Part of my own sensitivity to this has to do with my own background....
Well, I understand better where you are coming from. This sounds like a horrible experience, and one which I luckily avoided by not going on a mission. The culture of sales always felt uncomfortable to me in the Church, and it certainly fed into and fed on the overall business atmosphere of the LDS Church. I once went to a presentation of security company in Provo (lured by the offer of free food, as any college student would be). I listened to their presentation in exchange for the food, but I had to tell them that I just wasn't interested in selling security systems door-to-door, and that I wouldn't be good at it anyway. They assured me that it was just like a mission, except that if solicitees don't buy the product they won't be damned to the telestial or whatever kingdom it is non-Mormons go to. The pitch faltered when they found out I didn't go on a mission, but they let me stay and eat my fill. It sounds this is something that you actually got sucked it into, and that it far worse than any security company (a Mormon attorney getting invovled? Wow).
By the way, I think I remember my parents telling me about this Durrant fellow, who is married to Susan Easton Black, Google tells me. They knew him for some reason and thought he was a charming guy. I'll bet he was a great missionary, but your product might have been easier to sell if they'd been narrated by Jimmy Durante instead.
Yea, that's basically what happened. It was an awful experience and going was a bad decision, but I don't necessarily regret it--I learned a lot--stuff about business and sales, about myself, and about Mormon culture. I went before my mission, which of course was rare. The other guys I was with were weirdly jealous of me--they thought knowing all these professional sales techniques would make me a killer missionary which would put me on an amazing trajectory in life. Ironically it may have backfired--by the time I started the mission I was already a bit jaded.
George Durrant was a rock star in the religion department, and his son Devin was one of the best basketball players BYU ever produced. He was Mormon royalty and in terms of making you feel the spirit with his charisma, he was right up there with Paul H. Dunn.
It’s relatively easy to agree that only Homo sapiens can speak about things that don’t really exist, and believe six impossible things before breakfast. You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.
Of course we could see through what they were doing when they were manipulating us like that, which is when they took out the big guns. They repeatedly alluded to a letter that an apostle had sent to the company's president that somehow exonerated what we were doing. The letter apparently had an explicit warning that it needed to be kept secret because they didn't want to create the impression that an apostle endorsed the company's products. But our managers always told us that even though we couldn't see the letter or tell our prospects about it, it really was there. In fact, we were told that if we made it into management, the company's president would take it out of the safe and show it to us personally.
I can't stop laughing about this: it's exactly what the Mopologists do. They are always claiming that they have some letter or memo, or there was some private phone conversation that Midgley had with a GA that proves that the Brethren have given their support to the apologists, etc.
Oh to be one of the witnesses of the gold plates!
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
I think being an "attraction" on one of these interactive "character" experiences of Cruise Lady sounds like a lot of work for barely adequate in-kind remuneration.
Consider the BYU context. Consulting fees run in the several $1,000's per day for full professors engaging in commercial side gigs over at the Marriott School or the Ira Fulton School (Engineering). Why should Peterson, Gee, etc be any different in demanding some compensation for lending their time to a commercial enterprise that benefits from their unique expertise, such as it is?
And it is more work than play, I'm sure of it. Feature scholar has to prepare notes, emcee tour locations, take questions, and be "on" all the time. Not much room to let the guard, or hair, down.
I've been wondering what other benefits accrue, if not money.
What about this idea?
Can you imagine a more fertile ground for practicing and polishing tricky apologetic arguments? I'm thinking about unique apologetic saw-sharpening that cannot be replicated in less-controlled fora.
Here Mopologist X has a captive, self-selected, academically curious group of believers for a full week, asking all kinds of questions, ranging from chapel Mormon to the informed-enlightened. What better alpha environment in which to practice telling, modifying, and refining new apologetics?
ha, I think you're on the right track. Not sure if it's totally about testing disingenuous arguments though. How about as a way to get all the cheap praise that they feel they deserve, but never get? Instead of having to dig in deep and figure out how to win an argument with Gemli, they go for the uncritical fawning of their Rusty-indoctrinated peers, who will praise them no matter what they say? That's worth travelling to the ends of the earth and back! is it not? Oh, to be worshiped as Abraham of old by the court of the Pharaoh! Why can't the critics just admit we're right like all the sheep headed to slaughter do?
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.
Instead of having to dig in deep and figure out how to win an argument with Gemli, they go for the uncritical fawning of their Rusty-indoctrinated peers, who will praise them no matter what they say? That's worth travelling to the ends of the earth and back! is it not? Oh, to be worshiped as Abraham of old by the court of the Pharaoh! Why can't the critics just admit we're right like all the sheep headed to slaughter do?
Oh, aren't we all a little guilty of enjoying the praise of people who are inclined to agree with us?
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
Oh, to be worshiped as Abraham of old by the court of the Pharaoh!
Oh, aren't we all a little guilty of enjoying the praise of people who are inclined to agree with us?
Pretty sure only Dr. Peterson would receive a sedan chair ride, but he does possess the apologetic power to challenge the Idolatrous Gods of Egypt to a thumb wrestle. Louis Midgley would declare an instant moral victory when the so-called "Idolatrous Gods" failed to respond. He would note that they were afraid to face the modern science of Mormonism as embodied in Dr. Peterson and himself, being a former science professor at BYU.
I think being an "attraction" on one of these interactive "character" experiences of Cruise Lady sounds like a lot of work for barely adequate in-kind remuneration.
Consider the BYU context. Consulting fees run in the several $1,000's per day for full professors engaging in commercial side gigs over at the Marriott School or the Ira Fulton School (Engineering). Why should Peterson, Gee, etc be any different in demanding some compensation for lending their time to a commercial enterprise that benefits from their unique expertise, such as it is?
And it is more work than play, I'm sure of it. Feature scholar has to prepare notes, emcee tour locations, take questions, and be "on" all the time. Not much room to let the guard, or hair, down.
I've been wondering what other benefits accrue, if not money.
What about this idea?
Can you imagine a more fertile ground for practicing and polishing tricky apologetic arguments? I'm thinking about unique apologetic saw-sharpening that cannot be replicated in less-controlled fora.
Here Mopologist X has a captive, self-selected, academically curious group of believers for a full week, asking all kinds of questions, ranging from chapel Mormon to the informed-enlightened. What better alpha environment in which to practice telling, modifying, and refining new apologetics?
How much feed back do you think the attendees would give? Can you imagine a scenario where the attendees would disagree with the apologist's shaky argument? Perhaps someone would quietly disagree and not say anything. But what is that worth? No, I think this is a praise plus free trip sort of thing. Durrant was my MTC mission president and I was stuck in that place for 3 months waiting for a visa and so I got an extra dose of the guy. I thought he was nice but loved praise, loved being on stage. So, I think in his case, I can see him liking a little ego stroking while he wows the crowd with his down home wisdom and basketball references while selling his son's tee shirts.
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen
As a nevermo accompanying my my wife on a Book of Mormon central america tour, not cruise lady, i repeatedly asked the "educator-tour guide" , a fine fellow, in side conversations, why i could not see or have pointed out to me any evidence of jewsish or christian worship at the sites. "nope , i don't see any evidence either" he said. funny the TBMs never questioned as the tour guide said "i can picture samuel the lamanite standing on yonder wall". nor did they question that the mayan? ruler was jaguar V or jack rabbit XX! instead of benjamin or mosiah or noah!