Notes: Renouncing War: How Mormon Theology & History Lead Us to Nonviolence

Notes to the forum seminar Renouncing War: How Mormon Theology and History Lead Us to Nonviolence, by David Pulsipher, who is teaching "US History 1820 to 1920" and "History of Peace" this semester.

This is commentary. And this is really good. 

A link to the video will be posted in this spot as soon as it it uploaded to BYU-I.

I'm a Mormon, and... I think that "Reign of Judges" is a horrible movie

There are a lot of problems that I have with this movie, Reign of Judges. The whitewashing, for instance.

I cannot tell you how frustrated the whitewashing in this film makes me. If for one instant the filmmakers are taking the Book of Mormon seriously as a historical document, as something that tells the stories of people that actually lived, breathed, and died, then it is an indefensible whitewash.

But there's something else that gets me, too. A few things, really, but the biggest of all is that it's promoting the idea that you have to kill in order to have peace.

Productivity Report: I'm slipping behind on this, I am

Well, I can't say that last night was stress free, but I got some important work done. I don't want to get into details, but suffice it to say that I made progress on, ah, fixing some "toxic" (as Magpie describes it, and I agree) mental programming. It's been an issue that I've recognized for a long while and tried to deal with in a multitude of ways, and I'm glad that I was able to step forward and feelvomit about it to someone. I'm even happier that I was overestimating just how bad it would make me look in that person's eyes.

There are a lot of issues that I've got to fix, some of which I don't even know about right now, but just talking about it has taken some weight off and made the job of debugging the code easier for me.

Productivity Report

Two more weeks until my off/preparation month, and boy howdy do I have a lot to get done that month.

The good new is while this month hasn't been as productive as I'd like, and isn't going to be, it's still looking to be reasonably productive. Writing this late Sunday night, I have eight stories complete at this point in time (all lists at the end, for those interested) and another that needs a couple of more paragraphs before it's done. With those nine out of the way I'm aiming to get at least another nine stories in particular done in the following two weeks, for twelve stories finished this month (not too short of my goal of fifteen per month, especially given that this month has also had to devote time to things like generating a backlog of posts, which the next on/writing month shouldn't have to deal with) and eighteen stories in total. If each of the following three on/writing months hit the 15/stories goal then that'll give me 63 stories to bounce around the market for Gosh Knows How Long.

For-market stories currently completed:

1. Finding Ginny
2. Lost Girl
3. The Man with the Bloody Coat
4. Perfect Engine
5. Pickman's Estate
6. The Philosopher's Ship
7. Sedatophobia
8. Thomas Edison's Last Gambit

For-market stories I'm planning on having done by the end of the month: 

1. The Act of Harley Warren
2. The Albatross Came
3. The Buddha in the Road
4. From Kadath Came
5. An Honor and an Horror
6. The Angel in the Basement
7. Percival
8. Scapegoat
9. To Dream a Dream

The ethics of AdBlock

I googled "AdBlock ethic" a few minutes ago as a joke, just to see what would pop up before I wrote this post. I was surprised (though I don't see how, honestly) to find that there were quite a few results. 241,000, exactly. This post by Andrew Taylor is especially good.

I didn't start thinking about this issue because of posts like that, though. It started with good old 4chan of all places (once upon a time I would have been surprised, but I've been on /tg/ for many years now). Moot mentioned, again and again, how blocking ads was hurting 4chan. Ads were how 4chan supported itself, and if you blocked the ads then 4chan was left dead in the water.

Started thinking.

Read Moot again, a different time, a different post.

Kept thinking.

Went to Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, read some comics, read about Patreon and why Zach Weiner is so happy about it. Among other things, he won't have to worry about people blocking his ads anymore.

Thought a little harder.

And I have to say, at the end of my thinking, that I think I've thought up a solution. For myself, anyway. You have different concerns and a different chair that you're sitting in. But I do think that where there is a site which I enjoy, which has ads, then I should look at those ads. Some people pay a fee for internet access based on how much they download, including ads. I can see why they would use AdBlock, but I'm not one of them. On the other hand, my computer isn't very fast, and there are too many ads out there that take up too much of my computer's attention.

I'm going to go with a middle ground approach for now. If your site is one that I enjoy, then I will add it to the whitelist. If it is not, then its ads will be blocked. Its ads probably won't be relevant anyway. I'm looking at it as though ad impressions and clicks were a product you were trying to sell, and your website was your means of making me want to buy. If you hook me, I will buy, but if I am merely passing through your website, unimpressed and uninterested in returning, then I neither need nor want the extra delay that my computer will suffer from running your ads.

When I have a faster computer, I will reevaluate. I'll have a different chair to sit in then.

As for me and my house (blogs), there will be no ads here. No pop-ups, no banners, no nothing. I hope that we will get to a point where AdBlock is as relevant as dinosaur repellent (or that dinosaur repellent becomes as relevant as AdBlock is, which would totally awesome) and I intend to not delay that day.

