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PazamaManX wrote:
That is a good point to bring up and not a bad one to discuss. Sticking with the fast food burger theme (this will be silly, so bear with me), people who twist the church’s teachings for justifying their actions would be more like a bad customer. If a customer buys some cheeseburgers from McDonalds and then decides to go around throwing them at people, is it McDonald’s or their other customers fault? They sold the burgers expecting that they would be eaten. Sure, they never explicitly said, ‘don’t throw burgers at people’, but should they have to? Another scenario, imagine an executive from McDonalds decided to leave and start a competing restaurant named ‘McChuckers’, where they specifically sell burgers meant to be thrown at people. Are McDonalds or their customers responsible for the actions of someone who has many similarities and a shared history, but intentionally diverged from the organization to do their own thing?It’s not a perfect analogy, but it’s fun to think about nonetheless. I’m curious what other’s thoughts are on this?
It is an interesting analogy.The analogy gets lost when one remembers that individuals are both “customers” and “representatives/sales” more or less. Aside from general demographics (millionaires and their representatives don’t generally shop at Dollar Tree for example) that contribute to the pool of “customers” – the customers are their own agents.
The second example sort of addresses this with the “former agent” scenario. For me, it really depends on the story that the former executive tells/sells to the population. If the executive culled from memory and reproduced the branding, flavors, and all that – but just has the twist of “throwing hamburgers at people” – and kept the “memory” of his past employment alive in his current employment – that’s potentially culpable. If the former executive just has the theme of “hamburgers” which get thrown at people, and does not copy the previous employment experience, that’s different.
I guess the key distinction is the degree the former hamburger customer is/was just a customer, is/was a representative (employee, ect), is/was a salesperson for the organization – how that individual presents themselves matters about the story pieced together about that individual.
LA Times had a good and balanced article of the miniseries. In it, the show creator talks explicitly about the idea that all members are partly responsible.
Quote:He also addressed the criticisms leveled at the show by current members of the church — particularly the suggestion that he paints Mormonism as inherently violent.
“I’m not saying that it breeds exclusively dangerous men,” he said, “but there is something in teaching little boys that this patriarchal structure is God-ordained and lasts into the afterlife, and gives them that power over women. That can create dangerous men, if you blur the lines between selfish desire and the voice of God.”
“I don’t think most Mormons are violent; most are not, thank goodness,” Black said. “But I’m not talking about physical violence. I think if you’re participating in a patriarchal structure that harms women,
you might not realize the violence you’re helping perpetrate.” Bolding is mine.
I am sympathetic to that approach. However, I think that most people do not closely examine the unintended consequences of the systems that they participate in and benefit from. Did the people that manufactured my clothing receive a “living wage?” Should I boycott the store until they do? If the store makes improvements in wages and working conditions, can I praise those steps and return to shopping? Or is the moral choice to continue my boycott until all demands have been met?
I feel the assumption here is that the only moral choice is to leave the church and that anything less is a moral compromise.
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