Though I have never read Neal Stephenson’s book, Cryptonomicon, I ran across the following passage from the novel and found it intriguing from an LDS perspective:
Weirdly, the ones who adopted the sternest and most terrible Old Testament moral tone were the Modern Language Association types who believed that everything was relative and that, for example, polygamy was as valid as monogamy. The friendliest and most sincere welcome he’d gotten was from Scott, a chemistry professor, and Laura, a pediatrician, who, after knowing Randy and Charlene for many years, had one day divulged to Randy, in strict confidence, that, unbeknownst to the academic community at large they had been spiriting their three children off to church every Sunday morning, and had even had them baptized. . . .
Randy hadn’t the faintest idea what these people thought of him and what he had done, but he could sense right away that, essentially, that was not the issue, because even if they thought he had done something evil, they at least had a framework, a sort of procedure manual, for dealing with transgressions. To translate it into UNIX system administration terms (Randy’s fundamental metaphor for just about everything), the post-modern, politically correct atheists were like people who had suddenly found themselves in charge of a big and unfathomably complex computer system (viz. society) with no documentation or instructions of any kind, and so whose only way to keep the thing running was to invent and enforce certain rules with a kind of neo-Puritanical rigor, because they were at a loss to deal with any deviations from what they saw as the norm. Where as people who were wired into a church were like UNIX system administrators who, while they might not understand everything, at least had some documentation, some FAQs and How-tos and README files, providing some guidance on what to do when things got out of whack. They were, in other words, capable of displaying adaptability.
My initial reaction is that Stephenson is right. Is he? From an LDS perspective, does the Restored Gospel allow us to better adapt to deviation? Should it? Does the rejection of a fixed framework actually lead to the kind of puritanical enforcement of arbitrary rules Stephenson describes?
Does adopting a rigid framework allows us to be more flexible?
How might Stephenson’s UNIX administration analogy be extended to an LDS view of Apostasy/Restoration and Modern Revelation?
Jon, interesting thoughts. I was just reading an article Adam linked to over at T&S, and found this language quite relevant:
Academic life, like the rest of social life, unfolds within a frame of rules and permissions. At one end, there are things that one must (or must not) do; at the other end, there is rule of whim. The middle range, in which behavior is neither explicitly governed by rules but is not entirely free, is that realm governed by what the British jurist John Fletcher Moulton, writing in the early 1920s, called “Obedience to the Unenforceable.†It is a realm in which not law, not caprice, but virtues such as duty, fairness, judgment, and taste hold sway. In a word, it is the “domain of Manners,†which “covers all cases of right doing where there is no one to make you do it but yourself.†A good index of the health of any social institution is its allegiance to the strictures that define this middle realm. “In the changes that are taking place in the world around us,†Moulton wrote, “one of those which is fraught with grave peril is the discredit into which this idea of the middle land is falling.†One example was the abuse of free speech in political debate: “We have unrestricted freedom of debate,†say the radicals: “We will use it so as to destroy debate.â€
The repudiation of obedience to the unenforceable is at the center of what makes academic life (and not only academic life) today so noxious. The contraction of the “domain of Manners†creates a vacuum that is filled on one side by increasing regulation—speech codes, rules for all aspects of social life, efforts to determine by legislation (from the right as well as from the left) what should follow freely from responsible behavior—and on the other side by increased license. More and more, it seems, academia (like other aspects of elite cultural life) has reneged on its compact with society. What, as Lenin memorably asked, is to be done?
(read the article here)
Well, it’s obvious that we’re Free Software. We have access to the source. We’re encouraged to share others and give back to the community. We’re a return to the original way of doing things, even though the established churches (proprietary software) don’t want to believe it and keep trotting out evidence (commercially funded studies) that a) we’re either lying or delusional and b) obviously way off base.
(Hmm, now that I’m done writing this, I’m not sure how firmly my tongue is planted in my cheek anymore. In the beginning, it was completely tongue in cheek, but now I can see some parallels that almost make sense.)
