Coggins7 wrote:What do you all think about the current state of affairs... has democracy lost to capitalism?
Are the wealthy few, running the country?
Along these lines, I also reread an article by Nibley, Breakthroughs I Would Like to See, where he argues that the church must return to the Law of Consecration in order to prepare for Zion. He uses the D&C to support his understanding that this law is required by all Saints.
in my opinion, the church seems to be continually moving toward more power, money, eliticism, wealth, etc. etc. etc. My observation is that there is a move away from the idea of communal living. Is the Law of Consecration no longer taught as something that will exist? Is Nibley's interpretation of the D&C wrong?
Any thoughts?
1. We do not live in a democracy. If we did, however, it is far more likely that Capitalism would be destroyed by democracy than the other way around.
2. Capitalism is liberty in the economic sphere; it is economic freedom. The general term for this is property rights, and they are of the unalienable sort. Without them, the rest of the rights in the Constitution are utterly moot.
3. Nibley was an economic illiterate who's views of the possibilities of human social organization were quite naïve, although he was brilliant in his sphere of expertise. The question is, of course, what do we mean when we say "law of consecration"? What do we mean by "communal living" and do we really understand what we're getting into when we pine away for it?
There is an inviolable and unequivocal tension between the collective and the individual and always will be until all men are angels. Until that time, "communal" living, without the deep, direct, and unfettered oversight of the Holy Spirit will end where all such experiments have always ended, in failure or human disaster. To the extent the original United Order worked, it worked to the extent free agency and property were respected.
However, that situation was a situation of naked survival in an unforgiving desert that had to be built up and made productive. There is no reason to believe that the United Order practiced then was in any manner fully revealed, or that it was revealed in a manner consistent with how it might be revealed if brought back into practice at the present time.
I think I like Coggins! :D