For every action there is a reaction. In a culture where over-conformity abounds, then under-conformity would be its polarizing opposite. This has been documented in police manuals studying the crime rates of Ogden, Utah when it was in the highest ten crime ridden cities of the United States, by social scientists. Aside of the crime stats, there is also an underlying counter-culture to Mormonism itself that is strong and growing.

"Present day Utah is still strongly LDS, and the Churches on every block, the Salt Lake Temple, and the LDS influence in government serves as a constant reminder of this. However, Newton’s third law doesn’t only apply to physics, but also to cultural studies: every action has it equal and opposite reaction. With 62.8 percent of Utahns identifying as LDS, there is bound to be an extremely strong counterculture.

Counterculture is defined as a group of people whose values, norms, and behavior clash with those of the prevalent culture. Mormonism is the obvious prevalent culture, and with the history of Utah, it is easy to see why it is. According to a study done by UCL, rebellion might be hard-wired into our brains. In this study, they asked people to list 20 songs that they liked, then told them what music critics thought of the song, and were asked again what they thought about the music. The people that conformed to the critics thoughts had more grey matter in their lateral orbitofrontal cortex than the people who stuck with their original opinions. This goes to show that rebellion just might be a biological issue. Rebellion and non-conformity are seen in all places in all different times in history; from Martin Luther’s Catholic reformation to the anti-war protests during the 60s, it’s strongly apparent throughout our history books.

Although Mormon rebellion in Utah isn’t as apparent, it still very much exists. If it’s true that non-conformity is hardwired into us, it’s easy to see how such a strong and overbearing culture in an area would cause for people to rebel. Although Mormonism is a relatively new religion, it still has generations of angst that has been brewing over the years. This would be an explanation as to how Utah has such a strong and distinct underground counterculture."

https://www.youthvoices.live/2018/02/21/understanding-how-counter-culture-arose-in-utah/

As if conformity is a virtue. Well, it is to conformists.

Maybe it's not that countercultures develop in rebellion to the dominant culture but rather that the dominant culture creates exclusion. "You're not conforming, so you're not one of us."

And maybe more grey matter in their lateral orbitofrontal cortex is a defect that makes people more sheeplike. "Oh, my musical tastes suck? Okay, I guess I was wrong, Mr. Self-proclaimed Authority."

The UCL test results came to its tiny bit of prominence in a Daily Mail Online article in 2012, possibly because the results were basically clickbait: "Oh, yer a rebel 'cuz yer lateral orbitofrontal cortex is a wee bit small !!"

If you were a social engineer in the pay of the prevailing culture, you'd most likely advise your paymasters to test lateral orbitofrontal cortices and to eliminate any of those who didn't have a fully grown "sheep" lateral orbitofrontal cortex.

Not having any familiarity with even my own lateral orbitofrontal cortex, I asked Google to give me a dumbed down explanation regarding what is known of this segment of the brain. Here's where Google led me:

"Adaptive behavior requires integrating prior with current information to anticipate upcoming events. Brain structures related to this computation should bring relevant signals from the recent past into the present. Here we report that rats can integrate the most recent prior information with sensory information, thereby improving behavior on a perceptual decision-making task with outcome-dependent past trial history. We find that anticipatory signals in the orbitofrontal cortex about upcoming choice increase over time and are even present before stimulus onset. These neuronal signals also represent the stimulus and relevant second-order combinations of past state variables. The encoding of choice, stimulus and second-order past state variables resides, up to movement onset, in overlapping populations. The neuronal representation of choice before stimulus onset and its build-up once the stimulus is presented suggest that orbitofrontal cortex plays a role in transforming immediate prior and stimulus information into choices using a compact state-space representation."
--https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14823

Now what the heck would the Daily Mail make out of that? I'm going to have to admit that their last sentence-conclusion

If the UCL study cited in the 2012 Daily Mail Online article is of any real import (based on a study of 20 people), there doesn't seem to be any such indication. Here's the link to that article: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2103859/Are-hard-wired-rebellious-How-brain-controls-fit-crowd.html#comments (By the way, UCL is University College London.)

