My Post Today: Moral Quagmires

Thanks for the daily brain bender.

1- Claus von Stauffenberg comes to mind.

2-A court over a calendar? Hmmmm.

3-Hiroshima and Nagasaki

4-Yes. If you can feel it in Walmart. You can feel it in a bar.

5-Are baptisms really success. Tons of people get baptized but most don’t remain. Rules or not.

1) Do the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people while also preserving the good of the minorities and individuals.

2) In my mind, excommunication does not much care about moral reasoning. It is enough to be disloyal. They asked Bro. Hardy if he would stop if asked by the President. He refused. His reasoning is secondary.

3) We are always morally responsible for the outcomes of our actions and we shall have to live with those outcomes.

4) Yes, you can feel the spirit in a bar. I find it interesting how afraid people are of alcohol. I know someone (LDS) that if the neighbors are having a party that involves drinking is afraid that drunk people may wander over and kill the family as they sleep. It does not seem to work that way for the people that I know that do drink. Their reaction time is impaired. Their inhibitions are lowered. They do not (as a general rule) start acting as though they have been possessed by demons. I am sure that this fear is a combination of individual upbringing and prevailing LDS attitudes about alcohol.

5) Obedience and baptism success are not correlated. However, there is a correlation between mission obedience and risk of missionary injury. There is a correlation between mission obedience and the perception that the MP is doing a good job (baptisms or no). I do feel for MP’s that are left to oversee several hundred young men (and a handful of young women) in far flung locations without many of the normal motivational tools. Missionaries do not get paid and just about the only punishment that you can hold over a missionary’s head is to send him home dishonorably. Institutionalized guilt is one of the few tools left to the MP who hopes to maintain order.

-What’s the relationship between obedience and missionary success? Does adding rules and restrictions increase or reduce success?

As a 21 year old:

Greater obedience brings blessings. The lord is bound when I do what he says. The lord is telling me to obey these rules. If I obey I’ll have success. That attitude fueled my scrupulosity, it was extremely stressful. I was depressed and filled with self doubt my entire mission.

Over two decades later:

If I could go back and do it again I’d focus less on the rules and more on the experience itself. I’d be much happier. That’s not to say that I’d go off and break all the rules, all I’m saying is that the rules would not be the focus. I’d also divorce myself from the goals, quotas, and expectations. They suck the joy out of the experience. Whether or not you hit the numbers shouldn’t determine your happiness in any way, shape, or from. That’s slightly off topic but the mission goals were couched in obedience. The lord expects you to hit these numbers… if you have faith and are obedient.

So yeah, it’s the only motivational club leaders have to wield but I don’t think they understand the harm that this does to some people.

I would like to question what makes a mission a success. Overall I think happy missionaries experience more success and an unhealthy fixation on rules and their hedges tend to make people less happy.

-Is it better for a rogue agent to be involved in something evil to undermine it rather than steering clear and being replaced by someone without good intentions?

-Should Chad Hardy’s defense have been sufficient to avoid excommunication (assuming that he wanted to avoid it)? Is that a moral reason to be involved in something unsavory and possibly harmful?

-Are we morally responsible for the outcomes of our actions or just our motives? What about when outcomes have mixed results (a death star with a flaw)? What about when our motives are a mix of good and evil choosing?

Life is complex and sometimes neat answers are not readily available. The questions above remind me of this issue:

http://archive.boston.com/business/articles/2010/09/08/abstinent_mormon_farmers_grow_barley_for_beer/

Here’s an interesting discussion that follows up on that: https://jesusinidahofalls.com/2010/10/01/barley-beer-in-lds-southeastern-idaho/ (Check out the comments)

Actually, my own father grew barley for a time. As a child, I never knew what it was used for but I have to assume that at least some of it was destined for breweries. (I do recall wondering. When my dad grew wheat, he would pull off some heads of grain and show me how to rub out the kernels and eat them….that doesn’t work for barley.) My guess is that if I pressed my father about this issue (I never have and am not inclined to do it now) he would neatly compartmentalize his behavior (while the author of the letter in the blog post linked above does compartmentalize a little but he does try to engage in the moral quandary a bit).

-Can you feel the spirit in a bar? Why or why not? Is it more important to avoid contamination and temptations or to reach out to others where they are?

I think you can but it does depend on what you went to the bar for in the first place. “Keeping unspotted from the world” is a big deal for Mormons. In my predominantly Mormon part of the country, I know that in testimony meeting MANY people mention some variation on that statement. I remember a high councilman in a past stake saying, “If we were doing our job as members of the Church, our meetings would smell very differently.” I think referencing the fact that those that smoke or drink or imbibe coffee should be far more comfortable attending than they are. My wife had an aunt who had developed an unfortunately smoking habit. She actually did desire to attend but knew that she smelled of smoke and was generally too embarrassed to go. This was despite having a good and kind bishop who constantly encouraged her to attend regardless.

What’s the relationship between obedience and missionary success? Does adding rules and restrictions increase or reduce success?

That relationship is unclear in my mind. I think too much stress on obedience and imposing penalties on missionaries who disobey does create a difficult atmosphere to work in. However, these are men and women in their late teens and early twenties….you gotta have some rules. On my mission, I don’t recall there being huge amounts of stress put on obedience. It was just kind of assumed that you would obey the rules and if you didn’t, someone would call you on it, but generally it was done fairly kindly. This is speaking as an individual who spent his entire mission feeling pretty anxious about it. So personally, I never saw a strong connection, probably because we didn’t have strong examples of either obedience or extreme disobedience (for the most part.)