So I just finished Jonathan Haidt’s latest book, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (Penguin Press, 2018), coauthored with Greg Lukianoff. The key phrase: bad ideas. No shortage of those these days. Let’s focus on the bad ideas that the authors call the Three Untruths: (1) Fragility (the idea that people can’t handle conflicting ideas); (2) Emotional Reasoning (the idea that your feelings can’t be wrong); and (3) Us versus Them (the idea that there are good people and there are bad people, rather than that human nature is that all of us have some good and some bad in us).
Before giving a paragraph each to those bad ideas, two quick comments to give some context to Haidt’s discussion. First, the discussion is strongly generational. The point of departure is the strange and sudden change in the culture of university campuses starting about 2013, when concepts like speech codes, trigger warnings, microaggression, safe spaces, and speaker disinvitations (resulting from energetic and even violent student protests to speakers they disagree with) suddenly became a thing. Haidt ties that development to the college cohort born about 1995. These are not Millennials, this is the next generation (often called iGen or Gen Z). The timing is such that this cohort was roughly the first to have full engagement with smart phones and social media when they were early teens, and now they are at college. It changes the way they think and behave, and not in a positive or healthy way. A revealing statistic: something like 50% of college students use campus counseling services in a given year. But the whole discussion applies to all members of that cohort, not just college-bound kids, and extends as well to society as a whole, if not in such a concentrated way. Facebook is making everyone anxious and angry, not just the kids.
Second (and you probably saw this coming) I’m thinking the Three Untruths tell us something about what is going wrong with LDS culture as well as what is going wrong with campus culture and American culture. Think about it: (1) Fragility (the idea that the membership can’t handle the actual facts of LDS history, so instead we get a “based on a true story” kind of narrative); (2) Emotional Reasoning (more and more, leadership is teaching the youth to get an emotional testimony and avoid a facts and evidence approach); and (3) Us versus Them (black and white thinking has always been a feature of orthodox Mormonism, but suddenly there are more Thems than before in leader discourse: gays, gay marriage, feminists, intellectuals or pseudo-intellectuals, anti-Mormons, and now suddenly doubters seem to have made it onto the Them List).
The Untruth of Fragility
In the campus setting, Haidt is disturbed that so much of the new culture acts to protect students from ideas or opinions that they don’t like. That is so antithetical to the traditional idea of a university as an institution where all ideas are freely discussed, tested, and either affirmed or rejected based on evidence and argument. That may be more of an ideal that a true description of what goes on, but it is hard to deny that the current campus culture is farther away from that ideal than just ten or twenty years ago. Instead of faculty presenting a range of new and challenging ideas to students and inviting them to see the world in a different way and to appreciate alternative viewpoints, faculty are increasingly incentivized to avoid controversial topics and even non-controversial but (to some students) unwelcome ideas. Universities are becoming correlated!
The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning
There is an increased tendency or habit of defining reality in terms of one’s feelings rather than objective facts or evidence. Sometimes that works but feelings and initial reactions are not infallible. Far from it. So if a speaker’s or author’s words or ideas make you angry or upset, think before embracing your negative emotional response. Emotions are not just powerful states of mind — they color the way we see the world. It takes effort to push down one’s emotions about a tough issue and actually think in a relatively objective and rational way about it. Feelings are not facts.
Haidt spends some time comparing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), an effective therapeutic treatment approach, with the problematic aspects of bad thinking. The negative thinking habits that CBT helps troubled persons overcome include emotional reasoning (overreliance on feelings), catastrophizing (focusing on the worst possible outcome), dichotomous thinking (black and white), mind reading (assuming you know the thoughts and intentions of another with little or no evidence), labeling, and blaming (p. 38). Haidt sees these bad thinking habits — that CBT helps troubled persons overcome — as becoming more and more prevalent in campus culture and, to a lesser extent, in society as a whole. I won’t make a blanket claim that this also describes bad thinking by Mormons or within Mormon culture. To have traction, one would have to claim it is more of a problem within Mormon culture than within US culture as a whole. But some of those bad ideas are certainly found in LDS discourse and curriculum materials.
