The Most Dangerous Game

Famous shrink Carl Rogers came up with a skill called "unconditional positive regard" which helps someone do "active listening." It means if you decide to genuinely enjoy listening to the person talking, you can get a lot more out of whatever type of interviewing you are doing. I have some kind of mental health issue which I call "universal positive regard", which is where I like EVERYONE. I could have a lot of fun being with a very rude mass murderer for a few hours, enjoying their company and listening to their unique views on life.

My condition not a good thing. Several weeks ago I found myself halfway through giving a stranger who was much larger than myself a ride home, when he started explaining that he thought I was bisexual and that he and I should experiment together. It was really awkward and a little intimidating until I finally got him out o my car. A week later I found out that he was a violent sex offender and that I had probably been in real danger.

Whether or not "attachment disorder" actually exists, the best explanation I have for my condition is that for the first eight days of my life I was isolated from bonding with any adults because of a health condition I had at birth. My childhood was normal there after with breast feeding etc, so presumably I had attachment disorder as an infant but I have had the treatment for attachment disorder (being forcefully bonded to an adult) as an infant as well. So I may have whatever it is people who have attachment disorder have after they have been cured, maybe "post-attachment-disorder?" 

Part of this post-attachment-disorder isn't just enjoying the company of people who I should not, but also sometimes getting into a habit of bully hunting. Back in the 1970's people had different ideas about raising kids, and an adult who wasn't blood related to me held me out of a 30 story window at age 3 and joked about accidentally dropping me. On the third day he did this, I snapped and bit his hand so hard he had to go to the hospital for stitches. I have had to watch myself carefully that I am not hunting bullies for sport ever since. So on one hand I find everyone such amazing and entertaining specimens to enjoy, but on the other hand if I identify you as a dangerous threat who is coming after me, I will also enjoy hunting you in return.

If you read this blog often you know I have been anti-MLM since the 1990s. Part of that is I study other scams and exploitation, to keep myself and anyone who will listen to me from getting involved. I am recently divorced and said so on Facebook, and overnight a whole new type of account was interested in me, mostly with East Asian profiles with portraits that looked like they were generated by AI. Soon one that was more convincingly human started talking Bitcoin, and I knew I had a new bully to hunt!

She went by the alias "Sophie Martin." She sent me a digital image of a convincing California state driver's license for an address in Beverly Hills. When I was interacting with her she had 5.6 million in USDT (probably stolen from divorcees by way of a fake bitcoin exchange website.) She went so far as to have a video conversation with me to prove she was a real person, and she presented as a Mongolian woman with a Russian accent, and she claimed to be from Kazakhstan living in Portland Oregon working for a Crypto exchange company. 

She never got a dime from me, but we were supposedly exclusive for about 72 hours, at her request. For the first 18 hours and last 18 hours I knew it was a scam, but I really didn't know for the middle 36 hours. Her replies were on point, her story about her x-boyfriend having a gambling problem was really convincing, and she came up with this date for us to go on in Portland that was clearly a bunch of things that SHE wanted to do, that had nothing to do with what I wanted to do (go dancing at night clubs.) 

The reason why I never put my guard down around her completely is she kept trying to shame me for not being wealthy enough. I thought it was a personality or character flaw she had. I am not well off, but I am not destitute either, I live the lifestyle I want, and if I made a million dollars a year my lifestyle would be just about exactly the same as it is now. But eventually I had to follow through with the Bitcoin side of what she was about, because this could have all been an elaborate scheme... and when we went down that road it was this crazy fever-pitch two hour crazy rabbit hole of me sending her screen shots from my phone logging into various crypto exchanges and websites... 

And then I saw it: a website designed for cell phones that was repeating information that was already on the crypto app. I made an excuse and broke off the conversation and hit the books for the next 12 hours figuring out who Sophie really was and how her scam really worked. Also how the hell did she fool ME of all people?

The game she is playing is that she is both simultaneously scamming and dating at the same time. In my case I think she was planning to sleep with me (she had no real chance as I am an LDS Sunday school teacher, but she wouldn't have understood that very well,) and I suspect she has slept with some of her victims. I think she sexually gets of on having relations with dudes she is victimizing, some kind of twisted power fetish. I further suspect that scammers like her have a chip on their shoulder against male divorcees... law enforcement thinks it's because male divorcees are lonely and alone and easily victimized, but the fact is we are all a gym membership and 6 months from being the most eligible bachelors we have ever been, it's physically impossible for us to be cat ladies. I think these scammers are targeting divorcees because these scammers are getting revenge on an ex-husband by going after all x-husbands (or their divorced dad by going after all divorced dads.)

This was really a dangerous situation, and probably came within 30 minutes of losing $200 to her and within weeks of losing many thousands of dollars to her. Who knows what else she was capable of. It was time to have a fake break up with her for our supposedly-exclusive relationship. I don't have the resources to stalk international criminals and I had learned how her scam worked. (Fake website imitates real crypto exchange, fake website takes your bitcoin and tells says you are getting daily compound interest which is of course impossible, and they come up with an excuse as to why you can't withdraw bitcoin but keep encouraging you to send more to them.)

I told her it was not practical for us to have a relationship if she was in Portland while I was in the greater Seattle area. We don't have the same values, I don't believe you can buy happiness and that's all she's trying to do with her life.  This was evident in the date she had planned that ignored dancing. At the end she slipped up and said "I don't like night clubs... but I was hoping you would see me and make me enjoy dancing at one."

Cut back to the Saturday night before. I was at The Forum in Bellevue when as I was waiting in line to get into the club, four tall muscular East-Asian women (aka Mongolians,) one of whom looked like Sophie in our video call, got into line right behind me. All night the Sophie look alike was acting strange near me, smiling at her friends with this huge wolf-like grin, but doing a wall flower type of thing near whatever direction I was facing. THAT WAS NO LOOK-ALIKE!

I have recently been stalked by an international criminal I was online dating. This is what men are dealing with in today's dating world. Understand that when you get on a man's case for not meeting your financial expectations, you are by definition engaged in exploiting him emotionally if not also financially, regardless of your intentions. I will leave you with my last words to Sophie, followed by an inspirational video. "I am looking for dance partners, and maybe a friend I can share the rest of my life with. I am not a communally owned dildo to be passed up and down the I-5 corridor by entitled mean-girl women who should know better." 

Sober Clubbing

I recently made SoberClubbing.com which just goes to my Facebook group. Why? It's basically for two reasons, a health/social reason, and then a reason specific to LDS culture.

The health/social reason is: 1) dancing is fun + 2) Dancing is healthy = people SHOULD go dancing a lot more often. Because drinking is 100% heinous, people should be doing this dancing WITHOUT alcohol. Sober Clubbing is one of those things that could make the world a much better place for everyone.

Personally what is happening on my various dance adventures is I am not getting to know not the other regular dancers at the dance clubs, but instead I am getting to know DJs, rappers, bar tenders and club staff, because THEY are the ones who can REMEMBER me. What about the regular attendee dancers? Well they drink, so their memories of previous adventures are spotty at best, and they often have zero recollection of my legendary antics.

In the LDS community we get high school age kids going to Church dances at least once per month. We show them how fun it is to have a sober dance. Up until around the time of 2020 the Young Single Adults used to continue that tradition in this area every single weekend, which is where I accumulated most of my dance experience in the 90's. But now the older-single-adults are having dances more frequently than the Young Single adults, and it's only about once per month like with the Youth/high-school-age.

