The kind of people who draw a line before you even open your mouth and say they will never believe X so don’t bother, do you lose hope in humanity a little?

This feeling for me goes all the way back to being a missionary. While I didn’t have all the facts on my side, I genuinely thought that Mormonism was the most reasonable Christian sect which would be apparent if people would just let me talk, and I died a little inside when people would not just listen.

I was always open to debate and criticism and new evidence, which I guess was what eventually did my testimony in, but it was because superior arguments and evidence were offered, not because I got lazy about defending my testimony from all criticism. That was never the game I was playing. That was never the game I was asked to play. But that is what most Mormons are doing, apparently.

I am still open to debate, but people are afraid, and my heart falls when I think that on this major topic nothing I say matters to anyone I know.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2020 11:13AM by Cold-Dodger.

I've been wading through a long article, "Leninthink," and am amazed at the overlap between cultic thinking and Marxism's offshoots of Bolshevism and Maoism. Here's an appropriate excerpt:

"What happens is something like this: when a criticism of the true ideology is advanced, or when embarrassing facts come out, everyone learns a particular answer. One neither believes nor disbelieves the answer; one demonstrates one’s loyalty by saying it. It is interesting to be present when the answer is still being rehearsed. Gradually, one acquires a little mental library of such canned answers, and the use of them signals to others in the know that you are one of them. If this process took place often enough in childhood, the moment of decision lies in the remote past, if it ever happened at all. For those who joined as adults, there is social pressure to accept one more explanation."

One emphasized matter is that loyalty to the Party (or One-True-Church?) supersedes other loyalties and personal priorities, including personal morality and empathy. Thus the coverups of abuse and scandal: Others may have to suffer for the Party/Church to retain power and legitimacy. My astute wife suggested that Brigham Young was to Joseph Smith as Stalin was to Lenin.

A long read, worth the time and effort, with a special nod to Lot's Wife.

https://newcriterion.com/issues/2019/10/leninthink

I have remarked on the parallel between Lenin/Stalin and Smith/Young several times on this site.

Yes.

Stalin arose from a secondary position, edited Lenin's collected works to make himself appear the natural successor, used bureaucratic means to ensure his succession and destroy his rivals, and then created a massive bureaucracy to ensure his position as head of the USSR.

Brigham Young arose from a secondary position, adopted and practiced Smith's polygamy in spectacular fashion to make himself appear the natural successor, used bureaucratic means to oust his rivals and establish his own power, then moved the church to Utah and radically systematized the bureaucracy to render his position unassailable.

Neither Stalin nor Young were as charismatic as their predecessors but oth were more sophisticated organizers and managers. Without Young, Mormonism would probably have withered on the vine. Without Stalin, the USSR would probably never have achieved the power it did. It's a bit like start-up businesses, which prosper under visionary leadership but eventually need managerial CEOs.

A great book that documents what Lot's Wife stated is: "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer. From Wikepedia The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements is a non-fiction book authored by American philosopher Eric Hoffer. Published in 1951, it depicts a variety of arguments in terms of applied world history and social psychology to explain why mass movements arise to challenge to status quo, Hoffer discussing the sense of individual identity and the holding to particular ideals that can lead to fanaticism among both leaders and followers.

I read that book 20 years ago and still reflect on its contents now and then. It is clearly applicable today.

Yes, over the decades I have read that book three times. Hoffer was an amazing man: a stevedore who read widely and critically and ended up a first-rate philosopher. Comparable, perhaps, to Barbara Tuchman.

And the True Believer is precisely on point not just regarding the post to which you replied but to the broader question of totalitarian tendencies. One of Hoffer's insights was that Hitler, understanding what Nietzsche termed the "slave mentality," created a fast-track into the Nazi party for former communists because they made better, more dependable, and less critical members. The cause didn't matter. What mattered was the reason to live, the reason to believe, the extremism itself.

John Le Carre did something similar with Little Drummer Girl. He recognized that a large category of people simply want to believe in a larger cause from which they could derive and strengthen their sense of self and that the precise nature of the cause didn't matter. It was thus not only possible but easy to train a terrorist who could be loyal and committed to both Israeli and Palestinian extremism at the same time. Politically the contradiction was stark: psychologically it was non-existent.

In short, there are a lot of people who especially under stress are eager to surrender their will and moral autonomy to a charismatic leader. That is the greatest challenge to constitutional democracy and, frankly, moderate religion: the appeal of a simpler and less complex political and moral life in which society makes the decisions for the individual.

Yeah, that's a moderately good article although it makes a number of false statements and fails to recognize the close connection between extremism on the right and on the left. For example,

1) The author says that Lenin always opted for extremes. Reading that, I thought, "what about the New Economic Policy" of 1921? For that brought an end to Lenin's anti-kulak campaign and the restoration of the market economy in the agricultural economy. The author then goes on to mention the NEP without recognizing that it contradicts what he just said. In truth, Lenin was a pragmatic mass murderer who moderated his policies on any number of occasions when necessary to preserve his and the Bolsheviks' power.

