r/t the thread about being forced;

We agree that Joe was diabolical, devious in his goals, methods, but what was at the root of his methods, his objectives?

I agree he was over-sexed as compared to his peers, but that doesn't explain everything.

we see today in the headlines about the sexual predilections of the rich & famous, also of the extremes of perversions of others....

What's at the root of extremes of sexually driven individuals (mostly men?) and diabolical criminals such as Ted Bundy?

maybe, just maybe there is a Satan (jk!)

"Genius" is just about being in the right place at the right time, which is a product of luck.

Smith just happened to be the right fit for his community of simple farmers, people he could dupe into following his made-up religion, and his innate ability to make up compelling stories was enough to create a movement in those circumstances. As the religion grew, I think it went to his head--thus the increasingly absurd commandments: "Believe in this book that an angel gave me"; "Invest your money in my bank"; "Consecrate everything you have to this church"; "Give me your wives and daughters." I've wondered before what would have happened if the Smiths had not been killed in Carthage. As his demands got more and more ridiculous, would people have started to leave the church in larger numbers? Would the movement have imploded like the majority of millennarian churches in the 19th century? Perhaps Smith's death was the best thing that could have happened to the church at that time, as far as its future growth was concerned.

> "Genius" is just about being in the right place at
> the right time, which is a product of luck.

Sometimes genius is more than that, but you are right that a lot of people who appear to have been geniuses were actually merely fortunate. And I think you are also correct to identify JS as one of the latter. The same is true, incidentally, of BY.

I also agree about the timing of JS's death. If that had not happened, BY would never have had the chance to evince his organizational "genius" and to relocate the Saints to Utah. The vast majority of us would not have been born into the LDS church.

God works in mysterious ways: so too the vagaries of a random universe.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> God works in mysterious ways: so too the vagaries
> of a random universe.

IKR?

How about the discovery of The Tree of Life in New York State!

http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/cairo-fossil-forest-07933.html

What are the odds? I thought Eden was in Missouri?

How do you know BY’s coup was an accident? Maybe it was orchestrated. He had a way of making enemies go away. Birds of a feather and all that.

I'm not sure what this means. Are you suggesting BY had a role in Joseph's death? Is there someone else, a potential successor, who died in suspicious circumstances?

Unless you can indicate who the victim might have been, Occam's Razor would militate in favor of the simpler explanation: sheer power politics.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> I'm not sure what this means.

Something that you can be correct about! enjoy it.

> Are you suggesting
> BY had a role in Joseph's death? Is there someone
> else, a potential successor, who died in
> suspicious circumstances?
>
> Unless you can indicate who the victim might have
> been, Occam's Razor would militate in favor of the
> simpler explanation: sheer power politics.


Don't worry. You forfeited your chance to be any kind of serious skeptic ....or insightful analyst LONG, LONG, LONG ago for anyone who actually pays attention.

Wow. That really hurts.

I'm in tears.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/24/2019 03:34AM by Lot's Wife.

fwiw- Einstein wasn't born in particularly favorable circumstances, but his Genius came to the surface regardless...

I disagree.

Einstein was born in a middle-class family, the son of an engineer, and had close relatives who worked with modern electronics. He was educated in good schools, technological schools that excelled in the teaching of math; and his first job was in a patent office working on the practical applications of cutting-edge science and mathematics.

More importantly, he was born in a rich intellectual milieu. He benefited from a rich and immediate mathematical heritage: Newton, Faraday, Gauss, many others, and most importantly James Clerk Maxwell. When, for instance, someone said Einstein stood on the shoulders of Newton, he retorted that he actually stood on Maxwell's shoulders. Without these predecessors, Einstein's work would have been impossible.

