The following excerpt is from the show Silicon Valley about tech people who believe they are trying to do good for mankind with their inventions even if they will go to any lengths at all to "make it happen" as in getting rich. What struck me is how easily this same conversation from this script could be from a board meeting of the Big 15 or any other group of Mormons. From an article in the NYT about the show:

Two of the big players ask themselves: how much wrong can we do and still live with ourselves? The lengths come in their pretzel twisting justifications:

"Even if this is wrong, I suppose you could argue that it's wrong in the service of rightness," Jared suggests.

Richard chimes in with rising approval: "It's unethical in the defense of ethics. Unjust in the quest for justice."

Jared: " It's like stealing from your pimp to pay for your friend's appendectomy."

----End of laugh out loud excerpt from what I now call the "Pretzel Games" which is the extreme creativity needed for extreme justification of the clearly unjust. Not as funny if you think of the Big 15 saying the same thing.

I guess the good news for some of these tech types is that the need for the justification means there is a conscience down deep somewhere that needs a massage. Unlike the techies,however, for the Gerontocracy and most Mormons, the conscience has been replaced by a need to make a hypocritical display of virtue and the justification is for the benefit of their facade which is critical to their power game.





And . . . Why do I keep hearing the quote by Oaks----"It is wrong to criticize the leaders of the church even if the criticism is true," -- in my head like an ear worm?

Quite a few years ago I read a piece (In the NY Times, I vaguely recall) about a young manager who was pricing items for the production of his company's product. He found he could get them much cheaper in China, as opposed to a US source. As he thought it through, he realized that outsourcing it would probably involve child labor under horrid conditions.

But he also realized that obtaining these components at such a low price would yield him a big bonus, and he could send his own children to an expensive, exclusive summer program. He decided to outsource the production.

His rationale? "If I don't do it, somebody else probably will. So I might as well gain the benefit."

Classic example of, "Well, all the other kids are doing it." as a rationale.

I think this is great, D&D. Nine times out of ten, a person's material interests will dictate her behavior. The difference between a pure sociopath and a normal person with normal ethical concerns is that the latter spends a few minutes rationalizing what they want to do.

Some of the tech titans are great examples of that. Zuckerberg would sell (has sold) out his country for money, but he will go to the floor of Congress and claim that he is doing it in the name of a higher principle. Steve Jobs would (did) abandon his daughter because fatherhood might interfere with his dreams of greatness. There are many others.

The LDS leadership's notion of being "church broke," their reliance on the 2A to cover their sins, their refusal to apologize (per Oaks) are similar. The early Soviet revolutionaries thought the same way. Marxism is historically necessary, so any act in pursuit of that goal is ethical. Period.

These are all people of great moral flexibility, great demonstrated ability to rationalize the pursuit of their own interests at any expense.

I find the term "moral flexibility" to be a telling sign of the times. No more Moral vs Immoral? Its all on the spectrum now. May be a good thing?

I was reading an article on Roy Cohn by Dwight Garner and at the end it quoted from "Birds of America" on moral fastidiousness (which I think falls into the moral flexibility category) which fastidiousness the author said she found in "a 'lot of people around here. They were not good people. They were not kind . . . But they recycled their newspapers!' Interesting point, no? "Yes, we've come to a place where an invisible line has been crossed--or, rather, the line has been so smudged by people like Roy Cohn that it's no longer there."

And then this at the end of the article, "If you want to know the right thing to do," Rilke said, "simply do what is most difficult." True often enough?

I was blessed with immoral flexibility. Which came in very handy when the gear shift moved from the steering column to the center counsel.

And if it's a very small sports car, the immoral flexibility is even more vital? Wish I'd have known more about this immoral flexibility when I had my 52 Plymouth. Wasted youth.

It started in the Book of Mormon when Nephi justifies himself in murdering Laban.

Exactly. Nephi kills Laban. A bloody crime for the greater good! I was going to say "textbook example," but, it's odd to label a fictitious incident as that. No?

Made me think of Brigham wanting to put a javelin through a cheating wife and her lover as a way to still get them into the CK. How magnanimous of him! That is about as far as you can go to claim an end justifies a means.

To me, a couple of the most outrageous notions that "the end justifies the means" have to do with the crucifixion of Jesus. Supposing that He actually existed, the idea that He died to "to save us from our sins" is a crazy justification for getting murdered. But it works. Christians took the Roman *End* (murder) and turned it into their own *Means* (control) for starting up a religion for their own *End* (generally money). Jesus’ death is a way for religion to “cover its End,” so to speak.

And then there was Adam and Eve (as the story goes), Adam in particular who "sinned" and fell from grace with the *End* result (booby prize) that “Adam fell that men might be." It's beyond laughable. And Eve gets no credit--just Adam.

All of this works well for religion.

Now that you mention it, the "holy" Bible is rife with examples.

God. It's his M.O. Killing first borns. Drowning an entire planet. Sending plagues of frogs and death and rivers of blood. Is that really the only means an omnipotent omniscient god has at his disposal to achieve his Holy End? No other options?

And how pathetic to use the charlatan Joseph Smith to achieve His End of restoring His true church which he couldn't even manage to do Himself in two thousand years?

Yes. Works well for religion who need to be the exeption to the rules. The end frequently does justify their means---The end being them getting their celestial reward at any cost to anyone else.

I don't believe anything the Bible says, particularly about God. Even tho I sited those examples of Jesus' crucifixion and Adam and Eve getting evicted from the alleged garden, I believe none of it, especially all those bloody-river calamities they dreamed up while opium inconvenienced, and then said it was God's doing. Those dope-smoking geniuses sitting in their tents could have avoided a lot of death and destruction if they'd have only washed their hands. Poor God. Killing the first-born?? I ain't buyin' it. --No motive.

The best way to avoid being in the slush of *means* for any church or "charity," is to quit believing any of their holy writ. Don't even read their writ.

I might believe that angel who took the the golden plates back (more fiction) may have been Solomon Spalding from whom the the manuscript was stolen to begin with. Except there were no golden plates, either.

Correction:

“Cited,” not “sited.”