Does the Interpreter Foundation Have Colonialist Ambitions?

[drumdude]

If I’m understanding his argument correctly: As long as he’s not profiting from apologetics, Dan is perfectly happy to live a mostly hedonistic lifestyle. And his religious belief is that this lifestyle will continue forever because he can’t imagine a world where it ends.

[Doctor Scratch]

Yep, if it looks like manipulation, smells like manipulation, tastes like manipulation, and sounds like manipulation..... it's Mormonism.
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Philo, you might ask yourself, why do I care? If the travelling is not illegal or unethical, then why do I care? Why even bring it up?

You may be surprised to learn that there is a reason.

Said person has a blog. Perhaps you knew this. The blog beats a drum: Religion, God, and more religion. I am curious, and I think I am rightfully curious, about the kind of life religion compels a person to live. Especially, a person who is compelled to talk nonstop about the benefits of religion and the bankruptcy of unbelief.

The blog author says that without God all is permitted. He seems to read "permitted" as "required". He doesn't seem to consider the possibility that a person who doesn't fear God might not want to go around beating others with tire chains. I think that's interesting. On the one hand, it explains why avowed atheists who tend toward intellectualism avoid pure self-destruction. The atheist is inconsistent, tacitly acknowledging objective morality while denying it. On the other, it explains his own moral success: just recently we learned about his triumph over alcohol and tobacco.

As an atheist, without belief in God, I think people are compelled to act according to their natural inclinations. A resulting difference in the way said person and I may see the outcome in terms of practical moral application, is that God provides a low bar for said person, while for me, introducing God into a world that can function with out him, provides a much higher bar. See what I'm saying? For said person, belief in God is evidenced by the world literally staying together, even if it may be by a thread. For me the world could survive by a thread anyway, without God, and belief in God should make it much better. To put it yet another way, for said person, belief in God explains his inclinations as well as my inclinations. I've avoided killing people and smoking, but I've fallen occasionally to a glass of whiskey. He's avoided all three. So I act somewhat like I believe in God, per his standard, while he's able to do a little bit better with his belief explicit.

Since he's avoiding alcohol and harmful drugs, what more could be asked? Belief is demonstrated. To me that isn't the case. I see a person who is quite gifted, but self-indulgent, whose actions are consistent with a person who doesn't really believe in God. For me, a person who believes in God would go significantly against their natural inclinations and do harder things. A world traveler who boasts of staying in the nicest hotels, or a luxury RV provided by generous benefactors occasionally, might feel compelled to visit the poor and experience discomfort in order to further build the kingdom of God. Where can I sacrifice to serve my God?

I mean, if said person were to quit the blog, quit travelling tourist traps, and go and build wells in Africa for the next five years, I would be forced to acknowledge the benefits of belief in God. If belief in God compels someone to significantly act against their inclination for the benefit of others, I can't discount that. But I could be wrong, maybe belief in God really is a "low bar" matter, where evidence of belief is had in the avoidance of the most self-destructive behaviors with explicit believers scoring slightly higher on happiness assessments.

Very well said, Dr. Robbers. You really do have to ask: How has the LDS religion made the Proprietor into a better person (if at all)? He's fond of tossing out big generalizations: religious people are healthier and happier. Religious people donate more to charity. Etc. But the problem with generalization is just that: they tend to break down when you start applying them in a more specific way. Meanwhile, we know that Mopologetics has made him and his cronies into *worse* people....Or has it? I guess this raises the question of whether defending the Church made them into horrible people, or whether they "self-selected" into this role because they had horrible tendencies to begin with.

Meanwhle, we have the specific issue of the Interpreter's colonialist film project in the DRC and the reasons why Interpreter's President cannot seem to find a reason to make it over there to the DRC. His explanation is interesting:

Why, they demand to know, am I not traveling in the Congo and Benin and Rwanda? Why am I not there with Jeff Bradshaw and our Interpreter Foundation filmmakers?

I’m not quite sure what the insinuation here is intended to be. Perhaps that I’m racist. Perhaps that the food and accommodations in, say, the DR Congo wouldn’t meet my sybaritic standards. Probably a bit of both.

In any case, the simple answer to the question of why I’m not in sub-Saharan Africa with the Interpreter team is that I wasn’t invited. And why was I not invited? Because I’m not needed. I’m neither a cinematographer nor a sound specialist, and I have no expertise regarding the Church in sub-Saharan Africa. It’s true that I’ve sometimes been invited along to prior Interpreter Foundation film sets, but not very commonly and usually only locally, and always at my own expense.

What a silly response. Is he "needed" in Ravenna in order to do touristy things? Was he "invited" there? And is he really "needed" for these lectures that he's rehashing? The answer is "No": the attendees could just read the transcript from his old speech, or watch an recording of his old FAIR Conference presentation. As Tom has pointed out in another thread, he appears to be recycling one of his old FAIR talks (he didn't even bother to give it a new title!) and he's getting a free trip out of the whole thing.

