D&C Bits

45:

45:6 — the time called today?  Is this a hint at an eternal perspective?

45:8 – wisdom that he is going to show.  But what is it?

45:35 — growing darkness is a sign of the fulfillment of promises

45:63 — “near, at the doorstep, within a few years” = 3 decades.  A few years less if you include Bleeding Kansas.  How long ago was the Proclamation?

46:

46:7 — Interesting that the doctrines of men and the doctrines of devils are treated separately.

46:17-18 — Is the punctuation off?  It makes sense to me that the gifts of wisdom and knowledge combined would lead to “that all may be taught to be wise and to have knowledge.”  But the existing punctuation suggests it is only the gift of knowledge that accomplishes this.

48:

48:4 — save all you can, get all you can, so in time you can buy land, and a city, for your inheritance.  From time to time an alien world view peaks through the scriptures.  Modern Christians think its dirty and moneygrubbing and unholy to get all  you can.  The moderns who are OK with that are shocked by the idea of trying to create an inheritance.

Personally, the idea of a city as an inheritance has captured my imagination.  What a concept.

I had two dreams.  One about Abinadi and the other about a bloodline aristocracy. (more…)

“Table Talk” is the way us literary gentlemen say “random observations.”

First,

Handle has an approach to virtue that I think is less useful for thinking and systematizing but better for applying.     Basically less accurate in  my opinion but probably handier.

Here is how I think of it. In any situation and context, there is the right decision. We are used to talking about “the narrow path”, but that is walking on a two-dimensional surface, and so deviations are only to the right and left.

Imagine instead that “the narrow path” is a flight plan for a small airplane, and you can divert from it and your “trim could be off” and be going off course in two different ways, which are distinct dimensions. You could be off yaw and going too far to the left or right, or pitch, lacking balance between weight and lift, and going too high or too low.

We are already familiar with Aristotle’s axis of deficiency or excess in any particular virtue. Call that the “yaw” axis.

But for situations of conflict between competing virtues, the “pitch” axis is one of striking the proper balance / temperance / moderation, and the extremes of the axis are “bias” (favoring one virtue too much at the expense of the other), and “indiscriminate” (unjust neutrality, false equivalence, unfair equality over merited equity.)

So, all this is like a recipe for decision making. Decisions happen at human scale and “must fit the pans” of human nature and experience – so you cannot make your cake arbitrarily large or small. But to make it you need the right amount of complementary ingredients, and you need the various ingredients to stay in the right, balanced proportions.

The virtue sets arise naturally in terms of the virtue which pulls you in the opposite direction of the pitfall which awaits you if you become obsessively focused on, or entranced by, one particular objective, and forget to keep it in check.

-thus Handle

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In the master virtue set, there are two types of virtues.  And, yes, we should think of them as types, not as classes or categories.

The best way to understand the types is just by listing their virtues.  (This is how WJT discovered the types, and the lists below are cribbed liberally from him).

(Work in progress.  These classifications may be off, or the general types may be off.  You start with what you have and go from there.  I think the idea of a master virtue set is very appealing,  and I’m mostly sold on WJT’s model for what the master virtue set is, but you could accept the idea of the master virtue set while thinking we have the wrong idea about what the two types of virtues are.

I do notice that the type 1 virtues seem to go big mentally while being constrained emotionally and physically.   Planning ahead, but also recognizing limits and being humble.  Whereas the type 2 are the opposite: expansive personally and emotionally and in ambition, but small in their mental scope.  I worry that we are just accepting our own modern culture’s Jock-Nerd stereotype too much.  On the other hand, there does seem to be some logic behind having a really good understanding of something and therefore recognizing your limits and not being very daring because you are aware of all the ways your efforts can go wrong, and vice versa.

If I had to adopt a different way of categorizing the master virtues, maybe inner v. outer?  Big v. small?).

The two types of vice are along the same lines as the virtues.  Cowardice on the one hand, recklessness on the other, and so on.  Someone who has type 1 virtues will also tend to have type 1 vices.  Ditto for the type 2s.

WJT uses the terms Ahuric for the virtues of passion and strength; Devic for the virtues of control and discipline; Luciferic for the vices of passion and strength; and Ahrimanic for the vices of control and discipline.  I don’t like those terms.

