A Built In Social Circle

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_Physics Guy
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Re: A Built In Social Circle

Post by _Physics Guy »

Gadianton wrote:[W]hat I'm saying is that [Mormon testimony is] a straight-up fabrication, not a real event that was misunderstood, and most of them know it, and testimony insecurity is yet another huge problems most TBMs have.

And yet:
I believe .. that most TBMs, especially lifers, really have it stuck in their mind that the Church is true. ... [T]here is a sincere commitment to truth operating here. ... [T]he typical TBM really believes it's "true" and when the member dares look into the box, and their web of false information is assailed from every angle, the obvious choice is that one must leave the Church (or mentally leave it and stay for family), and that's what usually happens.

I'm not accusing you of self-contradiction, just trying to emphasize that the scenario you present is paradoxical.

Convinced Mormons often emphasize that evidence and reason are only secondary grounds for their faith, which is primarily based on personal spiritual experience. You seem to be saying that this is only what Mormons know they are supposed to say, and that in fact few if any really have any such spiritual experience. Instead of one naked emperor, Mormonism is a whole naked empire in which everyone thinks that everyone else has magnificent clothes.

I can't see inside anyone else's head but I'd be surprised if most Mormons were really conscious of having no personal spiritual witness at all. What I rather expect is that most can recall some kind of experience which maybe could have been the Holy Ghost doing something, perhaps. Under peer pressure and from desire to believe, they decide that this actually rather underwhelming experience must have been their witness. They blame themselves for its inadequacy and try to make up retroactively by thinking about it as a life-changing event: a humble shrine faithfully tended because it's all that they have.

If that scenario is true very often then I'd have to say that I can understand individual Mormons trying to bolster their inadequate testimonies however they can, but getting everyone to accept lukewarm experiences as transcendence is like making everyone marry their high-school sweethearts. The advice to "find a testimony in the bearing of it" may come as a relief to Mormons who long for a reliable way of finally landing that elusive testimony but to me it's really creepy.

Your theory then seems to be that most Mormons are in fact basing their beliefs in the ordinary human way on a web of argument and evidence. It's a big web with a fair amount of redundancy but it can crumble and if it does, the witness of the Holy Ghost is like the wizard in The Wizard of Oz.
_Kishkumen
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Re: A Built In Social Circle

Post by _Kishkumen »

Physics Guy wrote:It's a stereotype which I'm afraid I'll shamelessly repeat, that a lot of men connect with people by being right about impersonal things. They seek belonging through the ritual of reciting views that are affirmed as facts by their peers. Sometimes the tit-for-tat of factoid exchange over beer looks so much like chimps grooming each other that you half expect the guys to start hooting. I freely admit I feel the instinct myself.

Hence the hypothesis: proudly affirming the truth of the whole Mormon line may not be a conscious proxy for a subconscious emotional need to belong to a group. It may simply be the way that group belonging is manifest, through the ritual of reciting the acceptable facts. "Alma says this," "Yes, and Moroni said that." It's a heady fountain of living water bubbling up to belonging eternal, especially for guys who aren't so great at sports trivia.

A test for the hypothesis: how many committed Mormon women express their commitment primarily as intellectual conviction, as opposed to defining it in more social terms? My guess would be, fewer than men—not because men in general are really any more intellectual than women in general, but because men so often express their social connections through the actually-not-very-intellectual ritual of picking factoids from each other's fur.


Love this comment. So much about this rings true. Let's find a body of "knowledge" to bond over. You have to do it in exactly the right way, understanding the place of these "facts" in the larger spectrum of social interactions. Got to play the part of a leader well if you want to rise in the ranks.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
_Gadianton
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Re: A Built In Social Circle

Post by _Gadianton »

physics guy wrote:I'm not accusing you of self-contradiction, just trying to emphasize that the scenario you present is paradoxical.


If you were, i'd have no problem with it. Unlike FARMS, I welcome challenges to my thinking.

physics guy wrote:Convinced Mormons often emphasize that evidence and reason are only secondary grounds for their faith, which is primarily based on personal spiritual experience. You seem to be saying that this is only what Mormons know they are supposed to say, and that in fact few if any really have any such spiritual experience. Instead of one naked emperor, Mormonism is a whole naked empire in which everyone thinks that everyone else has magnificent clothes.


I think that's pretty close. Contrasted with say, the charismatic movement, modern Mormonism doesn't foster or encourage the kinds activities that lead to being-encompassing spiritual experiences. I also think evidence for this position would be in how predictable it is that a shared testimony will be accepted or rejected by others.

physics guy wrote:I can't see inside anyone else's head but I'd be surprised if most Mormons were really conscious of having no personal spiritual witness at all. What I rather expect is that most can recall some kind of experience which maybe could have been the Holy Ghost doing something, perhaps. Under peer pressure and from desire to believe, they decide that this actually rather underwhelming experience must have been their witness. They blame themselves for its inadequacy and try to make up retroactively by thinking about it as a life-changing event: a humble shrine faithfully tended because it's all that they have.