Returns

Follow-up to: The Redemption of Shemesh

There are a number of things that I could point to in The Redemption of Shemesh. Shemesh is a Christ figure as easily as she is an Adam, but it is more in this latter vein that I wish to move today. The principal point of The Redemption is there in the title. It is a story of repentance.

Revisiting Bedbug Haven

In the eight weeks from the middle of June 2012 to July 2012, I and seven other missionaries lived in what was referred to by the mission office as "bedbug haven." It was an apartment built for four but, as mentioned before, there was twice that number living there. Plus bedbugs.

Quarters were cramped. There were three rooms, none of them very big, and connected them was some sort of hallway that managed to have kitchen appliances, a sink, a washer, a dryer, and an ironing board stuffed into it. Common it was to need to squeeze by someone (or several someones) as they were working food or laundry in order to go from one room to another. Eventually my companion and I relocated to the third room, along with all its weight equipment and other random junk, but before that change I slept on a couch and another missionary slept in a large closet.

And there were bedbugs. Can I stress that enough?

Understandably, tensions were high, and all of us did at least one thing that we later regretted. I carried a chip on my shoulder against some of them, and so did they, until a little while later when we were able to get some fresh air and reflect. One by one we bumped into each other again and saw that we were very different from how we had remembered each other, and we apologized and moved on.

There are two missionaries from Bedbug Haven that I have yet to bump into and may not ever have the chance to (both went back home before I was able to) but I don't- I can't- hold anything against them.

What I'll always remember from this episode in my life is that people get better, and even when you live with them for eight weeks you still don't always see the best side of them. People are who they are, but when their circumstances get the worst of them don't mistake that for who they would be in a better situation.

The Redemption of Shemesh

Note: I apologize for my lateness in posting this. I was caught up in wanting perfection for this story. 

There once was a young man, or a horror shaped in the likeness of a young man, whose name was Hastur. He was the moon, or, in other words, his light was not his own. He had light, but it was only a light that had been taken from others, and he gave nothing of his own in return to she that had loved him. His true name, spoken only in the wild places and in terrified whispers, was Darkness, and the name of his dominion the same.

Can I refute myself?

Follow-up to: The Pillar

In the post What will your mansion look like? I brought up the idea that we are continually changing so that, from one period of time to the next, we are not genuinely the same person.

The Pillar gives me the opportunity to contradict myself and support a different point of view that I find to be as defensible and, even to myself, preferable.

The idea, quite the opposite of the concept that we change so thoroughly as to lose ourselves, is that we don't change. Or, rather, we don't change, what is us does not change. Because what is good and just in us, what is virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, is a permanent jewel. It may be obscured for a time but even if it is lost we will find it replaced in time to come. Your mercy, however small; your love, however weak; your hope, however struggling: these and all other virtues shall never leave us throughout the eternal duration of our progression in Heaven. Wisdom will receive wisdom, light will cleave unto light, and every good thing that we hold will be added upon.

But what is corrupt in us will be scoured away as the eons pass. What is imperfect, or frail, or weak about us is temporary, and if your heavenly future belongs to you, and not to some power that descends from but nevertheless is not you, then it is more "you" than you are today. Now, you are a pillar of stone, but one day the sculpture that is within you will show forth, and it will be seen that all of the dust and rubble was only there to be carved away.

Fiction: The Pillar

The man shuddered, and returned his attention to the pillar in his room. There were small features evident in the otherwise faceless pillar: a slope here, a dip there. He ran a hand along the surface of the object frequently, more often than he raised his self-made chisel to it and chipped away.

What will your mansion look like?

Follow-up to: And There Are Many Rooms

Orson Scott Card's Xenocide taught me that we are dying all the time. Who we were ten years ago is not who we will be ten years from now, and only a continuity of consciousness lets us believe that we are an unbroken stream of mono-identity. At heart we are the sum of our thoughts and experiences, and when these things have changed sufficiently between any two moments, in those moments are two different people. The image that I developed after some time was that of a man standing on a tower of corpses, each one a previous self.

And There Are Many Rooms is a new way of discussing the idea, which my trainer gave to me because its previous form- that of our recurring personality-death- caused a reflexive denial in most people that I discussed it with. Personally I had no issue with it, but then, I have a different view of these things than many other people.

Because the man's cottage stays the same, what is not illustrated in the story is that change is inevitable. Whether we like it or not, the house that we are living in is not the house that we will always live in. Our goal, then, must be to ensure that Tomorrow's House is superior to today's, rather than inferior to it.

Fiction: And There Are Many Rooms

Two cousins lived beside each other, each in their own home. They had been inseparable friends, more brother and sister than cousins, from childhood (and, said those who knew them, perhaps from before even then). One of them, the woman, had, since a young age, been continually renovating the house in which she lived, expanding and demolishing, constructing and deconstructing, and for what purpose her friend never knew (nor was ever told, despite frequent queries). The other, a young man, was oft bewildered by this behavior, being quite content with the little cottage of his forefathers.