The Untruth of Us versus Them
I don’t think I need to say much here. A couple of quotes should do. “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being” — Alexander Solzhenitsyn. “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Concluding Thoughts
I don’t want this to sound like a blanket criticism of Mormon culture. There are a lot of good things we do: try to raise good kids who stay out of trouble, bring tasty food to friend or neighbors in need or in crisis, support higher education, and so forth.
The above discussion is drawn from just the first three chapters of Haidt’s new book. Other chapters discuss witch hunts, overparenting, safetyism, and bureaucracy, all of which a Mormon reader will find enlightening. So read this if you get a chance. Haidt’s earlier book The Righteous Mind is also highly recommended. Here are a few earlier W&T blog posts that discuss Haidt’s books or ideas:
Wheat & Tares 
I’m not sure I’d agree with your premises particularly the idea that the brethren are pushing emotional reasoning. I’d also say that if anything the brethren the last 20 years have been consistently moving from a fragility perspective although I think that was rather common the second half of the 20th century. Finally I’d say that us vs. them, while characteristic of much of our history also is something we’ve been fast moving away from – particularly during the period when Pres. Hinkley was President. (Indeed I’d say that move out of a siege mentality was characteristic of his efforts)
Have you ever talked yourself into believing something because you want to believe it? That’s the problem I have with the traditional LDS approach to seeking a testimony. It’s true that faith is required for a testimony and usually faith requires a little desire to get started. But if you WANT to believe something, aren’t you more likely to do so than if you are seeking the truth from a more neutral perspective? I have heard Church leaders over the years say that one way to build a testimony is to simply testify. Think about that for a moment. You’re not sure you believe something but if you declare that you do, you’re more likely to actually believe? Isn’t that kind of like talking yourself into a lie? One of my daughters was once pressured to testify of the truthfulness of the Gospel / Church / Book of Mormon and a girls’ camp and the direction was: we want all the girls to get up and do so. Talk about wanting to believe in order to fit in. I am much more comfortable with the approach that says that a testimony is a combination of what you feel (heart) and what you think (mind) after reviewing what you’ve been taught. To me that’s looking for and finding spiritual AND intellectual evidence. But it has to be an honest search, not one with a pre-determined desirable outcome.
I certainly observe many of these things within the Church, but what I was caught by was how much this often describes critics of the Church. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard the argument that members who have some characteristic (e.g. single, gay, doubting) might find some particular teaching difficult to accept (e.g. marriage, chastity, faith), that is reason enough to avoid preaching on that teaching, or at the least, that leaders should take extraordinary steps to explain how that difficult teaching applies or doesn’t apply to the sensitive group. Sensitivity, of course, is an important factor, and these concerns often arise out of something more than mere fragility, but I’m amazed at how often the arguments never go beyond an argument from fragility.
People from all viewpoints regularly engage in the emotional reasoning described here, but while I see general emotional reasoning and catastrophizing by Church leaders, I’ve observed dichotomous thinking, mind reading, labeling, and blaming more often from critics of the Church than from its leaders and defenders. I regularly read comments here that claim some Church leader meant something he didn’t say, labeling any policy or doctrine they don’t agree with as “damaging”, and blaming the Church for things that happen in Utah because they happen in Utah (often without good evidence that they happen more often in Utah–see Utah porn consumption claims).
I doubt that I kept my binder of French missionary discussions from all those years ago, but I sure seem to recall the scripted “So, Mr. Brown, how do you feel about…” whatever it was we had just presented to our investigator. Not, ” What do you think..? “
I think Dave B hit a home run.
Another David Burns in his sentinel book The Feeling Good Handbook defines 10 kinds of twisted thinking patterns of which several are partially overlapping and redundant. Apparently there is empiric evidence that indicates these patterns are strongly associated with depression and anxiety. The identification and controlling and replacing these thinking patterns with better ones is more effective treatment for mild to moderate depression and anxiety than medications and with longer spans of remission. In severe cases both therapy and medications are advised.
Guess what? ALL of these thinking patterns listed above are on the list of twisted thinking in Dr. Burns book:
….”emotional reasoning (overreliance on feelings), catastrophizing (focusing on the worst possible outcome), dichotomous thinking (black and white), mind reading (assuming you know the thoughts and intentions of another with little or no evidence), labeling, and blaming”.
