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Symbolic Death and My Second Crisis of Faith
#1
Symbolic Death and My Second Crisis of Faith
In his book Stages of Faith, James Fowler asserts that one of the characteristics of Stage 3 (synthetic-conventional) faith is that people do not recognize that they are inside a worldview.  To the Stage 3 person, their worldview is simply reality.  Moving to Stage 4 requires recognizing one's worldview as one worldview among many worldviews.  

But Mormonism (my former religion) is a worldview inside another worldview (as are other religions.)  At least for Americans, the Mormon worldview exists inside the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) worldview.  Most people who leave Mormonism (from within the WEIRD worldview) still retain the WEIRD worldview even after rejecting the Mormon worldview.  

Both worldviews are religious, because they both offer immortality as a reward for compliance to the prescribed values of the worldview.  Mormonism offers literal immortality - a literal afterlife, or salvation from physical death.  The WEIRD worldview offers symbolic immortality, or salvation from being forgotten, and salvation from the horror of leaving no record that you ever existed.  

I already had a crisis of faith about Mormonism and its power to grant me literal immortality.  Now I'm having a crisis of faith about the WEIRD worldview and its power to grant me symbolic immortality.  Symbolic immortality is the kind enjoyed by, for example, Einstein and Mozart, who live on in our minds through their great works of science and art.  We can achieve symbolic immortality through great achievements in art and science, by having children, by leaving some kind of legacy like a foundation or a corporation, or by anything that allows us to be remembered after we're dead (much of this comes from Ernest Becker's book The Denial of Death.)

Each worldview makes promises in exchange for "good behavior."  Mormonism says, "Obey God and you will be blessed.  Pay tithing and the windows of heaven will open.  Pray, and your prayers will be answered."  The WEIRD worldview says, "Work hard and you will be successful.  Good always triumphs over evil.  Be fair to others, and life will treat you fairly."  In Mormonism, the way to immortality is to be righteous.  In the WEIRD worldview, the way to immortality is to be productive.  

But you know that both worldviews are wrong.  You know that obeying God doesn't get you the "blessings" you wanted.  You know that people who pay tithing still go bankrupt.  You know that most prayers go unanswered, and the ones that seem to be answered are just coincidences (assuming you are an atheist.)  

And you know many people who worked very hard and still failed.  You know that evil sometimes wins.  You know that life is unfair, even if you strive to treat others fairly.  

And even if you do achieve a level of symbolic immortality, as Einstein and Mozart have, you too will be forgotten.  In a billion years, if there is still such thing as human consciousness, surely no human will have ever heard of Einstein or Mozart.  

So both worldviews are wrong.  Mormonism is unable to deliver on its promise of literal immortality, and the WEIRD society is unable to deliver on its promise of symbolic immortality.  

So I'm confused.  If it's not true that hard work will always bring success, then what is true about hard work and success?  If good doesn't always triumph over evil, then what is true about good and evil?  If life isn't going to treat me fairly, then why am I obligated to treat other people fairly?  If the WEIRD worldview is wrong, then what is true?
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#2
RE: Symbolic Death and My Second Crisis of Faith
I will delete the other two occurrences.
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great

PM me your email address to join the Slack chat! I'll give you a taco(or five) if you join! --->There's an app and everything!<---
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#3
RE: Symbolic Death and My Second Crisis of Faith
And there are quite a few things Mormonism cannot deliver.

Among them for some reason are the original, unaltered, unrevised, unmolested and unedited versions of all the revelations.


Still, over the decades, the church has managed thru various errors and clerical snafus and overzealous 'true believers' running amuck, to have released most all of them to the everlasting horror of the current administration.


My favorite is the original version of the polygamy one where subsequent wives to the first were required to be Native Americans only. Brigham Young himself observed that one to the extent he tried 2, found them wanting and abandoned them in Council Bluffs, IA prior to departing to Utah. And then altering the revelation to allow polygamy to sate his own desires regarding procuring additional Caucasian wives instead of Native American ones.

Still, give Brigham credit for trying, most of the other church leaders of the era didn't even bother trying Native American wives . . .
 The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it. 