He says quite plainly that "We came over early, for example, to spend some time in Ravenna — because we wanted to see Ravenna again and because we wanted to be done with jet lag before the lectures begin. Our Ravenna stay was on our own nickel."

Of course, it's impossible to ignore the obvious implications of this: He *doesn't want* to go to DRC. He *doesn't want* to see the Saints in sub-Saharan Africa. He *refuses* to spend his "own nickel" on a trip to the DRC. No one *here* even has to "insinuate" anything: the behavior says everything without us having to do anything at all.

So, is it accurate to say that the Interpreter Foundation is making the Proprietor richer? Not really, but it is absolutely accurate to say that the Proprietor uses the Interpreter Foundation to enrich himself. He seems to think that the whole point of his membership in the LDS Church is so that he can milk it for as many trips and fancy meals as possible.

Like you said, Dean Robbers: there is no real service; there is no senior mission; there is no charitable work. It's as if he sees religion as this big smorgasbord or buffet, where the goal is to stuff himself as much as possible--sort of like that guy who explodes after eating so much in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life ("Put me quail eggs on top!"). Nothing is done in the service of God or the Prophet; it's all done in the service of as much travel and enjoyment as possible. "Sybaritic" was not the word that came immediately to mind, but it fits perfectly.

[Physics Guy]

It's not clear that Americans going to Africa is really a good way of serving anyone. It's a trope, but does it make any sense? I mean, there are millions of people already there in Africa. Will they really benefit so much from one foreigner joining them?

[Gadianton]

If he dug one well and saved one life, that would mean something.

[Physics Guy]

If I went to a rural village in the one African country that I know a little bit, I could teach math or science or English—but there are decent public schools and the language of instruction in them is English already. Or I could work as an unskilled manual labourer—but the village already has plenty of able-bodied adults, most of whom don't have my back problems. So if I showed up, everyone would be friendly but I'd be clumsily trying to do things to help them that would mostly just take up their time explaining things to me, and then after a week or two I'd probably get sick or strain my back and have to use fuel and a vehicle to drive to a city and stay there.

The rural parts of Rwanda do in fact need more wells; they're all connected to the Internet by fiberoptic but water is harder. A Lions' Club in my own city in Germany has been getting wells dug in Rwanda for years. If I want a vacation to go and see some mountain gorillas, I can fly to Kigali and stay in some nice hotels and ride a tour bus, but if I want to help rural Rwandans, I'll do more good by donating what my vacation would have cost to this German Lions' Club for their Rwandan wells project, which could expand its operations efficiently if it had more funds.

For all we know—and Peterson has no obligation to confirm or deny it—Peterson has been donating lots of money for years to aid projects in African countries. That could easily have done much more practical good than a personal visit.

[Gadianton]

I think we agree on this, Physics Guy. I don't know if you saw my post:

Look, some people hit life's jackpot. My mom used to tell me that Steve Young was told not to serve a mission because he could do more for the Church playing football. It's possible that some while pursuing their travel and culinary adventures drop a tall tale or two along the way and do more promoting the Church than others could do on a fulltime mission or seeking to help a new branch get off the ground in an area of poverty.

Said person has a bust of Adam Smith on his desk. As a fellow student of Adam Smith, as you say, Africa's progress is optimized by an efficient market. Mr. Beast dug 500 wells in Africa in a single YouTube stunt. Adam Smith said, "it's not by the benevolence of the baker." I point to the early work of Christopher Hitchens that made him famous: his deconstruction of Mother Theresa. Not everyone who appears selfless and digs a well is selfless. Escaping pressures by going to Africa to dig a well may best optimize that person's utility function. Said person has a great freaking case for not inconveniencing himself by any so-called "selfless service in Africa."

Interestingly, Adam Smith is also a patron saint not just for said person, but Jordan Peterson and a good sweep of the religious right who preach prosperity, but also preach some version of a transcendental argument for God. Adam Smith taught that greed and selfishness -- the carnal nature of man is self-regulating. There is no need from here, to believe that an explicit (in the case of a believer) or hidden (in the case of an atheist) belief in God that keeps people behaving rationally. But if it does factor in there somewhere, God is proven by the bare minimum of human competence or decency. If a person lives the high life bullying for God for the praise of man while simultaneously optimizing the world and feels all the better by such an easy victory in argument over the people he doesn't like, then talk about hitting the jackpot.

