There was a talk on Sunday that brought up the idea that of confusion vs. clarity. I was listening from a distance, letting the ideas float over me in the gym while I sat on an ass-numbing folding chair. Who is confused? Who is clear? What does clarity mean? Is clarity just consistency of opinion? Is it confidence? Can you be “clear” but wrong?
The speaker mentioned several different dichotomous pairs:
- the world vs. the Church
- young people vs. adults
- good vs. bad
- past vs. present
These ideas were all intertwined in various juxtapositions. Things that used to be “good” are now “bad.” Things that used to be “bad” are now “good.” Young people are confused. (Even some) adults are confused. The World is confused. The Church has clarity. The past was “good and clear.” The present is “bad and confusing.”
These assertions felt muddled to me, partly because of how vague they were. What are the things that the speaker thinks used to be good that are now bad? What are the things the speaker thinks are confusing? What are the things the speaker thinks are bad that are now good? What is “the World” to the speaker? Does the Church have clarity on those things? Is the Church confused? Were the things that are now “good” really bad? Were the things that are now “bad” really good?
Since I don’t know what specific things the speaker meant, and since there was a big bruhaha over LGBT issues at BYU, I assumed he might be referring to homosexuality being “bad” but called “good” by his rhetorical opponents, but he could have meant something else. He said it was confusing for young people, but it seems to me that young people being “confused” is what old people say when young people disagree with them. Young people don’t have the historical knowledge that older people do. They don’t carry the same baggage we do. Things are generally more clear to them than they are to us as a result. Things that are a change to older people are not a change to younger people. Things that are crystal clear to my kids are sometimes more gray to me.
For example, the words we use to identify groups of people change over time. Today we say “Asian” rather than “Oriental,” and it feels *wrong* to say “Oriental.” When my assistant referred to people as “Oriental” I grimaced and said, “Don’t you say Asian?” She said, “I am Oriental! That’s just what Americans say, la!” (She was Singaporean). Then my other assistant chimed in, “I’m Indian, not Asian. I know everyone says ‘Asian,’ but India isn’t Asia. It’s one billion people. Call us Indian!” (He also corrected me when I called his city of origin Mumbai. “It was Bombay until ten years ago! I know Bombay is English colonialism, but I grew up in Bombay, not Mumbai. They made up Mumbai!”) When I explain this to my kids, we all shrug. To them, it’s still Asia, and it’s still Mumbai. That’s what their friends say. To me, it’s not quite as clear. I have older friends.
There was a fantastic article at Washington Post written by a college professor about the fears parents were having about the supposed “liberal” indoctrination of their children in universities, a fear E. Holland said was driving parents and donors to complain to Church leaders. Aside from the fact that we are now being run by a mob of Karens (who think BYU is being run by a liberal woke mob), the fear that young people are being indoctrinated at college seems to be misguided for a few reasons: 1) they are just growing up, and 2) it really sounds like some of these parents are upset if the conservative “indoctrination” they did with their kids didn’t stick now that those kids have left home. From the article:
I have heard the complaints of conservatives who believe that American colleges are indoctrinating their children. I don’t understand this. From where I sit, this complaint is only rooted in the fear that their children might acquire some empathy and understanding.
I am amused why many conservatives believe those of us who teach in college hold such sway over their children. They could not be more misinformed. My students regard me just as they regard all old people: as someone they have to deal with until they return to the company of other young people.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/26/professors-indoctrinating-students-reality-its-other-way-around/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_opinions&utm_campaign=wp_opinions&fbclid=IwAR0dbYIK1VuMhiJ6BRHHd7UQIYKaku9sXXdQEtDOekfSfVH09k2Yt8qPBFs
The professor quoted in the article also talked about the fact that most of the “controversial” topics that were concerning to these complaining parents (Karents?) were being raised by the students, not faculty. For the first time, students were comfortable raising concerns, coming out, asking the tough questions, brave enough to face censure from the group, and they were the ones who wanted to have bigger discussions about tougher topics.