The other ones on the Burns list are also common amongst Mormons : Shouldy thinking or must erbation, overgeneralizing, personalization, and the others are partially covered.
I think these concepts are some of the foundation stones of cognitive therapy. Engage in this twisted thinking at your own risk.
I’m going to have to agree with Dsc that this sort of thinking does seem to be more prevalent among critics of the church than among members of the church. That’s not to say that these problematic modes of thinking don’t exist in Mormondom, just that they seem to manifest themselves a bit differently than what Haidt and Lukianoff describe. In my experience, when Mormons react to something they disagree with or are uncomfortable with, it’s usually with more of an attitude of self-righteousness or even fear, rather than anger or outrage. Yes, there are elements of emotional reasoning, us-vs.-them, etc., although not of the same flavor I’ve seen, for example in ex-Mormon circles or from my politically liberal university classmates. I say this from the position of someone who is not particularly a friend of the church nowadays and is generally attracted by liberal politics: the culture described in this book is very much present among liberal 20-something-year-olds and has honestly made me second-guess a lot of what seemed at first to be good ideas.
Unfortunately there’s question-begging in this post. I will give one example:
You indicate the reliance in the Church on emotional thinking. Now there is a clear differentiation between spiritual communication and emotion, though they are often spoken of with the same language (unfortunately English isn’t particularly well-adapted to speak about transcendent subjects). But to take spiritual experience (including the calls to develop personal testimonies and a personal relationship with the Divine) and categorize that as emotional thinking because of some overlap in language is, in essence, stating that the Church promotes emotional thinking when I define emotional thinking as the thing the Church promotes.
You get what you look for, I suppose. I like the book, and I can acknowledge that the culture around the Church does at times equate emotion with spiritual experience but to project that onto the Church at large or to conflate the two is a mistake.
I am at present touring in India, and spent part of the morning at the darjeeling peace pagoda, where we learned that the parts of ourselves that we have to overcome to increase our enlightenment, are lust, anger, and ignorance. We are here to see the himilayas but they are covered in cloud.
When I hear terms like trigger warnings, and speech codes, I think these are ways for less enlightened folk to put down those who are respectfull of the feelings of their fellows that they do not want to see them attacked and hurt. I believe it is apropriate to discuss the costs and benifits of slavery, racism, racial superiority, government systems, Nazism and more recently homophobia, and sexism, but that does not mean you have to have speakers advocating those ideas without being rebutted. There are victims and to defend those victims is our responsibility and not a weakness.
The church is big on having subjects you can not discuss, and even redefining terms so they do not apply to them. Most members will not accept that the policy toward blacks and the priesthood before 1978 was racist. I suggested to the ward newsletter editor it might be good to announce how wonderful it was that much of the sexism had been removed from the endowment, but to check with the bishop. Next Sunday called in to the bishops office because i should not say the church is sexist. Sexist is a negative term and shouldn’t be used about the church. If young people are fragile we certainly are but ours is negative energy and theirs hss a good purpose.
We are also big on emotional reasoning and always have been.
I am not sure that some of the us v them problem is the response of the less enlightened feeling left behind. Trump has contributed to the conservative conversation around the world, and much of his contribution is othering.
The church has been talking about the wicked world for generations.us v them.
SO IF THESE ARE PROBLEMS FOR THE YOUNG AND SETTING THEM UP FOR FAILURE THE CHURCH ARE MASTERS AT IT, AND THAT MAY BE A PROBLEM TOO.
Jonathan Cavender – I think I get the point you are making, but I don’t know that it is so clear cut for all. If it works for you that is great. I struggle with feeling I almost never get answers to prayer. I get a tingling feeling at times when I hear a good story, but then I am confused if that is the spirit when I get the same tingling feeling when the evil villain gets pumped full of lead in a movie.
I also would ask Joanthan Cavander, or anyone else if they have a good answer, how we can clearly differentiate spiritual communication and emotional feeling.
I have never been able to do that. And I do believe the church conflates the two.
