I put up another track: fridayismyweekend.googlepages.com

the heterodoxy that was always already there

First off, Ash Sanders wrote a pretty tremendous essay over at Project Deseret that I recommend you read. This post is not so much a response as a descendant of a common ancestor--the direction that I take with what I feel is a shared inspiration. So read it, compare, comment, share, contemplate, marinate, respond, translate, etc.

I'll start with a fantasy I have concerning the Church. I see the history of the Church as a linear progression. The endpoint that I want to see involves more spiritual autonomy for individual units in the Church--families, wards, stakes, individuals. This is not to say that we buck the rule of stewardship, but instead become more proactive in our local spiritual pursuits. Currently, we take all our cues from the First Presidency. It's not a bad thing, but I look forward to a day when we take more responsibility for our spiritual development and don't wait for something to be written in the official Handbook of Instructions before we do it. Think of Moses' statement "Would that all the LORD's people were prophets."

And I think it will come to be a logistical necessity. A worldwide Church cannot micromanage the affairs of every individual stake across the globe and still effectively meet each individual need. I can see the First Presidency becoming more and more general, leaving the specific decisions to more localized leadership. Maybe we adopted Israelites are too spiritually stunted to have this kind of pluralism work for us, but when we get serious about taking the Gospel to the House of Israel, I dream of how much the principles of the Church can take off and flourish in unprecedented ways in the hands of those for whom it was originally meant.

To be clear, I'm not talking about matters of doctrine or receiving revelation for those above your sphere of influence. I'm talking about matters of policy, the nuts and bolts of Church attendance, such as how many hours and when church meetings are, what kinds of musical numbers are appropriate, who home teachers and visiting teachers visit, the kinds and formats of sunday school lessons, the venue for church meetings (out in nature?? It was good enough for the restoration of the Priesthood and early temple ordinances). These are just examples of Church policy that have been determined largely through tradition and the initiative of interested individuals. Realizing that such things and more are simply policy and not necessarily the result of direct revelation opens us up to imagine more possibilities for worship.

But at the same time, we get nervous about playing with such things. We aren't accustomed to making these decisions for ourselves. Again, these are matters of policy, but we blur the lines between doctrine and policy to an extreme degree.

The funny thing is, Mormons are so so comfortable in complexity and ambiguity, the kind of complexity and ambiguity that would accompany a pluralistic, global Church. We just aren't comfortable articulating it.

Think about it. What is hard and fast in our doctrine? The commandments. Except for when Nephi is told to break one... Obedience, then. Except when Adam and Eve are heroes precisely for their disobedience... Revelation. Except for when the prophets speak as people (or make mistakes *cough*priesthood ban*cough*)... The scriptures. Except for the mistranslations of the Bible...

It is in this spirit of complexity that I believe Joseph Smith said that the Book of Mormon is "the most correct book of any on Earth" instead of testifying of its absolute "Truth." Or when Moroni writes that "whatsoever thing is good is just and true" (Moroni 10:6) or that we "shall know that these things are true; for it persuadeth men to do good" (Ether 4:11); there is a pragmatist flavor to those verses. The more I think about the exceptions, loopholes, and contradictions, the more I begin to wonder, What exactly is this Church about? (Btw, I've always been impressed by how many Biblical puzzles Joseph Smith solved without turning the Church into the Bible Solution Church. Think about baptism for the dead, for instance; churches have been founded on much less).

Throughout the history of the LDS Church, emphasis on doctrine--not to mention doctrines and ceremonies themselves--has shifted rather comfortably. The social justice bent of the early Saints is all but gone (but coming back!). For all the supposed rigidity of Mormons, how do we explain this dynamism, this collective spiritual sojourn? What exactly do we have for a mooring?

What I'm getting at is that the soil is there for this kind of spiritual flowering. We've been comfortable all along with twists, turns, and radical departures. Now we only need to realize that the Spirit, that thing that's led us along this whole time, is present with every worthy (by "worthy" I mean worthy, not perfect) Saint.