The Eagle Oath

Recently I was privileged to be in attendance at the Eagle Court of Honor for Ed Parker [name has been changed], a young man in one of the wards that I am currently serving. I went only to support him and expected to have no noteworthy experiences- I must admit that, as I was once a Less-Active member of the LDS Church, to some extent I might be considered a Less-Active Boy Scout. Instead, however, I was pleasantly shocked to be touched by many comments and stories made, and learn from the whole experience.

I received some interesting thoughts, some of which I will weave into my posts in days to come, but the real turning point was when the time came for all of the other Eagles to arise and sit in the Eagle's Nest. Despite my complete departure from Scouting soon after I received my own Eagle I was nevertheless an Eagle, as always I will be, and I went up with my companion to sit there beside two other men in our corner of the room, and about eight others total. We sat there to show Ed Parker, the other boy receiving his Eagle, and every younger boy there who was or might one day be on the path to Eagle, that they were not alone and that we had gone before him. Just as others had gone before us and paved a path of example for us to follow, so too did we pick up a few stray rocks that had come onto the path to make the way clear for them. Just as they will do themselves, when as men they sit in the Eagle's Nest for a boy who may not even yet be alive. 

At that time I had the opportunity to recite the Eagle Oath with my fellow Eagles and those two boys that would momentarily join our ranks. The time that I first said it, very soon before my eighteenth birthday, I was exhausted. It had been an ordeal after moving to get all of the necessary paperwork from disorganized people back where I had moved from to less-than-motivated people where I was now living, and if it weren't for a single very helpful Scout Leader I doubt that I would have kept pushing it forward. While in both places that I had lived Scouting was not dead, neither could it be said to be thriving and jumping about. So after many years of working after one badge and then another without much enthusiasm, and coming to meeting after meeting to see that not even the leadership was present, I had decided that I had earned my rest, upon getting my Eagle, and resigned from an experience that felt less an adventure than a Great War of paperwork. 

I must be clear that half of it was my fault, as it was when I was Less-Active in the Church in my later years. It was not my choice how others acted, but it was my own responsibility to decide how I would feel about it and what I would do after. Reciting the Eagle Oath made me realize this, and I want to again affirm it, this time not with my voice but with words that will stay for as long as this blog does. 

I reaffirm my allegiance to the three promises of the Scout Oath.

I thoughtfully recognize and take upon myself the obligations and responsibilities of an Eagle Scout. On my honor, I will do my best to make my training an example and my status and my influence count strongly for better Scouting and for better citizenship in my troop, in my community, and in my contacts with other people.

To this I pledge my sacred honor.

This I state not to any authority in the BSA, or to anyone that reads this blog, but to God, and the standard by which I measure my example, and how I influence the world as an Eagle Scout, will be determined not by what others expect of the Eagle Scout that I am but what God expects. 

Repentance never ends

"Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." Isaiah 55:7

I had planned on starting a blog for some time before the word was given that we could start one on our missions. One of the reasons was to chart my progress in developing a more luminous life, or becoming more self-aware and applying that self-awareness. I was also going to be discussing some of the issues that I struggle with, most principally depression, and how I was getting on with resolving it as best as I could.

That second thing is what I'm going to ever-so-lightly touch upon. You see, there's a little agent in my head that is responsible for saying "You're doing enough" or "You're not doing enough." Something playing havoc with that agent was the idea that all of these people that I admired were complete. They were finished products. They were demigods, you could say, and everything that followed was merely them continuing to add awesome deeds to their pedigree ala Heracles. Christopher Lee was already a boss by the time that I rolled along. It was not a question of whether Terry Pratchett would write a book that deserved to be remembered for generations but how many: how many books, and how many generations.

History doesn't remember the guys that don't do anything worth being remembered for. Reading up on it, it was often easy to forget that they didn't just stroll into this gig, knowing deep down it was all inevitable and they just needed to mouth the words until It Happened.

Because I forgot this, I began cultivating in myself, without consciously realizing that it was my own doing, a desperate need to be finished. I couldn't be, when I was forty, that guy who knows the scriptures front and back or that guy with twenty-five published novels to his name, or that guy who had sorted out his problems and never broke down. I had to be that guy now, if I ever would be.

Obviously this isn't true, or I wouldn't be writing this now. We are always "in-progress," never done, never the final product. There is always room for improvement, and what is important is where I am headed. What I want to do now is draw a connection from this idea, and link it to something theological. Repentance, specifically.

Repentance is an ongoing process. There is always something we can improve on. President Hinckley said once, that even as President of the Church, he still had to repent every day. The issue at hand is not whether you need to repent nor even, really, how much but whether or not you are repenting at all.

A righteous man may stop repenting and thus become wicked, and the most wicked man in the world, at the moment that he turns himself toward God and begins to repent, can become righteous. Don't worry about where you've been; worry about where you're going.

Fiction: They called him Judas, after the dagger

A soul met with Peter to thus sojourn with him at the gates of Heaven for a time. Their conversation came to turn to Judas, and the soul mentioned its pity for him, that he was cast into outer darkness for betraying the Son of Man.