by huckelberry » Fri Oct 29, 2021 2:21 pmI think Joseph Smith acted with a lack of concern for some of the people around him and behaved in ways which I take to indicate one should limit how much one trusts him.
Oh I completely agree with that. I'm certainly not arguing for a supernatural belief in Mormonism. We should definitely not trust Joseph Smith and his supernatural claims. But the question for me instead is: what is the psychical energy that his life and scriptural work generates (outside the Utah-Mormon Correlated Lens)?
You speak as though there are rules and purposes involved such as power and sex. Evolution does not have such principals though sometimes convenience encourages speaking as though there were. But the convenience may cause some dimensions of survival of the fittest to be overlooked. It is the survival of an entire gene pool which matters not just the survival of Mr bigwigs genes. That is why there are human homosexuals as well as human breeders. The community of people must survive and that community survives with a variety of people with a wide variety of skills and interests.
If I spoke in a way that made one think I support the idea that evolution has a trajectory and purpose in mind, I want to make clear that is not what I mean. I'm fully aware of the blindness of evolution as Dawkins argues. I do think however that Nietzsche made some good points about the organism and its instinctual drive for power, i.e. for growth and expansion and not merely survival and replication; but of course that was his hypothesis. I do think I supported my case very well though with my examples, so will not repeat them here. If you can provide me an exact sentence or paragraph of what I said I will try and clarify.
Because humans are not as strong as apes ... and a variety of creatures humans have based their survival on community intelligence and shared skills. These basic survival mechanisms are based upon mutual trust, cooperation. shared skills and shared effort. These things are not entirely automatic people have use intelligent reflection to build values and customs to encourage these skills necessary for humans to have qualified for survival of the fittest.
I don't disagree with that and I don't see it conflicting with my argument. Jonathan Haidt says we have ape bodies and Hive Minds, or we humans are 90 Percent Chimp and 10 Percent Bee. So we definitely have social instincts to form interdependent bonds to increase our power.
People may at times choose to follow a theory of life being strength living off the less strong. People using this theory end up annoying enough people that they are eliminated or contained. War based societies succeed on a limited scale when isolated weak groups are available. Otherwise wiser groups work together to insure the destruction of the vain.(Hitler, Napoleon,etc)
Remember that Joseph Smith ultimately wanted the less strong, the less rich, to be welcomed to the table and he sought to create an egalitarian society with Zion. I can find an inner drive for power in his life and work as well as a hive Instinct as well. Just think about how much of his theology is about welcoming the losers, like his brother Alvin who a preacher said was a loser for not going to church and going to hell and losing out on his salvation. Smith rejected that and made Alvin a winner of Heaven.
I do not disagree with your paragraph in general. In his book of
The Righteous Mind, Haidt talks about how if an alpha male does not have some unifiying skills and pisses off too many people the tribe will turn against him. Keep in mind though that Smith was mostly good at organizing alliances and generating camaraderie, not perfect, but you don't create a fast-growing world religion without some cohesive skills. Again, we can’t forget his strong egalitarian leanings sprinkled throughout his scriptures, which has led some to argue that Mormon scripture actually promotes Socialist Demoracy, just Google it. I also think that America itself follows a theory of strength not weakness, and the eagle on the dollar bill was initially looking towards the arrows of war, and the US often pushes it's polical philosophy onto others. Good or bad, it is what it is.
////// added note,
Free Ranger , you noted above,
But what is the "Right" use of power? All power is gained through power plays, with winners and losers, the deceived and the triumphant, etc. Advertisers coerce everyday. Salesmen are allowed to coerce people everyday. Capitalism is one big Power Play. Why is it wrong to be dishonest if it gains you wealth and power and provides for your family? What is your standard as an atheist? On atheism, I don't see how we can make all of these should statements and deciding what is right and wrong. These are religious and theistic notions. They make no sense to me outside of Christianity.
....
Huckelberry notes
The view I am holding is that human survival success in based upon mutual respect, friendship, trust, concern for others , love. It is based upon respect for truth, curiosity as to how the world works and what shills can be created to make human life more liveble. Humans draw energy to live from play invention stories and yes compitition. One big power play is injury to what makes humans strong.
You seem to assume I think it's either/or. I think it's both, life is full of power plays and gentle play, stories, and concern for others. At least that is the world that I experience and read about in history. Where I can agree with you is that yes, from the
Christian perspective you are right. Paul borrowed a lot from the Stoic notion of cosmopolitanism, and this notion of being
in Christ and treat your neighbor as yourself did increase our social conscientiousness to be more empathetic which had helped create the generally safe and civilized world we live in today. So
on Christianity, I agree with you, especially in today's age where we are living on the other side of Christian morality culturally, our survival-success as civilzed cultural-Christians is highly dependent on all those Christian virtues you mentioned. But remember if we don't follow the "rules" then a stronger power will overpower us and make us do it, it's called the police. So there is still a power-play in place.
