WWJD 1

What would Joseph do? Our beloved founder and exemplary paragon of virtue par excellence has been on my mind lately. Now we don't worship Joseph, but we revere and honor him as a prophet or something. The 'J', I know, usually stands for someone else, but come on Jesus was a superhero. Being idealistic is cool and all, but I prefer a dash of conservative pragmatism with my reality, so for me lowering the bar is wholly acceptable. I need not scrape the bottom of the barrel though, far from it, I mean who's done more to advance the plight of homo sapiens (Jesus excluded from consideration, of course) than good ol' Joe Smith; living up to Joseph's impeccable example will be a mighty challenge indeed. Let's begin at the end shall we (borrowing rule number 233 from 1001 rules for my unborn son):

GO DOWN FIGHTING!

below: Joseph at Carthage Jail inaccurately depicted without a gun.

"Oh Lord, my God is there no help for a widows son?" That's a negative.

If an angry mob's out to kill you, your brother and your friends, pack heat and f*ck up as many of them as possible (before being shot dead). That's what Joseph would do.

totally random unrelated atheistic musings

I have an idea let's burn down all the myths that have ever been and replace them with strong atheism/human secularism/extreme positivism. This truly is the answer to all the world's ills. As I sit here peering down aloft my exalted perch of intellectual superiority, suffering from carpel-tunnel syndrome of the shoulder due to an excessive amount of patting my own back, I am often amused and bemused by the irrational behavior of the wandering body of ignoble ingrates that form the core body of the rest of humanity. Rule number 1: Don't be dumb.

The flying spaghetti monster (barely funny the first time it was used, which only makes it all the more hilarious today -- OK I'm lying it is pretty funny) or God or My Little Pony and Friends are figments of the imagination formulated to dull the impact of the oncoming scythe of death . Each unfalsifiable yet the former is widely worshiped, while the middle and latter have yet to spawn a comparable measure of religious devotion. Having big balls and long noodles while impressive by any objective standard, subjectively speaking it is an untenable deity. I don't like the thought of any God(s) that may taste better than I do. On a related note I've never tried pony.

If it's shiny, they will come. Occam's razor: The most likely explanation is the one which is most boring. I often dream literally of being an accountant, not to pitch a tent over an entire cross-section of society, a tent would be too big. Occam's razor is very sharp and I am very boring.

Can't we all just get along? I have fathoms of tolerance for all peoples, especially those that agree with me. I am Mormon and Atheist. I operate at two opposing ends of an undefined spectrum of thought. My head will explode at any time now.

The Buzz Aldren of Mormonism

Below: Joseph working hard on his translation of the Book of Mormon

Inspired by a post and comments at BCC...

Joseph smith: folk magician, successful author, prolific womanizer. Among these impressive achievements he is also revered as a prophet of God by millions of Mormons the world over. Justification for this position - a testimony given by way of the Holy Spirit - will be examined later, as for now a simple thought: In the mainline church Joseph's divine calling is a central tenet, more so than any of his successors. Go to any Mormon testimony meeting (held on the first Sunday of every month) and you'll hear among the eclectic anecdotes that there is a God and that Joseph was his prophet, if the modern equivalent is lucky he'll receive an honorable mention, the others however are rarely ever spoken of in this manner. This is incredibly unfair to Brigham Young. He had almost as many wives as his predecessor and dabbled in polyandry to boot, you don't get much more Mormon than that. Moreover, the fact that there is a mainline church tells us that other branches exist.

During the succession crisis after Joseph Smith's death there were a number of would be prophets in waiting ready to make a power grab. Brigham was successful where others weren't by arguing that the Quorum of the Twelve, a unit within the church of which he happened to be the leader, had received all the keys and authority of God that Joseph had restored and that although no man could replace their dearly departed prophet, that this group should carry on directing the church in his stead. He later changed his mind and decided he was a prophet after all (in the same way Joseph was?) and was sustained by the general membership as such. Other groups who disagreed splintered off formulating their own versions of Joseph's theology/theocracy. Imagine today, we (normal Mormons, that may be a misnomer) could instead be almost as non-existent as the Strangites if things had gone differently; or fundamentalists still practicing polygamy - score! Or progressive enough to allow woman the priesthood - Go reorganites! But we're good old fashioned normal Mormons and it's all thanks to Brigham Young, except he doesn't get any. It's a crime. Sure he gave us the Adam-God theory and Blood Atonement, but even prophets make mistakes sometimes. I propose that we add a new basic proposition to our testimonies: I know that Brigham Young was a prophet. (I think). So shall it be written so shall it be done.

who am I?

I am a human being. A part of a world not of my own choosing, at least when I got here I wasn't aware that I'd chosen it. I've been told differently since. Whether or not I wanted to be here or otherwise I am here alive now for a limited time only. Why should I keep going? First of all I lack the will and courage to leave and transform myself into dust. Dust doesn't have any fun as far as I can tell, but then again neither do I, dust also just is. If I were to go all zen and become enlightened I would just be too. And how is this different from death?