For me, an atheist, our shared luminary Adam Smith is good enough to explain said person's actions. To convince me that said person or any person believes in God, I need to see them do something that they wouldn't do anyway without God. I'm one of those who think "real belief" is evidenced by doing something hard for them to do, as Jesus seemed to indicate. I get it: following Jesus isn't practical and if everybody sold all they had to follow him, how would society function? My "high bar" view of belief comes from a relative of mine who was born into wealth and lived about the best life anyone could imagine, including travelling the world where he'd often stay in residences he owned abroad, and then in his later years, went on three missions to poor countries. He seemed to realize he had it all, and felt that he had to prove his belief by doing something other than writing checks -- he did a lot of that.

When I say I got this idea from him, it was from one of his talks in church either returning from a mission or going on one. He told a story (this is a real paraphrase) about two missionaries who encountered rain. They knocked on one more door before quitting, a guy answered, they told the Joseph Smith story, and then indicated they were heading back before the storm really broke. The guy looked at them like they were insane and went off. "If you really believed that story you just told me about Jesus visiting a fourteen-year-old boy to restore the gospel to the earth, you wouldn't be quitting because of a little bit of rain -- you'd knock on doors until your knuckles bleed..." --you get the idea.

[Gadianton]

Of course, it's impossible to ignore the obvious implications of this: He *doesn't want* to go to DRC. He *doesn't want* to see the Saints in sub-Saharan Africa. He *refuses* to spend his "own nickel" on a trip to the DRC. No one *here* even has to "insinuate" anything: the behavior says everything without us having to do anything at all.

Do you think that his friends who "didn't invite him" had reasons in mind other than his lack of technical abilities?

As an example, let's say I'm really into country music but you hate country and everyone knows it. I probably wouldn't invite you next time I see Taylor Swift.

[Doctor Scratch]

You make a lot of great points, Physics Guy, and it brings us back to the initial questions that I posed in my OP: What exactly are these very American Interpreter Foundation operatives *doing* in DRC? The thing is: there is no indication whatsoever that what they're doing is in any way "charitable." Interpreter is essentially making a propaganda film, and in his own words, Bradshaw seemed to be saying that he was "bullying" the young Africans into getting their temple recommend ASAP so that they could go see the fancy new American temple. And to be honest, I don't think that the Interpreter people really feel that they are doing anything "charitable." It's not as if they're making this movie in order to help impoverished Africans. It's more for the "edification" of American LDS--especially prospective donors to the Interpreter Foundation. It's meant to make them feel all warm and fuzzy about their shared membership in the Church.

As for the Proprietor? Again: I think the last thing on his mind is helping *anyone*--let alone a bunch of "unsophisticated" and "uncultured" Africans in the DRC. Maybe if a few of them went to Oxford or Cambridge he might raise an eyebrow. But no: he's not setting foot anywhere near the place and probably doesn't give a rat's ass whether the people are suffering or not. *Should* he go, as President of the Interpreter Foundation, just in order to send a message, though? I have to agree with Dr. Robbers on this one: him not going speaks volumes about his priorities and values.

And as for this:

For all we know—and Peterson has no obligation to confirm or deny it—Peterson has been donating lots of money for years to aid projects in African countries. That could easily have done much more practical good than a personal visit.

True: he has no obligation to confirm or deny, but given things he's said, it seems unlikely. Pretty much the only donations he's mentioned giving have been for some commissioned piece of classical music (I think he said he paid $500), and then tithing, which is really hard to characterize as "charity" since paying it is compulsory. Meanwhile, he's said more than once that he and his wife have been socking away funds for years so that they can spend all of it on travel--he even said that he drove an embarrassing "junker" of a car in order to save more money. So I think the proper assumption here is that he has not given any money to Africa, and is instead reserving that money to spend on himself.

But this is all really beside the point since, as I noted, I see zero signs that the Mopologists have any interest whatsoever in "helping." Their "mission" over there--if you want to call it that--is fundamentally extractive and exploitative.

[Doctor Scratch]

Of course, it's impossible to ignore the obvious implications of this: He *doesn't want* to go to DRC. He *doesn't want* to see the Saints in sub-Saharan Africa. He *refuses* to spend his "own nickel" on a trip to the DRC. No one *here* even has to "insinuate" anything: the behavior says everything without us having to do anything at all.

Do you think that his friends who "didn't invite him" had reasons in mind other than his lack of technical abilities?

As an example, let's say I'm really into country music but you hate country and everyone knows it. I probably wouldn't invite you next time I see Taylor Swift.

An interesting thought, though I wonder if another analogy might fit equally as well. E.g., what if we have a friend who's normally charming and very erudite and funny, but also doesn't know when to shut up and, in the wrong contexts, can come across as arrogant and condescending? Maybe, because we don't want to scare off the "locals," and because donor money is on the line, we sent out subtle signals that he presence maybe isn't needed this time?

Could be. But I lean more towards selfishness and "sybaritic" gluttony being the main motivation. This guy is President of the organization. If he wanted to go to DRC, he would.

[drumdude]

This guy is President of the organization. If he wanted to go to DRC, he would.

Exactly.