I'm beginning to rethink my ideas on intellectualism in the Church. Maybe it's the average folk in the Church who are the nimble-minded ones, and it's we intellectuals who want so badly to cling to dogmas. Like the protagonist of Pi, we're obsessed with finding the one pattern that will unlock all the secrets. But it doesn't exist, and it's the faithful, churchgoing Saints who are agile enough to handle that, hence their impatient scorn for those who want to distill the Church's expansive doctrine to a single formula.

But still, why are we so uncomfortable in dealing with ambiguity? I hope that it's a cultural leftover, and the rising, postmodern generation in the Church will be able to put sustaining faith in a prophet who makes mistakes, will be able to glean truth from a temple ceremony of dubious origins, will be able to cling to what is excellent and forgo any pretense of absolute perfection. I think of Dan Jones' response to a trick played on him by Joseph Smith--"I'd rather have a drunken prophet than no prophet at all." We've taken the drunk prophet every time; my hope is that in the next few decades we'll stop telling ourselves he wasn't drunk.

swine flu

I realize 100+ people have died of swine flu. I'm not trying to be insensitive. But before we rush off panicking about a new TV-movie-style pandemic (like *gasp* SARS or *the horror* avian flu), I want to bring up a couple points that aren't getting mentioned a whole lot in swine flu coverage.

First of all, factory farms' role in this. The Mexican government is investigating CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) because these are breeding grounds for disease--as many animals as possible crammed into as little space as possible. To combat this, farmers load up these animals with antibiotics. Surprise, surprise, the common swine flu virus mutated to become resistant to such antibiotics. Not to mention the selective breeding that is ruining the natural variety of domesticated animals that traditionally provided a counter to such diseases; a greater genetic variety reduces the chances that diseases can wipe out entire populations.

Secondly, can we get a little perspective? Again, I'm not trying to be flippant about people dying, but 2.2 million children in developing nations under the age of 5 die from diarrhea every year. Each year, 350,000,000 - 500,000,000 million cases of malaria occur worldwide every year, with 1,000,000 deaths stemming from it. That's a whole hell of a lot more than the 100-something people who died from the bird flu "pandemic." When are we going to get up in arms about tropical disease?

FIMY reviews Straight Up!

I performed my new stuff for the first time live this Friday night. It was my second performance ever as Straight Up! How did it sound? Not so great to these ears. But mostly I really don't know it sounded; I was kind of busy doing stuff. Besides, I know how it's supposed to sound...

Like this: fridayismyweekend.googlepages.com

(I posted a new track, "Justice and I," a song I wrote long, long ago for my first self-recording).

speaking up day XI: meat

Ok, April's speaking up day concerns an area where you can have a lot of impact without waiting for the various procedures and roadblocks that accompany policy change. You can vote with your dollars, in other words. It's meat consumption, and if you know me, you know I'm pretty low-key and non-intrusive about my personal decision to be vegetarian, but today I'm going to lay it all on the line and give you a thousand good reasons why you should try to curb your meat consumption.

Before we get started, I'm not advocating becoming vegan by dinner tonight. I personally started slow: no red meat, then no factory farm meat, then no cooking with meat, then just fish, then no meat at all. The process took about 8 months. If I had thought during that time, "What difference does this make?" I probably wouldn't have continued into vegetarianism, where I am today (happily). What I did focus on was how wrong our industrial food system is, and that gave me the motivation to (slowly) change my habits. So here come a flood of different reasons:

Environmental:

If you're concerned about climate change (you know, melting of the ice caps, disruption of centuries-old weather patterns, famines, floods, polar bears and puffins and shit dying, etc.) you can buy a hybrid car and marginally lessen your carbon footprint, or you can stop contributing to a bigger greenhouse gas producing industry: livestock. Land animals have a bigger global warming impact than transport. The methane that they produce is 20 times more effective at trapping heat than the carbon dioxide from cars. According to Environmental Defense, if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week, the greenhouse gas savings would be equivalent to taking 500,000 cars off the roads.

