Month: February 2016

After the Cultural Revolution

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One of the most surprising things about Cixin Liu’s award-winning science fiction novel The Three-Body Problem was its direct and unflinching portrayal of China’s Cultural Revolution. The descriptions of bloody civil war and widespread oppression of academic intellectuals was not what I expected from a novel that was first published in China, and the specific dialogue as student protesters harangued a physics professor for daring to teach special relativity was at once chilling and fascinating. In some ways, there are elements of the excellent sequel (The Dark Forest) that are even more haunting. The way that an author who is so willing to stare the political doublethink of the Cultural Revolution directly in the face has no qualms about positively describing the important role that political officers would play in a modern (presumably less totalitarian) Chinese military shows, to me, how deeply embedded some of the assumptions that led to the Cultural Revolution still remain. So many things that do not seem political to use are that way purely because nobody has bothered to politicize them. But physics, like anything else, can be and has been politicized.

And then just a couple of weeks ago, I saw this fascinating article in Foreign Policy about an obscure Chinese folk singer (Yang Le) who was allowed–on national television–to sing about the personal costs to his family of the Cultural Revolution. The article notes that “Yang’s song likely made the cut, even earning accolades in a November 2015 article by Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily, by focusing on emotion rather than details, telling a family rather than a political story, and declining to place blame.” Here is a video for you to watch, and then the lyrics (translated into English by Foreign Policy) after:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_DbSDImST0

When I was small
A family of six
Older brothers and sisters, I was the youngest
Dad was handsome and brave
Mom was young and beautiful
They worked earnestly, and were kind-hearted

After the Cultural Revolution, only five were left.
Dad suffered a wrong, he passed on first.
Mom had no choice, she married someone from a different place.
My siblings went up to the mountains and down to the countryside.

From that time on, our family was dispersed.
Brothers and sisters to the four corners of the earth.
At each holiday, we could only send distant greetings
Distant greetings
Distant greetings

Many years later, looking back again,
Brothers and sisters, no need to comfort each other
We all remember, Dad wanted us to be honest and kind
We should never change
We remember, Mom wanted us to be strong
And happy
Even today
We sing Dad and Mom’s favorite song
Strong and happy
Kind and honest
We sing Dad and Mom’s favorite song
Good and kind
Living happily

 

The Need to Belong

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This is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

James Q. Wilson

The late political/social scientist James Q. Wilson made a name for himself studying crime (most famously his “broken windows theory“),[ref]For more on this theory, see the City Journal articles by Heather MacDonald,Charles Sahm, and George Kelling.[/ref] which eventually led him to study mankind’s innate moral sense as well as the familial context in which this sense is nurtured. This wide range of research and reflection enabled him to pen the following paragraph, which is a beautiful summary of human nature:

Evolution by selection, though of great importance to human life, is an incomplete explanation unless we first understand that what it produced were not robots that acted automatically on biological instincts but thinking, feeling people equipped by nature with a complex psychology that predisposed but did not compel them to act in certain ways…Part of the reason we help others at some sacrifice to ourselves is that they are our children; by helping them we perpetuate our genes. And another part is that we help people who are not our children in order to impress these people with our dependability and win from them some reciprocal help in the future. But these two explanations, inclusive fitness and reciprocal altruism, while quite powerful, do not clarify everything…To explain all of altruism, it is necessary to first understand that what evolution has given to us is not a fixed mechanism to achieve a specific goal, but an emotion that not only serves that goal but achieves related ones as well. Let us call that emotion a desire for affiliation or, in simple language, a desire to be part of a social group.[ref]James Q. Wilson, The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 35-36.[/ref]

To be human is to be social.[ref]See Matthew D. Lieberman, Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect (New York: Crown, 2013); Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Vintage, 2012).[/ref] With increased socialization being linked to our evolutionary development as a species (i.e. “the social brain hypothesis“), it is little wonder that covenants, kinship, and community play such an integral role in Mormon theology.[ref]Covenant language was kinship language in ancient Israel. See Frank Moore Cross, “Kinship and Covenant in Ancient Israel” in his From Epic to Canon: History and Literature in Ancient Israel (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1998).[/ref] Isolation or alienation does violence to this fundamental element of our human nature and often leads to unfortunate outcomes, possibly even addiction. As British journalist Johann Hari explains,

[W]hat if addiction isn’t about your chemical hooks? What if addiction is about your cage? What if addiction is an adaptation to your environment? …[M]aybe we shouldn’t even call it addiction. Maybe we should call it bonding. Human beings have a natural and innate need to bond, and when we’re happy and healthy, we’ll bond and connect with each other, but if you can’t do that, because you’re traumatized or isolated or beaten down by life, you will bond with something that will give you some sense of relief. Now, that might be gambling, that might be pornography, that might be cocaine, that might be cannabis, but you will bond and connect with something because that’s our nature. That’s what we want as human beings.

