Disturbances to get gain

Now, it was for the sole purpose to get gain, because they received their wages according to their employ, therefore, they did stir up the people to riotings, and all manner of disturbances and wickedness, that they might have more employ, that they might get money according to the suits which were brought before them; therefore they did stir up the people against Alma and Amulek. (Alma 11:20)

This verse talks about the dangers of law-craft becoming a means of stirring people up to disturbances, in order for the lawyers to get gain, but I think it can apply in other ways too. Anyone who stands to profit from an increase in disturbance may become suspect.

For instance, what good is a big army in peacetime? Preparation is important, but how much is too much? Nibley (who worked in Army intelligence) later wrote of his concern when he saw army leaders being sad when WWII was over because they would be out of a job…until they discovered the idea of little brushfires wars around the world.   Likewise, those who sell weapons have an interest in conflict becoming armed and dangerous.

Disturbance is news, so those who report the news have a sort of motivation not only to find the conflict to report it, but also to continue talking about it and hashing it over as much as possible, all while publicly tsk-tsking over what goes on. The 24-hour news cycle was a model created in the 80s that also created a constant demand for material to report. The news cycle means not only reporting events, but also reporting reaction to those events from all kinds of stakeholders in the story and even those who are not involved. Competition between news providers means they must deliver the latest news in the most compelling manner to stay ahead. They get dollars for capturing eyeballs to sell to advertisers.

Social media enables those who gather a large following to make money from online advertising.

Sharing on social media may start with sharing valuable perspective that may otherwise go unheard, but there is a darker side. When emphasis on conflict becomes a primary means of capturing and holding attention--as followers are gripped with curiosity and want to see what happens next—when a social media person’s involvement is devoted mostly to taking sides in controversies—and followers are encouraged to take action to attack and shame those they consider enemies, then social media advocacy is stirring up disturbance.

I think it behooves us to keep these things in mind and be careful not to let ourselves get stirred up to anger. Part of charity is to not be easily provoked. We need people with those qualities even more now.

As In the Days of Noah

41 But as it was in the days of Noah, so it shall be also at the coming of the Son of Man;

42 For it shall be with them, as it was in the days which were before the flood; for until the day that Noah entered into the ark they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage;

43 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. (Joseph Smith—Matthew 1:41-43)

This statement about how things were in the days of Noah has always puzzled me. Why are eating and drinking and marrying used as statements to encapsulate the wickedness during the days of Noah? What is so bad about eating and drinking and marrying?  On the surface, there isn’t anything wrong.

When I was thinking about this scripture, I thought it was odd that eating and drinking (something that is done a least three times a day in prosperous, plentiful times) is paired with marrying and giving in marriage (something that ideally is only done once in a lifetime).  It realized that pairing those activities together was implying something about their frequency. 

Eating and drinking happens often because we need food and water. But if marrying happens just as often, that really says something about appetites and passions—they are practically unbridled.  It is as though people are marrying and divorcing almost as often as they are feeding themselves. It means marriage has lost its sacredness and is used as a hypocritical cloak for casual sex. It says something about how unstable families and society will be.  

Now, I don't know if that will literally be true or whether it is a hyperbolic statement meant to emphasize hyper-disloyalty and moral decadance.  However, it seems to me that these verses warn us that unbridled gratification of appetites and passions shrinks spiritual awareness to nothing, since these behaviors made people completely blind and deaf to the warnings of the flood in Noah’s day. It will similarly prevent awareness and responsiveness to the signs of Christ’s coming as well.

I ran across a quote by M. Russell Ballard about the influence of the entertainment industry which is related to this: “I believe human sexuality cannot be continually portrayed as just another physical appetite that has to be satisfied—whenever and with whomever the urge strikes—without diminishing respect for God and His commandments.” (“When Shall These Things Be?” Ensign Dec 1996.)

So, while everyone else seems to surrender to their appetites and passions, we must not. We must keep marriage sacred.