Here's the problem: if dancing is good for you, and dancing is fun, what are the married couples supposed to do? I have interviewed the elderly on this topic and discovered that in ancient times the LDS Church had all ages dances. Furthermore it appears this tradition may still persist to this day in some parts of Latin America. However I live in the USA, so what gives?

There are various possible solutions, but ultimately if the Seattle Area LDS community is not going to set up some kind of every-weekend 18+ or all ages dance night for all members regardless of relationship status, there is a huge social void in the LDS community. We were all raised to dance, and that was a great way to be raised.

LDS or not, we all need to continue dancing, for both our health and our entertainment. My plan is to get a group of like minded individuals together and go enjoy night clubs without drinking, and it's a plan that is starting to work:

Rejection is a Gift

I don't get rejected often, so when it happens it stings a little. One thing I have told others over the years is that they should view rejection as a gift. Lately I have to be swallowing a taste of my own medicine.

Back when I was working for Antioch University Seattle in 2007, a job opened up that I wanted to have in an academic department I admired. I was rejected for the job and it stung. However I had the strange opportunity to observe what happened with the person who DID get the job I wanted: it was one of those positions where you spend a lot of time listening to others complaints and while being a scapegoat simultaneously, it wasn't a position I (or the person who was hired for it) could enjoy. I was very lucky the people who did the job selection understood both me and the job duties to realize I was a poor match!

Note however that rejection can be good for another reason: if you are getting rejected often, it means you are aiming high. In the case of employment, do you want a position that you only have a 50% chance of getting, or do you want the position you have a 90% chance of getting? Most likely the 50% chance job is the one you want, so it's worth getting rejected more often in order to end up with the better job in the long run.

Keep this in mind for romantic rejection as well. No matter how bad the disappointment, understand that when you are rejected this means that the person rejecting you has information that you do not have.

Blinding Makeup

I admit I watched the first 4 seasons of Love is Blind more or less as they came out. It really got me thinking in a more nuanced way about romantic relationships. However my big take away was a lot stranger: Men don't like makeup. 

There are a few different situations in Love is Blind where the relationship is going well until the man sees the woman and then something strange happens: though he's happy with her physical appearance, he suddenly stops trusting her. In a few cases towards the end of the relationship (mid seasons) she stops putting on make up and the man suddenly warms up to her, and in at least one case actually says it was the make up putting him off.

When a man sees a woman's face that has a lot of makeup on it, he doesn't know if he likes her face or not, what he does know is he is looking at a woman who feels like she needs to wear makeup. It is at least in my opinion ALWAYS more attractive to see a woman's face without makeup on than with makeup on. A lot of the subtle intricacies of a woman's face that can make her unique and stand out from others are covered up by makeup. A whole bunch of laddies standing around with faces that look almost exactly the same because of the latest trend in makeup is very off putting. A woman standing near that crowd who used NO makeup (all other factors being equal) instantly stands out as far more attractive than the ones with the painted masks on their face.

Of particular alarm to me was a recent trend with long fake eyelashes. They were hideous and universal. It was almost like someone in the makeup industry wanted women to be less attractive to men. In the show "Too Hot to Handle" on Netflix where the show's producers attempt to reign in notorious sexual behavior with their contestants, we frequently see these attractive women with and without their makeup on, with the gigantic eyelash thing being a big part of their makeup routine. In every scene the women are always far more attractive without their makeup than with their makeup.

So what's with all the makeup? I am reminded of scams like Mary Kay that are pyramid scheme style companies who sell makeup. When a woman attempts covers up her faces it is inherently deceptive regarding what her real face looks like, and this deception is expensive to her because makeup is not free. In an MLM makeup scam, that deception is then used on the woman to drag her into the scam, leading her to think makeup is more normal and valuable than it actually is.

Now don't get me wrong I get that little makeup used with careful moderation is not some great evil. However it's clear to me that it has gone way too far in recent history, now having the opposite effect of what it was originally intended to have, making women look like clowns instead of looking good. 

Karma

 I have an extremely unpopular opinion:

1. Cheating disproportionately impacts men, in that it is more deeply wounding to a man than it is to a woman (all other emotional resilience factors being equal.)

2. There is a natural consequence of cheating for a woman that makes the consequence of her cheating more severe for her than it is for a man, and it has to do with men being an ideal mate for longer than women are.

Cheating Disproportionately Impacts Men

If a woman is raped, a great violence has been committed against her. But in addition to the violence against her, she has been denied the choice of who the father of her child should be. She may potentially give birth to a child that is half her DNA, and half her abuser.

If a man is cheated on, a great theft has been committed against him. He has been denied the right to be a genetic father at all of the resulting child. It's not that half of the DNA was not his to choose, it's that ALL of the DNA is not his whatsoever.

For men the line between violence and theft is much thinner than for women. Because of the potential to give childbirth, women value the sacrifice that goes into creating each life more than men do. Because men as a whole spend so much time getting resources to support families, they see their own life slip through their fingers in sacrifice for wealth, and stealing from them disregards their sacrifice.

It is a joke to say that cheating impacts women as much as it does men. Anyone saying this is either callous towards men or hasn't thought it through. Contemplate this song carefully, and understand the righteous indignation behind it:

Natural Consequences

"I the Lord delight in the chastity of woman" (Jacob Chapter 2.) Peak fertility for a woman is age 18. If she has the luxury of taking herself seriously and her mate selection seriously from a young age, she is likely to have an enjoyable life. But self destructive temptation can destroy a Queen's kingdom.

Many men, including even myself, can get continuously better looking and even stronger all the way into their 50's. Women have no such luxury, they can work very hard to age almost as slow as men, or they can age much faster, those are their two choices. This means that while women get accustomed to being disproportionately desired compared to men at a younger age, as they get older that is completely reversed with men their age being far more desirable than women their age.

The Karma here is that as men shed cheating women their options improve, and as cheating women are shed their options decline. Though I strongly resent this song's lack of sympathy for the damage done to who it is addressed to, I very much appreciatethe tone of regret, desperation, confusion and recognition of maybe-permanent loss that effects and vocals in the song portray:

Lose/Lose Situation

Men in our society generally do respect women, thanks largely to the feminist movement. The dark side of that success is now men are often disrespected by women. No man wants to be cheated on just so he can have the satisfaction of watching Karma run it's course - cheating on some level can be forgiven. However the point of no return comes fast with cheating, and Karma is a vengeful bitch.

Dancing Past Midlife Crisis

 

Last week I confessed to a friend of mine and her boyfriend "I don't care if I have to pay a male sex worker to take me dancing at a gay bar, I will be on a dance floor this New Years!" (He was like "well... good luck with that..." but she knew I was 100% not joking.) Then this happened:

My age starting with a 5 has been a huge issue for me - I finally have employment that allows me to live comfortably after a lifetime of keeping my "career" on the back burner in favor of family and personal projects, but my life is over half way done - so what good does this comfort do? Just after I turned 50 I met a 55 year old knife fighter on the mat who taught me to focus on my strength training and to stop pouting (and since then I have become 20 lbs lighter and 10% stronger):

In 2021 I went to Detroit for a wedding. My wife's health issues that keep her in bed most of the day were acting up, so I took her back to our hotel room and with her blessing headed back out to the dance floor. It wasn't very long before cell phones were out and people were recording me. (Same cellphone recording happened more recently at an event for high school seniors I was chaperoning.) That 2021 dance floor in Detroit was the most fun I have had in decades. 