I thought of this information as I was reading through the Priesthood session of the October 1971 General Conference. Marvin J. Ashton recounts a time he was visiting a prison and was stopped by a young man who, after talking with Elder Ashton for 15 minutes or so, said, “Thank you for talking to me.” This need to be listened to–to be accepted and truly seen–is echoed in the predicament of Ashton’s imprisoned friend, who stated,

I don’t want to blame anyone back home for my being in prison today, but it is factual that I had no family relationships. I am involved in the family home evening program at the prison. Without the parents who have been assigned to me through this social services program, many times I would have given up. These people love me as if I were their own son. I have never had that, even when I was a small boy. Now, with their help and that of others, I believe I can now make it back a day at a time. I am not proud of being in prison, but I am proud of my recent experiences while being there. We have a tendency to blame others. We don’t want to blame our parents for not loving us, because we know they do, but maybe they didn’t have the guidance and direction in their lives to apply when they were bringing us up.

These prisoners obviously had experienced social isolation on a grand scale prior to their imprisonment. This is what makes Ashton’s message so powerful:

I humbly, but with all of the power in my possession, declare to our “lost” youth, young men and young women worldwide, you can make it back from where you are. The great social services program of the Church, operating as an arm of the priesthood, lends a helping hand to our young people with social and emotional problems. As President Smith has declared to us tonight, by honoring our priesthood we can help them find their way back to joy and stability.

The gospel is freely available to all, including and especially those whose sins may be more public and legally troublesome. They are not truly lost: they can make it back from where they are. But they cannot and should not do it
alone. The gospel is communal and we as members of the community should be leading them “back to joy and stability.” This is why President Joseph Fielding Smith reminds the brethren in his opening talk that they
are to use “the priesthood to benefit mankind.” It “is given…to bless ourselves and our Father’s other children.” In a well-known and popular story, a man has a dream in which he is walking on a beach with the Lord. As he sees scenes from his life, he notices that at times there are two sets of footprints and at others only one. Realizing the hardest times feature only one pair of footprints, he questions why the Lord abandoned him in his trials. In reply, the Lord says, “It was then that I carried you.” The story is sentimental enough, but as physician and cultural historian Sam Brown notes, “While there is no doubt that Christ will indeed carry us in our lives…[h]ow could a person’s life story be told with only one set of human footprints?” “The Mormon version,” he writes, “...would have so many footprints that it would be hard to find undisturbed sand. There would be parents and siblings, friends and neighbors, visiting and home teachers, the Relief Society presidency, the bishop and his counselors, even sometimes the young women and young men of our wards and neighborhoods…At times of trial, the footfalls may become a stampede, the sand bearing the marks of an earnest crowd of saints carrying us forward.”[ref]Samuel M. Brown, First Principles and Ordinances: The Fourth Article of Faith in Light of the Temple (Provo: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, BYU, 2014), 125.[/ref]

The need for more footprints in the sand is made even more explicit in Marion D. Hanks’ talk. He describes five things that the youth (or anyone, really) need:

First, they need faith. They need to believe. They need to know the doctrines, the commandments, the principles of the gospel. They need to grow in understanding and conviction. They need to worship and to pray, but they live in a time when all of this is so seriously questioned, when doubt is encouraged.

Two, they need to be accepted as they are, and to be included. They need a family, the most important social unit in this world; and even if they have a good family, they need the supportive influence outside their home of others, of neighbors, of friends, of bishops, of brothers, of human beings.

Three, they need to be actively involved, to participate, to give service, to give of themselves.

Four, they have to learn somehow that they are more important than their mistakes; that they are worthwhile, valuable, useful; that they are loved unconditionally.