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#4
RE: Symbolic Death and My Second Crisis of Faith
Philosophies / world views that offer certainties are always suspect in my mind. What replaces them? I read all sorts of books / essays ect. that inspire my world view. Corliss Lamont"s "The Humanist Manifesto" , Karl Marx and Ayn Rand on the same day , Groucho Marx , Science , Gardening and Farming , literature . I recently read Roberto Bolano's "2666" (Wow!).
Basically , I feed my head and don't eat the naked lunch. The opinions of priests, politicians, and sportscasters like Limbaugh and Hannity are not part of my world view. I can not offer any certainties but I know I handle weird times well.

"When the going gets weird , the weird get going." - HST
God thinks it's fun to confuse primates. Larsen's God!






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#5
RE: Symbolic Death and My Second Crisis of Faith
(September 20, 2016 at 1:35 am)InquiringMind Wrote: So both worldviews are wrong.  Mormonism is unable to deliver on its promise of literal immortality, and the WEIRD society is unable to deliver on its promise of symbolic immortality.  

So I'm confused.  If it's not true that hard work will always bring success, then what is true about hard work and success?  If good doesn't always triumph over evil, then what is true about good and evil?  If life isn't going to treat me fairly, then why am I obligated to treat other people fairly?  If the WEIRD worldview is wrong, then what is true?

You seem to be asking what worldview am I left with such that it will give meaning to my life. The struggle with the search for meaning tends to be a recurrent theme in the life of everyone, theists included. We seem to be able to sense when our lives have meaning and when they do not, yet we are not able to predict what things will make our life meaningful. You seem to be wanting to resolve this struggle in one fell swoop, by adopting the right worldview. I don't think the struggle can be won that easily. I believe that the struggle is to be won by filling one's life with meaningful actions, but that's just an opinion. I also think we can't escape the dimension of meaning in our lives; it is like the water a fish breathes--we are always immersed in a flow of meaning. For someone who believes, a worldview can short circuit the quest for meaning. Do you find yourself troubled by the meaninglessness of your existence? Are you looking for something to "make sense" of a world that doesn't seem to make sense? What would it mean to you if the world doesn't make sense.

You speak of the promise of immortality of the WEIRD worldview. I'm reminded of the old quandary that if something is temporary, it isn't any less meaningful. A movie experience isn't meaningless because it is only a finite experience. Being in love isn't devoid of meaning even though it is fragile and temporary. This quest for immortality seems to be wrapped up in a fear of death--a fear that because your life is only temporary, it has no meaning. I would suggest it has meaning in spite of being temporary, perhaps even because of it.

To me it sounds like you're grappling with themes of meaning and nihilism; would that be accurate?
[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]
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#6
RE: Symbolic Death and My Second Crisis of Faith
(September 20, 2016 at 1:35 am)InquiringMind Wrote: Each worldview makes promises in exchange for "good behavior."  Mormonism says, "Obey God and you will be blessed.  Pay tithing and the windows of heaven will open.  Pray, and your prayers will be answered."  The WEIRD worldview says, "Work hard and you will be successful.  Good always triumphs over evil.  Be fair to others, and life will treat you fairly."  In Mormonism, the way to immortality is to be righteous.  In the WEIRD worldview, the way to immortality is to be productive.  

But you know that both worldviews are wrong.  You know that obeying God doesn't get you the "blessings" you wanted.  You know that people who pay tithing still go bankrupt.  You know that most prayers go unanswered, and the ones that seem to be answered are just coincidences (assuming you are an atheist.)  

Welcome to real life!

Religion is a sham.
Work hard and you increase your odds of surviving long enough to get old.
Good and evil are human constructs - the Universe doesn't care.
Fairness is a utopia.

The way to immortality is to leave behind something that resonates with enough people for them to keep it going... like Mozart, Beethoven, Van Gogh, etc... all of them had some massive flaw in life, but left behind something that is near immortal: beauty!
And to makes matters worse, while you live, you can't really tell if you've left anything immortal behind.

Enjoy real life!
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#7
RE: Symbolic Death and My Second Crisis of Faith
Heh, now that's a hard one to explain.

Life is meaningless in the great scheme of things, we're born, we pay taxes, we die and for most people they're really insignificant. Odds are nobody is going to remember us in 150 years hence and aside from breeding we will have made no impact. Even for the rather exceptional examples of humanity who change the world for us like great inventors or scientists, in the long game on a universal scale they're insignificant too. People might enjoy reading the Epic of Gilgamesh now but nobody remembers who wrote it.

