I left LDS Inc back in the 1970s, a few years after plowing through Hugh Nibley's ridiculous apologetics for the BoA papyri.

As such, I totally missed the prohibition on R-rated movies, and blather about the Plan of Happiness. Natalie Brown recently did an article in SLTrib about the Plan of Happiness (PoH) that I found kind of interesting, so I pass some of the data on here.

"...Latter-day Saint scholar Patrick Mason observes that "the phrase 'plan of happiness' appeared in only one General Conference address from the 1850s through the 1960s. There were two mentions of the phrase in the 1970s, 12 in the 1980s, and then an astonishing 85 in the 1990s, 125 in the 2000s, and 132 in the 2010s."

...Unsurprisingly, references to the iron rod — a Book of Mormon symbol of adhering to God's commands — also begin increasing during this period. The idea of clinging to commandments becomes intertwined with happiness, and parents learn to be anxious about ensuring that their children also follow the same path to salvation. And, yet, the threat that children might not choose the right — and thus upend their parents' happiness — also exposes the limits of this model and shifts the conversation back toward the Atonement and the need for grace.

In this transactional model, happiness can swiftly become proof that one is following the commandments, while unhappiness can too easily be seen as a sign of unrighteousness.
==============

I'm glad I missed all that. Looks like happiness is just one more thing to feel guilty about. [Sorry, I don't have a link, but it is probably paywalled anyway :-/ ]

Make a new plan, Stan.

Slip out the back, Jack.

https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2025/02/02/exploring-why-lds-plan-happiness/

I like this paragraph

"It’s not difficult to see the cultural consequences of being raised in a faith that so heavily emphasized formulas for happiness during my youth. These consequences include performance anxiety among members who feel that their salvation depends on continuously adhering to specified practices; the cultural conflation of signifiers of a happy life with righteousness; toxic positivity culture that encourages us to overlook unhappy facts or people; and, above all, an inability to think productively about the gospel and our relationship to the church when the formulas fail to deliver the promise of happiness."

Amen. Perfectly said.

What always summed it up for me was the "Natural man is an enemy to God" thing they use against you as a weapon. If you are true to yourself then, you are automatically wrong. God made you broken and its your fault.

In the end all I did to get out of that mess was choose myself.

Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> In the end all I did to get out of that mess was
> choose myself.

Good plan, Stan.

Perhaps it began when polygamy was going out and they had to rationalize the sealing ordinances.

Man had to search for happiness somewhere else.

The movie "Man's Search For Happiness" brought tears to my eyes ~ 16 yrs old as my never-mo parents were divorcing.
mid '60s

Dad should have paid more cows like Johnny Lingo.

In 1976-78 on my 24-month mission we never spoke the words Plan of Happiness. One of the six discussions was called "The Plan of Salvation."

We would show the film "Man's Search for Happiness" using a cassette tape narration with a beep to indicate when to advance the film strip we used. That was the high tech we had back then!

LDS Inc. is about selling a message, telling a narrative that fits its doctrine and repeating words and messages that are regurgitated as testimonies and in lesson material. It's repeated conditioning of the mind.

I have no factual basis for saying so, but I suspect they did a survey along the way and found that the word happiness substituted for the plan of salvation was easier to sell. After all, doesn't everyone want to be happy?

I think that is pretty close to what happened. They thought ‘happiness’ would sell better than ‘salvation’ so they experimented with it in the 1980s, and then committed to the switch in the 1990s.

I agree this is probably close to the process. Also when I was a missionary in Europe, Charles A. Didier introduced a new first discussion that was called the plan of salvation with a lot of lines taken from "Man's Search for Happiness" and we adlibbed the title to "Gods Plan for Man's Happines" the discussion was not written down but we were supposed to adlib the main points and draw on a piece of paper the mormon view starting with adam, the atonement, apostacy, restoration and judgement, spirit world, three kingdoms etc.

Charles A. Didier was a little creepy but he seemed very smart, unlike most of the other GAs I have met.

Just another meaningless phrase designed to keep all the cows in line. Other phrases like "Wickedness never was happiness," take care of LGBTQ and apostates who only appear happy. You can't be happy outside LDS Inc's boarder wall.

......Monte Burns laughs and releases the hounds......



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/2025 12:19PM by squirrely.

Reminds me of that film I saw a dozen times as a kid. "Man's Search for Happiness". The premise was that everyone on the planet was preoccupied with knowing Where we came from? Why we are here? and, Where are we going?

And of course only Mormons had the answers. And so only Mormons were truly happy as they were not filled with the angst that everyone else was who did not know the answer to the 3W's.

Once I got out of Utah where no one was even thinking about all that, I saw a lot of people having a lot of genuinely happy moments in their lives. Happiness isn't a state. It comes and goes like flowers in the spring that die thank goodness or you would get used to them and they would bore you.

So desperate to feel special the Mormons are. Like a lot of others in this world.

>> The premise was that everyone on the planet was preoccupied with knowing Where we came from? Why we are here? and, Where are we going?

In my younger days, I was consumed by those kinds of existential questions. I read widely and attended church sporadically. After a number of years, I slowly came to realize that those questions were unanswerable, and there was nothing wrong with that. You could have a happy life while not having the answers. It is okay not to know.

I slowly came to realize that BS makes the world go 'round.

Wasn't the movie shown at the SLC Temple visitor's center ad nauseum entitled "God's Plan for Happiness" or some such thing? I remember how happy and (misled) I was when, in 1977 as a freshman at BYU, I convinced my parents to drive up to SLC for a tour of Temple Square. They had driven across the country with my younger brother to pick me up at the end of the Spring semester. I was still "on the fence" about joining Mormonism but so wanted to convince my parents of how wonderful it all was.

The movie was dated and emotionally manipulative but still I hoped. I was majorly disappointed when they were completely unimpressed. It was less than a year later that I was so thankful they and I had not succumbed to the grift.

Side note: It was long before our Temple Square visit that Mormons were billing their church as the key to happiness. The Osomnds, known for their corner on all things happiness,came out with their album "The Plan" in 1973.

When free agency was replaced with whatever.

They weren't getting by on their "free agency" wages.