I took a year of ballet in grade school and was a captain of a small ballroom dance team for a year when I was in High School, and when the early 90's changed the dance scene entirely, I would practice in a mirror in a basement to a metronome. Later in my 20's I attended hundreds of dances. Dancing was never a sexual thing for me, but rather a fun way to spend time with friends in a social and healthy activity. But you know my ride-or-die BFF's I used to go dancing with in my teens and 20's? They are old or dead now, mostly from ailments that could have been prevented through cardiovascular exercise!

I haven't been sleeping well latey, partly due to lack of any signficant cardio exercise. When I dance I like to hit the dance floor for about 3 hours straight, 180 minutes... take off 30 minutes for slow dances and water breaks, that's 150 minutes. It says "preferably" above because the American Heart Association has noticed it doesn't actually matter very much if that 150 minutes per week is all at once or in multiple workouts, and I am still going to be doing my martial arts and strength training exercises of course.

The big problem with cardio training is it is highly repetitive and thus more likely to result in injury. Over the last 10 years I have been injured jogging more than once, causing me to miss out on several months of serious training. With casual dancing however you are just doing whatever moves you feel like with the beat of the music setting the pace, making it the safest possible cardiovascular exercise.

I don't do break dancing or dirty dancing, but everything else is on the table: swing, hip hop, EDM, goth, square dancing, Latin, ball room, you name it, I am down! The problem is I am going to have to find people to do this with: maybe I know some people already, maybe I don't. Dancing is literally the only thing I want in my life but don't have, and for the sake of my mental and physical health, I have decided to embrace a new adventure of finding dance in my life again.

LGBN

In 2000, George W. Bush (the W,) the worst President of the United States of America (POTUS) of all time, became POTUS under shady circumstances. He proceeded to get the USA into wars that had massive popular disapproval and questionable legality. 

In 2004 after starting those wars, the W was popularly and legitimately re-elected. This was a slap in the face to those of us who cared about peace and healthy democracy. The USA paid dearly in blood and money for decades. But beyond that the balance on the Supreme Court changed to eventually allow the biggest threat to the integrity of the USA's democracy, Citizens United v. FEC, allowing nearly unlimited access to the manipulation of our democracy by those who have the most money. 

I have despised Trump since long before 2016 because if his involvement in ACN and other Multi-Level Marketing schemes which damaged communities and destroyed families. He went so as to promote ACN on The Apprentice:

So yes I was horrified when he soundly defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016. Though he wasn't re-elected in 2020, his impact on the Supreme Court led to the overturning of universal abortion rights in the USA. Virtually no one recommends abortion as the ideal form of birth control: any argument over abortion is a bad omen for any society that has to have it. But as Americans when faced with the choice of two evils (a woman being able to threaten the life of a man's unborn child, vs a woman having to provide legal proof of rape or incest in order to access abortion,) we should pick the evil that allows more personal freedom, not less, but instead we have chosen to have less freedom in the USA.

Beyond this, Trump showed sincere contempt for democracy on January 6th, 2021:

And after all that, the citizens of the USA re-elected Trump! This is the similarity between 2004 and 2024, is the USA reinforced bad behavior against it's own democracy (W's 2000 election scheming & Trump's January 6th.) 

Universal abortion access was the single most sacred political institution for feminism. It is roadkill. The LGBT community needs to radically accept the political reality in which they exist, in order to best serve LBGT. The most important thing to remember is this: 52% of Americans will never accept a difference between sex-at-birth and gender - they frankly will not acknowledge any such thing as gender that is not biological sex-at-birth. That 52% of Americans also believes almost any biological male in a female only space is a threat to female safety, and that same 52% believes in protecting females with lethal force.

I have numerous trans friends, but I do not believe they are well served by using language that 52% of their country will never understand. When a biological-male says they are a woman, having 52% of the country feel they are a threat is of no service to that woman. What I strongly recommend instead is that going forward we completely drop the use of "transgender," and instead use "non-binary." The reason why is claiming to be non-binary is not claiming to be something-you-were-not-at-birth, and is offering more transparency to that 52% who will otherwise possess lethal force and see you as a threat. I think the use of non-binary instead of transgender will make transgender people far safer and far more accepted in our society. 

What the phrase non-binary effectively communicates: this person is not going to conform to your expectations for males and females, but they do not expect you to call them something you do not think they are. I used to think this controversial scene from a recent popular video game was under-serving the transgender cause and was over-preachy towards the transphobic, but now I am thinking is it is the safest survival strategy:

As for gender, I have been against gender specific pronouns since the first Trump presidency:

As a nation we have been in dark places before. We can use that adversity to build personal resilience and stronger, more sustainable survival strategies. Dress however you need to, but if that doesn't meet conservative expectations, I recommend describing yourself as non-binary and as they/them in order to more easily interact with society safely. 

Joseph Smith: Innocent

The founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (The Church,) Joseph Smith, was in no way a polygamist. There are two things that must be considered: 

1. The actual evidence that exists and what that evidence suggests, and
2. the narrative that emerges from that evidence powerfully defends Joseph Smith and The Church. It raises questions for Brigham Young, but Brigham Young has always been a problem for The Church and we've been eschewing his influence on our religion since the day he died.

Evidence:

You want a complete breakdown of the evidence? OK, you asked for it, so pay attention:

Joseph Smith, his wife Emma, and Joseph's brother Hyrum were main leaders of The Church before Hyrum and Joseph were assassinated on the same day. They always did preach against any form of polygamy, and excommunicated people for doing anything like polygamy. All of Joseph Smith's interpretations of scripture reject polygamy, and that Jacob 2 verse 30 clearly means "if God wants to a chosen people to grow He will command them to be monogamous, otherwise they will fall into the same evil practice as David and Solomon and have multiple wives." All of the evidence to the contrary is pure trash, and yes this can easily be proven with each and every wife example that has been brought up, as per the video above. That's why DNA evidence has proved that Joseph Smith had no children with anyone but Emma, is because he was only having sexual relations with Emma. If you doubt this, watch the above video again, more carefully this time.

Narrative:

This is very good news for members of The Church, because means that Joseph Smith WAS trustworthy, and that he was NOT a womanizer or pedophile. Now we can look at how The Church got side tracked by polygamy:

Basically people who later led The Church after Joseph Smith did not work very closely with Joseph Smith for very long, and were heavily influenced by other religious sources. The Church was only one of may Christian Utopian movements, and many of those movements disagreed with monogamy. The Church absorbed and was otherwise exposed to these movements both in North American and in Europe. The new leadership under Brigham Young may have believed Joseph Smith had practiced polygamy, even though in hindsight Joseph obviously did not. The fact that this new leadership intentionally altered the historical record shows there was an organized movement soon after Joseph Smith died to try to make Joseph look like a polygamist. Confused or disagree? Watch the last video above again, more carefully this time.