It seems that access to the source is more access to the developer who occasionally listens and gives you vague bits of code and directions for using the API.
If it was Opensource then we’d have full source code in the sense of being able to look at everything (which we can’t) but then we’d have a hard time getting much feedback and there would be a very good chance of the whole project getting abandoned.
Great post. There’s a paradox here I don’t have an answer for. In religion, orthodoxy always leads to apostasy. It locks in inevitable mistakes and doesn’t allow for corrective periodic reform to clean up messes later. This is definitely true in the LDS church. Look how ridiculously long it took to correct King Follet Sermon, Adam-G-d, Mark of Cain, etc. In the case of Adam-G-d, for years the band-aid was blatant denial. I’m still waiting for us to reform on the WofW as a requirement; it’s become our circumcision, an artificial and arbitrary roadblock to entrance into the Kingdom. It’s really ironic that the ancient church’s BY (Paul) was the radical who reformed the church on circumcision.
Umm. What do you mean correct the KFD? You mean the bit about the resurrection of children?
People who go to church would never enforce arbitrary rules puritanically. Oh, wait a second…
Yeah – I like the KFD. It’s also still taught with somewhat regularity. What needs to be corrected?
On first read, I cannot disagree with Steve (FSF) more. Perhaps if he fleshed out what he meant by “orthodoxy always leads to apostasy” a bit more, then I might disagree with him less. The WofW is in need of reform? It wasnt until the 20th Century it was rigorously applied as a requirement to the general membership. And how many Mormon vegetarians are there? I can count on one hand the number I have met. According to Steve’s model the LDS Church would have to lapse into orthodoxy and enforce vegetarianism, even though it is only endorsed and not required, before it could “reform” itself and drop it as a requirement. How is the prohibition of blatantly self-destructive behavior “artificial and arbitrary”?
Regardless, the analogy Stephenson is pushing is based on a contrast between the religious and the atheist, not LDS Restored Gospel and the old school Christian. According to his view, pretty much any type of religion would serve as a framework that allows for change and acceptance of change, which, he suggests, atheism lacks. He is arguing secular atheism creates arbitrary rules of conduct under which there is no opportunity for change and acceptance (i.e., repentance). The individual who fails to conform is ostracized (i.e., if youre not politically correct then youre obsolete).
I dont find this a compelling argument in practice. In theory perhaps, but not in practice. Humans don’t act in such a fashion that their behavior is consistent with their purported belief systems. Atheists forgive because they know what comes around goes around, and if you live in a glass house you shouldnt throw stones, and all those other secular aphorisms. Any smart self-promoter learns quickly that going down in a ball of flame is undesirable, and letting people off the hook for their faux pas is a great way to manipulate them in the future. And thats whether they are of the religious or secular classification.
People naturally act out of self-interest, and the gospel is designed to get people to transcend that. Secular atheism encourages people to delve deeper into it and stay there (read the Humanist Manifesto II, the secular atheist’s ideal piece of sophistry). But, that doesnt mean all secular atheists are entirely selfish, any more than it means all Christians are entirely selfless. In theory they should be, but in practice they arent.
Are you aware of “The Inverted Cone Theory?”
For a wild paraphrase, read on: The base of the cone, the large circular opening is placed downward, its space allowing for variety of behaviors and beliefs. As one progresses “upward” in comprehension and knowledge–masters rules that work and applies them, the space is more and more restricted until at the apex, another cone is connected by its tiny tip to the first cone’s apex. (I assume that one would be at their most judgmental/hypocritical best by this “point.”)
As one passes through the most restricted areas, one’s capacity and ability are at first still restricted to a small arena of choice, but this arena increases as one progresses “upward” still–until reaching the largest arena and beyond–having mastered the known, one comes to the edge of the unknown, with the capacity to create–even apply rules in ways one wouldn’t have approved of in the beginning?