Also, the thrust of the OP's cited source is that Mormonism creates "a special angst" and that "This would be an explanation as to how Utah has such a strong and distinct underground counterculture." Some angst is special and the rest of the angst aren't?

But the correlation I'd like to take away from this is that people with fully developed lateral orbitofrontal cortices 'fail' to develop herd mentality, and will opt out of herd behavior when they feel there is a reason to do so. It might be that a fully developed lateral orbitofrontal cortex simply creates a compliant herd animal.

Anyway, how small is YOUR lateral orbitofrontal cortex? I have standards, you know.

"Adaptive behavior requires integrating prior with current information to anticipate upcoming events."

Which could manifest as, "I know from previous experience I'll be treated badly if I don't conform."

Maybe it's more about one's willingness and ability to take the crap that will come their non-conforming way — a higher threshold of psychological/emotional pain — in order to think/behave/live the way they like.

Conforming may also simply be lying. How many bishops have been told exactly what they wanted to hear in a worthiness interview? How many times did students from BYU leave campus, behave in multiple ways that defied the honor code, return to campus and deny any sexual activity, alcohol consumption, or speaking ill of the Lord's anointed? Getting kicked out of the only university your parents will pay tuition for may be a strong motivation to appear to conform.

One may also tell another that they are right about their judgments in musical taste to avoid confrontation but do they actually change their listening habits? That would be quite difficult to confirm.

The conformist LDS culture of the morridor makes it so easy to rebel. When something as simple as wearing a colored shirt on Sunday is seen as an act of rebellion almost any expression of individuality is forbidden.

For teens, having more than one earring, getting a tattoo or having a beer automatically marks you as rebellious.

When I was a Mormon, it was almost too easy to be a rebel.

Shinehah is right, it's so easy to be a rebel in Utah. When I want to really piss people off in Utah I mow the front lawn shirtless on Sunday with a beer in one hand. To get the same reaction anywhere else I'd have to get face tattoos and sell heroin to elementary school kids.

What makes it even more fun is how passive-aggressive Utah Mormons are. They won't come out and tell you how they feel - you're supposed to figure it out from changes in their behavior. Just pretend to be oblivious and you piss them off all over again.

For real. I wore a genuine leather Native American Indian headband one day in junior high (this was somewhere in the Morridor,) that was outright lovely. White leather with a sapphire blue jewel set in the middle.

Because it was different, I was ordered to remove it at once. It wasn't making a statement other than a fashion statement IMO. It came from a tribe up in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada where an antique dealer had given it to me as a souvenir the summer before when our family passed through on a vacation.

It was very tasteful. It possibly looked like a hippy symbol or something tantamount to the 60's scene.. but it wasn't.

I wore a pair of ear cuffs (small and tasteful) in the MTC because I did not have pierced ears and wanted to look a bit more dressed-up for sacrament meetings. Nobody said a word but I was "sent to the authorities" and asked to explain myself. I explained that I did not have pierced ears, clip earring hurt to wear, and I wanted to be more dressy for sacrament. The white shirts looked puzzled but said it was okay to keep wearing my ear cuffs as I was doing so in the right spirit. Had I been wearing them to be rebellious I guess I'd have been in real trouble. Go figure.

I had to look up ear cuffs to see what you were talking about. They sound dressy, as if they needed any explaining lol.

Once in a while, I shop at Whole Foods (the only place I can find Dr Bronner's.) I park my F-350 at the EV charging station, put my MAGA hat on, tune in Rush Limbaugh on my earbuds, and, of course, carry concealed.

If you had any balls, you'd open carry, open container, and wear a cross necklace. Amateur.

All you have to do to be considered a rebel in Utah Mormon culture is be yourself. Takes very little effort other than having personal integrity and being autogenetic. That will do the trick.

I never "countered" anything when I lived there. I just did what I wanted.