…We need to understand their needs. They need to learn the gospel. They need to be accepted, to be involved, to be loved; and they need, my brethren—my fifth and final point—the example of good men, good parents, good people, who really care.

Each of these, including the first one, bolster a sense of belonging and connection with others. Christianity “provided an unimaginably exalted picture of the human person–made in the divine image and destined to partake of the divine nature…In short, the rise of Christianity produced consequences so immense that it can almost be said to have begun the world anew: to have “invented” the human, to have bequeathed us our most basic concept of nature, to have determined our vision of the cosmos and our place in it, and to have shaped all of us…in the deepest reaches of consciousness.”[ref]David B. Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 213.[/ref] That people are “not only something of worth but indeed something potentially godlike, to be cherished and adored, is the rarest and most ennoblingly unrealistic capacity ever bred within human souls.”[ref]Ibid., 214.[/ref] To be the victim of abuse, tragedy, shame, or loneliness is to often have one’s feelings of dignity and self-worth stripped. It is not merely a future peace or salvation that is being taught when one preaches Jesus and the doctrines of the gospel: it is an identity; a recognition that “the worth of souls” (including one’s own) “is great in the sight of God” (D&C 18:10). They “are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (Eph. 2:19; note the kinship language in my italics). They are called to be “equip[ped with] the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12, NRSV). They are called into a community. They are called to belong.

And so are we.

—

Here are the rest of the blog posts for the General Conference Odyssey this week. You can also follow along via our Facebook Group.

Mormon Privilege

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The LadderThis post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

There were lots of good talks from the Priesthood session of the October 1971 General Conference. I really liked the list of 5 things that every young person needs given by Elder Marion D. Hanks in his talk, Love Unconditional.

  1. They need faith.
  2. They need to be accepted as they are, and to be included.
  3. They need to be actively involved, to participate, to give service, to give of themselves
  4. They have to learn somehow that they are more important than their mistakes; that they are worthwhile, valuable, useful; that they are loved unconditionally
  5. They need the example of good men, good parents, good people who really care.

“There have to be standards and they must be enforced,” he later said, “but our love must be unconditional.” The General Authorities have been refusing the false choice between tolerance and righteousness for decades.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks also gave a list of advice in his talk, Strive for Excellence, this time advice for seeking “a balanced and full life of service to God and fellowman.”

  1. Rigorous standards and high achievement in any field of learning are not at odds with faith and devotion to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
  2. In approaching any field of learning, remember the Lord’s direction to “seek learning, even by study and also by faith.” (D&C 88:118.)
  3. Cherish and nourish your spiritual life. Seek spiritual growth at the same time that you are seeking to enlarge your learning in other areas. Nourish your spirit just as regularly as you nourish your body or mind.
  4. Most of all, live so that you can be guided and taught by the Spirit in all your activities, including all your efforts to learn and gain an education: honor your parents; be true to the teachings of the Church; be clean and faithful in all things; and be loyal to the leaders of the Church.

But the talk that stuck with me the most was President Harold B. Lee’s Responsibilities of the Priesthood. He started out with an amazing metaphor that I’d never hear before. A mission president asked one of the missionaries to push over a pillar inside a building. “I can’t,” said the missionary, The reason? “The weight of that ceiling is all on top of the pillar.” So the mission president asked what would happen if the weight were taken off the pillar, and the missionary said that, in that case, he could probably topple the pillar. And so President Lee concluded:

Brethren, you and I are just like one of those pillars. As long as we have a weight of responsibility in this church, all hell can’t push us over; but as soon as that weight is lifted off, most of us are easy marks by the powers that drag us down.

It’s such a profoundly different way of looking at responsibility, although when it is phrased a little bit differently I think it’s more familiar: we need to be needed.

A little later on in the talk, President Lee recounts what one prisoner said about why they were in prison: “We are here in the state penitentiary because there came a time in our lives when we were made to feel that nobody cared what happened to us.”

President Lee then issued message of humility and compassion, along with a warning against self-righteousness:

You and I sit here tonight in a comparative measure of security, but the Lord help any one of us if ever we are made to feel in our hearts that nobody cares what happens to us.

Together, these two quotes (the story of the pillar and the idea that we’d be in dire straits if we ever felt no one cared about us) reminded me of the idea of privilege.