Testimony as fish story? I wholeheartedly agree that this happens. It's not universal, because not everyone is prone to tell fish stories and it's good enough to just get to the point where you can do as BKP suggests and stand up and say "I know.." without being specific in any details. I think the way I see it, for the fish story testimony to contradict my proposal, the teller would have to come to deeply believe it themselves, in a way that grounds their own faith. And I'm very skeptical of that happening very often. In general, if members were so rooted in their spiritual witnesses, they wouldn't come unglued over the prospect of a little anti-lit.

When I was a missionary in particular, I had several missionary colleagues (elders and sisters) want to talk in private about whether or not they really had a testimony even though they'd stand and bear it all the time with a lot of feeling behind it.

Your theory then seems to be that most Mormons are in fact basing their beliefs in the ordinary human way on a web of argument and evidence.


Not sure I'd put it exactly like that, as people in general don't seem to base their beliefs on argument and evidence. I think social ties play a huge part, along with a web of bad information -- I guess if we want to call that evidence it could loosely fit. Maybe one way to put it is that I think people are Mormons for the same reasons people are Jehovah's Witnesses or disciples of other closely-knit religious communities, and I don't think the unique Mormon claim of "testimony" is required to explain why they attend or believe so strongly.
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.

LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
_Physics Guy
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Re: A Built In Social Circle

Post by _Physics Guy »

Gadianton wrote:Testimony as fish story? ... It's not universal, because not everyone is prone to tell fish stories and it's good enough to just get to the point where you can do as Boyd K. Packer suggests and stand up and say "I know.." without being specific in any details. I think the way I see it, for the fish story testimony to contradict my proposal, the teller would have to come to deeply believe it themselves, in a way that grounds their own faith. And I'm very skeptical of that happening very often. In general, if members were so rooted in their spiritual witnesses, they wouldn't come unglued over the prospect of a little anti-lit.

"Testimony as fish story" is indeed something I could imagine, but I wasn't really supposing that typical Mormons keep on gradually exaggerating their modest experience until even they themselves believe it was the Damascus Road. I was figuring they would remain keenly aware that it wasn't nearly as great an event as it was supposed to be, but still count it as their testimony. Like being stuck in a crappy apartment when you were promised a penthouse, and not being at all blind to the peeling paint, but saying, "Well, this is my penthouse."

I think social ties play a huge part, along with a web of bad information -- I guess if we want to call that evidence it could loosely fit. Maybe one way to put it is that I think people are Mormons for the same reasons people are Jehovah's Witnesses or disciples of other closely-knit religious communities, and I don't think the unique Mormon claim of "testimony" is required to explain why they attend or believe so strongly.

I guess I don't understand exactly what you're saying about the relationships between (1) sincere belief in Mormonism, (2) the sense of having had personal revelation, and (3) the need to belong to a close-knit community. If there really isn't enough of a personal revelation to warrant sincere belief, but the belief is nonetheless sincere and not just a pretence maintained in order to sustain social ties, then doesn't the sincere belief have to be entirely based on the web of bad information? What else is there?
_Gadianton
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Re: A Built In Social Circle

Post by _Gadianton »

Physics Guy wrote:I guess I don't understand exactly what you're saying about the relationships between (1) sincere belief in Mormonism, (2) the sense of having had personal revelation, and (3) the need to belong to a close-knit community. If there really isn't enough of a personal revelation to warrant sincere belief, but the belief is nonetheless sincere and not just a pretence maintained in order to sustain social ties, then doesn't the sincere belief have to be entirely based on the web of bad information? What else is there?


The other ingredient is the entrapment of the close-nit community vs. the need to belong to a close-knit community. I'm sure that there are people who join the Church for the community, and members are really pushed to "fellowship" investigators but I can't say that investigators and new members are brainwashed by kindness, in my experience. To me, while members are thrilled that someone else is drinking the Kool-Aid, they are skittish about accepting newcomers in their social circle.

People's lives get so rooted into the community that there is a huge disincentive to look at the Church objectively. Scientology may be a more extreme example. I had a friend who joined the Sea Org in the LRH days, although I only knew him after he'd left. He was an intelligent loner type; high native intelligence, low formal education, and so a program geared on self-improvement, by learning these new tools and shortcuts to higher and higher mental powers -- he was reeled in. The quickest way to advance was the sea org because he had no money, and so was in deep very quickly, but none of that had anything to do with wanting to be friends with these people or needing their acceptance. His problem was there were limits to his credulity, and he was introduced to "deep doctrine" too quickly by one of his associates and that was that. But it wasn't easy for him to get out, even without any real ties, and even with him being very obstinate about it. I didn't get the feeling his claim was being illegally detained or anything like that. He didn't have deep family ties or a life history with them, but he had financial ties for sure. And his worldview had become deeply informed by their kind of thinking. So there was always someone higher up the chain he should talk to first to be sure, until he spoke with #2 in command, and I assume shaming is a given, but then he had to reason his way out of it, with his beliefs largely being a product of their training. It would be like, okay, you learn about polygamy suddenly, and its shocking, but then how do you explain away all the evidence for the Book of Mormon, or how do you explain the creation of the earth? And didn't you get that from anti-Mormon lit anyway? What about all the brilliant people who maintain belief, are they just fools? How to get past the hard questions from those on the inside.

