Posted by:
frogdogs
(
)
Date: June 24, 2013 09:46PM
Elder Berry, I'm in total agreement. Especially on the comparison to Socrates.
How can any rational, self-respecting person stand any of it?! I’ve already thrown up in my mouth a little bit from watching the first 20 minutes of it. But I’m past that now. Ok, not really...
From a marketing standpoint (which one would think TSCC would have nailed by now) the saggy, baggy, uninspiring, about-as-charismatic-as-a-chewed-on-popsicle-stick, display of old white men taking center stage for promoting this WORK (as in: job, chore, labor, toil, exertion, slog, drudgery, grind, task, burden) is already a big, fat, laughable failure. Right now all the wet-behind-the-ears, naïve, hopeful high-school graduates will chow down on this, just eat it up. They really have no idea what the real world is like - the world that Stan rules, in which nice, normal, regular, decent folk just try to do the best they can and be good people without meddling from LD$ Inc about the rules of some ridiculous afterlife club membership interfering with all the work they have already to do in *this* life.
I feel a great deal for those naïve, teenaged hopefuls. Life’s about to deal them a harsh dose of reality. Nobody, except the most marginalized, at-risk, poor communities (and therefore least able to contribute monetarily) wants to hear about Joseph Smith’s ridiculous claims. So what’s in it for me? A sky daddy loves me, for the most part, and my salvation is so important? (baptism, callings, a few months later….) Wait, I have to pay 10% to get my exaltation signed, sealed, delivered and the church won’t really minister to me other than guilt-trip me as to my worthiness or righteousness? (drifts into inactivity….)
I’ve been out over half my life now, but even as a girl it’s not out of bounds that I wouldn’t have ended up in the mission field. Given my TBMness and rebelliousness to expectations of me, there’s a chance I would’ve resisted marrying an RM at 19 or 20 and instead have gone on a mission. I can see that person inside me as a teen. I recognize her, know what she was all about: enthusiasm, deep emotions, passion, wanting to belong, wanting recognition for achievement and efforts I made, wanting to help others feel what I felt (passion, deep emotion). All of it would have nicely and perfectly dovetailed into making me a rather annoying (but very, very sincere) mormon missionary. And I still wouldn’t have had the slightest fucking clue what I was talking about when it comes to ‘Truth’.
Anyone with an even fractionally functional bullshit-meter couldn’t care less about the claims of Joseph Smith. Trying to harness the power of the Interwebs with chat rooms or iPads will not change this fact one iota.
So what is it, exactly, that the billions of people in the world need to learn from high school graduates who have never been to college or even another state in most cases, who have in all likelihood never questioned whatever it is they’ve been told to believe from the day they were born? What exactly is their message again?
Ai. Yai. Yai. As if harnessing the power of duh Interwebs will change the basic absurdity of that premise.
Watching this tonight is both cringe-worthy while it yet gives me hope. LD$ continuing to trot out these laughably out of touch, 1950’s cookie cutter (and outrageously old, white, and unattractive) anachronisms to deliver their weird, cultish and quite frankly – boring – message of “The WORK of Salvation” will fall most squarely flat on its face.
I have been very grateful for such a place as EfM. But I’m predicting there won’t be much of a need for it by the time I’m drawing social security. That’s a cause for sadness, and also celebration.
Holland: “Never again in your entire life are you going to be part of a zone conference this large.”
(frogdogs imagining what at *least* half of the teenagers there are thinking: “You got that right, buddy. And for all the right reasons, too.”)