Oriental mysticism used to have cachet.  It no longer does, not in the same way.  The words don’t have intuitive meanings to the western mind.  They are technical but basically randomly technical.  You could make up any combination of phonemes and for even most educated people it would do just as well.  I would rather work with Western types and at a level that is accessible to the middle brow.

Finally, and most objectionably, in latter-day saint revelation Lucifer is clearly “Ahrimanic.”  He is not “Luciferic.”  Milton’s Lucifer is a bold rebel, but the actual one is a fleshless creature of fear and subversion and resentment.

I would look for options in fairy tales and fables.  It would be appealing if the four Pevensie children or the four humors aligned nicely with the master virtue set, but I think they don’t.

Here are some thoughts.  Feel free to disagree with any of this.

The tortoise and the hare — the tortoise is type 1, the hare is type 2. The bear is type 2, the honeybee is type 1. The owl is type 1, the hawk is type 2.

Trickster archetypes are neither one nor the other. They have the cleverness and ability to treat others as means to ends that are type 1, but the impulsiveness and recklessness of a type 2. However, the fox from the Renaud the Fox stories comes close to being a good Type 1 although a little lacking in humility.  The ‘master mind’ is also mostly a type 1, but with type 2 ambition and daring.

Bulls are type 1.

The faustian impulse is interesting. Type 2, but elevated.

Odysseus is type 1 (But not the Odysseus of Tennyson’s Ulysses). Achilles is type 2.  Odysseus lacks humility but he is clever and his ambition is constrained–he is just trying to figure out a way home.  Daring to hear the sirens but making sure you are tied up first is a classic type 1 move.

Gathering is type 1, hunting is type 2.

Washington is type 1, Jackson is type 2.

The hero is a type 2, the wise old mentor is a type 1.

Brahmin is type 1, kshatriya is type 2.

Armor is type 1, the sword is type 2.

Thomas is type 1,  Grant is type 2.  Longstreet is type 1, Jackson and Lee are type 2.

Lies are type 1, boasts are type 2.

Wormtongue and Saruman are type 1. Orcs are type 2.

Denethor is a type 1-ish villain.  Boromir is type 2-ish.

Bilbo and Samwise Gamgee are type 1, in the humble and constrained aspects of it.

Friday morning at 3 AM I woke up with a number of ideas about my virtue charts bubbling through my head. I got up and wrote them down for later posting. Before I did, though, I decided to recap the fundamentals of a virtue chart here.

Then I saw the hand of God at work. JG friend WJT posted a link to his own remarkable work building on the virtue charts, and much of what he had to say deeply complemented my new ideas. I felt that expansive feeling you get when your own work gets supplemented from up high.

But before I get to those, let me just briefly introduce the fundamentals of WJT’s virtue sets. Whereas I had just used the charts as a tool for investigating particular virtues and vices (which is why I called them charts), he perceived that each chart was just a particular application of a fundamental set of relationships between grand categories of virtues and vices. He called it the virtue set, which is the term I will now be adopting. You can read his posts here, which have the basic idea plus a number of additional insights.  You really ought to read his basic idea post, at minimum.  It is masterfully done.

Basically, he sees two main categories of vice, vices of a lack of passion and strength, and vices of uncontrolled passion and strength. He sees two main categories of virtues, virtues of passion and strength, and virtues of control and discipline.  (There are probably better descriptions then I am giving here).  He calls them Luciferic and Ahrimanic and Ahuric and Devic respectively. I don’t like those terms but may end up using them if I cannot come up with better ones. More on that later.  Here is his master diagram.

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I shall desire and I shall find
The best of my desires;
The autumn road, the mellow wind
That soothes the darkening shires.
And laughter, and inn-fires.

White mist about the black hedgerows,
The slumbering Midland plain,
The silence where the clover grows,
And the dead leaves in the lane,
Certainly, these remain.