If you're not concerned about climate change, there is still the huge impact of livestock production on an increasingly-strained water supply. It takes 100,000 liters of water to produce 1 kilogram of beef. Agriculture accounts for 87% of all US fresh water consumption. If you want to reduce your water impact, you can stop taking showers altogether, or you can cut meat out of your diet. Additionally, there is the issue of concentrated waste from factory farms seeping into and contaminating water supplies.

Maybe you're concerned about land use. In 1900, about 10% of grain produced worldwide was fed to animals. Today, it's 60%. The raising of livestock (21 billion land animals slaughtered each year) takes up more than 2/3 of agricultural land and 1/3 of land total. It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef. While it is true that some livestock forage on plants like grass that aren't edible to humans, factory farming relies on grains that could go towards feeding humans, essentially throwing calories down the tubes.

Ethical:

The above concerns bleed into issues of world hunger. A Cornell scientist estimates that the U.S. could feed 800 million people with the grain that we feed to livestock. Naturally, there are plenty more concerns than simple grain production in solving world hunger, but a shift towards a plant-based diet would certainly not hurt. Besides, if the rate at which the world consumes meat and feeds meat with grains edible to humans continues to increase, it will eventually become quite literally a choice between eating meat and allowing others to live.

Spiritual:

"Flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly;

And it is pleasing unto me that they should not be used, only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine" (D&C 89:12-13 aka Word of Wisdom, emphasis added).

"Wo be unto man that sheddeth blood or that wasteth flesh and hath no need" (D&C 49:21).

"Blood shall not be shed, only for meat, to save your lives; and the blood of every beast will I require at your hands" (JST Gen. 9:11).

"I exhorted the brethren not to kill a serpent, bird, or an animal of any kind during our journey unless it became necessary in order to preserve ourselves from hunger" (Joseph Smith).

"Kindness to the whole animal creation and especially to all domestic animals is not only a virtue that should be developed, but is the absolute duty of mankind ... It as an unrighteous thing to treat any animal cruelly" (Joseph F. Smith).

"So we see that the Lord intends to save, not only the earth and the heavens, not only man who dwells upon the earth, but all things which he has created" (Joseph Fielding Smith).

"I would like to add some of my feelings concerning the unnecessary shedding of blood and destruction of life ... And not less with reference to the killing of innocent birds is the wildlife of our country that live upon the vermin that are indeed enemies to the farmer and to mankind. It is not only wicked to destroy them, it is a shame, in my opinion. I think that this principle should extend not only to the bird life but to the life of all animals" (Spencer W. Kimball).

Factory farming is a clearly cruel practice. As meat-eaters, we perpetuate the cruel treatment of God's creations*. According to scripture, we will be held accountable for the blood we shed or cause to be shed that isn't necessary for our survival. Eating meat simply because we like it makes wanton use of creation. Plus, the rampant waste in our industrial food system makes ungrateful use of what the Lord has given us, breaking the Word of Wisdom.

Health:

For most people, eating meat is unnecessary. It's an individual determination. Consistent with the warning in the Doctrine & Covenants, I am not forbidding the eating of meat. Humans (you and your health) are more important than animals. But for the vast majority of people, meat is not only unnecessary, but not as healthy as a vegetable diet. As the above scriptures don't treat this directly, there is also the story of Daniel, where he and his friends who refuse meat and eat only grain are judged to be healthier than the control group who ate meat.

If you want modern day science demonstrating the same conclusion, there is no lack. Most notable is the comprehensive China Study, which demonstrated that a diet that relies more on vegetable proteins than animal proteins reduces the risk of cancer, diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.

Additionally, there is the additive component in factory farm meat. When you eat that shit you're also eating the growth hormones and loads of antibiotics that they feed those animals because they raise them in such cramped, unhealthy, unsterile conditions. You have to cook ground beef and not steak because when they grind beef they get some of the rind and consequently feces in the meat. That's just plain dirty.