The breakdown of family in ancient Egypt

22 And it came to pass when I was come near to enter into Egypt, the Lord said unto me: Behold, Sarai, thy wife, is a very fair woman to look upon;

23 Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see her, they will say—She is his wife; and they will kill you, but they will save her alive; therefore see that ye do on this wise:

24 Let her say unto the Egyptians, she is thy sister, and thy soul shall live.

25 And it came to pass that I, Abraham, told Sarai, my wife, all that the Lord had said unto me—Therefore say unto them, I pray thee, thou art my sister, that it may be well with me for thy sake, and my soul shall live because of thee. (Abraham 2:22-25)

I’ve written about this incident several times I think, but this last time when I came across it I was struck by how this danger to Abraham indicated a breakdown of family in Egyptian society.  It was a society in which those with power were not honoring others’ marriages, but breaking them up by killing one spouse to free the other to marry again, to marry the power player who wanted them.  (I have to wonder if this was a different kind of family breakdown, or the same family breakdown, just further along the path to destruction.)

It is interesting to me that Sarai’s beauty was notable, but Abraham’s looks are never mentioned.  It makes me think that perhaps Abraham was rather plain. And if so, that means Sarai married him because she was able to look below the surface to see his goodness, and she cared more about his good character than marrying someone with good looks.  And the fact that he (a righteous man) chose her too shows that he knew she was a good woman, not just a pretty face.

In contrast to Sarai and Abraham’s relationship that valued character, the Egyptians were really shallow, valuing Sarai only for her looks and for nothing else.  I have to wonder if they thought only good-looking men deserved beautiful women, or whether they thought only Egyptians with sufficient force were allowed to have beautiful women. 

Also, the Egyptians seem to have been hanging on to some semblance of marriage permanence; you can tell at bottom they believed it should last until death, but their society had been corrupted to the point that they were willing to hurry death up to free a beautiful woman from her inconvenient husband.  This is pretty barbaric, and I don’t think that started all at once, but with a gradual slide—obsession with the sensual, loss of emphasis on character, focusing too much on outer appearance, indulgence of desire, and law winking at those taking license.   

The fact that the Lord warned Abraham of the danger and told him how they could protect themselves is very reassuring.  It shows the Lord really does know how to protect marriages and families, and He gives instructions designed for the circumstances.  

 It also struck me recently that the instruction to say that Sarai was his sister may have just seemed like a ruse to protect from the physical danger, but it was actually a spiritual safeguard as well, an important principle for relationships that can actually help men and women keep from falling into the error of objectifying the opposite sex. 

Seeing and treating someone as a brother or sister takes you back to the most basic ways of relating, that of sibling relationships.  Everything about learning to be close and learning to love is there except for the sexual aspect.  (And I’m assuming that those reading have learned to love their siblings and know what I am talking about.)

Perhaps if we find ourselves getting pulled into an objectifying pattern of thinking, we need to practice the sibling frame of reference for a while.  Take a page from Abraham’s experience and say, “She is my sister.”  Or learn from Sarai’s patience with that difficult situation and say, “He is my brother.”  In the church, we do this naturally among those we are not related to; we call each other Sister Johnson or Sister Emily or Brother Clark or Brother Bruce.  We realize we are all brothers and sisters, children of God.  That awareness of the brotherhood and sisterhood of all of us can also help us in our relationships and marriages, though we don’t have to necessarily call each other brother and sister.

 During the time that Abraham and Sarai treated each other as brother and sister, they were an example to the Egyptians. There came a time when it was safe to reveal they were married, and if the Egyptians thought back over how Abraham and Sarai had interacted, they would see how a good marriage is about more than looks and sex. Maybe Abraham and Sarai became instruments in helping improve Egyptian marriage culture through their good example, since examples are the best way to catch the vision of what improvement is possible.

Maybe our good examples of marriage can help today too.

The Societal Trend of Shaming

I ran across an interesting book called Is Shame Necessary?: New Uses for an Old Tool by Jennifer Jacquet that talks about the rise of shaming in society, particularly online through social media. 

Since online shaming seems to be on the rise in society, I wanted to understand shaming better, what causes it, what its uses are perceived to be, and whether there were ways to avert it or recover from it.

Call it what you like—shaming, bullying, persecution, trolling, whatever—the internet has lowered the costs of gossip and shaming and increased its scope and speed like never before.  The power to shame has been distributed to the people and is not longer just the exclusive privilege of opinion leaders and government. 