Over a decade ago, I was visiting my home ward and I ran into the Sunday School teacher I had when I was thirteen. We were deliberately difficult, challenging authority, talking in class, reading the dirty parts out of novels in the back of the room, eating food in class, tipping our chairs up. We were the worst. Our teacher was a college professor from French Guyana, a very smart man with a thick accent and an adult education mindset. Seeing me as one of the ringleaders, he assigned me to teach the class as his substitute several weeks that year. It was tough, but a valuable lesson for a few reasons: 1) I could see firsthand that we were a bunch of a-holes, 2) I had empathy for his position as teacher, but most importantly 3) he took me seriously enough to engage with me as a “peer.” He extended trust in me as if I were an adult like he was, someone who could take an adult responsibility like teaching my own peers in a class.
When I met him all those years later, I apologized for my terrible behavior in his class, and he emphatically and graciously stopped me. “Never apologize for the things you did as an adolescent,” he gently corrected me. “These are the things you must do to become an adult. You must learn to stand on your own, to have your own ideas and thoughts. We all must do this.”
A couple years ago, I shared this story with some of the ward friends I grew up with who also had fond memories of this man. One of my friends said, “Oh sure, he says that now, but I know for a fact that when he was going through it, he’d get home from church, close the door and celebrate finally being done for the week, not having to deal with us for one more week.” I can totally believe that, too. I’ve experienced a nursery migraine firsthand, despite not being a migraine sufferer. I don’t hold it against those kids, but some of them were definitely trying my patience. Kids are self-centered, and they live in kid-world. We can’t control them. We can guide and teach them only with their consent.
I just finished watching the Netflix series The Chair, (**SPOILERS FOLLOW**) about an English department in a liberal arts college, with its first female POC chair. One of the professors is teaching about the concurrent rise of the absurdist movement and fascism. He mentions by name several of the fascists, including Hitler, making a quick “Heil, Hitler” gesture as a rhetorical attention getter. Students in the class have filmed this action, then make a meme of it. Protests break out across campus. White supremacists feel emboldened, drawing swastikas in public areas and saluting him on campus. He faces scrutiny by the institution which wants to fire him for this, even though none of them believe he is a white supremacist or a Nazi sympathiser. They all know this is purely an issue of optics and a careless gesture being blown into something it was not.
When he meets with students to discuss the situation and apologize, his apology is rejected because 1) he apologizes for their reaction, not his action, 2) he expects them to educate him about why it was wrong, and 3) he doesn’t understand the situation they are living in, their reality. That last point is perhaps the crux of this issue. Older generations may think they have clarity about certain things, and so may young people, but we are also prone to confusion. Making a “Heil Hitler” gesture thirty or forty years ago might not have emboldened actual Nazis to think you are an ally. Honestly, the German teacher in my high school used to do that, which we took as a self-deprecating joke at the time, like he was poking fun at the one thing every American thought about when we heard a German accent. Everybody knew Hitler was the most evil human who ever lived. Nobody openly admired him. That’s not necessarily the world we live in now. Some things that were hidden are open.
Things that used to be good are now bad? I’m not sure those things were really “good,” so much as neutral, unless those things aren’t really “bad” now, and maybe this is a conservative strawman argument. Things that have changed over time:
- How educated we are. When we understand something on a cursory or shallow level, it can look different than when we dig deeper. Simple may feel clear, but it’s not all there is to the story.
- How polarized we are. Polarization increases with time. We are growing apart, not closer together, and it’s now more common align in opposition to something we hate than to rally around a thing we love. This results in less understanding and empathy with those we see as on the “other” side. Their views become incomprehensible to us, and ours to them.
- Social media exposing things we didn’t used to see. Things become normalized the more we are exposed to them. I did not know what a “furry” was before social media, for example. That wasn’t me being confused. I just learned about something that I had never encountered before.
What do you think?
- Is clarity an illusion? Is confusion really just disagreement? Is clarity overrated?
- Is it more important to be right or to be willing to have the conversation?