Politically, when it is often heard as “white privilege” or “straight privilege,” privilege becomes a problematic idea, in part because it tends to make people feel isolated and suspicious of each other. Someone who sees the world through the lens of privilege must always ask whether every misfortune they encounter was simply one of  life’s unfortunate random events, of if they are experiencing persecution and oppression. This is a horrible way to live and it divides rather than unites people.

But there is a great deal of truth to the idea that some people have privileges that make their lives easier and that, what’s more, they often take these privileges for granted. Imagine, for example, one of those stone pillars holding aloft a heavy ceiling and thinking to itself: “I would be so much more free if only I hadn’t been placed here underneath this heavy load.” Isn’t that very similar to the way some Mormons, raised in the faith and therefore carrying the burden of knowledge of the Restoration, might feel about their own lives? Taking the high standards and high expectations of the faith and the community as a burden instead of understanding how this privilege empowers and strengthens them to stand straight and true against the forces of the adversary?

An even more poignant example is that so many Mormons—who have experienced the privilege of being raised in loving homes by their biological parents—now see the same family unit that provided so much of their formative life experiences as basically a dispensable life choice. Intentionally or not, this cavalier attitude towards the family amounts to kicking away the ladder that one has just used to climb to a higher vista.

The saddest thing about privilege is that, when we take it for granted, we may be tricked into working to destroy the privileges that we have enjoyed so that those who come after us will have to struggle through without them.

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Here are the rest of the blog posts for the General Conference Odyssey this week. You can also follow along via our Facebook Group.

 

Kids These Days

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Vox has a great article on teenage behavior compared to generations past. Despite the consistent complaint about “kids these days,” they appear to be doing better than before. After selecting my birth year (1986), it turns out that teenagers today are

  • 45% less likely to smoke
  • 30% less likely to binge drink
  • 15% less likely to have tried alcohol at all
  • 15% less likely to have sex before 13 (with 40% fewer teen girls getting pregnant)[ref]4.5 percent of teen girls got pregnant in 2001 compared to 2.5% in 2015.[/ref]
  • Slightly more likely to have had sex in the last 3 months (34% compared to 33.4%)[ref]However, this is lower than the 37% of kids in the early 1990s.[/ref]
  • Better at using birth control
  • More likely to wear a seat belt
  • Less likely to carry a weapon

This is compared to when I was a teenager, specifically a freshman/sophomore in high school. The data goes back to those born in 1972, so pick the year you were born (if you were born past 1972) and see how your generation compares to kids today.[ref]This isn’t to say that “kids these days” don’t have problems, as Jean Twenge has documented. But it should derail the narrative of a total decline in generational quality.[/ref]

Worlds Without End: Mormon Theology of Work

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Last February, I was privileged to present at the 2015 Faith & Knowledge Conference at the University of Virginia. My paper drew on management literature and Mormon history to begin constructing a coherent Mormon theology of work.

I’ve finally posted my presentation over at Worlds Without End. Better late than never. If your interests include business or Mormon Studies, give it a read.

True Motherhood and True Fatherhood

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Father and Child - Small

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

The talk that struck me the most this week was Elder A. Theodore Tuttle’s The Things that Matter Most. He began his talk with an excerpt from a Deseret News article about how racing greyhounds, which are trained to chase a fake rabbit around the track, don’t even know what a real rabbit looks like. According to the editorial Elder Tuttle quoted:

We chase social pleasures on a glittering noisy treadmill—and ignore the privilege of a quiet hour telling bedtime stories to an innocent-eyed child. We chase prestige and wealth, and don’t recognize the real opportunities for joy that cross our paths.

This immediately reminded me of Jonathan Haidt’s book The Happiness Hypothesis. In the book, Haidt—a social psychologist we often cite here at Difficult Run because of his work on Moral Foundations Theory—distills important lessons from a variety of world philosophies through the lens of psychology. According to Haidt (writing in a followup book), “One of the greatest truths in psychology is that the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict.”[ref]The Righteous Mind, page 27[/ref]

In The Happiness Hypothesis, Haidt talks about the rider (the conscious, deliberate, rational side of our minds) and the elephant (the intuitive and emotional side of our minds). As an intuitionist, Haidt puts a lot of emphasis on the intuitive sides of our nature (the elephant). He underscores how important our intuition is (even to logical, analytical thinking) and also highlights how sophisticated our intuitive natures are. However, there are drawbacks, one of the most important of which is this:

The elephant cares about prestige, not happiness, and it looks eternally to others to figure out what is prestigious. The elephant will pursue its evolutionary goals even when greater happiness can be found elsewhere.[ref]The Happiness Hypothesis, page 101[/ref]

The elephant is the product of evolution and natural selection. It cares about prestige because status—in primates—is what provides access to reproduction. It doesn’t care about happiness or fulfillment because happiness and fulfillment are, from a genetic perspective, kind of beside the point. This is why the pursuit of prestige—nice job, nice car, nice house—is so irresistible. It’s embedded in our biological natures. And it’s a treacherous trap, as Haidt points out, because pursuit of prestige is always a zero-sum game.[ref]In game theory, a zero sum game where any player can only win what they take from another player. That is why it is a “zero sum game”: the total of winnings and losings always amounts to nothing.[/ref]

If everyone is chasing the same limited amount of prestige, then all are stuck in a zero-sum game, an eternal arms race, a world in which rising wealth does not bring rising happiness. The pursuit of luxury goods is a happiness trap; it is a dead end that people raced toward the mistaken belief that it will make them happy.[ref]The Happiness Hypothesis, page 101[/ref]

Sound familiar?

Elder Tuttle then points out that the people who are most vulnerable to being trampled when our inner elephant charges off in search of status and prestige are the people we care about the most:

Our most flagrant violations, perhaps, occur in our own homes. We chase worldly pleasures and neglect our own innocent children. When did you tell stories to your children?

Every single night I pray for help in resisting this. When you’re a parent, the days crawl and the years fly. Children are miracles from God, but—like many of God’s greatest miracles—they are in danger of being overlooked and neglected.

On Sunday I taught Gospel Doctrine and we focused on the murmurings of Laman and Lemuel in chapters 16 – 18. For the first time, I noticed a very definite pattern in the slow hardening of the hearts. At first, in chapter 16, all it took was a lecture from Nephi to bring them to repentance. Later, when Nephi’s bow broke, it took the indirect voice of the Lord (through the Liahona) to bring them to their sesnse. Later, when Ishmael died, the voice of the Lord directly was required. Finally, when Nephi started to build a ship, it took a threat of physical violence to humble them. The problem wasn’t that Laman and Lemuel murmured. Everyone murmurs. It’s that their hearts grew harder with every passing trial.

But when the penultimate confrontation came it wasn’t a result of trial or tribulation. The argument that prompted Laman and Lemuel to tie Nephi to the mast of their ship for days wasn’t the result of hardship. The spark that started that fire happened when things were going well. The ship was built, the supplies were loaded, the journey was easy, and there was no hard work to do. And that was when the greatest crisis erupted. Which explains why Elder Tuttle writes:

The trials through which today’s young people are passing—ease and luxury—may be the most severe test of any age. Brothers and sisters, stay close to your own! Guide them safely! These are perilous times. Give increased attention. Give increased effort.

You want a simple example of this? Screen-time is the easiest. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not one of those families with no TV and no screens. My wife is getting her PhD in computer science and my job is in software development. My kids are expert Minecraft players and I enjoy playing Castle Crashers with them. We’ve watched Avatar: The Last Airbender all the way through twice and started it a third time. So screens can be—and are—a part of this family. But they’re also perilous. The older your kids get, the easier it is to tell them to leave you alone and have them actually do it. An infant can’t leave you alone. A toddler can sometimes, but only for a few minutes. But a 9-year old is perfectly capable of entertaining him or herself for a few hours or more. Throw in a TV or a video game console or an iPhone and you could—if you wanted—basically live in the same house as your children and never really interact with them.

That is the peril—for them and for you—of “ease and luxury.” As a parent, I have learned that the greatest tragedy is not that your kids don’t listen to you. It’s that they do. If they hear “I’m busy” often enough, or “Daddy doesn’t have time” frequently enough, the message does sink in, and then there’s no way to take it back.

These are indeed perilous times. Growth is always risky. It is always perilous as your children grow more independent and begin to take on more and more freedom for themselves. But that ordinary course of getting older is even more perilous in our society, which makes it so easy to curate digital connections and so easy to forget the flesh-and-blood variety.