You need to understand Ogden history, before you associate it with the rest of Utah. Ogden wasn't your typical Utah, pioneer settled town. Ogden exploded with the Transcontinental railroad.
Union Pacific located there and brought in tens of thousands of outside workers, not LDS. Many Chinese.Probably the largest city of a Gentile population in Utah at the time. Ogden has always been a blue collar town with blue collar vices. They had an underground tunnel system, during prohibition, that ran booze and hookers to other buildings on other blocks. Most of the rebellion comes, not from mormon kids turning their backs on their family religion, but from never-mos. Ogden was written off as a necessary evil and didn't receive the heavy handed crackdown by politicians and police, that such behavior would have received in SLC or Provo a hundred years ago.Gangs grew and police didn't care so much about crime in "that town" Outside of Moab and Park City, Ogden is probably the most more like other US cities than Utah cities.

My never Mo grandfather spent his career on the railroad.. Utah was the last state he was assigned to - and lived in Corinne, Brigham City, and last Ogden respectively until he died.

I have several bones to pick. First, the gratuitous insult hurled at Ogden. Tenth most crime ridden city? Yeah right. Those sorts of statistics are always highly dependent on when the measuring is done and what is being measured.

Utah has a reputation for stock fraud, especially penny stock fraud. I bet that's not centered in Ogden. It has lots of affinity-fraud. Lots of misleading advertising and sales of "nutritional supplements" that Orrin H spent a career defending (and making money off of). Powdered dog pancreas supplement comes out of Logan, not Ogden. Utah County is rife with that sort of nonsense too.

What about shady MLMs, or door-to-door sales companies with unsavory reputations?

Utah is rife with various sorts of white collar crime, and it is not coming out of Ogden, and it is hardly to be considered a counter-culture to Mormonism, since, IMHO, Mormonism is basically a white-collar MLM fraud itself.

Second bone: OK, Mormonism is the culture. Why would you consider crime to be the counter-culture?

I don't buy the premise. There is not a "prevailing" counter-culture. There are a number of counter cultures. Yes, there is a rebellious youth culture. There is also a vibrant arts culture. Downtown SLC has outstanding live performance venues (Rose Wager (2 theaters) Capitol Theater, Eccles Theater (2 venues), Abravanel Hall, Vivint Arena, SLAC, Pioneer Theater Co, Kingsbury Hall, Maverick Arena, Hale Community Theater. There are four professional modern dance companies (don't know if that is still true, but back in the 1990s, the only US city that had more than that was NYC). There are 4, count 'em, 4 public radio stations (KUER, KRCL, KPCW/KCPW, KBYU). KPCW and KRCL have fanatical followings. KUER is one of the most highly funded public radio stations in the US. Doug Fabrizio at KUER has minor rock star status in SLC.

We have the internationally recognized Gina Bachauer piano competition. Utah has the world famous Sundance Film Festival. There are 7 permanent "art house" movie screens in SLC, and several of the multiplexes now carry the occasional indie/art house film. We have one of the finest environmental authors in the world in Terry Tempest Williams (Utah Mormon born and raised). Edward Abbey (Desert Solitaire, The Monkeywrench Gang) lived and wrote in Utah. Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten) now lives in Utah and is a member of SLCUU church.

Salt Lake is know nationally as a very gay-friendly city. The court case that finally blew open the gates for the approval of same-sex marriage was a Utah case - Herbert v Kitchen. Derek Kitchen, of that case, is now on the SLC council. The current mayor of SLC is gay. The next one likely will be.

I submit that all of that and more is all part of the Utah counter culture. I live right in the heart of downtown SLC (also reported to be dangerous, also nonsense). I walk through City Creek Center probably 3 times a week on average, and I almost never interact with actual Mormons, except perhaps the occasional business transaction. I live entirely within the counterculture, even here within sight of Temple Square. Actually, I think that is easier to do downtown.

"What about shady MLMs, or door-to-door sales companies with unsavory reputations?

Utah is rife with various sorts of white collar crime, and it is not coming out of Ogden, and it is hardly to be considered a counter-culture to Mormonism, since, IMHO, Mormonism is basically a white-collar MLM fraud itself."