-thus Rupert Brooke

Awhile back I invented virtue charts.  Its a tool to think more clearly and systematically about virtues and vices.  It draws from the common-sense idea that there are virtues and vices that are opposites.  It adds the Christian insight that most vices are distortions of virtues.  And its adds in Joseph Smith’s deep understanding that even virtues have “opposite” virtues–all knowledge is proved in contraries.  The result is a square.  Put a virtue at one corner.  The two corners on either side of it are going to be vices.  One of those vices is the opposite of the virtue.  The other vice is the distortion of the virtue.  Then the opposite corner is the “opposing” virtue.  Remarkably enough, the vices will also link to it neatly.  The vice that opposed the first virtue will be a distortion of the second virtue, while the vice that distorted the first virtue will be the opposite of the second virtue.

For example–(I am using “bloats” instead of “distorts on this diagram)–

The two opposite virtues make a powerful combination when put together (and one that is very worth thinking about and exploring).  So do the opposite vices.

Comely Modesty is beautiful and testimonial.

Uglified flesh-flaunting is the direction so much pornography or immodesty is headed: tattoos, piercings, self-damage, mutilation.

But virtue charts do not have to be limited to virtues and vices.  They can be used to explore the good and the bad even if they are not the result of deliberate personal choices.

Take comeliness and ugliness for example (more…)

Whoso forbiddeth to marry is not ordained of God.

-D&C 49:15.  “Is not ordained of God” is an interesting choice of words.  It could be “condemned” or “errs” or “is not of me,” but instead its “Is not ordained of God.”  I wonder why.

There may be an esoteric or poetic layer of meaning there.  To be ordained is to be given a direction and a destiny and a future.  What God ordains for you is what He wants to have happen to you in the days to come.  So an underlayer of meaning here may be ‘no marriage, no future.’  Marriage of course also meaning sex, since in the right view they are one and the same.

I was poking around the archives looking for something else and I found this story.  It’s one of G’s stories.  It talks about a Godwatch.

Maybe I didn’t read it when it was published or maybe I just forgot.  I love it.

The Atonement seems to have involved a complete communion between Christ and every moment of every human experience.  Thus he experienced and bore all our sins and their punishments (the sin is usually itself the punishment), all of our failings, illnesses, weaknesses, the whole lot.

The Holy Ghost interpenetrates.  It seems logical that the Holy Ghost would be the means whereby Christ would have so communed.  But the scriptures say nothing about the Holy Ghost being present at the atonement.

Warning: speculation ahead.

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there shall be a great work in the land, even among the Gentiles, for their folly and their abominations shall be made manifest in the eyes of all people.

D&C 35:7

Revealing folly and abominations is a great work.  It is a form of greatness.  Why?

To paraphrase Confucius, all glory begins with the rectification of names.  Glory is a true appreciation of someone’s deeds.  So true glory comes from establishing the truth of each person and their deeds.  Glory consists of the merited love and praise we receive for our goodness.   But where anything depends on the perception of others there is a possibility of a gap between the perception and the thing perceived, love and praise where it is thought to be merited but it is not.

Bringing perception in complete union with reality is a task worth of a God.  Is this why the Holy Ghost, a member of the Godhead, interpenetrates?  Is this why the Atonement seems to involve a total communion between Christ and every man and woman?

Judgment therefore is a form of greatness and Judgment Day is not an arbitrary imposition but a necessary fulfillment of God’s nature and our need for true recognition.  Every kingdom is a kingdom of glory because everyone there knows in the presence of God that they had some worthy principle about them that He, the Almighty, found worthy.

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TFR 1.64, rounded up.  The sixth year in a row of new record lows.

1.64.

These are the levels that had everyone shaking their head about Europe a decade ago.

I do not wish to see this country a country of material prosperity where those who enjoy the material prosperity think only of the selfish gratification of their own desires, and are content to import from abroad not only their art, not only their literature, but even their babies.

-Theodore Roosevelt

How many books out there are plausible, coherent, well-argued, and wrong?

The vast majority of books where you can see the author is wrong or mentally unwell just by reading it gives you an unwarranted confidence in the books where you can’t.

I picked up a young son for lunch.

I wish I had more sons.  Mine are not enough.  It was a joy to be with him.

Now that I am healthier, there are gospel-type experiences, family-type experiences, that are almost unbearably vivid.