Joseph Smith was a hard-core monogamist and this is great news for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Mormon Dope

I noticed that in Vice's documentary on Mitt Romney's polygamist relatives in Mexico that those relatives openly consumed alcohol at bars, in that very documentary. In the Book of Mormon there is a story about how a spiritual leader becomes corrupt, replacing his priests with wicked men who would support his wicked polygamy and alcohol consumption. This brought the curse of alcohol onto his people as they struggled to cope with the adverse social consequences of their leader's abuse of women, as seen in Mosiah Chapter 11:

"14 And it came to pass that he placed his heart upon his riches, and he spent his time in riotous living with his wives and his concubines; and so did also his priests spend their time with harlots. 

15 And it came to pass that he planted vineyards round about in the land; and he built wine-presses, and made wine in abundance; and therefore he became a wine-bibber, and also his people.”

Distilled spirits, particularly whiskey, was the hardest drug of the old west. Keep in mind the other candidates for hardest drug would be tobacco, coffee, cannabis, smoking opium, and Laudanum (opium tincture.) We need to consider what makes a drug "hard":

1. Level of intoxication from the substance, how much judgement is impaired by using it.
2. How serious the withdrawals are from the substance.
3. How addictive the substance is.
4. Long term health consequences.

Contrary to popular belief, even today alcohol is the worst drug you can use. I am not saying to avoid using vanilla in cooking or a sip of wine in a religious communion ceremony, but in any mount strong enough to give you any kind of buzz, alcohol damages all of the soft tissues of your body, reducing your brain volume, damaging your heart (never helping it,) and liver, and shooting your cancer risk up as much as tobacco or asbestos. Alcohol more so than other drugs leads to bad life choices and dangerous accidents while under it's influence. And on top of all that, alcohol has the most deadly withdrawals of any drug:

Alcohol is clearly than far more dangerous than cannabis, tobacco and coffee, since withdrawals from those drugs amount to irritability that lasts for several days, the health consequences are far less severe, and the behavioral problems caused by the drugs are not nearly as extreme as alcohol. But what about the opiates, opium and laudanum, are they not more addictive, are the withdrawals not as serious? Well as per the video above, no, opiate withdrawals are NOT as bad as alcohol withdrawal, alcohol withdrawal is far more dangerous.

While it's true that opiates may be more addictive than alcohol to some people, this is also true of tobacco for all people, and not the only consideration in how "hard" a drug is. What gives opiates a bad name in today's world is we are dealing with highly concentrated forms such as heroin and fentanyl that are very easy to accidentally fatally overdose on. Smoking opium or measuring out laudanum one drop at a time is a much less concentrated form of opiate that is a lot harder to overdose on. Other than that, the long term health consequences of opiate use though definitely not good for you, are relatively harmless compared to the universal soft tissue damage that alcohol does to your body.

So that's it, the hardest drug of the Old West was definitely distilled spirits, especially whiskey. As a Latter-Day Saint I have been disappointed a number of times by people living in Utah who have a care-free attitude when it comes to the consumption of alcohol, because it is against our religion. In general I have found them quite ignorant of the harmful effects of alcohol, and just how hard of a drug it was that Brigham Young was peddling in Utah as he owned a Whiskey facility. The Lord said in Doctrine and Covenants chapter 89 verses 3-5:

"...to the ...weakest of all ...who ...can be called saints... thus saith the Lord unto you: In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days, I have warned you, and forewarn you... That inasmuch as any man drinketh wine or strong drink among you, behold it is not good, neither meet in the sight of your Father..."

Brigham Young owning a Whiskey distillery, according the the Lord, would then qualify Brigham as someone who was less than "the weakest of all who could be called saints," and that Brigham Young was a "conspiring man" who hand "evils and designs existing in his heart." Of course as an active, faithful, mainstream Latter-Day Saint I realize this is not "The Church of the Prophets of Latter Day Saints," and that in the above D&C quote the Lord "forewarned" us about Brigham Young. This is instead "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints," where we all strive to develop our own individual relationship with God rather than on gambling on reliability of Church administrators:

Feeling the Spirit

Once critics come to the realization that Joseph Smith (or anyone else in Joesph Smith's time and place) did not write the Book of Mormon, one possible next step for them is to say that the LDS are misled by the devil. Because we "feel the spirit" and trust that the good, peaceful, warm feelings we get (when we are doing our best to do what is right) are from God, supposedly we are vulnerable in this way to being misled by the devil's manipulation of our emotions. The problem here is that if you are NOT "feeling the spirit" as we do, you are not experiencing the spirit Jesus promised his followers.

Jesus said to his followers in John chapter 14 verses 15-17:

15 If ye love me, keep my commandments. 

16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; 

17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.

And in verses 26-27 Jesus again emphasizes this is a supernatural experience Christians should expect to have:

26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. 

27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

Later Paul writes to fellow Christians in Phillipians Chapter 4 versus 6-7 that what the LDS call "feeling the spirit" should be a normal part of your daily prayer:

 6 Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. 

7 And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Those relying primarily on human interpretation of ancient scripture in order to communicate with God would do well to consider that God understands the human mind, and knows that in order to communicate with us effectively, he has to pass knowledge to us in a way that goes beyond words, he also communicates directly to our hearts. This is probably because humans make decisions primarily through their feelings first, and then justify those decisions through logic later:

When Joseph Smith was translating the Book of Mormon as commanded by Jesus Christ, Jesus taught him a basic formula for divination, when Jesus told him in Doctrine & Covenants Chapter 9 versus 7-8 (1829):

7 Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me.  

 

8 But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right. 

This divination exercise of first studying something out carefully in your mind before asking God about it, and then second praying to ask God about it, then third God will let you know if your are right in your heart, is repeated in the last chapter of the Book of Mormon itself:

3 Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of men, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts. 

4 And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. 

5 And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is one of the most effective tools counselors have today for treating personality disorders, suicidal ideation and chemical dependency. One of the core concepts is similar to what God was telling Joseph Smith (to get his heart and mind in the same place, if he wanted to know what was right.) In DBT this secular concept, usually pursued without prayer, is called the "Wise Mind" (late 1970's):

LDS religious practice is not the only place I have "felt the spirit," and LDS believe that the Holy Ghost will often communicate to people through their hearts outside of religious observance. While I was a student I was required to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for certain addictions classes I was taking, and I "felt the spirit" very strongly at one of those. It is very interesting to me that the Serenity Prayer asks God to bring peace and wisdom by reconciling our hearts and minds:

Secular Justification for Faith Selection

Faith is those beliefs you hold so strongly that they impact your decisions. When it comes to free will, what faith you chose is one of the most important factors in determining what decisions you will make. God insists on us having free will, and so he makes us chose our faith. But in so far as God will judge you for any decision you make, God will most certainly judge you for what faith you chose.

God knows you can not with 100% certainty determine if God is really there or not. Therefore God expects you to chose your faith for the best possible reasons, spiritual, historical, personal and secular. The secular and practical reasons for choosing a faith are some of the most important reasons for choosing a faith, because God knows you have 100% certainty about secular and practical reality you experience. God will judge you for your secular reasons to pick a faith.

A religion is an organized faith system and faith community. In order to do something well, we almost always require feedback from others. In order to exercise faith competently, it is clearly best to participate in a religion.

Your choosing a religion is key to God's evaluation of you, and your secular reasons for picking a religion are the most important reasons, because they are the most tangible reasons.