And finally there is this:

The responsibility rests on the family to solve our social problems. Youth search for security. They search for answers to be found only in a good home. No national or international treaty can bring peace. Not in legislative halls nor judicial courts will our problems be solved. From the hearthstones of the homes will come the answers to our problems. On the principles taught by the Savior, happiness and peace will come to families. In the home youth will receive strength to find happiness.

As I wrote about last week, I believe this to be entirely literal. Laws and governments are a superficial veneer on society. They are important, but they are not essential. What matters more than formal institutions are the informal ones: friendships, associations, churches, clubs and—far, far and away the most important—families. This is born out be reams of social science research (another topic we cover at Difficult Run, especially Walker Wright) which underscores the empirically validated truth that stable families are the most important ingredient for stable, prosperous, safe, flourishing, happy societies. It’s not rhetoric and it’s not exaggeration. It’s the truth: the family is the one and only solution to our deepest social problems.

The world doesn’t believe this. “The world is full of foolish schemes.” Many of these schemes are attempts to root a stable society in some foundation other than families. They will not work, and—to the extent that they lead people to turn their attention away from the life-long endeavor of nurturing families—they will lead to unhappiness and suffering.

What is wanted, first and foremost, is true motherhood and true fatherhood. And, as Elder Tuttle writes, we must “face the fact that true fatherhood and true motherhood are fast disappearing.”

He doesn’t spend as much time talking about what those concepts mean. I think the world continues to have a relatively robust account of what true motherhood is about. We continue to understand, to a greater degree than with fatherhood, the dignity and importance of mothers who nourish, protect and care for their children. But fathers—especially if you judge by the bungling, incompetent depictions in popular television—are viewed more and more as auxiliary and disposable. In contrast, Elder Tuttle describes true fatherhood this way:

Fatherhood is a relationship of love and understanding. It is strength and manliness and honor. It is power and action. It is counsel and instruction. Fatherhood is to be one with your own. It is authority and example.

The line that speaks the most to me there is that “Fatherhood is to be one with your own.” I haven’t finished processing it, but it continues to resonate long after I first read it, a bell reverberating on and on in my heart, and calling attention to a message I haven’t fully received yet.

I have learned, in my marriage and in my parenting, that the messages I’ve been taught by the world about being a husband and a father range from irrelevant to insidious. I’m still learning to sift the true meaning of fatherhood from the surrounding chaff. I don’t have it all figured out, but talks like this encourage me to keep going and help guide me along my way.

—

Here are the other posts from the General Conference Odyssey this week:

“Unto One of the Least of These”

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This is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

In Michael Shermer’s book The Moral Arc, he has a section in which he discusses restorative justice vs. retributive justice. Retributive justice is a “theory of justice that considers proportionate punishment to be the most effective means of deterring crime…” Restorative (or reparative) justice is a theory in which the “perpetrator…apologizes for the crime; attempts to set to rights the situation; and, ideally, initiates or restores good relations with the victim” (pg. 371). The notion of rehabilitation over punishment is gaining momentum among prison reform movements. One example is the Insight Prison Project, a program that “aims to help incarcerated men learn new emotional skills and correct problem behaviors in order to succeed in and out of prison. IPP offers a multipronged approach to personal transformation, including classes in violence prevention, yoga, and mindfulness. It also brings victims and survivors together with inmates, so that the men can be exposed to the human impact of the types of crimes they’ve committed. VOEG group circleThe process doesn’t just help the inmates to grow. It can also help the survivors.” Prisoners go through “an intensive, yearlong program designed to help them open up, learn to trust each other, and take greater responsibility for the harm they’ve caused. They explored how crime impacts everyone—not just the direct victims, but the victims’ spouses, children, parents, and communities—while developing empathy for victims through directed exercises. They also learned about the effects of childhood trauma and abuse and how these experiences may have impacted their personal psychology, all the while developing skills like emotional regulation and anger/stress management.” In 1997, “the San Francisco County Sheriff’s Department ordered Wash­ington into a jail program called RSVP: Resolve to Stop the Violence Project. In his first week there he met a former skinhead, Aaron Mosco­vitz, who had already undergone a dramatic transformation through the program. Moscovitz went from perpetrating violent hate crimes to becoming a public speaker against violence. If the program could take violent racists like Moscovitz and return them to society reformed and peaceful, Washington was curi­ous about what the program could do for him.” The exciting part is that this kind of approach actually works: a 2013 meta-analysis found that restorative justice programs were more cost-effective, led to a decrease in post-release recidivism, and greater victim satisfaction.

