John C Wright on the state of his own church.

Many big publicity results in psychology do not add up. Many many.

There is glory (earned love) and unconditional love.  What does their synthesis look like?

Atonement and repentance.  Unconditional love that cares for you even though you don’t deserve it yet.  Earned love, that is offering you another chance to deserve love.

The arms that are always open for you, no matter how prodigal.  The arms that guide you towards your potential.  The insistence that you are always valuable.  The insistence that you live up to your potential.

Whether or not we identify earned love with the male principle and unconditional love with the female principle, we can see that family expresses this same synthesis.  Caring and growing.  Safety and learning at the same time.  I suspect that on some deep level, family and atonement/repentance are metaphysically identical.

This may seem like a short toss off post.  It is.  I also suspect it may be one of the most important things found on here.

If there are two types of virtues, maybe the two types are male and female. WJT says maybe, though he’s just trying the idea on, he’s still working it through.

Only later did I realize the correspondence between Ahuric/Devic and male/female. By simply exploring these models of good and evil, without thinking of sexual identity at all, I had inadvertently arrived at a possible explanation for the eternal nature of sexual identity — the necessity that good be expressed in two complementary forms rather than in a single asexual Supergod.

-thus WJT

Looking at lists of Ahuric and Devic virtues, I found that the first list made me think of Jesus Christ and the second of Our Lady. This led me to the tentative conclusion that these two types of good corresponded to masculine and feminine, and that the Ganymede model helped to explain why the two sexes were necessary and eternal.

–thus WJT.  He also discusses some problems with the idea.  This post is one you will definitely want to read.

Also this one on the two types and eternal sexual identity.

Let’s mull it over.

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the Father of lights—the veil shall be rent and you shall see me not with the carnal neither natural mind, but with the spiritual—no man has seen God  except quickened—Ye are not able to abide the presence of God now….

Doctrine and Covenants 67

There are these hints throughout the restoration of a spiritual physics.  (more…)

The Lord praises sheep, wheat, tame olive trees, etc bc they take no thought for their own nourishment – everything they get they give away If there is no Cultivator obviously this is a very stupid way to live.

The parable of the olive trees in Jacob 5 introduces gradations of tameness & wildness The lord of the vineyard doesn’t just kill the wild & save the tame – he gradually prunes away the hard, woody, wild portions of each tree.

But we also learn that tame branches are prone to decadence & decay – & the solution is to graft strong, wild root systems with hungry, tame boughs that will draw out their strength It’s not just “tame good, wild bad”, both are necessary which is why both are allowed to persist

-from ExDeJCB

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If you are interested in virtue sets, you owe it to yourself to read WJT’s essay on Satan Divided Against Himself.

It’s full of insights.  (In the following passage, “Ahriman”=Satan, the evils of fear and excessive prudence and risk avoidance)

Those who serve Ahriman may seek to be in control themselves, but more often their goal may simply be that everything be under control. Hierarchy is of Ahriman, because even those who are far from the top have no objection to it. Even an Ahrimanist who has the ability to control things personally will generally defer these personal decisions to a system or algorithm, personal responsibility being unpleasantly risky.

Even the casual asides are good.  Here he is describing how the two fundamental good impulses (seek goods, avoid evils) can be turned to evil

• Sacrifice the avoidance of evil in order to pursue good (e.g. to seek pleasure)

• Sacrifice the pursuit of good in order to avoid evil (e.g. to be “safe”)

The only true virtues are the combination of hot virtues and cool virtues.  Things like prudent courage.  Or courageous prudence.

The true virtue is not a moderation of the hot and the cool.  It is not lukewarm.  It is a synthesis of the two where each is enhanced.  Ice cold bravery.  Hot, unrelenting calculation.

The true model of manhood will be an archetype that combines the two.  Or a combination of two archetypes.

Every man a holy pirate king.

Or every man a priest and a king.  (Thanks, Zen.)

Or righteous dominion.   (Thanks, Joseph.)