Yeah, but you're not making the distinction between typical crime and Utah, state sponsored crimes. Mormonism is a combination of MLM and a Ponzi scheme. But, again, it's state sanctioned.

That Ogden was mentioned at all in the OP was from the polarizing effect between over and under conformists, which does relate to the subject of the counter-culture prevalent in Utah.

It is not the subject matter of the OP however. The counter-culture is. And that is state wide.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2019 01:56PM by Amyjo.

On the scale measuring conformity, which you posit measures "over" and "under" conformity, is there a means to identify the point when under-conformity becomes non-conformity?

And likewise, doesn't taking "over conformity" beyond a certain point constitute another form of non-conformity?

I can see where there has to be some give and take in what constitutes 'conformity', but saying 'under-conformity and over-conformity' could be or need to be measured comes across as ludicrous, and I don't mean the rapper, or to be non-conformist, the wrapper.

rocomop Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> On the scale measuring conformity, which you posit
> measures "over" and "under" conformity, is there a
> means to identify the point when under-conformity
> becomes non-conformity?

In Utah that's easy. Just compare to the Mormon standards where the community norms rule.

>
> And likewise, doesn't taking "over conformity"
> beyond a certain point constitute another form of
> non-conformity?

No. It means what it means. People who are robots. Who live by the letter of the law to the nth degree.

>
> I can see where there has to be some give and take
> in what constitutes 'conformity', but saying
> 'under-conformity and over-conformity' could be or
> need to be measured comes across as ludicrous, and
> I don't mean the rapper, or to be non-conformist,
> the wrapper.


I don't know how it becomes measured like you say it does. It's observed by social scientists and studied and written on. In the case I was referring to it was a report of a study included in a police manual on crime statistics and demographics for Ogden which at that time in the mid to late 1970's was one of the highest crime ridden cities in the United States for violent crime.

I moved from Ogden to Silicon Valley my senior year of high school and worked for a top ten police department during my senior year. I read it from one of their police manuals, and it only confirmed what I had just moved away from.

My next-door-neighbor in Ogden had recently been arrested for stabbing the night clerk at the Ben Lomond Hotel in downtown Ogden something like 39 times for a few dollars. The same creep had burglarized my mom's house after I'd moved away.

Another boy I'd went to high school with in Ogden had survived a vicious attack where his mom and their business workers were murdered in their stereo business on Washington Blvd. Drano had been poured down their throats to murder them with, and pens driven through their ears etc. My classmate survived but barely.

Just violent, vicious stupid senseless things like that during the 70's. Then there was the racial violence and segregation in the high schools - my high school was just moving beyond years and decades of racial segregation and violence in its hallways when I went there. You couldn't even go to certain inner city neighborhoods without keeping your windows locked and not stopping for fear of being attacked. It isn't like that anymore, it's totally different when visiting Ogden. The ghettos aren't there like they used to be - the downtown area has been gentrified and turned into a mostly historic district.

When I lived there Satanic worshipers was a sub-culture. It may still be but may be more underground. There was a satanic house of worship where it was known in the downtown area. I met some people who were involved with the occult when I lived there as a teenager. It scared me because I wanted nothing to do with them. They were creepy. My TBM brother who was a family therapist adopted several children from Utah whose parents were Satanic devil worshipers. He said it is very common in Utah and that many of Utah's foster children come from such homes. Sad.

That's another sub-culture of the polarizing effects of the Mormon over-conformity v. under-conformity IMO. The kids from those homes were also suffering severe neglect and child abuse.

I didn't say crime was the counter-culture to Mormonism. What I said was that there is a polarizing effect between over-conformity and that is under-conformity in communities such as Mormon populations where over-conformists abound, to balance the tension between extremes - leading to the polarization of opposites.

That Ogden was in the top ten crime ridden cities was a statistic of the late 1970's. I don't know what it is now, but it was back then. When I worked for a police department in Silicon Valley, Ogden, Utah was profiled in its police manual for the reasons I cited above ie, polarization of over & under conformity leading to higher than average crime rates. And yes, in the 1970's Ogden was a ringleader in violent crime in the United States. I think only Berkeley and Oakland, California was higher at the time.