All I can recall is something like this: if your thoughts or feelings confirm that what church leaders are saying is true, that is spiritual communication.
Eugene:
Not to diminish the question, which is valid (it is a lifelong process), but the simple answer is practice. Yes, you get a happy feeling when the villain gets pumped with lead at the end of the movie and yes, you also get a happy feeling when the Lord communicates with the Spirit. Leaving aside the ambiguity of the word “happy” the emotion often sits on top of the spiritual experience and can displace it if we are not careful. When we have contact with the Divine, it is only natural that we might experience positive emotions from that contact. But just because positive emotions often accompany spiritual experiences doesn’t mean the emotions ARE the experience. And even that isn’t constant — there have been plenty of times the Lord has given me instructions I didn’t like and which didn’t come with positive emotions. When you get a prompting that you absolutely don’t want (causing any number of negative emotions) and at the same time know from experience that the prompting is from the Lord, it becomes crystal clear the difference between the “warm fuzzies” that are sometimes mistaken for the Spirit (because of their frequent proximity) and the actual transcendent communication.
So we do our very best to (a) leave ourselves as worthy as we can get to hear the Spirit as loudly as we can (repenting, reading scriptures, etc.); and (b) when we believe we hear the Spirit, working to tease that apart as best we can, we follow it. We have experiences where we follow what we believe to be the Spirit which is confirmed over time to have actually been the Spirit. We have experiences that we thought at the time were our own emotions, but which in retrospect we see to have been the Spirit.
And we have experiences where we follow what we believe to be the Spirit where, in retrospect, we are following our own emotions. And so, bit by bit, we are able to see God at work in our lives and sort out the “taste” (to use Joseph Smith’s term) of spiritual promptings and to distinguish them from emotions.
To relate it to something more mundane, I think it is largely like chicken sexing. In the beginning, we might be little more than random in our determinations as to what is the Spirit and what is emotion. But when we keep the pathways clear, when we listen as carefully as we can, when we try to genuinely follow what we determine to be the Spirit (and throw in some self-evaluation for good measure — a journal is good for that) over time, line upon line, we can learn to distinguish between the whisperings of the Holy Ghost and the rumblings of last night’s meatloaf.
The main point for the original post being, of course, that it is this experience — the spiritual experience — that the Church wants us to ‘feel’ (again, an ambiguous word). After all, if all the Church wanted for us to feel were the warm fuzzies it would leave us in a position where the Lord couldn’t instruct us to do anything we really didn’t want to do. And since none of us are really worthy (or likely very close yet) the Lord probably has a fairly large amount of ‘telling us things we don’t want to hear’ left for each of us before we are through. Emotion-based testimonies (and, for that matter, logic-based testimonies) tend to struggle with getting messages from the Lord that we need to change — the very messages that true conversion requires. Plus both emotion-based and logic-based testimonies are more fragile than those from contact with the Divine — a man with experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument.
Put in scriptural terms if we try our very best to listen for the Good Shepherd, over time we will come to know His voice. This is a life-long process that we can help each other with, but it is not one that an answer of the type you describe can be conveniently given. I am unaware of any shortcut.
Thanks Jonathan for taking time to explain. But to be honest, I don’t understand what you are saying. I tried for half a century as hard as I could and I have not had the experience you just described. I can’t understand why they Lord would keep it from me. But I did feel that same tingling feeling I used to feel that I thought was the spirit when watching the movie Bohemian Rhapsody yesterday. But thanks for trying to explain. I do think you are trying to help.
I think that people with different personality types experience/or not, these things differently. I have come to accept that there is very little intervention from the Lord in my life. Perhaps 2 oe 3 times in 70 years.
Some observations:
People of other denominations (including Muslims) have described their “spiritual experiences” using the same/similar terminology we often hear in Fast and Testimony meeting–that provide confirmation to them that their path with their chosen religious institution is the “right” one.
People in our church often display emotions when describing their spiritual experiences–giving the impression that spiritual experiences are emotional in nature.
I have a friend who credits the movie “Jesus Christ Superstar” for sparking her religious awakening and eventual joining the LDS church.
(while my seminary teacher was telling us the movie was the work of Satan).