I think restorative justice is an excellent way to describe Victor Brown’s talk in the October 1971 Conference. He begins,

In June of this year I was invited to attend a graduation exercise conducted by the LDS Institute of Religion and Church Social Services Department held at the Utah State Prison. Seventeen men received certificates of award: nine received their first-year certificates, five their second-year, and three their third. Twenty-four others had participated in religion classes but did not quite qualify for certificates.

As I recall, only two had been released from prison and had returned that evening to receive their certificates. All of the others were inmates. Many of them were not members of the Church.

One would hardly expect in the environment of the prison to hear the beautiful, stirring hymns “I Need Thee Every Hour” and “Sweet Hour of Prayer.” They were sung by two choruses composed of white and black prisoners.

Men dressed in prison uniforms offered humble, sincere prayers to God, expressing gratitude for their blessings and for the knowledge they now have of his gospel. Several stood at the pulpit and testified that they know God lives, and expressed gratitude for his goodness to them. May I tell you of just two of these men—men whose lives were seriously out of step with society; men with internal, personal problems that really are not much different from those of many who have never been in prison.

One prisoner Brown describes gave up coffee and smoking, “became involved in the various religious programs sponsored by the Church social service agency,” and felt loved “as a son” by his home teachers, “something he had never experienced in his life, even as a little boy.” And this was only “[a]fter a few weeks of exposure to the program of the Church specially designed for prison life…” Another inmate “had some particularly wonderful home teachers who occasionally brought their own children to the prison to have family home evening with him. The children consider Ed as an older brother.” Following his release, he was invited to speak at the program’s graduation service. He held up a piece of paper for the audience to see and said, “You probably can’t read this, but this is the most important document in my life. This is my baptismal recommend that will permit me to be baptized next Thursday.” He was baptized. “After his confirmation, he walked over to a corner of the room where he could be alone and wept. He wept even more when he was ordained a deacon in the Aaronic Priesthood.”

Brown explains,

Certainly these young men were faced with serious problems. Yes, they had lost their physical freedom by being confined in jail, but this was not the basic problem. Even more serious was the lack of purpose in their lives. They had no place to go. They were lost. Life had no meaning. They had no idea why they were here on earth or where they were going.

Release from the prison would not begin to solve their most urgent problems; and yet, in the environment of prison, they found the release that could ultimately make them truly free men. They found their Savior, Jesus Christ, and his gospel.

And this gospel was brought to them by others. May we seek to be more Christian not only to those whom we think deserve it, but to those who may actually need it more:

I was in prison, and ye came unto me…Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me (Matt. 25:36, 40).

Other Noteworthy Quotes & Insights:

LeGrand Richards:

“When the foundation [of the Salt Lake temple] was being laid, we are told that it was sixteen feet wide, and at one time President Brigham Young came and saw the workmen throwing in chipped granite. He made them take it out and put in those great granite blocks with this explanation: “We are building this temple to stand through the millennium.” Isn’t that a good thought? Each one of us ought to want to build our lives and help our families to build their lives so that we can stand through the millennium.”

A. Theodore Tuttle:

I was tempted to write about Tuttle’s talk and the modern gospel of busyness:

“Note again the admonition [of D&C 121:34-35]: “their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world”—not on the things of the spirit. And they “aspire to the honors of men,” rather than seeking approval of God. Have we sought “so much” for material things while missing, even ignoring, the things of God? The beauty of nature at this or any other season goes unseen and unappreciated. Our lives are ruled by a schedule and appointments while the Christian acts of kindness wait—ofttimes in vain.”

“The trials through which today’s young people are passing—ease and luxury—may be the most severe test of any age.”