- Is indoctrination of young people a mirage? A bad goal? How do we respect the process of growing up, even when our kids reject our ideas?
- Have you seen The Chair? What were your thoughts?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
Let me answer the last question first: It is absolutely clear that young people are being indoctrinated. And not for the good.
The modern entertainment industry, social media, and the rest of hip hop culture are teaching young people that immediate gratification is the only thing that matters. Indeed, the message is that satisfying the desire for pleasure is the only thing that matters, regardless of the consequences.
As a result, we have a whole generation of young people who make Hawk Girl’s group look like nuns and kindergarten teachers in comparison.
When Ms. Stallion and Ms. B are held up as the paragon of modern culture in an award ceremony so foul it would embarrass even the most excitable Russian Princess, we know that society is in trouble. And yet, this is celebrated because of the indoctrination that Hawk Girl speaks of.
As for the other questions, clarity is not an illusion. When one focuses on what matters, everything becomes clear. As the famous quote states: “ This nation was founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world — “No, YOU move.”
A lot of things in life are complex and difficult. So of course a lot of people, young or old, are confused and probably should be. But much of that confusion is rooted in an unwarranted expectation that everything should be simple and straightforward, black and white, good or evil. If you *expect* a lot of things will be complex and difficult to fathom, you won’t be confused! The current polarized political environment, which deals in simple dichotomies, is spilling over into everything else. More people are confused because their expectations have been cheapened.
Indoctrinating kids? Has anyone ever really tried to do this? It’s a lot harder than it seems.
Normally I wouldn’t respond to JCS, but since he’s making broad and insulting generalizations about the group of people I work with, I felt the need to respond:
JCS: I’d be careful with your comments about “young people” being indoctrinated and being only interested in pleasure. Most of the young people I work with are skeptical, brilliant, aware of the world and how it works and are much less prone to hedonism than you might think. Are they a bit naive? Sure. Do they possess a mostly untempered idealism? Sometimes. But they’re also incredibly adaptable, creative and committed when it comes to making the world a better place. Most of the young people I know spend a lot more time advocating for marginalized people and fighting for legislation that benefits such people than partying. Of course there are young people who prefer to party or indulge in any number of sensual delights, shall we say, but that doesn’t mean all of them do that and it also doesn’t mean that one can’t both indulge oneself and also spend a decent amount of time advocating for others. They are amazing people, these young folk. If you spent less time judging and condemning them, JCS, you could learn a lot from them.
And speaking as a college teacher, I haven’t seen “The Chair” (yet! I’m dying to!), but I can say that your description of the scene and story line about Hitler is obviously meant to be a bit satirical while also nodding to the fact that, indeed, things have changed over the years; or at least our perception of public discourse about certain things has changed. Most of my students wouldn’t have such a knee-jerk reaction to said fictional incident, but I do think that the young people of today aren’t willing to be dismissed or talked down to. When I was young, the basic message was something like, “wait until you’re at least 30, then I’ll start listening to you.” Today’s young people don’t accept being condescended to or treated that way. As I said to JCS, this younger generation does have its flaws, but it’s also a lot more aware of political and social ideologies and the potential harm they can inflict. I think that’s one reason that things have gotten so polarized: This younger generation sees more clearly the harm that public policy and legal decisions can cause. Add that to the older generations that have members who are “dug in” and unwilling to accept change and you’ve got a recipe for continued polarization. But I do think progressivism will eventually triumph. It will just take longer than I or my young students would like. And to Dave B.’s point, it IS a lot harder to indoctrinate young people than most people think. Thinking that it’s easy is another indication of the contempt with which some people regard the young.
Brother Sky, are you denying the claim of JCS that young people are being indoctrinated by the media into accepting uncontrolled sex and violence? There is an article in today’s Wall Street Journal about how Tik Tok is pushing sex and violence on youth: https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-algorithm-sex-drugs-minors-11631052944?mod=mhp
JCS is clearly right on this one.