Relying on spiritual experiences guidance is an inexact and often nebulous method of communication.
While I haven’t read Haidt’s book, I want to disagree with Haidt. I think we need to withhold judgement of GenZers. They are growing up in a vastly different society and world than previous generations. (Older generations often look down on younger generations).
In many ways, life was much simpler years ago. I especially, reject the label applied to UC Berkeley students when Milo Yiannopoulos was invited to
speak at their campus. Some students were gathered outside at a peaceful protest (a form of freed speech)–a dance– (i personally know someone who was there) when a group of vandals and thugs (believed to have been an antifa group with ties to Oakland) invaded the campus and the city of Berkeley.
The majority of those arrested were between 25-30 yrs old. Certainly not GenZers. And information doesn’t mention whether they were students at UC Berkeley or not.
I think for most people it‘s impossible to know for sure if the Divine is communicating with them, especially if in a direct and distinguishable manner. Those that say they know can‘t really explain how they know, they just say they do. I think it‘s faith/hope/belief. And that is just fine.
Thanks Jonathan too for your contribution.
Excellent analysis by Haidt and pretty good application to certain instances of Mormon culture, which if you happen to live in one of those instances may seem like there is only one Mormon Culture and it sucks.
“I’m thinking the Three Untruths tell us something about what is going wrong with LDS culture”
Wrong is in the eye of the beholder and there is no single LDS culture. An example is the culture of LDS military veterans which includes me. Or the California Mormon culture with seaweed milkshakes for YSA family home evening.
“(1) Fragility (the idea that the membership can’t handle the actual facts of LDS history”
I think the idea is “milk before meat”; expressed in scripture somewhere. What is the alternative? Meat before milk? Requirement 1 of baptism: Explain satisfactorily how and why a benevolent, omni-everything God created his own enemy and set him loose upon the world. Requirement 2. What exactly is your purpose in life; give three examples. What is good versus evil; explain these words and the terms you use in your answer. Why does it matter which you choose?
“(2) Emotional Reasoning (more and more, leadership is teaching the youth to get an emotional testimony and avoid a facts and evidence approach)”
Um, what facts could possibly exist that God visited Joseph Smith? Or me, for that matter.
“black and white thinking has always been a feature of orthodox Mormonism”
Black and white thinking seems to be a normal human condition without regard for a person’s religious beliefs. It appears to be extremely common. Even the name of the blog is binary: Wheat and Tares.
In response to “I think for most people it‘s impossible to know for sure if the Divine is communicating with them”
I believe God has made it possible to know for sure as otherwise the whole thing would be utterly hopeless not knowing from moment to moment whether any inspiration was from God, including the advice on how to tell.
There has GOT to be a way to know, to distinguish; but this is a gift of God, one of several, the “discerning of spirits” seems to fit the description.
“Those that say they know can‘t really explain how they know, they just say they do.”
I have no difficulty providing this description. The holy ghost has a distinct quality or feel; but learning what feel goes with God (or any invisible messenger) and what feel goes with the enemy of God is less obvious. One such calibration is knowing your secrets; but the enemy also knows at least some of your secrets.
I was given a blessing after a surgery. In that blessing my home teacher announced the answers to five questions that I had not asked anyone, but which were important to me. As it happens the blessing also went exactly as pronounced and I was up on my feet in the hour.
That helps calibrate but isn’t the most powerful revelation that ever came to me. The most influential revelation was just two words; when I was feeling sorry for myself thinking nobody cared, not only nobody but no animals or anything, I might as well have been invisible or not exist. The words “I CARE” came to my mind as if spoken, but not really spoken; sort of echoing between my ears, accompanied by an astonishing energy or lightness. That is why I said I HEARD it, but I’m scientific enough to know or suspect I was the only one hearing it (but I was also the only one there). I looked around anyway to see where it came from. It was exhilarating but it was also frightening.
Furthermore, there’s a “gestalt” or an endowment of understanding that goes with it; suddenly something, or many things, become very clear and obvious that until that moment had been cloudy or even invisible. Whether this is “God” I cannot say for he did not say; I have a sense it was the Savior based on the personal nature of it and the astonishing power of it.