However, just because the world itself may lack a meaning imposed upon it by some outside force does not mean it cannot be given one by yourself. This is one of the reasons the term free thinker is there; what is it you value most? What do you think is "true" or "beautiful". Utilitarianism, Hedonism, Cynicism, Stoicism; many different people down the centuries have given many and varied answers.

Realizing ones worldview is just that, one view amongst money can be quite dramatic, but in the same sense it can be rather liberating and highly informative. It makes you more aware of how your own thinking works, and it allows you to cross examine and assess how your line of thinking compares and works compared to other world views that previously were just ruled off out of hand as "wrong".

I do wonder sometimes if it was a similar line of thinking Nietzsche (I would very much recommend you look into him considering your OP, he spent most of his life prior to succumbing to illness pondering those kind of issues) talked about when he spoke about if one stared into the abyss for too long, it eventually stares back and it's impossible to get back out unscathed. It's a lot harder to strive to uphold your own theories, to be an individual than it is to just sign up and mindlessly repeat a set creed.

I can't tell you what is true for you. I can certainly tell you the objective physical reality that Joseph Smith was a charlatan (we've the criminal records of his pre-prophet days to prove it) but as for what brings you enlightenment, what just seems to click. That's something you've gotta work on your own. Read and listen to as many as as varied viewpoints as possible, find what seems to click, and start stitching it together from there.

It's not light reading by any stretch of the imagination, and it is riddled with abstract aphorisms since by writing in riddles and polemics he was trying to make readers think rather than agree with what he wrote but one book I would recommend is http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1998 , "Thus Spake Zarathustra". Since it discusses the trial of Zarathustra being the only man in the world who had swallowed the red pill in a sense and wasn't sure how to present his "good news" to the rest of the world, and try to make sense of it himself amongst others still stuck in what would be a stage 3 world view. That's quite an old translation, but it's free. There's more recent editions on amazon for about $10 and below.
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#8
RE: Symbolic Death and My Second Crisis of Faith
(September 20, 2016 at 5:22 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: Do you find yourself troubled by the meaninglessness of your existence?  Are you looking for something to "make sense" of a world that doesn't seem to make sense?  What would it mean to you if the world doesn't make sense.

......

To me it sounds like you're grappling with themes of meaning and nihilism; would that be accurate?

Maybe.....If we're talking about nihilism, I'm hoping to have a discussion that is more profound than "Life sucks.  Then you die."  

Maybe I am talking about questions of meaning.  The problem is that I know that there isn't any intrinsic meaning to life, and I've often found myself going in circles when I can't find any meaning behind what I'm trying to do.  I understand that in logotherapy, created by Victor Frankl, we are responsible for finding our own meanings in life.  I haven't been able to get there yet.  

But what I can do now it to discuss a little about how I used to find meaning, and how that has fallen apart for me.  

Like most ambitious people, I accepted the WEIRD worldview that life is given meaning by achieving "success."  Some say that success is defined by the individual, but in WEIRD society, I don't think that's true.  I think that the WEIRD society has a fairly narrow, prescribed definition of success, which is a combination of these: having a job that is well-paying, satisfying, and fulfilling; being married with children; living in a nice house and having other important material possessions; having good physical health and being in good physical shape; making some kind of contribution to your chosen field; and feeling generally happy and satisfied with your life.  If you do these things, then society considers you to be "successful."  

An alternate route to success in WEIRD society is the route of the artist, which is similar to the route a scientist can take.  The artist achieves success by creating a world-changing piece of art (or science) and thus earns their symbolic immortality.  Artists don't have to be married with children or have good physical or mental health, as long as their works are works of true genius.  

I have previously tried to find meaning through both of these, and have failed.  I may indeed find a job that is well-paying, satisfying, and fulfilling.  But I've been a failure in romantic relationships.  I'm 37, and I've never had a relationship that lasted for more than a few months.  I consider myself to be a reasonably attractive and interesting man, but my relationships always fall apart for reasons that seem perpetually elusive.  (I'm not looking for "dating advice" or "relationship advice" here, as people sometimes want to give.  I'm hoping to discuss this from an existential point of view.)  

Since WEIRD society considers relationship success to be a central part of life success, and since "success" is the purpose of life in the WEIRD worldview, I've felt life become more meaningless as I have been unable to find useful answers for my romantic problems.  