2) Morson also makes some specious comparisons to Hitler's Germany. He asserts that ethnic Germans loyal to the regime were safe from the regime whereas Lenin killed people merely because they were capable of resisting him if they wanted. That is false. Recall what happened to the Brown Shirts, loyal soldiers whom Hitler thought might resist him and whom he accordingly decapitated. Remember also the Night of the Long Knives when Hitler again knocked off any loyal supporters who were capable of challenging him. What Morson fails to appreciate, or at least convey, is that Stalin learned that technique from Hitler. When the Night of the Long Knives occurred, he praised it as a brilliant strategic move and decided to launch purges of potential enemies on his own behalf. So no, it was not Lenin and Stalin who invented that expedient: the USSR learned it from Hitler. Just as in the USSR, it was not safe to be a loyal German in Hitler's Germany.

3) The notion that truth must be bent to serve the party's interests is likewise not a Soviet construct: it too is part and parcel of any totalitarian ideology as attested by the German or Italian party lines about Jews, Communists, etc. You'll remember, I'm sure, that Mussolini won power as a communist and then turned to the right and slaughtered and imprisoned his communist supporters. Lenin was therefore not unique.

4) The Orwellian interlude also amuses. Morson says that perhaps Orwell was referring to Leninist thinking when he had Winston Smith betray his values and his love. That is true but not profound, for as Orwell said on frequent occasion his point was that Germany and the USSR both bent truth to fit their needs and that the democratic West was moving in that direction as well. The attempt to narrow that point about totalitarianism down to the USSR is reductive and hence misses the point that thought control is an attribute that applies to all mass dictatorships.

Stepping back from those historical and conceptual errors, the point that Morson unwittingly presents is that if someone is committed to a totalitarian ideology and the concomitant Newspeak, he can sometimes see that in someone else but not in himself. Consider, for example, these instances in which people on your side of the ideological aisle are behaving remarkably like the unwitting dupes of Leninism and its vanguard of the proletariat.

1) Crime is determined not by the person's actions but by "the material determination of the crime," meaning the effect of the action on the Leader. How many crimes have been proved and resulted in convictions in the US that are now being redefined as patriotic because they helped the president? How many legal actions are conversely now portrayed as criminal because of the effect on the administration?

2) Consider also the Orwellian nature of baldly false statements made and reiterated like a Leninist mantra by authorities. "I was joking when I said people should inject bleach;" "I cannot release my taxes because I am under audit;" "the US military are stupid and losers:" "John McCain was a loser;" "I had the biggest crowds of any inauguration;" "Antifa is an organization;" and "there are good people on both sides." The list is endless and the useful idiots who repeat them are countless.

The point, caffiend, is that when someone like Morson cannot get his history right, what he is revealing is that his own vision is constrained by ideological blinders. Orwell's point was actually that when facts no longer matter, when they are evaluated based on their effect on the leader and his ideology, that leader and his followers are totalitarians.

Leninist thinking is rampant right now. If you want to find it, just identify those for whom facts no longer matter and the meanings of words have become plastic. Morson is a relatively intelligent example of that reality.

Physician, heal thyself.

So Lot's Wife's partisan analysis stays up, but other comments go missing. Does this woman bankroll this website? Blackmail? Why the special treatment?

Actually caffiend's post was likewise partisan but thoughtful. Or did that escape your comprehension, Jordan?

Most people are okay equating Facts with Truth.

So with such a person, their facts quite often are chosen over your facts, thus the truths at which you've arrived are just opinions. And why can't you see it?

And everyone reeks of sincerity.

Belief and facts are oil and water. They don't mix.

You wish you could do to their beliefs what is done to an oil slick and put a float system around it and suck it up,dispose of it before it kills some wild life. But humans don't have a similar system yet.

As long as you have someone, who fronting for a leader, actuallysays in the face of evidence, "We have our own set of facts" as a reply, you know we are never going to get anywhere.

For a group that substitutes the word Belief with the word Know, there is no hope. They have relinquished their honesty and their trust in their own selves although they will claim the opposite.

I've gone through more than fifty years of this with my parents. It never got better but I got used to it. Spiritual callous I call it.


I lied a to others but never lied to myself. That is why when tracting one day and I bore my testimony to a very nice intelligent man who opened the door, and he said he had no doubt I had felt what I felt but how did I know that it wasn't just something I had worked my self up into? That cracked the armor because I could not honestly dismiss his point.

I always hoped for such a serendipitous moment for my family, but nope.

> As long as you have someone, who fronting for a
> leader, actuallysays in the face of evidence,
> "We have our own set of facts" as a reply, you
> know we are never going to get anywhere.
>
> For a group that substitutes the word Belief with
> the word Know, there is no hope. They have
> relinquished their honesty and their trust in
> their own selves although they will claim the
> opposite.

Brilliantly stated.

What constitutes a fact? Something that happened? Something that could have happened but didn’t? Why do we draw the line at the formality of actually occurring? Reason gave us a world that’s wired for nuclear annihilation, although the joke is on us since it looks like runaway climate change will get us first. If this is reasonable, maybe religious fantasy isn’t so bad.