The enemy of God can also be calibrated. Many people I have talked to have had the Joseph Smith experience of having a very scary force shut his mouth and feel like you are about to die; but calling on the name of Jesus Christ usually works instantly to dispell this phenomenon. It did so for me.
There be many spirits neither God nor his enemy; they vary considerably in intelligence, power, intentions of good/bad. Some might not be “spirits” in the discrete sense of the word; just that they contain something spiritual or of the essence of what a spirit is made of and can be felt. I explore this more fully in California where there’s a lot of “dark zones” where the Light of Christ just isn’t there except in rather sharply defined boundaries, sort of a dome or skin closely wrapped around the Oakland temple, an invisible boundary less than an inch thick as the spirit(s) inside the temple push against the darkness outside (or vice versa).
But in Alaska it was the other way round; all of nature living the law of its creation is by definition Celestial creating vast regions that to the eyes look rather bleak but where the spirit of God, and the Light of Christ, is strong like a temple.
Reading the scriptures reduces the ability of the enemy of God to misrepresent himself and gives you a baseline of good/bad so that when “God” tells you to do something bad you can reasonably conclude that it isn’t God speaking to you.
In reference to: “I tried for half a century as hard as I could “
In a couple of places the “gifts of God” are enumerated. The implication is that no person has all the gifts or at least it is likely to be extremely rare.
The point is to seek your own gift and amplify it so you can share your gift with those who don’t have your gift, and you can benefit from the experience of others who have different gifts.
Answers to prayer can be VERY fickle at times. For little things I easily obtained answers, but for Big Life Questions I got nothing! For many years! Until finally I obtained the answer I was seeking, who to marry; but before I could be answered I had to be prepared and that took quite a long time and even then I was only barely prepared.
Interestingly, I can get answers for other people usually quite readily. I cannot bless myself. But if I put my hands on your head and humble myself, usually but not always it comes clearly to my mind the thoughts; but it is still up to me usually to form those thoughts into English words and sometimes that’s not very easy as I stumble around a bit trying to capture the essence of a thing. But there’s times when I’m on automatic pilot and I’m barely aware of what I am saying with quite a lot of passion or energy. When I tap into that sort of thing it’s “yowza” this person has a great, which often means terrible, future. If God has his eye on you, so does the enemy of God.
As for my children, well step-daughter in particular, we went hiking in the mountains and on the way down talking about religious topics; angels and the holy ghost. When I felt the presence of the Holy Ghost I asked my daughter to describe her feelings at the moment, to make note of the special quality that accompanies the Holy Ghost by which you can know it is of God. Many things provide good feelings; but the Holy Ghost isn’t just “good”, it is “pure”, a very difficult word to describe. I suppose I might try by comparing to wild flowers like lupine; it is perfect in its environment; nothing that is not lupine or wasteful. I suppose the essential ingredient is “LIFE” itself; everything about God and creation is LIFE. That means the enemy of God is about death, surrounds death, seeks death. That’s one way to tell.
D&C 46:
12 To some is given one, and to some is given another, that all may be profited thereby.
13 To some it is given by the Holy Ghost to know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and that he was crucified for the sins of the world.
14 To others it is given to believe on their words, that they also might have eternal life if they continue faithful.
And so on. It is worth reviewing the list.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
Clark and Dsc and mckay, negative thinking patterns certainly appear in many people and in different institutions. I think the authors tied those patterns to human nature, not just go Gen Z, although their initial focus was on college campuses and the Gen Z or iGen cohort.
Mike, the authors might cited David Burns as the source for their negative thinking template and the CBT approach (I don’t have the book with me now to check).
Geoff-Aus, you’re in India? There has to be an interesting story there. There’s an LDS temple that has been announced for Bangalore. I wonder if they will make it colorful in the East Indian style.
Lois, I’m not sure the authors were really judging Gen Z. They explained that their attitudes and behavior are partly a result of social media dynamics and constant access via smartphones. They come down hardest on college administrators, actually, who seem devoted to creating an environment in which negative thinking flourishes and traditional education is at risk.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
Michael 2, if you’re an ex-military guy, you probably grasp the difference between a conversation and an interrogation. When you structure your entire comment as taking snippet quotes from the post or earlier comments, then directly rebutting them, that is more like an interrogation than a conversation. It rubs folks the wrong way. Maybe you intend that. If you don’t, try just a little harder to contribute in a friendlier way.