"I am in my religion because my family is in this religion and they are very serious about me staying in the religion" is actually a very good reason to be in a religion. "I picked this religion because I liked how the people acted who were part of this religion" is another good reason to be in a religion. "I picked this religion because their rules made sense to me for having a better life" is a particularly excellent reason to pick a religion, as is "I could see myself raising a happy family in this religion." 

God IS watching your decision and why you are making it. In fact the worst thing you can do is to just avoid choosing a religion, because life goes on without you having the benefit of having effectively pursued faith.

Avoid religions wear shunning is encouraged. In a worst case scenario this would be where family members are not allowed to speak to each other because of their status in a religion. This behavior is not socially sustainable, it is anti-family, it implies unhealthy power dynamics inside of the organization, and it suggests ulterior motives by the leaders of that religious organization. Religious shunning is not good and not of God.

LDS Opinions

 There is a huge diversity of belief when within the mainstream LDS faith, with possible differing opinions on many topics. Here I will explain what my current opinions are on various common LDS disagreements. 

My basic principle behind all these opinions is "quality of evidence over quantity of evidence." In general a witness statement is more accurate: 1) how soon it was after the event happened, and 2) from a first hand witness. When we get into recollections from long after the events happened or start playing the telephone game, evidence deteriorates in quality. This has caused me to be what I call "Vanilla 90's LDS." In the 90's we generally considered embarrassing "facts" about the Church to be attacks by anti-Mormons:

1. I think the Book of Mormon took place in Mesoamerica, at the dates suggested in the book. The quality of evidence for the Mesoamerican hypothesis is superior to alternative theories:

2. I don't think Joseph Smith Jr used a "magic rock" to translate the Book of Mormon, I think he did it with the tools that came with the plates...

3. I seriously doubt Joseph Smith was a polygamist. In a nutshell:

4. I think polygamy has always been a sin, and that when ever it has been practiced, it has been a mistake. I don't think God has ever commanded anyone to do polygamy, I think it's a social contagion that forces of evil use as a weapon of mass destruction against humanity:

5. I don't have a big problem with Brigham Young going off the rails and the LDS Church still being of God. Jesus had Judas, that doesn't mean Jesus wasn't the real deal. Normally when organizations change as much as the LDS Church did between the time of Joseph Smith Jr. and the time of Brigham Young, that organization will continue to go off in that crazy new direction. Instead with the LDS Church we saw big course corrections making it like what Joseph Smith Jr. established in the first place. I take this as evidence that this is not "The Church of the Prophets of Latter-Day Saints," but "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints."

Shadow of Evil

"Ex Nihilo" is the belief that God created the world out of nothing. The "Problem of Evil" is an argument against God existing: it is impossible for a Good Creator of the world to exist because the world has so much evil in it. This Problem of Evil argument depends on God creating the world out of nothing and thus intentionally bringing forth evil.

 But the Problem of Evil's premise of Ex Nihilo is totally and completely wrong:

God created (past tense) the universe out of chaos? Consider all the great religious teachers throughout history, Buddha, Muhammad, Jesus, more recently Martin Luther King Jr., Joseph Smith Jr., Pope Francis, etc. What is the one thing they all ask us to do in the name of God? Be better people than we are NOW. IF God has spoken through ANY of these leaders, God is using this world as a tool to help make us better people. Therefore God is creating (present tense) the universe out of chaos.

As evil (chaos) preceded good (creation,) when one of God's creatures exercises free will to chose evil over good, that's not God's fault. Evil was already there, and bringing forth creatures with free will into the universe IS more opportunity for creatures to choose good and thus become good. Creating creatures with free will is a risk God takes in order to make the universe a better place.

Some have wondered if evil is the shadow or absence of good, or does evil have it's own agenda? I say it is both: the status quo of the Universe and our world is dark and chaotic (as Earnest Becker said "...red in tooth and claw, destroying all she creates...") and that the only significant justice and mercy that comes to the Universe that we know of is established by humanity (literally through humans.) God is literally using his children to make the world a better place. Evil is the default state of the universe, and good is thus the shadow or absence of evil.

But I mean shadow here in a most sinister sense: a predator stalking it's prey. Good consumes evil: bad situations are a creative opportunity to create better situations. Evil can cry and squirm and tell nasty stories about good, and though much evil may eventually escape good's hunt, evil's protest will not keep good from having it's feasts. The universe is a massive lemon grove with no delicious fruit, but God & friends are lemon-aid enthusiasts.

Unhallowed Hand

I am a Brigham Young fan and have quoted him on this blog before, but I think he may have been THE Antichrist. How can I still be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) if I think Brigham Young has been the most effective instrument of the devil for attacking LDS? It starts with something in The Wentworth Letter that I suspect was a prophesy regarding Brigham Young:

"The standard of truth has been erected. No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the great Jehovah shall say the work is done." —Joseph Smith, 1842

Unhallowed has two definitions: 1. unconsecrated, secular, or 2. unholy, wicked. A hand in this context means an individual with an agenda working to achieve an objective, or in other words an agent. So the Unhallowed Hand would be a Unconsecrated Agent or an Unholy Agent. The succession crisis after Joseph Smith's assassination happened because it wasn't expressly clear to everyone who should be the leader of the LDS if both Joseph and Hyrum Smith were killed simultaneously (as they eventually were,) so that Brigham Young could then be considered the Unconsecrated Agent leading the LDS. However I suspect Brigham Young has played a far more sinister role in the history of the LDS, and that the title of Unholy Agent or Antichrist may apply to him.

What is "the work" that will not be stopped from progressing? From Joseph Smith's personal view it could be only one thing: the LDS religion Jesus founded through Joseph. Why were people mad at Joseph Smith and wanted to have him killed? No matter how you look at it, the biggest factor was rumors of polygamy, and more than anything else was causing mobs to combine, persecutions to rage, and eventually in the case of the Utah War (1857-1858) literally the US Army assembled against the LDS . To this day Brigham Young's calumny, in accusing Joseph Smith of pedophilia and adultery in the form of a rewriting of history to justify Brigham's own foul sexual practices, is one of the biggest philosophical problems holding back the growth of the LDS faith. 

Another mess left over from Brigham Young that we still have to address is his overt racism. However before him Joseph Smith was NOT racist. He and his wife were close friends with escaped slaves, and he had the first black Elder ordained to the LDS priesthood in 1836. But once Brigham Young was in control of the LDS, LDS prevented blacks from holding the priesthood or entering the temple.