You want to know what is confusing to many LDS? How is it that yesterday’s doctrine can be disavowed today without any new revelation or scripture? That seems more convenient than it does clear. Perhaps the most testimony damaging statement I ever read was the line from the Gospel Topic Essay on Race and the Priesthood in which the Church claims to now disavow theories about race being a curse. It wasn’t as if that was a theory promoted from the back row of the High Priest meeting…it came from the very top. And now we are just going to say: “nevermind” ?
You know what else is confusing, not clear? How the Lord can change his mind in 41 months (Nov 2015 – April 2019) on the Policy of Exclusion.
Mr Charity: You can blame the young folks for cat videos but don’t blame them for being confused.
All the most important scientific discoveries are somewhat confusing and counterintuitive. Relativity, the standard model, wave/particle dualism, rapid short term vs slow long term evolution, mind/body feedback, heisenberg principle, etc.
Many government and civic principles are challenging and confusing with opposing good objectives . Majority rule vs minority rights, personal liberty vs civic responsibility, religious institution freedom vs personal religious freedom, funding community services vs encouraging capital investment. etc.
Even religious and ethics principles are fraught with dilemmas. justice vs mercy, faith vs works, institutional authority vs. personal freedom of conscience, caring for the poor vs. investing your money (talents), burying your weapons of war vs. waving a war banner to rally for your cause, studying things out in your mind vs feeling in your heart, etc.
All of it is confusing and challenging. The grownups in the room embrace the confusion and wrestle with bith sides of all the issues to find a balance that best works for themselves and their loved ones.
hawkgirl asks “ Is it more important to be right or to be willing to have the conversation?”. Clearly, she understands that no one can really know whether they are right without first engaging in the conversation. Without considering all sides of the issue, no one can know whether they are right.
Unfortunately, hawk girl’s understanding is not shared by other authors on W&T. Rick B. consistently refuses to allow women to post comments on his blog and even removes their comments when others support the women rather than him. This is all too common in a male-dominated church. Indoctrinated indeed!
I’m sure a lot of the anti-maskers and -vaxers have perfect clarity about their positions. OTOH, it’s becoming more and more evident that they’re perfectly wrong and the consequences to hospitals and trained professional staff is causing chaos, confusion and even depression and mortality. Witness ID.
It’s an unfortunate fact that clarity can come equally from mastery and confirmation bias. Of course our personal struggle is to be vigilant and scrupulously honest with ourselves about where our clarity comes from and to answer to more than our personal “freedom”.
An excellent point made by Alice. If clarity is not an indication of correctness, it is only desirable for making us feel better.
“Clearly, she understands that no one can really know whether they are right without first engaging in the conversation. Without considering all sides of the issue, no one can know whether they are right.”
This is so very important! Learning and approaching the truth is so much more important than being right. It’s how we can get right. …to the extent that it’s possible for mere mortals.
Trish is right about be willing to engage in conversation. I too have pointed out that Rick B. is overly critical of women and ignores their contributions to the church, only to have him censor my comment by removing it. Obviously, those who are indoctrinated to the hilt do not want to even engage in conversation with women they disagree with.
I decided a simple upvote was not enough for @josh h’s comment. I agree that so much of the confusion in the Church comes from trying to understand how prophets and apostles change their collective minds or just plain make mistakes or teach things that are later discovered to not be True (capital T). I think Ben Spackman captures the confusion well in his essay on Philemon where he tries to deal with the problem of slavery in the Bible. At one point, he asks, “What model of scripture, revelation, and prophets allows “God’s word,” God’s prophets, and Jesus himself to do or allow something so… inhuman?” We often say that having living prophets and apostles will decrease confusion in the world, but it sometimes seems that these same prophets and apostles are contributing to the confusion.
Some thoughts on “The Chair” (more spoilers ahead!)