It's been somewhat similar with being a scientist.  I'm a talented person, but I'm not Feynman or Einstein.  So even if I do have a decent career in science or engineering, it's very unlikely that I'm going to become a household name, and at best, my contributions to science will likely be small.  The best I can hope for is a few publications, and perhaps a little bit of name recognition in whatever narrow field I chose.  I'm certainly not "destined for greatness" as I had previously hoped.   

And so yeah, without a romantic relationship and an illustrious career, I find myself feeling the burden of the meaninglessness of my life. I like the idea that career and relationships form a symbolic form of immortality, and that once these illusions are shattered, the fear of death sets in, and life feels meaningless.  

What should I do?
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#9
RE: Symbolic Death and My Second Crisis of Faith
(September 20, 2016 at 3:37 pm)InquiringMind Wrote: And so yeah, without a romantic relationship and an illustrious career, I find myself feeling the burden of the meaninglessness of my life. I like the idea that career and relationships form a symbolic form of immortality, and that once these illusions are shattered, the fear of death sets in, and life feels meaningless.  

What should I do?

I wish I had an answer, but I don't. To me, your searching for a relationship and a career is part of the grappling with the need for meaning. You are putting activities that are meaningful to you in your life. I think meaning is a moment to moment affair. I think hoping to find permanent meaning will just leave you grasping. Do things, first of all, then look for meaning second.

I have my own struggles of meaning to contend with. I'm 53 years old, and I've been suffering depression for the last three years. I know that if I could get involved in something, I'd find the time passing more easily. But I can't seem to get interested in anything. So I see one week passing, the same as the week before, which was the same as the week before that. I'm not bothered by a lack of meaning per se, so much as the monotony and boredom is getting to me. Is that simply a different kind of crisis of meaning? Perhaps.
[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]
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#10
RE: Symbolic Death and My Second Crisis of Faith
As for the (presumed) lack of "True Believers" in the hierarchy of the LDS org, consider the severe damage a "True believer" can do to the church (in it's current form) in this scenario:

God commanded the Mormons to be a record keeping people and they have done a great job in carrying out this task.  In the archives, amongst all the tons of records, it turns out are numerous diaries, some penned long ago by early Mormon pioneers.  Modern day Mormons on occasion ask to see a diary from an ancestor for various reasons, and then, please consider a "True Believer" working in the archive receiving such a request and how they would handle it;

"Why of course, I'll fetch that up for you right away!"

Now is that what actually happens when someone goes to the LDS archivists and makes such a request ?

Hell no!!


What happens is, the archivists will have to evaluate, in exquisite detail, just what's in that diary.  Even handwriting analysis might have to be done to verify who wrote in the diary.  And the reason is, there might be references in the diary to earlier, no longer current, versions of church revelations, dogma, edicts and/or teachings. And since the church maintains that such matters are never changed, releasing 'smoking guns' can be a significant problem.  Additionally, even in matters relating to day to day life, are church leaders of the past era referred to?  Are their activities mentioned? Even such prosaic details as to where and when they may have been buying groceries, for instance?  The problem being, there might be an official church publication citing that church leader on that date in a different locale and/or doing something other than what is noted in the diary.

Clearly, the church cannot have a "True Believer" in such a position, and obviously, the person(s) selecting an individual for that job cannot be a "True Believer" either because, again obviously, a "True Believer" might install another "True Believer" as an archivist!  Disaster will ensue !!!


When someone comes to the archivist and requests an old diary, the correct response will be something along the line of, "Well, thank you for your interest!  I will check and see if that material is available for you right away!"

And then, depending on who's asking, and what they are asking for, the materials may or may not be made available, but only after extremely diligent research and approval from higher ups, lest the church be embarrassed (yet again).




So you can now understand the very necessity at the highest level of the church, personnel responsible for records, church financial information, and virtually everything else, have to be extremely carefully selected.  "True Believers" can be used of course, but they need to be supervised extremely closely for fear of them making a grievous error in their innocence of knowledge of the churches true history of connivance, revisionism, rewriting, revising, changing, tweaking, erasing, and making up stuff from whole cloth.  And clearly, the folks running this 3 ring circus of deceit (such a harsh word!) need to be fully aware of precisely what is at stake and what has to be done to stave off upsetting the apple cart.


Don't think for a second that above a certain level of church admins, there is even 1 "True Believer". There is no way the church could function with such people running the show.
 The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it. 




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