Brigham Young also introduced other false doctrines LDS have since totally rejected in favor of what Joseph Smith taught before.  Let's look at how Brigham Young's Antichrist doctrines confused the plain and precious truths of the Gospel:

1. In an era of Church history when many members were starving to death in old west Utah, Brigham Young was commanding people to horde SEVEN YEARS supply of food. By the time I was a child this had number was down to Two Years, and then as an adult it has gone down to "Three Months + a 72 Hour kit." Three months + a 72 hour kid is not the kind of bizarre difference from mainstream society having over a year's supply is. Joseph Smith didn't command anyone to keep SEVEN YEARS supply of food, and instead the Book of Mormon teaches to not let others go hungry (just for example starting in Mosiah Chapter 4 verse 16.) 
2. Throughout my entire adult like the Temple Endowment ceremonies have evolved to be less and less like what Brigham Young established, generally rejecting much of the following ideas. 
3. Adam-God theory degraded Jesus Christ's (same as Jehovah in the LDS) role in the Universe, placing Adam somehow above Jesus. In Joseph Smith's view and in the LDS view today, Jesus was the principle creator of the world including the human species. Brigham Young taught that Jesus was something less.
4. Brigham Young's "Blood Atonement" doctrine taught that adultery was so serous that Jesus Christ's atonement alone was not sufficient to save someone from that sin, and that the adulterer would have to pay with their life in order to be saved. Adultery would be a surprisingly common sin for Jesus's sacrifice to not cover, so that again we see Brigham denying the power of Christ established in the Bible, Book of Mormon and teachings of Joseph Smith.
5. Racism is clearly against the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as racism is not kind or even respectful to those you are being racist against. Brigham Young falsely claimed his racist views were doctrinal and of God.
6. The most obvious sign of a benevolent all-knowing God is he would tell you to completely abstain from alcohol and tobacco, because of the suffering caused by the health and social consequences from the recreational use of these substances. IF Jesus is God, you can pretty much tell what church is His by looking at who takes this rule the most seriously. The LDS rules around forbidding these substances were revealed in 1833, "...adapted to the capacity of the weak and the weakest of all saints, who are or can be called saints..." clearly intended for all LDS members. However Brigham Young went so far as to make and sell whiskey, which has about 4 times the alcohol content of any wine ever described in the scriptures. Brigham Young refused to promote the LDS rules regarding substances established by Jesus through Joseph Smith, and instead encouraged members to break those rules.
7. Since the time of Adam and Eve, including the times when populations needed to grow rapidly such as immediately after the flood or when the Lehites reached America, the commandment from God has always been one wife for each man, no concubines allowed. This creates the basic family and societal structure that successful civilizations are based on. Brigham Young fought against this basic family structure beyond anyone else I know of through his doctrine of polygamy.
8. Today the LDS and most other believers highly frown on divorce, because of the consequences it has on individuals and society as a whole. Jesus in Mathew Chapter 5 vs 31-32 describes divorce as a form of adultery. After all the huffing and puffing Brigham Young did over the importance of marriage, Brigham had 10 divorces!
9. Brigham Young twisted specific verses of scripture to mean the opposite of what they obviously meant. For example Jacob Chapter 2 is part of a huge sermon against polygamy, where "seed" has been established as "righteous people" and "things" have been established as various sins or abominations. Verse 30 reads "For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things." In context this clearly means "I command you to be monogamous, otherwise you will sin." However Brigham Young considered this verse to be an exception allowing polygamy, undermining the intention of the entire sermon.
10. Today in the LDS community we have high expectations of our leaders, and though everyone is a hypocrite sooner or later, we really expect them to do their best to live the gospel. We also expect them to refrain from judging people as much as possible, only enforcing the most important rules in the LDS faith. This is all reflected in Mathew Chapter 7 where Jesus warns us about being hypocrites and to tread lightly when we judge others. Brigham Young on the other hand pretty much just made up the rules as he went along to suit his whims, constantly threatened people with an adverse afterlife for not going along with his Anthichrist schemes, and (as per this list) was probably the biggest hypocrite in the history of the USA.

If the LDS is a religion that is primarily about following modern prophets, then this means that the LDS religion was completely derailed at the time of Brigham Young, right? Not according to the prophecy above from The Wentworth Letter, which specifically said any such Unhallowed Hand would not stop the LDS religion from spreading throughout the world. Let's look at LDS spiritual practices to see how high priority "following the prophet" actually is. In order to even become an LDS member in the first place, you have to embrace the "First Ordinances and Principles of the Gospel", which are:

1. Faith in Jesus Christ
2. Repentance
3. Baptism
4. Gift of the Holy Ghost

That last step, #4, The Gift of the Holy Ghost is to enhance your personal ability to get revelation directly from God yourself. Which of these 4 says to "follow the prophet?" Yes of course following guidance from prophets both ancient and modern is wise, but it is fundamentally more important to establish your own personal relationship with God. The LDS is then a body of people who have embraced these Principles and Ordinances.

Perhaps this is why over 75% of LDS ignored Brigham Young's ranting on polygamy and never practiced it themselves. Even if Brigham Young was the Antichrist, he did not successfully lead away most LDS members to do polygamy, as they had the Gift of the Holy Ghost for themselves. Brigham Young himself said:

“The First Presidency have of right a great influence over this people; and if we should get out of the way and lead this people to destruction, what a pity it would be! How can you know whether we lead you correctly, or not? Can you know by any other power than that of the Holy Ghost?” — Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 6:100

Yes indeed Brigham, yes indeed. LDS reject the "Trinity" creed, and believe that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are separate individuals, so then why is the name of LDS not "The Church of Heavenly Father of Latter Day Saints," or "The Church of the Holy Ghost of Latter Day Saints," or "The Church of the Prophets of Latter Day Saints?" The Unhallowed Hand has shown us that regardless of who sits on the throne in Salt Lake City, Jesus Christ is the true leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. 

Polygamy Is Not Doctrinal

I am active LDS and a descendant of polygamists, and I do not think that the founder of the religion, Joseph Smith Jr. was a polygamist. As a Brigham Young fan I do not think that this creates a "succession crisis" for the mainstream Salt Lake LDS Church, and I do not think Brigham Young was a "fallen prophet." I think prophets make big mistakes all the time, and that Brigham Young was aware of his own limitations as a prophet.

Brigham Young knew that his way of leading the Church and his spiritual gifts as a prophet were different from Joseph Smith Jr's. Brigham Young stated in the context of the Utah War that was beginning: 

"...They have not as good a man to deal with as they had when they had Joseph Smith. I do not profess to be very good. I will try to take care of number one, and if it is wicked for me to try to preserve myself, I shall persist in it; for I am intending to take care of myself... I am not going to interpret dreams; for I don't profess to be such a Prophet as were Joseph Smith and Daniel; but I am a Yankee guesser..." https://journalofdiscourses.com/5/17

Brigham Young led The Church in a very violent and racist era of American history. In the context of African American slavery, extermination orders, the US Military mobilizing against his people and bloody civil war, Brigham Young's sins (talking women into joining a harem, saying black people can join the church but only with limited access, having some strange interpretations of Genesis, rewriting Church history and coming up with doctrinal justifications for violence) do not seem relatively serious compared to the evils of his day. In today's world such actions would be unforgivable, but the Mormon people (a few of them black themselves) were in a run and gun battle for their survival in those days.

It is really clear that all of Joseph Smith Jr.'s public comments on polygamy before he died were against the practice, and emphatically so. He would have people excommunicated for it and then publicly describe exactly why they were excommunicated. The Book of Mormon itself is strangely anti-racist (with some of the prophets being racist and then as the book goes on those racist views are corrected by other prophets, God, etc.) It is also overtly anti-Polygamist, with the practice being condemned as "abominable." 

There's supposedly a verse in the middle of an anti-polygamy rant in Jacob Chapter 2 v 30 that says "For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things." But in previous verses he just called it a "whoredom" and "abomination," so since God doesn't command people to do whoredoms and abominations, that verse must necessarily be interpreted as something like "If you are my followers and I want you to have a ton of kids, believe me, you will. Otherwise you need to avoid abominations and whoredoms anyways." No one in the vast period of time covered in the Book of Mormon is commanded to do polygamy by God.