As soon as the new chair of the English Department settles into her lovely office she’s confronted by her dean to get rid of one or more aging dinosaurs who’ve been there forever (with tenure), teach a tiny fraction of the student body, and draw enormous salaries. Meanwhile there’s a brilliant young professor who’s popular with her students. But she’s ready to bolt for greener pastures because, b,asically, the dinosaurs are impeding her hoped-for cadeer path. One of those dinosaurs laments to her Chair that a prime reason why she got into college teaching was that she believed it was a place where “elders” would always be respected and honored. Surprise!
Meanwhile, the young Chair has to interview the guy who the dean (actually, it was his wife’s idea) wants to give a prestgious lecture
Oops, phone decided to post comment before I was done.
Anyway, this wealthy, famous actor being interviewed decides it’d be a great idea to finish the dissertation he started back in the mid-80s. Problem, of course, is everything’s changed in English literature scholarship since, but he has no clue. The world has moved on.
Clarity, at any given time, most likely won’t be clarity sometime in the future. Yet religious institutions all too often get stuck in one of those moments of supposed clarity, believing it somehow represents Truth for all time. Sadly, aboout the only thing that can change things is a tremendous shock to the system. Some instititutions and their time-bound leaders, however, respond by just digging in deeper.
According to the dictionary definition, “indoctrinate” means “teach (a person or group) to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.”
In my experience, universities tend not to do that. Rather, I think many do a decent job of introducing critical thinking skills to students. Perhaps when students use those critical thinking skills on the beliefs their parents indoctrinated them with, their parents feel that those children are being indoctrinated because how else could a kid possibly disagree with a parent about anything?
In addition, I think there may be a lot of college kids who never had their ideas challenged or pushed back on before attending college (at least not certain ideas). So maybe they feel uncomfortable expressing a different opinion than a professor or a classmate, but I wonder if that stems more from discomfort with debate and inexperience with people disagreeing with them than it does from actual persecution by professors and liberal students. Because I’m a lawyer, I’m very used to debating the merits of ideas without interpreting disagreement as a personal attack. Sometimes when I get into this mode with non-lawyers I realize I need to tone it down because my counterpart *does* interpret disagreement about ideas as a personal attack. This is particularly true when talking about charged issues like homophobia, sexism, and racism.
I also think many universities do a pretty good job of introducing students to people from backgrounds they had previously been totally unfamiliar with depending on their family of origin & where they grew up. Since I went to a super white, super Mormon high school, when I went to college on the East Coast I interacted with people from different racial, ethic, socioeconomic, political, sexual orientation & gender identity, etc. etc. etc. backgrounds. Wouldn’t you know, interacting with those people helped me to understand them better and, yes, changed my worldview some. But that was an education, not an indoctrination.
Sidenote(ish), this post reminded me of the very excellent observation that Lindsay Hansen Park made the other day:
“One of the most frustrating things being surrounded daily by Millenarianism, is that you are completely enmeshed in a system of people who depend on the world getting worse to validate their religious ideas.
Too often, progress and advancements for women, POC, lgbt and other marginalized groups, becomes a threat. Things that make the world better and kinder for more people, have to be viewed as wicked- when in fact, they are liberating.
It’s gross and exhausting living around people who depend on a bleak outcome for their own spiritual liberation at the cost of liberation for living, breathing humans that exist in the now.”
I whole-heartedly agree that it is exhausting to be in a community that *expects* things to get so much worse and so interprets any change as bad. There’s a 99.9% chance that your sacrament speaker was definitely referring to this and operating with this mindset.
Speaking of debating ideas, how about the idea that “The Millennium” started when Christ made his appearance in the Nauvoo temple. That was glorious second coming. Since that event we have made leaps and bounds, albeit imperfectly and inconsistently, in human social, scientific, technological, and economic progess. We are in the millennial period. Things will continue to get better notwithstanding the bumps along the road. The test is are we moving the world toward a universal paradise or are we getting in the way?
Kirtland Temple…. sorry. Fingers moved faster than the brain.
Elisa – that quote about how depressing it is to be around someone whose views require the world to get worse in order to validate them finally crystallized this struggle I have in relating to a difficult relative. Thank you for that. He is sure that his pessimistic predictions are the only way to think, and every time he’s wrong, he just digs in harder. He’ll only be happy when total destruction proves him right because then he can say ‘I told you so.’ He’s exhausting.