I think a strong argument can also be made that part of what has ended most conflicts among nations is the advancement of industry and trade. So the combination of Christian morality and free trade has diminished the
war of all against all one sees in the animal kingdom and among humans prior to the invention of agrictulutre and city states. But just pick up your Bible and see how not too long ago life was a war of tribes and each tribe had their morality of as you said, mutual respect, trust, love; but those ideals you speak of were not attributed to The Outsiders among most tribes. If you study the original meaning of "love your neighbor" in you your Hebrew Bible you will find that it initially meant your fellow tribesmen. Yet over time they expanded their ethic. It was mostly the Hebrews that began an ethic of hospitality that evolved along side the normative tribal ethic of might makes right: where Yahweh commands his people to kill and overpower to expand Israel’s boundary, status, and power. It is when the Israelites are on the losing side of the equation, and they are mistreated by strangers, that this ethic of love of
the Other begins to most fully develop. Christianity is responsible for extending the insider-morality of the tribe being extended to those outside one's tribe.
Keep in mind as well that those Christian virutes you mentioned are not only Christian, but existed among the pagans, but first century Jewish-Christianity just encapulated and sold it more successfully with a god that suffers and cares for the weak rather than the gods normally being caprious assholes half the time and aiding in wars and favoring the strong.
Yet again we can't ignore the power factor. Christianity is not all lovey-dovey, but from the beginning Paul fantasized of his War God burning up his enemies in the apocalypse and him reigning as a
pneumatic god among the Elohim/Gods and judging angels/lesser gods. The Evangelical scholar Michael Heiser admits this.
I would argue though that the one constant in the cosmos and life is: Growth. The universe expands, material forces collide and integrate into new material forms, life evolves from life consuming itself to form new forms, in a process of ongoing
Growth. The one consistent phenomenon I see all around me and in my study of science and history, is the cosmic drive to thrive as the beating heart of reality, an ongoing phenomena of growth and expansion. It is the one truth I see all around me: the grass grows and dies and regrows, businesses thrive or go out of business, relationships start and fizzle out. Those virtues you mentioned, as I see it, are part of the process of cosmic Growth. Wolves form a pack to consolidate their power and increase their growth-sucess, and survival-sucess aids in this growth-success as part of cosmic Growth. A good clip from Galdiator shows the utility of working together for the growth-surival of a team, see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7KD9CM_PjM&t=3s Love is how the biological organism can grow/expands it's DNA into future generations from a biological perspective.
By the way, an alpha male ape is not just some a******. Frans Dewhall points out that an alpha ape is not just strong but also creates order and peace, see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPsSKKL8N0s If all alphas did was bully and hoard resources and cause resentment and create enemies they’d be unscucesfull at consolidating and maximising their power through interdepredence with the group; which expands their power and thus their survival and replication success. I think Joseph Smith was in generally successful at this. But towards the end of his life one could argue he failed.
This idea of no alphas, only betas, is just a recipe for chaos. Because some betas will seek to be alpha. Ever heard the phrase too many roosters? Jordan Peterson talks about the Dominance Hiearchy in rule 1 of his 12 Rules for Life. The data he sites is quite clear. We can dream of a perfect utopia of only nice passive people with no alphas, no great leaders, no inspiring heroes, but I think that denies
Life.
Before Chrsistianity you had religions like what my Viking ancestors produced. They may have had mutual respect and trust for their Insider members of their tribe, but those outside of the tribe were subject to the law of strength, might makes right. The Vikings did have an honor code of sorts, see
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ ... _problems/ The attitude was hey if we're stronger and more powerful and can take your goods, then it is our right to take it. You don't like it, become stronger than us. Fair game. The old you snooze you lose only in this case, if you're weaker you deserve to be overpowered. they believed to the victor goes the spoils. This was the view of nearly all humanity prior to the invention of agriculture and Christianity.
Even though we have moral codes and constructed social norms that mitigate this evolutionary dominance hierarchy always at play, like a blade of grass cracking through concrete, you still see hierarchical Life emerging all around us; with economics as the strong and rich and the powerful, hoarding all the wealth. We see it in sports. And while some of us might complain about this and wish for an egalitarian utopia of Nice Guys only, we go to the movies and prefer to watch the Alpha Hero conquer! We live in a country where someone can be "canceled" but movies like Hostel are popular. There was even a Hostel Part 2 and 3 for gawd's sake.
Human nature is human nature.
This is why I say Joseph Smith was an alpha ape in tune with Nature, or his nature. He was in tune with both his
hive mind and his
alpha body: by more freely acting out his natural instincts yet in an orderly way; and caring for others like his brother Alvin and wanting to be linked with others through rituals that binded himself to them into eternity.
Anyway, I was going to ask FR what his view of naturally emerging hierarchies entails, but I think he explained his narrative pretty well up there.