If you had invested one talent–let’s say around ten thousand dollars–back in the dawn of the Christian era, at a moderate rate of 1% real return compounding, you would now have $5.4 trillion dollars. Almost as much money as USG printed last year.
Haha, just a little joke, friends.

Of course you’d never get that sustained level of interest, not in mortality.

The light of truth. The light of Christ. He is the light of the sun and the power thereof. He is the light of the moon and the power thereof. He is the light of the stars and the power thereof. The earth also, and the power thereof. The light in all things, even the power of God which sitteth upon the throne.

-thus D&C 88:5-13.

Now, one might say truthfully that glory = power plus light. Righteous power = power plus light. But the scriptures say that you cannot even really separate the two concepts. Power without light is ultimately not actually power. Light without power is ultimately not actually light.

Always take your prescriptions. It’s all the fun of the lottery without the horrifying risk of unearned wealth.

D&C 86 says that the “tares” aren’t rooted up because the faith of the “wheat” is weak.

For a long time I have lightly entertained the notion that the date of the Second Coming is variable. I speculated our righteousness can put it off, just like Sodom could have been saved if there were even 10 righteous people there.

But this section says the opposite. It says it is the feebleness of our righteousness that keeps putting off the Second Coming.

Model: the situation keeps getting worse until no one with weak faith is left one way or the other.

Wryly, one might say The beatings will continue until faith improves.

Gresham’s Law of Supply Chains.

Empty containers drive out fulls.

It seems that everyone now agrees that the bottleneck is yard space at the container terminals. The terminals are simply overflowing with containers, which means they no longer have space to take in new containers either from ships or land. It’s a true traffic jam.

— Ryan Petersen (@typesfast) October 22, 2021

I dreamed that I decided to become a novelist. Surprising myself the dreamer (not myself the person in the dream) I cranked out quite a bit of good dreck that got popular. Then my ambitions increased and I decided to become a great novelist. (more…)

Here are a few more insights on righteous dominion. The quality here is high.

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We are all reading D&C 121 this week.

Here are some of the best JG posts on righteous and unrighteous dominion.

They are really good.

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it must needs be that there be an organization of my people, in regulating and establishing the affairs of the storehouse for the poor of my people, both in this place and in the land of Zion—

4 For a permanent and everlasting establishment and order unto my church, to advance the cause, which ye have espoused, to the salvation of man, and to the glory of your Father who is in heaven;

5 That you may be equal in the bonds of heavenly things, yea, and earthly things also, for the obtaining of heavenly things.

6 For if ye are not equal in earthly things ye cannot be equal in obtaining heavenly things;

-thus D&C 78:3-6

Like some of you, I have developed an allergy to the concept of equality, as who wouldn’t if the whipmasters shouted “equality” with each blow on you of the lash.  But that is the fault of the whipmasters, not the (sadly much abused) concept.

Paradoxically, I have become more alive to the idea of a group of people joining together as peers because of some great animating friendship and cause.  Like it says right there in those verses, “to advance the cause.”

But that isn’t the point of this post.

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How did I miss this gem from SPDI?

On Pills, Blue and Red

Here is an analogy I don’t think I’ve ever seen made (though it must have been): the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil <=> the Matrix’s “Red Pill.”

Something is lost when you start chowing down on red pills. You gain knowledge, but you lose innocence.

Adapting yourself to the world is (by definition) a utilitarian endeavor. We can become uglier even as we become more successful.

That’s the start.  He then treks off into Adam and Eve, sex roles, and on and on.

The stuff about sex roles strikes me both as deeply wrong, but also in some way I cannot put my finger on, a lot more right than my current notions.

What if you are the hero farm boy in a fantasy novel, but there is no Dark Lord of Darkness for you strike down, no One Ring to throw into the cracks, not even a Mt. Doom?  Just creeping malice and sludge and miasma and mediocrity?

In circles where manhood still has nominal rhetorical value, there is a tendency to say

Real men do X

Real men don’t do Y

Where X and Y are whatever the speaker happens to be for or against.

Real men brush their teeth

Real men don’t disrespect their wives

Don’t mistake us, my poppets.  We are four square for brushing your teeth and respecting your wife, preferably at the same time if possible.

But we are against mindlessly inserting “real men” in front of every piece of good advice (or, sometimes, bad advice).

It comes across as manipulative and meaningless and makes the concept of manhood pretty empty.

What there needs to be is some connection to an actual concept of manhood.

Elder Holland makes the connection here

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I love the wind in the mountains

I love the wind in the hills

I love the ripple of water

over the high mountain rills.

I’ve made a bed near the willows

A bed on the sun-heated grass

I’ll watch the light on the water

and watch my thoughts ambling pass

and let the day ambling pass

and let the day ambling pass

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Imagine some stodgy old town that has stodgy old town meetings.

Except one day some incredibly brave youth stands up and says something incredibly brave that shocks literally everybody, maybe something like the truth is that there is no truth. He says everyone should just look out for themselves and never mind the rest, lie a little if they need to, there is no truth and morality so do whatever it takes to be comfortable and have a few of life’s little pleasures.  It’s so brave because he may well lose his job and his fiancee over what he is saying.

That is the fundamental myth of modernity.  Society LARPs it every day.

The myth is in the air we breathe, so much so that I’ve struggled to write it in a way that shows it’s absurdity.  The truth is that there is no truth …get out.

By him, and through him, and of him, the worlds are and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God

-thus Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon

Worlds, plural.  He is the savior of multiple worlds.

But I want to focus on the begotten part.  There is a lot of interesting mysticism in the scriptures about how we becomes sons and daughters of Christ, how the Son is the Father and so on.  But this revelation first emphasizes the Son’s status as the Begotten of the Father and then says that we are begotten sons and daughters of Father through the Son.  To me, the obvious answer is just that we take on Christ’s identity.  We are part of Christ, we are the body of Christ, and so in becoming Him, we become what He is–the Son of God, the Daughter of God.