Conclusion:

These are the reasons why I'm happier not eating meat. Also, since I stopped eating meat, I've actually felt stronger. When I ate meat, I would feel shaky and faint fairly regularly. I rarely feel that way since I went vegetarian. I get plenty of protein, and I've had no problem exercising, lifting weights, running long distances, etc.

If you're still wondering how your decision to cut back on meat (or whatever personal decision this post may have prompted you to consider) would make a difference, consider this: if you're reading this post, you're probably one of my friends, and (nearly) all of my friends are educated, intelligent, sophisticated people who are or will be leaders in some sphere or another. At some point, our consumption of the world's resources will have to undergo a change by necessity. You will be a part of that, undoubtedly. Your decision to address issues like this today instead of ten years from now can have a significant impact, not only in terms of your own personal consumption but in the people you influence and the global conversation of which you are a prominent part. To paraphrase Elder Zosima from the Brothers Karamazov, the whole world is an ocean, and every action we make has repercussions across the globe. Love, Bob.

*As a non-vegan, I realize I'm susceptible to this same criticism. Let this underscore the point that I'm not trying to be on some high horse condemning omnivores. It's a process, and I'm at a point in that process where I'm not ready for a completely vegetarian (vegan) diet.

super midnight

Super Midnight EP is now ready. Like before, I'm doing it one track at a time. Check out "The Things I Would Whisper in Your Ear" at fridayismyweekend.googlepages.com.

disintegration

I’ve been a little out of sorts since I got back to Utah. No, it’s not Mormon insanity like old times. It was/is a feeling of a lack of control.

The first and most overwhelming source was my parents. I’m a grown-ass man, but still my mom can’t go 2 hours without offering to do something for me. If you’re going to call me an ingrate for complaining about my mom doing all of my laundry for me when I got back, then you clearly don’t know what I’m talking about. To help you, think of how you felt if you’ve ever been micromanaged at work. Now extend that feeling to every single thing you do in your everyday life. On Thursday, I felt so helpless I couldn’t even motivate myself to do something as simple as get my address changed with the post office. The first time I felt normal since being back is when I went grocery shopping and made myself lunch on Friday.

The lack of motivation also came from the sense from my dad that getting a job is just par for the course, nothing special or praiseworthy. Ok, maybe it’s not, but then again, I wasn’t recruited straight out of college like my dad. It’s really hard to get myself pumped for something where if I succeed, I will be adequate at best.

I’ve been thinking a lot these last few days about how artists are a self-destructive breed*, mainly because I’ve been feeling self-destructive. (I’m not nearly so emo as to like cut myself or anything, so don’t worry.) I’ve tried to write music because I want to communicate how I’m feeling, and it’s not working. I don’t have the right genre. I’ve been wanting to write like crazy, but haven’t felt like I have the right format. Poetry is lame, short stories aren’t confessional enough.

And I was thinking, of course artists are self-destructive. We demand so much of our artists. We want nothing less than stark, revealing honesty that is equal parts entertaining and innovative. We want poet-shamans and lovers who are good at their craft and also sophisticated and wise. Of course, if we don’t like what they produce, we have no obligation to buy the emotions that they’ve irreverently turned into product, threatening them not only with rejection but with financial ruin.

Plus, artists by their creative nature are maladaptive. The people who are successful at life are the ones who are able to distill patterns out of chaos and live in ways that keep them out of harm’s way. For artists, these patterns look an awful lot like rules, which are infinitely less fun than the chaos at the fringes of civilization and order. Creativity plays with rules, rearranges patterns, flouts convention. Success lives firmly within the boundaries that creativity plays with, and so being an artist and a human requires a balancing act that the social pressures of being an artist can upset in the direction of self-destruction and willful emotional handicapping. I really like seeing musicians smile. I feel like the musicians playing these days are more unabashedly happy than the perpetually angsty 90s rockers, both mainstream and underground. Even Trent Reznor lightened up. Maybe it’s a collective exhaustion with all the grimness, or maybe it’s a byproduct of the collapse of the major record labels, forcing musicians to balance themselves out by being their own businesspersons.

