Excellent to see you here, Doctor. As usual, I have little to add that you haven’t anticipated. One footnote, if I may. It is so easy for narcissists to boldly opine on what dead people thought or would have thought. Wordsworth isn’t here to answer, and so Mopologetically it’s a layup. All the more so because doing so in context of great writers makes Dan look like a supremely thoughtful seminary teacher, hitting on devotional faith and academics. It reminds me of my best friend’s dad, frankly. His mother filed for divorce when he (my friend) was 10, because his dad was a priesthood-wielding jerk to her, and she then died a few years later. His dad tells the story to this day, that he had a touching and healing conversation with his ex wife on her deathbed in which she fully forgave him and even apologized to him for her part in things. No one was there to witness this great moment. The design is clear enough: he wants everyone to know that she, not he, was to blame for the divorce. Dan is doing the same thing with dead people who can’t argue back.
Good to see you as well, Dr. Moore! And wow: that is quite a brutal story--very depressing.
I think you're right about Prof. P as well: there is a reason why Christopher Hitchens is the object of his obsessive hatred. (And no: I'm not really buying the disingenuous "humor" that's meant to mask what is, quite obviously, anger and hatred.) It would be interesting to see him tell stories about how he successfully convinced (e.g.) Barry Goldwater, or Milton Friedman, or whoever else to convert to Mormonism. But him converting the "great minds" of the world is perhaps even more of a fantasy that imagining the William Wordsworth would have thought highly of LDS doctrine.
"If, while hoping that everybody else will be honest and so forth, I can personally prosper through unethical and immoral acts without being detected and without risk, why should I not?." --Daniel Peterson, 6/4/14
Excellent to see you here, Doctor. As usual, I have little to add that you haven’t anticipated. One footnote, if I may. It is so easy for narcissists to boldly opine on what dead people thought or would have thought. Wordsworth isn’t here to answer, and so Mopologetically it’s a layup. All the more so because doing so in context of great writers makes Dan look like a supremely thoughtful seminary teacher, hitting on devotional faith and academics. It reminds me of my best friend’s dad, frankly. His mother filed for divorce when he (my friend) was 10, because his dad was a priesthood-wielding jerk to her, and she then died a few years later. His dad tells the story to this day, that he had a touching and healing conversation with his ex wife on her deathbed in which she fully forgave him and even apologized to him for her part in things. No one was there to witness this great moment. The design is clear enough: he wants everyone to know that she, not he, was to blame for the divorce. Dan is doing the same thing with dead people who can’t argue back.
This hits home Dr. Moore as I have a relative that is following the same pattern. The priesthood holder has belittled, bullied and created a lot of mischief for his wife of more than 40 years. She was the one that always outshined him as far as church service went and was interviewed for the Relief Society General Board at one point until he ruined it for her by being overly obtuse to his GA friends and I am sure it made it to the powers that be and they didn't want a boat rocker in their midst. Now, he is surprised by how she is finally standing up to him and moans every time she pushes him away. I guess the male leadership model has its downsides. At least it never got to physical violence as far as I know.
Myth is misused by the powerful to subjugate the masses all too often.
The pre-existence correlation from Wordsworth that I heard mentioned frequently with reverence in LDS sources in the 1960s was from his "Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" . . .
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home . . .
The passage was used in the LDS Church film, "Man's Search for Happiness" which was shown widely including at the Temple Square Visitors' Center in Salt Lake City. Check it out, at the 1:20 mark,
I have nothing to add, other than my immaturity, in that I giggle whenever I hear Wordsworth brought up, because Lord Byron used to call him "Turdsworth."
Not Wordsworth wrote:I wandered lonely as a clod,
Just picking up old rags and bottles,
When all at once I saw a mob,
A horde of golden axolotls;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
A sight to make a man’s blood freeze.
-- Mad Magazine (minor mods by malkie)
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