If Einstein had been born in a different time or place, he would never have achieved the prominence he did. Compare, for instance, the Indian Srinivasa Ramanujan, who was a contemporary. He too benefited from European advances, lived in a relatively orderly country, learned English, and had a solid understanding of math. So by human standards, he was far more fortunate than most. But he had to work out much of his own math, and when recognized and helped by a Cambridge academic he found himself lost between two worlds and two cultures--which was acutely stressful. He died a premature death because of a combination of Indian germs and British (mal)nutrition. In short, he had a lot of advantages but not enough.

So Einstein was born with great luck. He was not a peasant in Russia, nor an impoverished Native American on a reservation with inadequate schools. He was educated in the languages of privilege, exposed to the best minds in the world, and employed by places that let him develop his ideas. The vast majority of true geniuses are not so fortunate. Most of them are so busy scavenging for food, recovering from the diseases of poverty, and running from invading armies that they never discover their talents. The world has never heard of them.

I believe he & his family were Jewish, wasn't he born in occupied Austria or Germany just before the Nazi regime took over putting many jews to death, taking away their property, splitting families?

? Why didn't U mention that???



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/20/2019 04:08PM by GNPE.

Einstein was born in 1879, so he was in his fifties when Hitler came to power in 1933. His greatest scientific feats were achieved between 1905 and 1915, at which point the world had not even heard of Hitler.

Einstein was a famous man with connections all over the world in 1933. He was on his third visiting professorship in the States, teaching at Cal Tech, when Hitler became chancellor. It was a simple matter for the Einsteins to relocate to the States, with the support of the US government, over the following months.

So in that sense as well Einstein as in the right place at the right time.

One of my hare-brained theories is that humans are instruments of possession. Joseph was already predisposed due to genetics and maybe the leg infection incident disassociated him some more. So disembodied spirits could have their way with him, for good or bad. Mostly bad, since everything the Mormons did seemed to be geared toward sowing chaos.

You don’t get a $100B fund by painting an accurate picture of Joseph Smith. He was no genius, he was crazy. Or maybe the two go together.

JS probably had an unusual brain, but wasn't likely a genius. Compare him with historically acknowledged geniuses, like Newton, DaVinci, Copernicus, Ptolemy, Descartes. Smith comes nowhere near their abilities. From a literacy and linguistic view, what about the first humans to encode language into writing? Or Voltaire, Shakespeare, or Champollion, who actually DID translate ancient Egyptian? Not even close. If Mark Twain can skewer your greatest achievement with the quip, "chloroform in print", you probably aren't a genius.

I would say average IQ, but low empathy and above average criminal versatility. This is not a particularly uncommon set of traits.

As for the root system operating in sexual sadists, I recommend this article:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/inside-the-criminal-mind/201712/the-thinking-processes-sexual-predators%3famp

It is a concise description of what makes people like JS and worse tick. It's written by Stanton Samenow, PhD. His focus is on criminality. I think it's a very good clinical picture of JS.

I am not up on the defining characteristics of each, but clearly Joseph Smith willfully mislead and manufactured a religion that many people suffered, sacrificed and eve died for. He used his personal charisma and persuasion to seduce women and relieve men of their wives and fortunes. I knew Mark Hofmann when he started into his full blown LDS counterfitting stage, he was certainly not as charismatic as JS but obviously he had the ability to fool even the lords most highly exalted leaders on earth. Personally I thought he seemed to need to make up lies to cover things that did not need to be lied about . Since then in the business world I have worked for a few sociopaths and psychopaths who have no worries about constantly creating their own new reality to suit their egos. None of them were extreme high IQ, but they got elevated in power by gross deception. Sounds familiar doesn't it.

Hedning Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am not up on the defining characteristics of
> each, but clearly Joseph Smith willfully mislead
> and manufactured a religion that many people
> suffered, sacrificed and eve died for. He used his
> personal charisma and persuasion to seduce women
> and relieve men of their wives and fortunes.

I've studied psychopaths. And attended a week long training with Robert Hare, the foremost expert on psychopathy.

At a lunch break I walked with him and asked him if he thought Joseph Smith was a psychopath. He said that he didn't think that he would fit the criteria in the test for criminal versatility.