There is always the fear that happiness isn’t as fun to write about, so being self-destructive is better for (art) business. Luckily, I exploded that myth for myself by being perfectly stable and responsible while in Michigan and still writing and recording two ep’s worth of music (btw the new Straight Up! Ep, which you should care about, is going to be called Super Midnight, and should be ready to be rolled out within the week, provided I can keep one of the files from freaking out long enough to properly mix it). Besides, working on my music has really kept me sane since I've been back. It's given me a sense of control.

When comparing myself over the last few days to my Ann Arbor self, I’m surprised by how even-keeled I was in Ann Arbor--I knew practically nobody and was almost entirely anti-social. The difference, I think, is that while I didn’t have the same amounts of love in Ann Arbor, I also didn’t have to meet anyone’s expectations. Everyone here knows me, and what’s worse, they’ve known me for years. YEARS. I know I don’t seem like I’ve changed a lot in the last 3 years, but for me, I’m a completely different person. I’ve always been particularly sensitive to people’s expectations of me, and I don’t like disappointing them. So every person that I know here represents another instance in which I have to limit myself so as to not throw anyone for a loop. And the feeling’s the keenest when it’s the dudes, because I feel most limited by standards of machismo.

I’ve had a really good time with my friends in the short time I’ve been back, and I love so many people here and have felt really loved. I really like being stupid and silly and just having fun. But beyond that, I need plenty of personal space.

I really liked my anonymity in Michigan, because it gave me so much control over how I presented myself. Ironically, when given the chance, I didn’t resemble at all my narcissistic, womanizing, androgynous alter ego that I now want to explore. The lack of control is pushing me towards creativity and self-destruction.

What I've realized is that destruction should be taking place, only I should direct it outwards rather than inwards. I'm not talking about hurting people, only disappointing them, breaking down their expectations of who I am. It's such a small thing for others while breaking my own spirit simply to follow their pattern of who they think I am (Thoreau's "foolish consistency?") would net greater unhappiness. This is the breakthrough I had a few years ago, and it made me a lot happier--disappoint others a little instead of wrecking yourself a lot.

And of course we get to the ultimate social relationship: romance. I haven’t been shy about being non-committal for the last year or so. In this light, I’m realizing why. I don’t need a tremendous amount of love, I need a tremendous amount of space. I turn off on girls because I reach points when I feel as if I’m playing a role in a relationship, so I resent myself and the girl by extension. I feel like I constrain my own growth in order to not disappoint her expectations of me.

It’s mostly internal, I know. And besides, the extent to which the situation is unacceptable to me approaches pathology. I realize that. But chastising myself for not wanting to grow up is counter-productive. I’m on the remedial track for life, and that’s how it is and I’m finally okay with that. It helps, though, that I can identify the problem. Now I have to figure out whether or not commitment necessitates a certain amount of constraint on one’s self. If so, I need to prepare myself mentality for that, preferably after a string of term-limited romances. Either way, I am going to need a girl who basically thinks I can do no wrong, just like my mom does (she spoiled me). I test girls (subconsciously) by acting like a self-absorbed asshole after I go through the initial perfect-boyfriend phase. I need to know if the girl I will marry will follow me and believe in me with perfect loyalty despite my mistakes and shortcomings. Tall order, but I’m not so bad a guy, right?

I’m willing to be a realist about this and admit that a girl like that probably won’t have much of a mind of her own. This would be a big disappointment, but in marriage, I’m just looking for something that works. I used to want a classic Mercedes convertible, something high-performing and elegant, but now I would really be happy with a ’99 Accord like the Republican (my car). It’s no beater; I take care of it, but its big draw is its reliability. So yeah, marriage scares me.

Once I can get more control over the basics of my life and be more self-sufficient, I am going to want to move away from self-destructive, self-indulgent physical relationships. I want to do that. I want to start to settle. In Salt Lake City. I’ve never been interested in the places I’ve lived because I’ve been afraid to settle down and get attached. I’ve never been into hiking or exploring or being a part of any community. I’m starting to want that. So that’s something.