“The responsibility rests on the family to solve our social problems. Youth search for security. They search for answers to be found only in a good home. No national or international treaty can bring peace. Not in legislative halls nor judicial courts will our problems be solved. From the hearthstones of the homes will come the answers to our problems. On the principles taught by the Savior, happiness and peace will come to families. In the home youth will receive strength to find happiness.”[ref]This is extremely important, especially when one considers Brown’s talk above.[/ref]

“[A] home where the accumulation of worldly goods has become so important…is a poor place to teach the worth of a human being in terms of love and sacrifice.”[ref]The knock against working mothers in the full quote is, in my view, outdated but forgivable given the overall point.[/ref]

Compassionate (Sentimental) Liberals, Loyal (Authoritarian) Conservatives, and Intelligent (Cold-Hearted) Libertarians

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Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and the Cato Institute’s Emily Ekins have an incredible article on the moral psychology of different candidate supporters. The two begin with the 6 major moral foundations:

  • Care/harm: We feel compassion for those who are vulnerable or suffering.
  • Fairness/cheating: We constantly monitor whether people are getting what they deserve, whether things are balanced. We shun or punish cheaters.
  • Liberty/oppression: We resent restrictions on our choices and actions; we band together to resist bullies.
  • Loyalty/betrayal: We keep track of who is “us” and who is not; we enjoy tribal rituals, and we hate traitors.
  • Authority/subversion: We value order and hierarchy; we dislike those who undermine legitimate authority and sow chaos.
  • Sanctity/degradation: We have a sense that some things are elevated and pure and must be kept protected from the degradation and profanity of everyday life. (This foundation is best seen among religious conservatives, but you can find it on the left as well, particularly on issues related to environmentalism.)

In the graph below you can find how supporters of the various candidates scored:

Here are some highlights from Haidt and Ekins:

  • “The most obvious thing to note is that supporters of the two Democratic candidates are high [in Care], whereas supporters of most Republicans are low. This is consistent with most studies of the left-right dimension: The left values care and compassion as public or political values more than the right does. (We note that all people, and all groups, value care to some extent; we are merely looking at relative differences among groups.)…Rand Paul’s supporters score particularly low [in Care]. We have consistently found that libertarians score lower on care and compassion compared with others — indeed, they score low on almost all emotions, while scoring the highest on measures of reason, rationality, and intelligence.”
  • “As you move to the right, the bars [in Fairness] rise. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio supporters score highest on this foundation. This pattern is consistent with these candidates receiving the most support from the Tea Party. In our earlier research, we have each independently reached the conclusion that Tea Party supporters are highly motivated by the sense that the government routinely violates proportional fairness, by bailing out well-connected corporations and by spreading a safety net of welfare benefits under people they see as undeserving of help.”
  • “Not surprisingly, Rand Paul’s supporters rate [Liberty] the most important foundation, by far…More surprisingly, Bernie Sanders supporters also score high. Sanders seems to be drawing the more libertarian elements of the left, consistent with his more libertarian views on personal freedom, gun rights, and dovish foreign policy. Libertarian-minded voters seem to choose Sanders if they are on the left on economic policy, and Paul if they are on the right…Clinton supporters, in contrast to Sanders’s supporters, score slightly below the national mean. This may be one of the most important differences between the two candidates: Clinton attracts voters less concerned about individual autonomy.”
  • “Supporters of the Republican candidates tend to highly rate authority/loyalty/sanctity. Supporters of Democrats and libertarian-leaning Rand Paul do not…Sanders supporters score the lowest on these foundations and are joined not by Clinton supporters but by Paul supporters.”

But perhaps the biggest surprises?:

One surprise in our data was that Trump supporters were not extreme on any of the foundations. This means that Trump supporters are more centrist than is commonly realized; consequently, Trump’s prospects in the general election may be better than many pundits have thought. Cruz meanwhile, with a further-right moral profile, may have more difficulty attracting centrist Democrats and independents than would Trump.

One last interesting finding: Jeb Bush supporters are closest to the average American voter, despite the fact that his campaign has thus far has failed to gain any traction among Republican primary voters.

Bush’s failures may have more to do with his poor debate performances than with his moral profile, but in this time of high and rising polarization, cross-partisan hostility, and anger at elites and the establishment, Bush appears to be suffering from an excess of agreeability: He has no standout moral message that connects to any particular moral foundation, even at the risk of alienating supporters of another.

Check it out.

Immigration: No Laughing Matter

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Comedian Steve Gerben has a new talk entitled “On Increasing Immigration” that is funny, informative, and to some extent moving. If you wonder why some people advocate for (more) open immigration,[ref]I’ve blogged about immigration here at Difficult Run before multiple times.[/ref] but prefer your academia presented in an entertaining fashion, then Gerben’s talk is for you. Check it out below.