Then I told him about him dying in jail etc. And he reply was, "I'm not going to answer that."

I think that J.S. was a psychopath. He is the one that knew for sure that it was all a fraud. When the mormons were being forced from their homes in the winter, the Haun's Mill massacre etc. etc. he knew they were all losing their lives and suffering for his fraud.

Someone who could watch all the suffering and death and not be moved has no empathy. Plus he fits the other criteria pretty well. I'm confident that he was a charismatic psychopath. Sex, power, and adulation was his thing, not murder.

But using Hare, a true psychopath lacks impulse control and normally doesn't stay with a single endeavor for very long. In that sense JS wasn't a typical psychopath. He may well have been a narcissist, which is another type that must be the center of attention, is given to self-enrichment at any cost and endless sexual conquests, and lacks empathy.

I even think there is some doubt that he was a malignant narcissist because I don't think he took pleasure from hurting others. He didn't refrain from hurting people if they obstructed his efforts, to be sure, but I'm not sure he went out of his way simply to inflict pain on people. If that is correct, then perhaps he was just a "normal" narcissist.

We are really talking about shades of evil here, so I don't think it matters very much. But it is an interesting question.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But using Hare, a true psychopath lacks impulse
> control and normally doesn't stay with a single
> endeavor for very long. In that sense JS wasn't a
> typical psychopath.

I think his impulse control is evident. Anytime he had an impulse, he just said that God wanted it. Want to have sex with one of your confidants wives? Send him on a mission and go for it etc.

And the single endeavor I also see evidenced by how often he changed up his plan. The treasure hunter, to author, to mouth piece of God. To moving from place to place when you wear out your welcome, to presidential candidate, to banker fraud. And it goes on and on.

If you see it from a mormon perspective, it was all look like one long narrative that grew as it went. From an outsider who never had a belief nor was indoctrinated in it, it probably looks like one jumbled up soup of a plan.

He didn't so much stick with it, as keep changing it to fit his whims. Just the way I see it anyway.

No, this is a good discussion.


-----------------
> I think his impulse control is evident. Anytime he
> had an impulse, he just said that God wanted it.
> Want to have sex with one of your confidants
> wives? Send him on a mission and go for it etc.

That is a good example. A typical psychopath would feel the impulse and act. He wouldn't try to persuade the target, or enlist others to do so, or plot the reception of divine instruction, or bother with contriving mission calls. If frustrated, he would simply move on to the next target. JS committed time, energy, money, and political capital to his efforts. He invested much more in them than a psychopath normally does.


----------------
> And the single endeavor I also see evidenced by
> how often he changed up his plan. The treasure
> hunter, to author, to mouth piece of God. To
> moving from place to place when you wear out your
> welcome, to presidential candidate, to banker
> fraud. And it goes on and on.

Yes, but when he was tarred and feathered, he didn't move farther west and sell snake oil, for instance. He went back to the community he led. Similarly, he didn't flee from the imprisonment that cost him his life but allowed himself to be arrested and jailed knowing what would likely result. Again, there was a commitment to a community and a project that survived threats so serious that they would motivate a psychopath to decamp for greener pastures.


-------------
> If you see it from a mormon perspective, it was
> all look like one long narrative that grew as it
> went. From an outsider who never had a belief nor
> was indoctrinated in it, it probably looks like
> one jumbled up soup of a plan.

It was indeed one jumbled plan. But so too are political movements, start-up businesses, etc. It isn't the changing nature of the plan that makes a person a psychopath, it is the absence of a plan. JS had a scheme that kept evolving, but he stuck with it despite considerable risks. That tenacity belies typical psychopathy.


---------------
> He didn't so much stick with it, as keep changing
> it to fit his whims. Just the way I see it anyway.

I'd love to hear what you were doing at the Hare conference if that is something you feel comfortable sharing. You seem to have lived an interesting professional life.