I’ve been living in the song “Disintegration” by The Cure. The whole album is fantastic. It’s all I’ve wanted to listen to lately. Yes, it is more along the lines of self-absorption and thus self-destruction, but it’s so so good and feels so good. I can’t exactly say I’ll miss the nights when I’m feeling as if any moment I’m either going to write down world-shattering epiphanies or have a panic attack/seizure/stroke and I can’t sleep because I’m lit with a consuming creative energy. To be honest, my best stuff doesn’t come out of those nights. But the beauty of art is in the giving in to the feeling, at least for moments. It’s losing control, not thinking ahead or pragmatically or according to the rules and patterns. I’m aware of the ill effects, but human experience, like humanity, is full of duality, and love isn’t very convincing when it’s pick and choose.

If I paint my fingernails black in the next few weeks, now at least you’ll know why.


*Migdat introduced me to this lecture from the author of Eat, Pray, Love, who talks about this issue in the terms of how we think about artistic genius. If you’re interested: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/453

new rrrrrrrrrrmix

Q: What do you do after you have a somewhat productive day of working on state taxes/finding out how to apply for unemployment in Michigan? How do you keep your sanity when your mom keeps barging into your room and telling you your room smells like kimchi (wtf?)? How do you keep control of your life when your dad tells you what to do with your life like you're 16?

A: You make a remix!

hey what's up

I just arrived in Utah. It's 3:30 am Mountain time, but I'm somewhere between Eastern and Central time, so... 5:00 am? I've been convincing myself that I'm not tired for the last 3 hours, and I think that plus a Mexican Coke have overperformed. I'm pretty well awake.

Also, I've got kind of a lot on my mind. This begins to explain why I'm posting right now.

I was really excited to come back to Utah. And I did get really excited when I crossed into Utah from Wyoming, not least of which because Wyoming has all of a sudden decided to enforce its speed limit, to the point that concerned citizens are calling the police on me when I speed past them. Seriously. (I got off with a warning).

But I'm feeling a little trepidation about living here. Substitute teaching really isn't that cool. Job hunting isn't that cool. These things are necessary for me right now. I wish I could just take trips, but that will quickly leave me without money. Money is necessary.

The thing I'm most excited for is music. I'm going to start performing. (By the way, I'm mixing a new Straight Up! ep. It's a bit of a stylistic detour, more in the vein of M83, Her Space Holiday, stuff you can't dance to. So yeah, I broke my own cardinal rule for Straight Up! and am making music you can't dance to. It was inevitable.) I want to go on tour. I want to get on a record label. I'm realizing that I'll never be completely satisfied with any other career; it will always just be a day job. So now's a good opportunity to try to make something happen. But also, I'm looking forward to playing with all the great people that I've played with in the past.

As for girls, I don't even know what to think. I know what I should think, which is that I should run away from any girl I'm attracted to and leave her well enough alone. But I won't. I'll continue to disguise my vanity as benevolence, and I'll leave you to figure out what that means.

You're not going to see much politics on this blog in the near future. I'm taking a hiatus from politics, unless I get hired by one of the few dozen political jobs that I've applied to over the last couple of weeks. What you will definitely read here is religion. I'm in the process of totally deconstructing Mormonism. After Prop 8 and learning more about the Priesthood Ban, I see arbitrary cultural traditions everywhere. I'm taking everything with a grain of salt. Yikes.

What I can say definitively about the Church: I realize my own way of thinking is flawed. I'm not asking for an acknowledgment of my superior thinking. I'm also not asking for others' flawed thinking to be exposed and ridiculed. What I would like is for the Church to be as forgiving of my flawed thinking as it is for the white middle-class conservative professionals'. Tall order? Hopefully not for too much longer.

Gen Con: a little discouraged by the Saturday sessions. Sunday morning, however, napalmed my spiritual face off. (In the good way)

read if you are a girl

I will break your heart. You've been warned.