When I wake up in the morning I face a conclave of endless choices, most of which thankfully are filtered out by whatever is happening behind the curtain. My awareness seems to be limited to a fixed amount of inputs. I don't know the scope or plasticity of those limits, but I do know that death is one of them; its reach is universal, there is some point in every ones future where everyone stops being human. I have come to like my humanity precisely because it allows me to like and dislike things. If life went on forever I could go about exploring every single aspect of the universe, but that is not my experience, so I am required to prioritize, to make decisions. I often shrink from this necessity of being.

Part of the difficulty in deciding how to live is simply in the process itself. By this I mean that I have an idea of what a good life looks like and how I'd like to be, but the methods that I choose to use, to achieve those ends seem to often subtly pull me away from my desired aim. I hear a lot about the check box mentality and how that can alienate us from reaching the heights of a morally integrated life; why? Because we turn into pharisees? We lose sight of how to be, distracted by what steps we've chosen to get there? I don't know.

unfinished tales 1

Devin lived by the pool, not by choice, but by chance. Circumstance crept up without warning long before Devin ever arrived on The Scene and made appropriate preparations. It was almost as if he were the final cause in a long line of cause and effect and finally the pinnacle of creation had made its grand entry into the universe. Devin was here. The pool was there and life was going swimmingly.

Although the general tone of The Scene was oft congenial toward existence, it happened one day as Devin lay in a boat fashioned from the trunk of an old oak tree that a certain giant fish (Devin only later discovered that this was indeed the species of animal that then announced its presence) made itself known to him. This was a surprise to Devin, because he had been up to that point completely unaware that any form of life more cognizant than a vegetable existed other than himself. Yes, Devin had eaten and excreted his fair share of flora in his time, but had never chanced upon another creature that adorned its bones with meat and did as it pleased as often as it liked. He was unsure whether he felt at all inclined to share any portion of his beloved pool with this new entity. Existence had inexplicably complicated itself and Devin a millisecond into this new epoch yearned for simpler days.

"Hello, I say, what are you doing on my pool? You've been shitting and drinking here uninvited since you arrived!" said the over-sized fish whom we shall henceforth refer to as Fish.

Devin had always ignored the faint uncomfortable feeling that accompanied the thought that both ends of himself were equally involved in the pool. There was something unsavory about the entire affair, but because no one had ever said anything (other than himself) he continued in his unabashed blissful squalor. Devin thought it rather forward of this fish to disturb his peaceful repose and doleful contemplation of cloud formations. The way it had announced itself was nothing short of rude and Devin in spite of his toilet etiquette, or lack thereof, felt that all people should maintain at the very least his level of gentlemanly refinement; for he had never in all his days so much as cast a pebble in the peaceful ocean of someone else's thoughts.

a little light reading with Mr Baum 3

That was a long walk. I could have stayed where I started and remained equally (yet not so definitively) disappointed. No need to carry it all the way here. There was a nice show, a flashy display of power. We expected as much. Something wasn't quite right though, something felt wrong.

That's when we decided to look behind the curtain. There we found a man, well-meaning though he may have been, but still merely a man and not the wizard for which we were hoping. He did his best to conjure up solutions nonetheless, to our various problems, and some of us were impressed with his skulduggery, I however retained my disappointment upon discovery of his deception. Scarecrow still thinks he got a brain; Tinman believes he received a heart; Lion is no longer afraid; getting Dorothy home proved more of a challenge than the rest; I didn't get a billion dollars either. And all this thanks to the wonderful wizard of Oz and confirmation bias. Do we always find what we are looking for? Only on the occasions when we don't.

building my kingdom

Look inside the benevolent knight whose cracks reveal the darkened halls of new breath's dawn.

Is this writing's equivalent of scribbling? Some kind of improvisational performance in a static medium? Pretentious sophomoric garbage? That's partially up to you. Interpretation is a funny thing, but not the kind that will make you laugh. There are facts, that most of us can agree upon and then there are interpretations where disagreement is just as likely. Context plays a part, no doubt. If Picasso draws something that looks like it was produced by a five year old it's a staggering work of heartbreaking genius (or is generally accepted as such), I draw something in a similar vein and my little sister laughs. Little else transpires by way of response. Picasso has a prodigious body of work, whereas I do not. So, he can get away with a lot more then I can (he's a genius). Social constructs meet mental ones and we interpret stuff according to whatever framework we've erected over the course of our lives. But you don't have to buy into social currency, you can create you're own. Literally any interpretation is possible if you get creative enough.

a little light reading with Mr Baum 2

Maybe you're missing a brain, or a heart or something else. You're not as fully complete as you'd like to be. All rational measures look unpromising, then like a tunnel of light breaking through the dark horizon of death: a little hope. A benevolent, powerful being in a magnificent city wields the wherewithal to alleviate the embarrassment of your long held, torturous short-comings. With the avenues of the probable leading to unwanted ends the highly-improbable, nigh-impossible are the only roads left to take.

Dorothy wants to go home, I want a lot of things. You set out on a journey searching for the end of the rainbow. Good luck.