The path of ascent and desire is spiritually dangerous.  Nonetheless, if there is anything virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.

Many years ago I had a dream.  I suppose I must have read Folk of the Fringe at the time.

In the dream Deseret was an Empire in the inner mountain west.  It was a vaguely post apocalyptic setting.  At least, there was no hint that anything else existed besides us fading off into wastelands and wilderness.

The empire was pretty loose but it did use access to temple rites as a means of keeping the periphery tied in.  A hydraulic despotism but with living water.

When Moses gathered his people together at the edge of the promised land, he was astounded by their numbers.

The Lord your God hath multiplied you, and, behold, ye are this day as the stars of heaven for multitude.

-Deut. 1:10.

His reaction?  More!

(The Lord God of your fathers make you a thousand times so many more as ye are, and bless you, as he hath promised you!)

-Deut. 1:11.

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Time is a flood.  Who can tell where we flotsam are going?

Who can say what day when you or I will be washed up on some bank while the flood goes furiously on.

As happens from generation to generation, a child was born with all of the physical markers that characterized a Child of Destiny.  The child would grow with the extraordinary gifts that would allow it to drive out the dark and corruption that had snuck in since the last Child.  Just like in every tale, there would be quests, prophecies, and strange daring adventures! The child would be able to change the world and usher in a transformed era of creation, innocence, and growth.

The child’s parents promptly bought it destiny-neutral clothing toys and books so that it would not be biased in favor of becoming a world changing hero.

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I found this very intriguing sampling of the Overfitted Brain Hypothesis for why we dream.

In effect, the hypothesis is that dreams are supposed to prevent us from being too overly adapted to our specific waking workaday world.

The “overfitting” is by analogy to machine learning.  When an AI is being trained on a training data set, one danger is “overfitting”–the algorithm might get so good at parsing the training data set that it can’t handle the actual new data it was meant for.

This is a secular hypothesis, but it caught my eye because it fits with my own speculation about why mortality includes sleeping.  I think that God may have given us sleep as a way of interrupting our mortal experience so we don’t get stuck in a rut–so we get lots and lots of bites at the apple, as it were.  In other words, the scriptural wisdom of “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” or the consolatory folk wisdom of “tomorrow is another day.”

Ditto our hypothesis about why mortality is so richly complicated.  A straightforward test of one’s agency could probably be much simpler than this.  But all this immense variety keeps us from limiting ourselves.  God wants us to be good and great, not good and reduced.

Yet ofttimes a secret something whispered, “you are a stranger here.”  It whispered, “this is just a training data set.  Don’t overadapt.”

I believe our taste for novelty and adventure is at bottom our subconscious awareness that we are really much bigger than this.

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The corruptions of bullying are too well known to all of use from media and personal experience to need elaborating.  Yet bullying as we know it seems first to be a product of the grade-segregated public schools, which many have suggested have highly artificial social characteristics, and second to be a product of social media, which we also know well to be unnaturally distorted social environments.

Is bullying merely a product of damaged environments as with hens in too confined spaces?  Or is there a natural form of bullying that potentially has a genuine social role?  The second option, as foreign as it is to our own experience and preconception, deserves consideration.

History has too many examples of of hostility to outsiders to excite our wonder, and when bullying is just hostility to outsiders it would not be unusual.  More interesting is bullying within the group. Bullying within the group could sometimes be a competition for resources internally, just as bullying outside the group can probably be explained as driven at some psychological level as a competition for resources.  Within the group, the competition could be directly over actual resources or over social status.

Against that form of bullying we can contrast bullying that is meant to strengthen the group.  Let us continue to call it bullying though a better term should exist.  In conditions of competition, a weak member of the group weakens the group.   Bullying would then either strengthen the group in a ruthless way by driving the weak member out or strengthen the group in a positive way by spurring the weak member on to self improvement.  Historically Anglo literature had a trope where eventually the bullied person turns on the bully and either earns either the respect of the bully himself or of the larger group of whom the bully is a lower-status member.  This trope appears to be a form of group-strengthening bullying.

This illustration comes from the book Farmer Boy, where the teacher has to prove himself against bullies.

What does it mean to take responsibility for your own learning? Look for possible answers in Elder Bednar’s statement and in the following scriptures: John 7:17; 1 Thessalonians 5:21; James 1:5–6, 22; 2:17; 1 Nephi 10:17–19; 2 Nephi 4:15; Alma 32:27; and Doctrine and Covenants 18:18; 58:26–28; 88:118. What do you feel inspired to do to be more active in learning the gospel?

–Come Follow Me manual.

We had our best family scripture study of the year yesterday (haha, but also the best family scripture study of the last 365 days).  It was wide ranging, heartfelt, had contributions from everyone, and had the presence of the Holy Ghost.

One thing that impressed me was 2 Nephi 4:15, from the section above.

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In our unrelenting efforts to improve the customization of your Junior Ganymede blog experience, this year you get to choose our blog New  Year’s resolutions for us.  Please tell us the goal you choose for us to have adopted this year.  For the best experience, please also draft a graceful apology for when we do not achieve the goal.

I reckon them Jareedites and mebbe that feller Nephi too were typos and shadders for space explorashun.

It can be a fun exercise some time to ask your friends for suggestions for a pseudonym or handle that fits your personality.

Will is a bricklayer, mortaring together deeds.

Repentance is the appalling arrogance of the Faustian will that all one’s bricks shall be laid into the same wall.

https://nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste

Even with the most conservative estimate, assuming a biological implementation of all persons, the potential for one hundred trillion potential human beings is lost for every second of postponement of colonization of our supercluster.

If we could, this is the kind of thing we should take more seriously.

But large scales are beyond our grasp, let alone infinity and eternity.

100 trillion potential gods

Each making 100 trillion potential universes

The most trifling sin has an infinite weight of consequence.

To save you, just to save you alone, the Christ must bear the weight of universes.

Our God, heaven cannot hold him,

nor earth sustain;

heaven and earth shall flee away

when he comes to reign:

in the bleak midwinter

a stable place sufficed

the Lord God Almighty,

Jesus Christ.

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Ladies and Gentlemen,

the JG is pleased to announce that we have found an amazing bargain on Christmas messages from one of our Chinese suppliers. The size might be a littler smaller than you are accustomed to but we feel the warmth and humor and frankly the bargain price of this message will please everyone.

Even better, it comes disassembled, so you can have fun putting the pieces together with your whole family!

Love
Hot Chocolate
Snort
Comic Misunderstanding
The Holy Family
Mary Christmas
a Star
Wry Touch

You are welcome.

Batteries not included. No returns. In event of missing pieces, please write to Guanxhiou Associates LTD, 512060, No.915-925 Huanshi North, Buezu; please allow 4-6 weeks for your prompt reply. If you cut yourself in the process of opening the package, seek medical advice.  Not responsible for any comic misunderstandings that may occur as a result of improper assembly.