What is it about us, how could we misunderstand righteous dominion for so long?  How is it that I didn’t understand the plain meaning of that passage of scripture until late last night while musing in the bath?

Holy.  Pirate King.

Priest.  King.

Righteous. Dominion.

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When Joseph Smith and the guys decided to publish his revelations, a number of the guys got to talking about how Joseph Smith wrote them pretty rough and jumbled and maybe they could do better.

In D&C 67, the Lord says, in effect, “you know Joseph Smith and you know he hasn’t really hit his stride as a writer yet.  Pick your best guy and have him try to write a revelation.  If he does better than Joseph Smith, then you can say he’s just making it up.  If not then either you bear testimony of the revelations or you are condemned.”

Interesting stuff.  As it turns out, I think the early revelations were rough and jumbled and I think I’m a better writer than Joseph Smith was at that point in his life*  and I think I could do a better job.   So what if I were one of the gang and they decided I was the wisest?  Well, first, I’m probably wise enough to turn down the opportunity.  Getting crosswise with the Lord and his prophet is no way to carry on.  But supposing I decided to because I thought the Lord was really ok with it, he really did want the testimony that the revelations were from him.  What would happen?  I will tell you what would happen.  The Lord would cheat.  The Lord would withdraw the Holy Ghost in whatever measure would be needed so that I would completely fall apart as a writer.  I would write like shambles.

*Some of his stuff later on, D&C 121 and 122, pure poetry.

I had a great time preparing and executing today’s lesson for the 13 year olds. (more…)

Inspired by friend of the JG WJT, lets apply virtue set concepts to some of our work with manhood and womanhood.

I’ve tried my hand at capturing the essence of man and woman before.  Never perfectly.

Women are love (unconditional love), men are glory (earned love).

Men are agents, women are ends.

My favorite: Every man a holy pirate king.  Every woman a luxury and a necessity.

Glory is clearly a hot virtue, its hard to say where love fits in.  Being an agent is a hot virtue, being an end, its hard to say where it fits in.  But for me what’s interesting is my favorite one.  My ideal man and my ideal woman are both combinations of hot and cool virtues  (I more and more think that the synthesis of a hot and cool virtue pair is the only actual virtue).

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I am too indulgent a father.  I killed two of the kids’ roosters for them this morning.

Afterwards I spontaneously asked God for forgiveness for killing them.  I didn’t think about it, it just happened.

It felt right to do.  But I did not and do not feel guilty.

Go figure.

Thinking about the historical development of the term virtue made me realize something about virtue sets.

Think about the scripture where the woman touches Jesus’ hem and “the virtue went out of him.”  It wasn’t His righteousness that fled.  It was some inner power.

Or think about the phrase that is a holdover from an older English where we talk about “the virtues of a course of action.”  We don’t say that because we are evaluating its morality.  We just mean the benefits of the course of action.  And of course virtue as everyone knows comes from the Latin “virtus” which just meant qualities that were good to have in a man, whether they were chosen or not.

With our emphasis on free agency, we put a strong emphasis on choice and those “virtues”–old sense–that are freely chosen, i.e., also virtues in the modern sense.    But even there the ultimate goal of a choosing a virtue is that it becomes automatic, written on the fleshy tablets of the heart, no longer something chosen and now just a good quality.

And lately we have been recovering the full extent of the Atonement.  It applies not just to sins but to flaws, imperfections, struggles, obstacles.  There is no hard and fast dividing line between virtue (new sense) and virtue (old sense).

That is why you can have a virtue set using virtue (old sense).

D&C 49
D&C 49:8 It is my will that all men repent. Properly understood, this is formally the same as his work and glory being to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

49:8 “Holy men ye know not of.” Extremely intriguing. Who or what are these people?

49:16 “One flesh”=sex. This and the immediate verses are one spouse => sex => “fulfill measure (i.e. children)
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The reason we do not forgive only the deserving is that until we forgive we are unable to tell rightly who is deserving.

(Inspired by reading doctrine and covenants section 64)