyzing or thinking about the instruction in-depth. Simon Says. I do. And that's basically the boundary on any possible emotional and intellectual maturity development in life. Its quite a wondrous way of growing into someday being an omniscient resurrected being like my childhood hero Angel Moroni.

He's the great Nephite prophet-historian-General who pretty much knew anything/everything about the Nephite civilization and the future of the Lamanite descendants, them being kept separate from all other nations until the coming of Columbus, and then he passed on into becoming a mighty omniscient resurrected being at the time he had all those visits with Joseph Smith which left us with the legacy beliefs we have in Church about the origins of all or almost all Native Americans. There are some fierce anti-Moroni so-called apologists at BYU and elsewhere who try to introduce other theories. But we know they are absurd alternatives because they must start off with the hypothesis that Moroni was a very clueless (and/or deceitful) omniscient resurrected being who really distorted the history of the Nephites/Lamanites.

However we don't talk about the anti-Moronis in Church because that involves deep thinking. Instead we just focus on "Simon Says" type activities so we can learn to be much more obedient and never distracted by thinking/analysis activities.

One of the best posts ever on RFM, and I've been around for quite awhile. And yes, this thinking still creeps into our psyche's occasionally. Luckily, even when I don't recognize it, I have friends who will say, "that's your Mormon conditioning talking."

The most recent 10-day social media fast was such an exercise in Simon Says. There was no thinking involved and in fact, no long-term learning involved. There actually could have been a good point to it, but no follow up. Just people counting the days until Simon said "ok, you can log in now." Incredible how we just turned over our brains because it was so much easier than thinking.

There is a German name for this concept: Führerprinzip.

"The ideology of the Führerprinzip sees each organization as a hierarchy of leaders, where every leader (Führer, in German) has absolute responsibility in his own area, demands absolute obedience from those below him and answers only to his superiors."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerprinzip

Oh boy, do you remember how we received revelations for our area of responsibility and our obligation to follow leaders within the realm of their responsibility. OMG!

I still struggle with it sometimes even though I have been out a long time.

I struggle to think and be critical. Especially towards people higher up in hierarchy. I was taught, no brainwashed into obedience. Whenever I'd say 'I want' My mother would answer with: you have nothing to want!!

I practice my critical thinking but it takes real effort. And I blame that stupid cult.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/23/2018 04:43AM by Becca.