Posted by:
Vahn421
(
)
Date: June 10, 2019 09:19PM
This post wasn't received so well over on the ex-Mormon Facebook group, so I'm going to we-write my idea here and see how well it is taken.
I left the church in 2008. I was an active poster here for a year or so and this community saved my life at the time. I remember the intellectual giants that assisted me during that phase. They mentally helped me out of my cognitive dissonance and provided resources for me when I needed them. I felt the community was very grounded and sane. I felt empathy from you all for taking it all so seriously in my past and for having studied the doctrine deeply. I felt you all understood me and could relate to the despair that came from finding out it was all a lie. ***I knew you all took at as seriously as I did, otherwise you wouldn't still be here posting.***
I recently joined the ex-Mormon groups on Facebook and have been extremely disappointed. Gone seem to be the days where the average ex-Mormon really, TRULY cared about the claims of the church. Sure, you'll get one occasionally that had the bigger picture in mind, but recently, being an ex-Mormon has become a *popular* trend, and when things become *popular,* its quality diminishes big time.
What I find now over on Facebook at least is mostly people who want to jab at and mock the church without any thoughtful substance. I don't see the same level of intellectual prowess over there that I saw here when I first came here years ago. I admit, I have not paid attention to exmormon.org for a while so I don't know if the same thing has happened here, but what I do know is that I miss those days, because I can't relate to this new breed of ex-Mormons who for the most part don't seem to want to talk about anything *deep* like the ex-Mormons I used to know did. Being ex-Mormon is popular, mocking Mormonism is an in-crowd thing to do... there's no longer any RISK with being socially out there against the church like there used to be. This means that the new breed of ex-Mormons doesn't have to sacrifice nearly as much socially to walk away. It wouldn't bother me so much if I could find a group of people large enough that still wanted to discuss deeper ideas.
Maybe I can find a home here instead of there, where only words can be exchanged instead of flashy, useless memes.
I don't know exactly what I'm fishing for, I just know that I feel kind of lonely lately without much to turn to, so I thought I would say hello to everyone here and see if the minds here are as sharp as they were ten years ago.