For him, the self-improvement stuff was rock solid to a point, and psychology and psychiatry -- mainstream ways of explaining behavior -- were obviously fraudulent, and wouldn't those mentally more accomplished according to his measures have some credibility? Shouldn't they know more about it than he did? Getting out wasn't a harrowing plight to make into a movie as I understood it, but it wasn't trivial either.
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.

LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
_Physics Guy
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Re: A Built In Social Circle

Post by _Physics Guy »

I got interested in Mormonism after being interested in Scientology (as a critic) for a couple years, so I have a pretty good second-hand impression of your friend's history. I can understand the need to belong, and how that keeps people in a group. What I still find confusing is the relationship between need to belong and intellectual conviction. At first I thought you were saying that the need to belong was not the main reason people stayed in Mormonism, because the main reason was sincere belief. But maybe your point is that conviction and belonging are entangled. People may stay in the group from conviction but they have those convictions because they need to stay in the group.

Sharing basic beliefs with a group of people is a big part of what it means to belong to the group. Conversely if you're immersed in an ideological group it tends to define your own basic assumptions, and if enough of your basic assumptions are set by the group then rejecting the group beliefs isn't just changing your mind about something—it's really changing your mind.

Is that it?
_Gadianton
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Re: A Built In Social Circle

Post by _Gadianton »

Physics Guy wrote:At first I thought you were saying that the need to belong was not the main reason people stayed in Mormonism, because the main reason was sincere belief.


Yes, your first impression is right, when considering the greater population of Mormons at least.

In the above example, my friend believed his intelligence had been significantly raised by auditing, for instance. He didn't care about social, and life in the 'org was mostly hard work at menial tasks and lots of harsh language/criticism; the social scene wasn't a selling point.

Physics Guy wrote:But maybe your point is that conviction and belonging are entangled. People may stay in the group from conviction but they have those convictions because they need to stay in the group.


it's a little work to describe my belief in precise terms because not everyone has the same profile:

- leaders / in-crowd; sincere belief is more likely optional, and social status sustains them. (many GAs probably suspect it ain't what it claims to be)
- peon members but not full-tithe and temple; most likely to leave if they are offended by the Bishop or a prominent ward member.
- peon member full-tithe and temple; most likely to really think it's true. Most likely to apostatize over information on the internet rather than offence by bishop or not feeling accepted by ward. Will often leave even if it tears apart family because the truth matters that much, but this may be a protracted process due to imprisoning dimension of the social ties. (not because they just love 3 hours of church surrounded by the like-minded.)

Sharing basic beliefs with a group of people is a big part of what it means to belong to the group. Conversely if you're immersed in an ideological group it tends to define your own basic assumptions, and if enough of your basic assumptions are set by the group then rejecting the group beliefs isn't just changing your mind about something—it's really changing your mind.


I think this is a fantastic paragraph. It does seem to contradict my claim though, that belief in the truth of the Church is what's most important for the average TBM. Wouldn't it go without saying that such deep immersion explains the commitment? Belief is just an artifact, that is, if culture as a language structuring thought and world doesn't make it impossible to translate what a Mormon means by "the Church is true" into what an outsider means by that, in the first place.

I tried to write an answer but I have to think of a better way to condense it.
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.

LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
_Sophocles
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Re: A Built In Social Circle

Post by _Sophocles »

Gadianton wrote:-peon member full-tithe and temple; most likely to really think it's true. Most likely to apostatize over information on the internet rather than offence by bishop or not feeling accepted by ward. Will often leave even if it tears apart family because the truth matters that much, but this may be a protracted process due to imprisoning dimension of the social ties. (not because they just love 3 hours of church surrounded by the like-minded.)

That was me.

Gadianton wrote:Most of the time apostates speak of the testimony as tricking ones-self or hallucinating, or confusing emotions for a witness. And what I'm saying is that it's a straight-up fabrication, not a real event that was misunderstood, and most of them know it, and testimony insecurity is yet another huge problems most TBMs have.

That was me, too.

The church was obviously true to me, but that was a reasoned position. No spiritual experience was ever convincing to me, and would have been superfluous anyway, belief-wise. In fact, that was my reasoning for why I received no answers to my prayers about the Book of Mormon—I already knew it was true, and that was my answer.

And yet I was desperate to encounter spiritual experiences in order to have an appropriate story to tell at the appropriate time. And I found them. I did not truly believe them to be genuine, and they had zero impact on my belief in the church. I didn't need them to bolster my testimony, I needed them to bolster my group acceptance.
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