I don't believe it is as much now. Salt Lake's crime rate is higher than Ogden's is at the moment, but then it is a larger and more urban city. Although they've both grown so much over the past 2-3 decades that what lies between in terms of suburbs is more like one rolling metropolis.

I think the SLC Chamber of Commerce could use a guy of your knowledge and fervor.

Er, that "powdered dog pancreas supplement"--is it a bona fide treatment, or quackery? And is that supplement made FOR dog pancreases, or FROM dogs' pancreases? Just wondering...

Doesn't matter. Thanks to Orrin Hatch, the unregulated supplement industry can package 100% sawdust and call it a beneficial supplement for whatever ails you. Utah's supplement industry rivals the Medellin cartel.

If that were the case it would and should be facing unprecedented lawsuits for punitive damages and compensation for its victims.

Certainly, if an "unregulated supplement" contained something that was proven to cause harm/damage to a purchaser, there would be ample basis for such lawsuits as you mention, but the point writer stillanon refers to is that the vast majority of unregulated supplements" do no harm", but also have no benefit(s). They hint at being effective for this or that malady and say "studies have shown...", etc. But they are basically just modern day Snake Oil.

Senator Hatch, during his incumbency, helped keep these "unregulated supplement manufacturers" safe from governmental busybodies who wanted truth in advertising, rather than fairytales in advertising. The Snake Oil companies rewarded his campaign coffers richly.

No Amyjo, that is the case. And no, they can't sue. Pompous Windbag summed it up nicely. Common sense laws and common decency laws don't apply in Utah.

What law says a person cannot sue if they've been harmed from buying a bogus over-the-counter homeopathic drug?

Utahns aren't exempt from tort law.

No, Orrin Hatch did not pass a law that says manufacturers of useless supplements cannot be sued if they cause harm.

The typical bottle of Orrin Hatch-protected cure-all does no harm, along with doing nothing curative. So no harm, no lawsuit.

At worst, you might overdose on something that's nominally safe, but I'm certain the labeling provided sufficient warning so that it would serve as an effective defense.

Amyjo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What law says a person cannot sue if they've been
> harmed from buying a bogus over-the-counter
> homeopathic drug?
>
> Utahns aren't exempt from tort law.

Homeopathic medicine doesn't harm people, it just doesn't do any good either.

The real question is why the USA needs Xanax, Cocaine, Cannabis, Ritalin etc in order to escape from itself.

I grew up in old Ogden and it sucks! The trouble is that they built too many shanty houses too close together. And too many poor people everywhere a whole city full of them, yikes! (and too many from california) I lived next door to drug dealers and hookers, call girls across the street. Lots of drunk people everywhere. But the city was decent before ms13 or o13 started rabble rousing around town in the 90s. That's when it got really bad. But back in the 80's it was a decent town, you didn't have to lock your car. And it was pretty safe but all the old timers who built Ogden died, and then they turned their houses into rentals. And the city took a turn for the worst. Ogden high always has the worst test scores for the state even worse and Ben Lomand is horrible as well. So if you have kids don't live in Ogden.

But I've heard that it's got a lot safer lately, it's not as crazy as it was 20 years ago.

It was pretty crazy when I lived there in the 70's. Good to hear it's gotten somewhat better since then. My mum and grandmum are buried there, and gramps too. My great great grandpa from Wales is buried in the old Ogden cemetery as one of the first settlers to Ogden. He was sent there by Brigham Young when he arrived in Salt Lake City. He was Ogden's first tailor. :)

Speaking of the opioid crisis, Utah is near the top of the list nationally in terms of its affected youth and population.

Women rank at or near the top for depression and use/abuse of legal prescription narcotics for pain. Many of the opioid addicts started on prescription drugs then turned to street drugs - and we're talking in Utah ie, including among the Mormon population.

Perfectionism comes with a high price apparently.

Stevo and Heroin Bob have you all beat!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcFm96WxAZY