In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

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There is a very interesting shift from the kings to the judges that  involves a shift in religious authority and an outbreak of religious entrepreneurialism.  Grant hardy’s ethnic breakdown thesis may be correct but I think it obscures more than it reveals.

Nephite modernity; Lessons from Nephite history ; Nephite civilization cycles

Let’s take a look at some more of the interesting questions and insights from this period.

• Did Abinadi have authority?

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There’s a saying among us that you can’t beat a positive with a negative.  In other words, you can’t beat a vision just by telling people no, you have to supply them with some actual replacement for it.

While I generally agree, I’m not so sure that’s true for the sabbath.  I have found that if I supply the negatives–if I refrain from doing stuff–God supplies the positives.

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From somewhere out there, I think probably SF author Devon Eriksen

I run into these all the time, sometimes in the same discussion from the same person.  And, ahem, may have been guilty of perpetrating them a time or two.

We presume you are all reading the duckstack for the humor, like this week’s heister ratings.  It is after all funnier than the JG.

(Ed.–that’s damning with faint praise, like saying its funnier than a toothache.

Us, primly: Many toothaches are quite droll.)

But once you’ve laughed that over, stick around for the meditation on why God answers small prayers more than big ones.

P.S.  Or maybe its just because there are so many more of them?

HT Sutton

I think that understanding chiasmus is important, because it is part of how related concepts are explained. For instance here, the point about contention is deliberately contrasted with the Holy Ghost. You don’t fully understand it, if you don’t see that.

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Curse words get all their power from us. Any one who uses them is derivative of us. And to think they make fun of us for it? Its like making fun of the farmer for selling some of his food instead of eating it all himself. It’s like making fun of the generator for transmitting all its electricity.

There are two ways the sacrament is present in Lehi’s Dream. The first is the fruit (which is Christ) which is both fleshy and juicy. Blood and flesh of the tree.

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What is the significance of the Nephite monetary system in Alma 11?

We cannot say for sure. Perhaps Mormon was just male-brained and liked esoteric trivia for its own sake (the system he describes does not seem to have been his own). However, we should probably assume that it has symbolic significance.

Why should we assume that?

The Book of Mormon is an extract from a copious collection of sacred and historical records. Our default assumption should be that everything was selected with a purpose by the editor. In fact, the section on the monetary system has every appearance of Mormon adding it in personally.

Recall that ancient societies were almost all massively more inclined to symbolism than ours is.

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(with an unusual insight into the sacrament along the way.)

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The Western way is to define a term.  The definition should be as exact as possible.  There is another way, though, which I got from the ancient Greeks.  You define something by looking at the ideal or the paradigm of that thing.  Then whether you call something similar but not quite ideal by the same term depends on whether making the connection in context is useful or not.

So lets talk about what a covenant is.  We usually casually define it as a contract, but it would be better to think of it as a  contract with enhanced features.  As opposed to the ideal contract, a covenant is a mutual agreement that

1.  is sacred
2. involves oaths
3. is long lasting
4. is goal-oriented, not task-oriented
5. involves a joint goal–there is an outcome that the parties all want to reach
6. creates or reflects a relationship–the parties aren’t arms-length commercial
7. and where the parties do not have to be equals

I had a dream of a huge field next to a pine woods.  It was early twilight.  The trunks were dark but the sky was light.  there was a young couple who fled into the woods from the field.  There were men chasing them who were trying to shoot them.  As they fled the shots started.  They had to stop holding hands and break up to duck behind trees.  The slender pine trunks were just barely enough to offer one person shelter from the bullets.  There was an old rotten shell of the trunk of an oak that was large enough to shelter two, but it was too rotten to stop a bullet.  So the couple fled through the woods from tree to tree crying to each other.  The guns fired on.

An overhead half a phone conversation between two girlchild cousins

Girl: We should be called the Aspen Unicorns!

…

Girl: OK, the Aspen Spies!  But for short just ass!

No one wants to be innocent but everyone loves innocence when they find it.

For no particular reason this time through the Book of Mormon my understanding has been particularly drawn to the historical  narrative of the Book of Mormon as an authentic ancient text.  In that light, I am increasingly convinced that what we have is an extremely typical rise-and-fall arc that many other cultures and civilizations have gone through.

We’ve already covered evidence that the Nephites had a ‘modernity.’  The evidence that they had a fall is blatantly obvious, no one will disagree with that.

But still it isn’t immediately apparent reading the text that we are going through an overall Rise-and-Fall arc and I think there are three reasons why.

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