Most of the characters focused on in the Book of Mormon believe they have descended from Israelites escaping Jerusalem in around 600 BC. In that same chapter of Jacob in the Book of Mormon, God calls David and Solomon's polygamy "...abominable before me..." Verse 30's supposed justification of polygamy particularly does not make sense in this context, because of math. The average married woman without birth control will have about 8 kids. Solomon had 700 wives. This means for Solomon to be able to keep that birth rate up to average, he needed to have 5,600 children. Similar problem by the way with Brigham Young's own polygamy. Even if only 25 of Brigham Young's 55 wives were both fertile and seducable, Brigham Young needed to have at least 200 children for his polygamy to keep up with the monogamous average... but he only had 57 children... that is only one child per wife instead of 8!

And about polygamy in the Bible, I can't find a clear case of anyone being commanded to do it. In general "going after many wives" is frowned upon in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, Christian congregation leaders are required to both be married AND to have only one wife. Taken as an over all work, The Bible frowns on polygamy as less than ideal if not sinful.

Most of the women claiming to be Joseph Smith Jr.'s wives during his lifetime made those claims decades after he was dead. Their husbands were none other than Brigham Young himself and Heber C. Kimball, his right hand man. At around this time these two had to demonstrate that polygamy was part of their religion, because they were under the scrutiny of the USA, and thus were highly motivated to prove Joseph Smith Jr. practiced polygamy. Evidence suggests they rewrote history in order to protect themselves and the Mormon people from the invading forces of the US government.

The people closest to Joseph Smith Jr. while he was alive (his brother Hyrum and his wife Emma) always maintained that Joseph was against polygamy. This is important to note because none of the people who have been DNA tested to see if they were Joseph Smith Jr. secret polygamy love children have actually turned out to be his. Hundreds of sections of the Doctrine & Covenants, only 1 supposedly supports polygamy, section 132.

Section 132 is basically in two parts, the part that is compatible with the rest of the D&C, and the part that is sex-pirate crazy. Versus 1-20 read something like this, "in regards to your questions about polygamy, understand that a one on one marriage between a man and a woman sealed together for eternity is the stuff Gods are made from." Then, no joke, starting in verse 21 the writing style totally changes to what I can only describe as a very horny pirate, who by the end of the chapter is threatening to kill Emma, "...I will destroy her..."

As critics have looked into 132 there are numerous problems with dates. The sealing power being revealed in 127 and 128, years after Joseph supposedly started using it according to 132. William Clayton is supposedly in October writing down Joseph's revelation, when he was fired as Joseph's scribe the February before for stealing money.

Some of the people spreading rumors about polygamy were specifically doing it to try to kill Joseph. Polygamy was introduced to the community through notorious scoundrel John C. Bennet. John had abandoned his family to come to live with the Mormons, and as soon as he was able to gain some status started using his plural wife scheme to seduce Mormon women. Joseph had him excommunicated but John saw himself as a rival leader of the Mormon movement, and continued to spread rumors of plural marriage regarding Joseph as to enrage the locals into wanting to kill Joseph.

It goes on and on like this... since I was a child it made sense that Brigham Young was a polygamist based on his behavior, but not Joseph Smith Jr. When the DNA came out against Joseph Smith Jr. being the baby daddy I took a controversial troll stance against the position. Now the position that he was a polygamist is not making any sense at all anymore...

There are important LDS theological concepts at play here:

1. Again, we don't believe in ex Nihilo, so that creation is the act seizing chaos and organizing it into order.
2. We don't believe in infallibility of any mortal or scripture written down by mortals. Every mortal is a work in progress for God trying to help a sinful chaotic being become a good being of His order. 
3. This is true of prophets as well as the rest of us.
4. This is true of our community as time goes on generation after generation.
5. This is evident in our doctrine of "continuing revelation."

But more importantly this is evident in our doctrine of "personal revelation." The "first principles and ordinances of the gospel" are:

1. Faith in Jesus Christ
2. Repentance
3. Baptism
4. Gift of the Holy Ghost (source of personal revelation.)

Isn't interesting how 4 is not "strict obedience to the will of the Prophet"? During the era of mainstream LDS polygamy, over 2/3 of Mormons ignored Brigham Young's hellfire and brimstone sermons about how important it was to do plural marriage. Most just said "no thanks," and passed on it. Many of them had met if not known Joseph Smith Jr. personally, who once said:

"…God is not a respecter of persons; we all have the same privilege. … We believe that we have a right to revelations, visions, and dreams from God, our Heavenly Father; and light and intelligence, through the gift of the Holy Ghost, in the name of Jesus Christ, on all subjects pertaining to our spiritual welfare; if it so be that we keep His commandments, so as to render ourselves worthy in His sight." (Chapter 10: Prayer and Personal Revelation, Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith, 2007.)

As the LDS Church started to grow in popularity in the late 90's, the Warren Jeff (polygamist and child sex predator) controversy broke out, raising many questions about Mormons in popular culture. This is the same time I was on my mission in Western Pennsylvania.  The prophet of that time was Gordon B. Hinkley, who said on Larry King Live "...I condemn polygamy because I believe it is not doctrinal..."

In the end, the Prophet Gordon B. Hinkley openly disagreed with the Prophet Brigham Young on the doctrine of polygamy. This justified all those who had disregarded Brigham Young's suggestions to engage in polygamy. The lesson for LDS and non LDS alike is simple: don't be a lemming. God gave you a conscience, and He expects you to use it. 

Haves vs Have Nots

The activist (open source) game development team I am on has recently unleashed a tittle wave of productivity and are about to complete one project we have been working on for over 10 years (2nd Edition of the Squawk Role-Playing Game.) But maybe the most important project I have been working on lately is the Resilience Role-Playing Game, which I am hoping to have a hard-copy book version of this year. One insider knows there is a significant creative difference between how the online version looks and what the final product will look like, and has question this decision.

While the book uses photographs and a lot of them, the website only uses illustrations. Each and every photograph is being personally vetted by me to make sure it's 100% legally legit before I use it (we've been doing this open-source thing since the mid 90's and have a lot of experience with copyleft.) Yet I refuse to use photos on the website because of the Ghetty Images "extortion scheme."

Ghetty Images (or someone on behalf Ghetty Images) has some kind of bot that constantly crawls the web looking for people who use images that Ghetty Images considers themselves to have control of. Once they find such an image, if that website does not have a pre-existing agreement with them, Ghetty Images sends a letter to the web provider shutting down the website. Ghetty Images always asks for thousands of dollars to establish an agreement with them so that your website isn't shut down. The trick is they ask for a few thousand dollars less than it would take for you to get a lawyer. This has never happened to one of my projects, but it did happen to minority immigrant friends of mine who own an auto glass repair shop in Seattle in the late some time around 2009.

The image in question was:

1.  from a website that specifically gave anyone on the internet permission to use the image (Ghetty Images has a way of purchasing rights to collections of these kinds of images,) and 
2. was heavily modified as to without that permission be within the terms of "fair use." 

However the Ghetty Images bot discovered the photo, and the ACCUSATION was made. The ACCUSATION does the damage regardless of guilt or innocence.