If you read Hare's book, Snakes in Suits, you'll see that many psychopaths can run companies and be CEO's.

Yes, I've read that book, also Without Conscience; and have read/watched a number of his interviews. In my work I also interact with sociopaths and the odd psychopath, so I'm familiar with the "type."

But I am nearer to Hare than you are with regard to criminal versatility and impulse control. Again, the boundaries between narcissism, malignant narcissism, sociopathy, and psychopathy are fluid, so it's impossible to diagnose someone who lived 200 years ago with any precision. But there are clearly people, even very prominent religious and political leaders, who are closer to the Hare and DSM standards than JS was.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/23/2019 01:57AM by Lot's Wife.

It's been an interesting discussion. Thanks.

It would be enjoyable to discuss in person sometime.

It would indeed.

Parenthetically, I just recalled a quip from Hare that makes your point about professional psychopaths pretty well. He said, "when I want to interview unsuccessful psychopaths, I go to prisons. when I want to meet successful ones, I go to Wall Street."

There was also a very interesting article written soon after the 2007-2009 debacle entitled something like "The Psychopathic Explanation of the Crisis." It argued that the pattern of promotions in US industry and particularly financial services--work at one place for a couple of years, take credit for others' work; take a higher job at a new place, where you work for another couple of years; repeat until you are the boss--created a situation where the top reaches of the economy were disproportionately occupied by narcissists and psychopaths, people with no sense of responsibility to workers, investors, or society at large.

There is, in my opinion, more than a grain of truth in that observation although it probably applies as aptly to politics and as well.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yes, I've read that book, also Without Conscience;
> and have read/watched a number of his interviews.
> In my work I also interact with sociopaths and the
> odd psychopath, so I'm familiar with the "type."
>
> But I am nearer to Hare than you are with regard
> to criminal versatility and impulse control.
> Again, the boundaries between narcissism,
> malignant narcissism, sociopathy, and psychopathy
> are fluid, so it's impossible to diagnose someone
> who lived 200 years ago with any precision. But
> there are clearly people, even very prominent
> religious and political leaders, who are closer to
> the Hare and DSM standards than JS was.

nice job of; (A) really meaningless jingoism to pose your self as some type of authority/ academic/ intellectual, (B) saying so many words to really be so inarticulate / imprecise, (C) discounting and minimalizing .....when it suits you, otherwise you raggedly speculate and give bad assumptions

no doubt that you will be back to your normal supposedly/ self assessed brilliant and insightful highly flawed observations that are so specious, based on far less substance than there was available for the current topic

Your sentence no verb.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/24/2019 03:05AM by Lot's Wife.

Who knows? Maybe he had handlers behind the scenes, who chose him to be the puppet, for his ability to manipulate people.

Rigdon and others probably used him to get the movement going, but he was smarter than they were, and more devious ...and cut them out.

Re-read his letter to Nancy Rigdon with this in mind.

He was a talented storyteller with a lot of charisma and precious few scruples to speak of. This resulted in him being a gifted con artist. I wouldn't call him a genius, but a gifted con artist, certainly.

He was a product of his time!

Joseph was an adapter, imitator and plagiarizer.

Compare some of Joseph's stories to the folk tales of Washington Irving (think headless horseman and rip van wrinkle)

How much of the Book of Mormon is simply the bible with slight alterations?

Many don't know that parts of 1st Nephi are adaptations of his fathers dreams. (Referenced in The history of Joseph Smith by his Mother)

The Jaredite barges? I believe he got the inspiration from tales told in Salem,where he lived for a while, about the Turtle, America's first submarine that was used in the revolutionary war.

The Turtle was two halves sealed together, had openings at the top and bottom. The top was the entry hatch the bottom filled the ballast tank to submerge. It had windows. It's light source was a phosphorus lichen.

I think his times when many people believed in the supernatural, his ability to adapt others ideas and his own charisma made a perfect storm for him to exploit.

