The American Religion: A Marvelous Work and a Wonder? Or, is the following statement more appropriate: "What Mormonism brought to the table is not unique...
Prompt
Humans possess a dual nature: they can be self-centered and promote negative actions, while also transmitting ancient cultural values and morals. This duality is encoded in centuries of human wisdom learned through trial and error. It highlights the tendency of humans to become fixated on the present moment, neglecting the consequences of their actions. This fixation on sensual gratification can lead to compulsive seeking of new pleasures, causing the ego to justify these pursuits through manipulative means. As the brain adapts to the overabundance of dopamine, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine, it stops producing these chemicals naturally, leading to the need for drugs to avoid negative feelings. However, tolerance builds up, making the drug less enjoyable and even painful. Withdrawals are soul-crushing, consuming, and can sideline professional responsibilities and career aspirations. This occurs as the inner sense of integrity, reliability, respect, and honor built upon ethical and moral principles begins to wither, along with the soul, inner spark, and personality connected to the drive for self-development and reaching one’s full potential. Those at the highest level of development universally understand that bonds of love and friendship, especially within the family and home, extend to in-laws, second cousins, and eventually the community and country. This leads to the “I-and-thou” state, where one feels that “anything human is foreign to me.” This state of being makes one a global citizen, empathetic, authentic, responsible, and autonomous, with the primary concern being solving the problem of death and enabling humanity to become autonomous free agents by breaking free from the natural man, which offers counterfeit freedom and autonomy. It’s like giving someone a DIY jail cell construction kit, believing it will reward them with higher autonomy and free agency. However, they end up with a literal jail cell that limits their movement, activities, relationships, and potential. Yet, they feel free because the jail cell has a cool feature that allows them to recline, change their mattress position, and use virtual reality goggles, while still being able to move freely within the cell. People enjoy themselves, interact, message, post, and play with headsets, moving around the cell in eye-catching ways. It seems desirable, and if it were harmful, the government would protect and warn us. We cheat ourselves out of our talents, creativity, innovation, organization, development, logic, cognition, reality, and positive emotions. We miss out on love, connection, gratitude, humor, spirituality, and religious inspiration through spiritual connection with God. We lose opportunities for education, work, home ownership, marriage, and family. We miss out on romantic and paternal love. Extend your contribution to the human family by choosing what you want to do. Every living soul has a limited time to develop their capacity for that contribution and leave it for humanity before passing. This creates a ripple effect, great or small. Those who choose the royal path of development through anti-fragility, embracing conflict, and embodying the tragedy of human experience, mourning for the world’s sins, and feeling capable of protecting and helping the weak, vulnerable, afflicted, handicapped, special needs, less common, and misunderstood, will face the challenge of evil and darkness prevailing as the elitist establishment grows in power. Society continues to worship psychopaths, misunderstand and malign psychoneurotics, and voluntarily subordinate themselves and their gifts and talents to a do-it-yourself build-a-jail cell, offering a limited time only door-locking service with a key fee of up to 50% off. Act now to save on streaming and content/gaming/music/library packages, eliminating the stress and anxiety of women and relationships, and the stress and expectation of being a provider and an overworked, exhausted, depleted, unhealthy, dead-eyed, dispassionate, deadbeat dad. You’re free from a mortgage, worries about rising housing costs, and renting issues. Instead, you own a custom living space where you can do what you want without sharing or compromising. You only pay monthly maintenance and a lot fee, which guarantees your spot and lot number for up to 30 days. People give up privileges and opportunities to develop their potential, experience life, contribute, and achieve autonomy. They can have families, be in love, own pets, travel the world, accomplish big things like getting a PhD and becoming a Neuroscience Professor, manage a lab, travel the world, present ideas at conferences, write books, and speak at events. They can achieve their first patent and officially become an inventor by developing their own IP. They can use their money to create organizations that research and innovate, develop emergent technologies, seek funding, create jobs, and provide homes for the homeless. They can do actual work during the day and feel good about making progress for the world. They lead organizations driven by values for human progress and social welfare, beating out the competition. It’s genuinely prosocial, positive, developmental, adaptive, and evolutionary. They leave humanity with the social technology they were gifted with in the beginning. When everyone is unified and placed optimally for their contribution, and a culture founded on genuine self-actualizing values like autonomy, empathy, responsibility, and authentism spreads from the top down, you embark intentionally on scientific discovery and systematic innovation that leads to “more good.” Mormonism, meaning “More Good,” is the American religion that embodies the first amendment and the founding fathers’ vision for this experiment. They wanted to see how Americans would innovate religion and social technologies. For the first time in human history, people could practice religion freely without government interference. The government provided tax breaks and benefits to religious organizations, which operated outside the government to provide social welfare resources, a sense of belonging, and outlets for higher-order thinking and contemplation. This transformed existentialist angsts into meditation, contemplation, and exercises of faith. Religious practices of repentance, service, charity, forgiveness, and doing unto others as you would have done unto you increased life expectancy, life satisfaction, lower health problems, rates of abuse, addiction, and heinous crimes, and reduced the incidence of chronic diseases and mental illness. Religion offers communities stability, relief, resources, and aid beyond government capabilities. It serves as a social technology for developing citizens’ potential through protecting and promoting time-tested values and moral codes, while proclaiming a community religious ideal. This ideal motivates people to overcome illusions and counterfeit offerings that promise autonomy and freedom but enslave and bind by exploiting people’s privileges for development and growth. Can these benefits be achieved without religion? Yes, and religion can be used as a counterfeit system, similar to other such systems. However, statistical and social science data show that not all systems are equal. Some are more developmental, prosocial, and autonomous than others. These can be considered authoritarian and regressive controlling religions, potentially causing more social harm than economic, healthcare, education, government, and other establishment systems. They exist. Mormonism, with its long history, has produced observable, measurable, and analyzable results. Social science and research studies on Mormon culture, people, and religious practice reveal its significant societal contributions. It’s a powerful social technology for prosocial outcomes and development. Moreover, it’s one of the most powerful, wealthy, and resource-dense private organizations globally, among other religious organizations. It has a global multinational presence, manpower, resources, integration, respect, and acceptance from the mainstream establishment. It’s the only religion with the potential to establish Zion and become a new government or country if society collapses. Mormonism (The LDS Church) is prepared and waiting to begin its influence in a country that attempted to exterminate it by order of the government (Exec order 44). While it shouldn’t be fear, it’s a significant latent power with billions in annual revenue from investment arms and subsidiaries. It spends little and gives hundreds of millions in foreign and domestic aid, taking care of the poor and needy through the bishops’ storehouse and church welfare system. It provides assistance like rent, food, clothing, and moving aid without strings attached. In the event of a global disaster, anyone can access help at their local LDS meeting house. The church prepared yesterday to dispatch resources, volunteers, establish bishop storehouses, and provide aid before the disaster. Church meeting houses became American Red Cross shelters, and gyms became warehouses of food and supplies. Members, missionaries, and other volunteer LDS members joined forces with the local military, law enforcement, first aid/Red Cross, and governments to assist and rebuild in an organized manner. As a social technology, it’s complex, deep, advanced, and its potential and destiny are just beginning to impact humanity in ways that exceed our wildest expectations. Do you agree or disagree? Why? This exercise deliberately left the goal ambiguous and abstract to connect distinct realms of thought and create new ways of thinking, such as considering religion as a social technology with Mormonism as an exemplar in prosocial and developmental outcomes.