When I was doing an internship in the Education programs at the King County Jail on 5th Ave in Seattle (2003-2004) through Americorps, I saw numerous people do something called "a plea for time served." Let's say a cop ACCUSED you of some wrong doing and throws you in jail. While you wait for your lawyer, the more law abiding you are, the more damage is being done to your career and your family by your absence as time goes on. After you have had some time to simmer in jail for a while, the prosecutor offers you a deal: say you are guilty, and we'll let you out of jail now, no more questions asked. If you are a career criminal with money you fight it, and probably win against their usually weak case. But if you are a law abiding working class citizen, you take that plea before you lose any more of time from your job or family than you already have.

It's the ACCUSATION that does the damage.

Back to Ghetty Images, if a lawyer typically costs $7,000 in your area, then they will ask for $3,000 to $5,000. And that's just it, law abiding working class people get criminal records in Seattle constantly for the crime of not having $7,000 to pay a decent lawyer who isn't in the cop's pocket. (Public defenders rely on the court system to give them referrals. The prosecutor is part of that system, and too many victories is going to encourage that court system to direct their referrals elsewhere.)

There's a lot of problems in Seattle with housing, addiction, income and healthcare, but those problems all impact rich and poor to one degree or another. What the rich never feel is the raw, pure injustice that happens when you can't afford your own lawyer. I know a lot of people don't like hearing this, but the difference between a have and a have not is only about $7,000.

The moral of the story is this: pick your battles. You can die on almost any hill you want to die on. However, you need to reserve your personal resources for whatever matters most to you in your life, which is probably not some hill a loud personality is waving a flag on the top of.

OGL = TSR Lawfare Threat

As an indy RPG developer myself, I can tell you chances are I will not break even for how much labor and time I spend making a quality RPG product. When doing a cost-benefit analysis on weather or not to produce an RPG product, one consideration is ALWAYS: will this get me sued? Because if I have to get a lawyer to publish, that's a lot of money I have to raise that has nothing to do with making or distributing the product, before making any money from the product, and I already know odds are against me breaking even on what product is going to cost me in time.

Once upon a time there was a Game Company called TSR, who were really mad that anyone but them published table top RPGs, because they owned the original table top RPG, Dungeons and Dragons (D&D.) TSR decided to sue Palladium, who in turn decided to sue so many other new RPG system developers that in the 1980's and 1990's people were scared out of trying to get into the table top RPG market.

We (the team known as the Game Arts Guild, previously known as Galbraith Games,) were one of these groups in exile. Before 2000 our plan was to make a computer game version of our RPG first (the precursor to Squawk RPG and The Dark Woods,) and then make a computer game hand book that could coincidentally double as an RPG book, to try to avoid all that threat-of-lawfare we could not afford.

Then in 2000 the OGL came out. It ended the two decades old threat-of-lawfare preventing indy RPG development, and we entered the golden era of indy RPG publishing that we are in today, which has grown rapidly because of print-on-demand technologies and services. We at the Game Arts Guild never did embrace the OGL however, and instead relied on traditional open source licenses such as the LGPL and later Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike. As Quake 1 Total-Conversion developers we had started one of the world's first open game projects called "The Free Models Project" (the inheritor of which is Open Game Art who we endorse,) and as a result of that experience we realized at the time the OGL was suspect.

That's right, THE OGL WAS NO-DAMNED-GOOD ANYWAYS. The ONLY thing it did was end an age of lawfare-threat preventing indy RPG development. The problem then and now is the OGL grants Wizards of the Coast the ability to revoke your right to use the OGL at any time:

Hasbro (the now owners of Wizards of the Coast) has a parallel process going on with their most popular product, the board game Monopoly; they really think like that game, hate competition, lock down intellectual properties in ethically questionable ways, etc. What all of this "new proposed OGL 1.1" drama described in the above video has really signaled, is their intention to reengage in TSR style THREAT OF LAWFARE by way of OGL-license-revoking (remember it is only the THREAT that prevents indy game development as per my first paragraph of this post,) to shut down indy RPG development. The current OGL everyone seems to want to preserve will NOT prevent them from doing just that!

As a byproduct of working on Squawk 2nd Edition for the last 10 years we have produced a role playing game system we call "Resilience" (www.ResilienceRPG.com) licensed under the Creative Commons Share-Alike license (which is set in the modern day but has been designed to adapt to other settings,) which I hope disgruntled indy developers will consider as they exodus D&D.

Luxury of Being Right

I have been Yang Gang 2020/Forward Party since about 1994, politically associating with the Technocracy Inc. movement. I was raised conservative and can still see things from that perspective. Though my Yang Gang views are now considered moderate left, when I was in college they were considered far left anarchist.

One of the problems facing USA national politics right now is that since the 1970's, both the Democrats and Republicans had periods of time when they more or less had a monopoly on the objective truth. In the 1970's inflation got to be so out of control in the USA that the economic damage it was doing was inflicting more social harm than maybe any other issue by the end of the 70's. In addition to that, the world lived in constant fear of nuclear annihilation from the cold war between the USA and the USSR.

In 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected president, with popular support from Democrats and Republican voters. Yes his economic policy was incredibly flawed, but his optimism was contagious and markets stabilized (even as the manufacturing jobs left the USA like rats from a sinking ship.) With that borderline delusional optimism, he almost single handedly ended the cold war. On the most important issues of the 1980's, the GOP had the most important priorities, and most in the USA were content with their system of government. The GOP had the Luxury of Being Right.

However, in 2000 George W. Bush became president. The need to be truthful completely evaded the W, claiming the white house even when he had lost the election to Al Gore, and eventually starting the wars in the Middle East that lasted until very recently, based on lies about weapons of mass destruction. He intentionally shed doubt on the best climate science of his era, as was convenient for his family and friend's oil money.

For 8 years during the W's presidency the Democrats had a the Luxury of objective truth being more or less on their side on almost every issue, as the lies and Orwellian language spewed forth from the W. It turns out the "smart bombs" killed tons of families and children, and that "shock and awe" did not bring peace. It turns out that people you occupy are not guaranteed to want to adopt your system of government. It turns out the world really was getting hotter.

Obama was a normal president who was as honest as any other politician. Unfortunately two years into the Obama administration the Left had now enjoyed 10 solid years of the objective truth very much being on their side. The Democrats had the Luxury of Being Right.

It turns out that when you are right for 10 years, you stop questioning your own sources and facts. You no longer have to engage with the other side. You start voting for ideological zealots instead of politicians skilled at statecraft. Everything turns into ideological echo chambers with everyone outside of that chamber becoming "evil," with purity tests so extreme that almost no one can qualify to stay in that chamber. This delusional self righteousness had infected the W after the 80's, and it infected the left during the reign of the W.

On one hand there are cosmetic social issues, and on the other hand there are serious issues of forien policy, governance and economics. On cosmetic social issues, people's feelings get hurt and mental health problems can emerge, which can impact families. However these issues are not of the same magnitude of importance as economics, governance and foreign policy, where wars and famines can lead to genocide, famine, mass casualties and the end of societies. For example, voting rights will always be more important than marriage rights.

The real damage being done to our country from both the Democrats and Republicans having had the Luxury of Being Right is they are allowing differences on cosmetic social issues keep them from finding common ground on economics, governance and foreign policy. Meanwhile rival nations with far less benevolent practices grow in power and influence. In addition our economic practices become more and more outdated as we as a people fail to adapt to evolving technological realities because of our inability to consider each other's perspectives.