The confusion of the present vs clarity of the past is just nostalgia making things seem rosier than they were. I do believe we’ve got more partisanship and polarization nowadays, but doom predictors are a constant. I remember when I was a teenager attending a fireside where the speaker spent an hour talking about how hard rock music would lead us to Satanism, and Tina Turner’s song “What’s Love Got to Do With It” would make us all start fornicating if we listened to it. I got my feelings hurt as a super faithful teenager when some middle-aged doom predictor looked at Madonna’s latest antics and wild costume and assumed that all youngsters were admiring and copying that. Every generation has wild celebrities that get hyped by the media. It doesn’t mean every young person admires and emulates the celebrity.
The confusion around issues like rights and accountability is because the standards are changing. The more we try to hold people/businesses/politicians accountable for the harm their actions have done to the disadvantaged and the environment, the harder that sense of entitlement digs in and insists the way things were is the way they should always be.
I enjoyed The Chair. Our department’s specific problem are somewhat different, but the characters are not so different. As a science department what the dean cares about most is research grant dollars brought in, not the quality of teaching. But since I am in charge of classes, that is what I care about and getting some of the very senior faculty to freshen up their teaching approach is challenging.
I think JRH is right to be afraid that even LDS youth raised in the Book of Mormon belt aren’t buying what he and other Q15 members are selling. And when these youth come to BYU and are exposed to faculty members who both love Christ and LGBTQ individuals, they do start wondering why senior LDS leadership has such homophobia, when other faithful disciples do not. Unlike JRH, I think that the best that college professors can do is not direct metaphorical musket fire at those who disagree with the Q15’s current teachings, but instead try to model a thoughtful and rigorous approach to complex problems. Trying to indoctrinate young adults seems a fools errand. You have to start in nursery and sunbeams for that, and still look how unsuccessful that approach is when you have poor doctrine to go on.
Finally, am I the only one who hopes that Elisa will be invited to be a permablogger for W&T soon? Besides hawkgrrrl, she is the person who comments and insights I most value here.
An excellent post on all counts, 10ac, but this is the portion I want to specifically underline:
“Finally, am I the only one who hopes that Elisa will be invited to be a permablogger for W&T soon? Besides hawkgrrrl, she is the person who comments and insights I most value here.’
I join you in this endorsement and hope.
JCS, on the off-chance you read any comments other than your own, you do realize that calling hip hop culture immoral smacks of racism, right? You didn’t call out country or pop which have their share of lewd lyrics and suggestive dance moves. And your repeated condemnation of the young never fails to induce eye-rolls. You sound like my grandpa lamenting the popularity of Elvis. I get that Cardi B terrifies you but you’re worried about the wrong stuff, my man.
Elisa has my vote too for more W&T content. No pressure though.
Oh that’s very kind everyone. Thank you. It would, however, require me to actually come up with original content rather than just offering hot takes on the great content produced by the bloggers here. Not sure I’m smart enough for that!
Maybe I will give a guest post a shot one day.
Elisa, anything you write would be most welcome!
I echo others to say that a lot of clarity seems like it comes from oversimplification of issues that are inherently complicated. (Of course I realize I should point this thought back at myself and the things I feel most clear on.)
I also nth the vote for Elisa to blog if she’s up for it. Elisa, I always love your comments!
Today is not only the anniversary of 9/11 but is also the anniversary of the largest massacre of white people by other white people out side of a declared war in the history of America. Sept 11 1857 is when the Mountain Meadows Massacre took place. 257 American men ,women and children massacred by other Americans who of course were all members of the LDS Church.I think both events should offer us an opportunity to reflect on the danger of intolerance in any form . To the extent we are angry with others because they don’t share our views of religion, politics ,life styles, pandemics or the efficiency of vaccines we are on dangerous ground. As both anniversaries should remind us It is a short step from anger to violence.