We’ve talked about this before, so maybe this is one of those ingrained negative thinking habits the authors talked about. Perhaps when you are tempted to use or overuse the quote-and-rebut method, stop and ask yourself — what was I just thinking? What impelled me to respond in this way? Is it really reasonable and logical to think everyone else is wrong and needs my pointed advice to correct them? Could it possibly be true that the life experience of other people, not just my own, is valid in its own right and deserves some consideration if not necessarily agreement? Give this a try next time around. And no, don’t respond with another long comment quoting and rebutting my request to stop quoting and rebutting every comment.
Dave B. speak for yourself, it doesn’t rub me the wrong way. One of the strengths of a blog is that you can respond to what people wrote and what better way to respond to what they wrote than to quote them first? I’ll tell you what does rub me the wrong way, people putting down other participants by essentially saying, “We don’t do things like that here” instead of engaging with what they actually said.
Dave B, indeed we have talked about this before and I have stated my reasons for communicating in the style that I communicate.
I find it somewhat ironic that most here chafe at Rules coming from Salt Lake City but there’s no shortage of your own rules.
I consider it a courtesy to identify to what I am responding. You, the reader, can then skip over the comment entirely once its context has been established at the top and it isn’t something you are interested in. I believe it also helps to identify to whom I am responding but I’m willing to forego that part sometimes.
I am intrigued by your comparison of my commentary to interrogation. I wonder if we have the same understanding of what that word means. If I interrogate you, I am seeking answers to questions, you provide me with information, it is a one way street, not a conversation at all. But I have asked nothing of you. I do sometimes have a general request of people, what do you believe and why do you believe it, but that is not here today.
Clearly interrogation is on your mind.
I have reviewed my comment; I see nothing sinister there. A reader complains about having tried for many years to get some sort of evidence of the existence of God; probably feels guilty about not having a thing that so many people assert in Testimony meeting that THEY have! “I know the church is true”. Really? How exactly do you know that?
So I remind the gentle readers that having a real testimony is likely to be uncommon; no need to feel guilty. Find your strength; it might not be what someone else’s strength has turned out to be.
How exactly is that an interrogation?
So, let us practice. I will paste your questions, answer them, but then delete your questions so that only my responses are indicated. Think of it as a game of Jeopardy where the answers are on display but you have to guess at the question!
How to answer you.
I have no idea. I also do not know why I prefer chocolate. But I do, so there it is.
It depends on the topic and my knowledge as compared to that of others as best as can be discerned.
Yes
Here you go!
Sorry, it’s my style. I can recommend just skipping over any time you see my handle and by that simple strategy find inner peace.
Dave: It occurs to me that because you did NOT provide context, I may well not know what exactly you found offensive. Perhaps you could ADD some context in your replies, even if only to me? That would help!
Ah, I see.
I respond somewhat challenging IF the writer of a comment asserts or assumes that All People Everywhere (thus including ME) are exactly as he/she says followed by some sort of criticism. It’s sloppy. It implies that you are wise and smart but everyone else has their minds clouded by “LDS Culture”. Implicit is for others to join you in feeling superior to those whose minds are still clouded. They will signify by the raise of the right hand (well, upvotes and downvotes here).
It seems a bit Rameumptum-ish.
Could it possibly be true that the life experience of other people, not just my own, is valid in its own right and deserves some consideration if not necessarily agreement?
Let us find out. if banhammer then the answer was “no”.
KLC, thanks for the feedback. Wheat and Tares is one of the few group blogs that actually acccommodates discussion from across the full LDS and Mormon spectrum. But there is always a need to protect the forum — to keep the comment space open and available to those who want to contribute to the conversation. On occasion people use the comment section to target other commenters, or try to take over a comment thread by leaving several long and rambling comments — then the post author or one of the site admins takes action to protect the forum. Every blog does this. W&T is fairly hands off with comments compared to most of them.