Genius? ::snort::

Just extremely lucky? How lucky are you if you get shot dead in your thirties?

It was a time where people believed in treasure hunting. JS died at age 38. In my opinion he was lucky theses days with the internet he would have not gotten away with it.

Or he would have gotten away with it on a much greater scale. We live in an age when social media and its manipulation have taken cults mainstream.

It's frightening to think what a Hitler or a Stalin or a Mao or, of a lesser magnitude, a Joseph Smith might have done with modern technology.

I think we will find out soon enough what a Mao would have done with modern technology. The three centuries following the invention of mass printing, and the century following the development of electronic communication and the industrial revolution are cautionary tales.

The invention of machines that can be programmed to make decisions, and operate in sub-nanosecond time frames, along with the development of a global electronic network, is likely to be disruptive in many ways, not all of them good.

Yes, there are several aspects to the technology phenomenon. We see the ability of dictators to use social media to influence politics domestically and in other countries' internal affairs. Russia has used the techniques to great effect in the US, in the Brexit debate, and elsewhere. Goebbels would have loved it.

We likewise observe the use of surveillance technology all around us. The credit card companies and large commercial websites know all about us; the NSA doubtless knows, or easily could know, even more; and in China facial recognition software is being employed in a huge, and growing, number of public spaces. Beijing has even obtained permission to test its technology in African countries to improve its ability to identify Black people. Stasi would have loved it.

This is Orwell on steroids. It's an open question, I believe, whether meaningful democracy is possible in the scenario now unfolding.

All it takes is an app.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/report-popular-uae-chat-app-totok-used-as-a-government-spy-tool

Exactly.

That is a scary thought.

I wouldn't go so far as to call him a genius.

But he seems to have had the ability to spot promising "marks" (fools, gullible people, suckers) on one hand, while also being able to recruit morally challenged opportunists as partners in his scams on the other hand.

I may be mistaken, but I believe the vast, vast majority of neighbors and acquaintances were people who didn't fall for his lies and correctly saw him for what he was.

This is part of the reason why he was always having to move his circus from place to place. He was the kind of guy who wore out his welcome very quickly. Reasonably intelligent and usually tolerant/live-and-let-live neighbors could only take so much of the constant lies and obvious scams.

Papa Hale knew he was a fraud. Emma had to learn the hard way.

He sold religious fantasies to bored people.

He sold promises of community and fellowship to lonely and insecure people.

He sold promises of imminent treasure and material blessings to the type of people who in modern times would be investing heavily in lottery tickets.

Like all scammers, he knew the angles of approach and could spot the vulnerabilities that could be exploited. Maybe one day he overhears a couple of old neighbors talking about rumors of buried treasure and peepstones...and then a few months later he's letting them know about this amazing stone that has come into his hands and how he can see things that seem to be buried...you know...bright, shiny things in boxes that look like they're underground and..... Next thing you know, people are paying him to stare at a rock in his hat and tell them where to dig. Suckers.

A practices and skilled scammer. Not really a genius though.

I've never been particularly impressed by what he produced in terms of scripture and "revelation". I've always had a hard time understanding why people think there had to be some kind of supernatural aspect to any of it.

Spot on, IMO.

He knew how to exploit the more credulous around him. He had hustler street smarts. He was a Rasputin of American religion.

I’ve always suspected (even though his name is smaller on the covers) that Martin Dugard was the entire author of Bill O’Reilly’s books such as Killing Jesus, etc., but, That Dugard needed a nationally know name to sell his books. (Just my opinion.)

Same with Rigdon and Cowdrey. They were smarter, but Smith had the charisma. I think Cowdrey, Rigdon (and Pratt) hatched up the BOM. The rock in the hat, the gold plates—all parlor tricks.

No genius, just a con man with charisma and some handy sycophants.

More like an opportunist. Who figured out how to take something that already existed (freemasonry) and mold it into something new.