Shaming involves exposure in front of a crowd in order to damage reputation and incur other negative consequences, such as encouraging others not to cooperate with the shamed individual.  Pillories, dunce hats, branding, tarring and feathering, and other acts were types of shaming used in the past.  Today, Twitter attacks, trolling, online gossip, nasty reviews, angry websites, and other such techniques are forms of shaming.  Backlash of this kind can extend to job loss as companies try to jettison individuals they perceive to be a liability to their reputation.

One reason shaming is used against systemic corruption of companies and large organizations is that the large groups have limited their liability through legal structures and the moral compasses of individuals in the group are undermined, usually by profit motive.  Shaming is used when there seems to be no legal alternative that brings punishment on offenders.

The author was guardedly enthusiastic toward shaming as a technique for social control and policing with respect to ecological and environmental concerns, and seemed to put faith in shaming as a tool for social change.   However, as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I found the enthusiasm for shaming rather alarming.

There is a dark side to shaming that we are probably already aware of—its use over trivial matters, shaming in measures far disproportional to the offense, shaming as contempt for the individual rather than just focusing on the offense, and attacks on human dignity, the permanence of the evidence of digital shaming, the lack of clarity on who is doing the shaming, especially with anonymous attacks, and the real debilitating effect it can have on individuals.

The dark side means that it is far too likely and easy for shaming to become unjust.  While the dogpile happens to the offender, there is no one standing by to blow the whistle and say, “That’s enough; any more would be unjust.”

People may perceive Mormons as having high group cohesion and group mind—meaning the group has intentions and makes plans—more than individuals that merely share an identity (like blue-eyed people or basketball players).  Therefore the church may be seen by others as being more responsible for their collective actions, and thus a more worthy target for shaming for behavior that violates perceived norms.

The church has received its share of shaming in the last few years, especially in the debate over marriage.  Those trying to protect traditional marriage have had their names published in newspapers (to shame and expose them to more shame and attacks), some have had property defaced, some have been attacked online, some have lost jobs.

From another perspective, the church’s practice of refraining from publicizing member excommunications and other disciplinary actions shows that the church does not want ex-members or dis-fellowshipped members to be publically shamed at church.

Considering how innovations in communication bring revolutions to society and considering the growth of the internet, I think shaming as a wider practice is probably not going to go away any time soon. If anything, it will get bigger until it saturates the limited economy that competes for human attention spans.  

The risk of disproportional and trivial shaming makes me think that it would be best for us to stay away doing from any shaming ourselves, since we may not know the full facts, we certainly won’t know how much the offender has already been punished by others.  We don’t want to unknowingly contribute to injustice. It would be awful to face the Lord on judgment day and be confronted with the truth that we had ground the faces of our brothers and sisters in the dust.

When I was reading this book, some scriptures came to my mind and gained new significance with reference to shaming.

3 And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.

4 Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old, and as in former years.

5 And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the Lord of hosts.

6 For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. (Malachi 3:3-6)

The Lord may use the shaming of His people to refine them, to confront them over their sins and oppression. 

But then, of course Satan uses it too for coercive purposes, in which case we just have to stick to our guns.

5 ¶The Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back.

6 I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting.

7 ¶For the Lord God will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.

8 He is near that justifieth me; who will contend with me? let us stand together: who is mine adversary? let him come near to me.

9 Behold, the Lord God will help me; who is he that shall condemn me? lo, they all shall wax old as a garment; the moth shall eat them up. (Isaiah 50:5-9)

4 Fear not, for thou shalt not be ashamed; neither be thou confounded, for thou shalt not be put to shame; for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more . . . .

14 In righteousness shalt thou be established; thou shalt be far from oppression for thou shalt not fear, and from terror for it shall not come near thee.

 15 Behold, they shall surely gather together against thee, not by me; whosoever shall gather together against thee shall fall for thy sake.

 16 Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy.

 17 No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall revile against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord. (3 Nephi 22:4, 14-17)

For your shame ye shall have double; and for confusion they shall rejoice in their portion: therefore in their land they shall possess the double: everlasting joy shall be unto them. (Isaiah 61:7)

These scriptures, especially the ones of Isaiah quoted in the Book of Mormon by the Christ show me that Heavenly Father knows all about the rise of shaming and wanted to give us reassurance.