Our Temples and Our People
June 24th, 2025 by G.
There is a really striking parallel between our temples and our people.
The temples and the saints of yesteryear were few, rural, Western, quirky and eccentric, and often but not always beautiful in an unusual way– homespun high art.
Now numerous, global, suburban, efficient, and most of all top-notch mediocre. No, mediocre is the wrong term, that is too pejorative. What I mean is our temples and our people have an amazing record of achieving 2-3, maybe 2-4, SD higher results on all sorts of things, of which we should be justly proud, and fewer 5 SD results then you would expect given our numbers, let alone given the number of 2-4 SD high performers that we have.
An interesting phenomenon.
John Mansfield
June 24, 2025
I suggest that the single-minded focus needed for 5 SD results is not part of the life of a latter-day saint. He should labor with his might and seek the blessings of God in his endeavours, but his endevours should be diverse. He should be attentive to his wife and each of his several children; also his other relatives, including the dead. He should spend a week at youth camp or mornings teaching seminary when called upon. He should be engaged with his neighbors. He should spend significate time alone in worship and contemplation of divine things.
All that will strengthen the more strengthenable among us to be 2-4 SD performers in our fields of expertise. Many of those 4 SD performers might be 5 SD if chemistry or sculpture or whatever were their God. They and the world are better off for what they lived instead.
Eric
June 24, 2025
I need some help. What does SD mean here?
Sute
June 24, 2025
Somewhere along the way, we forgot that timeless architecture is based on architecture from the past and decided to make our new designs essentially modern versions of the Smoot building.
If you want something to look good for a thousand years, find that things that people still think are beautiful after a thousand years and emulate it.
Or you know, design cleaner versions of the Smoot building…?
Talkingbuffalo
June 24, 2025
@Eric I think SD here is standard deviations, but someone can correct me if I’ve got that wrong
nakedrat
June 25, 2025
We are becoming bimodal until the lower mode is cast off, the new mean takes center, and a new excellence can once again reassert.