Random Thoughts about parties and clubs

Either the whole world is crazy, or I am insane. I drive past bar after bar after bar. Young people sitting there, intoxicating themselves. What are they doing? What is the appeal? What is the point? Do they go out to meet the opposite sex?

The men all sit trying to act cool. They where long pants and a jacket, giving a look of “I’m here and I’m okay with the fact that I’m here, and I am trying to act cool like I don’t desperately want to get laid.” But they do, desperately want to get laid. The women with their mini-skirts and crop top tight fitting shirts look beautiful, and sexy, and attractive, and gorgeous. I want to be with them. Yet I know if I tried to talk to them, I would get scoffed. They are all like that. If their good-looking they probably already have a boyfriend. If they do not it is because they don’t want one. There are probably literally 20 boys around her all of whom will spend heavy percentages of their weekly income at her slightest whim. She does not care.

This is not just here, this is everywhere. Men and women go out to nightclubs and bars, the men to meet women, the women pretending like they are there to meet men, but they are really just there to look good for their friends. 

Anyways, perhaps that is a little too negative of outlook on the whole issue, but here is an incredible quote from Atlass Shrugged about  parties. 

'I know you don't like parties. Neither do I. But sometimes I wonder... perhaps we are the only ones who were meant to be able to enjoy them.'
'I am afraid I have no talent for it.'
'Not for this. But do you think any of these people are enjoying it? They're just straining to be more senseless and aimless than usual. To be light and unimportant... You know, I think that only if one feels immensely important can one feel truly light.'
'I wouldn't know.'
'It's just a thought that disturbs me once in a while... I thought it about my first ball... I keep thinking that parties are intended as celebrations should be only for those who have something to celebrate.'
'i have never thought of it.'
...
'I don't know... I've always expected parties to be exciting and brilliant, like some rare drink.' she laughed; there was a note of sadness in it. 'But I don't drink, either. That's just another symbol that doesn't mean what it was intended to mean.' He was silent. She added, 'Perhaps there is something that we have missed.'

Sex and Insecurity

There are probably many people who are insecure about sex. I am one of those people. Women I assume generally feel embarrassed about the amount of sex they have had, as not having sex is for some reason valued in women. Men are more likely to be insecure about the sex they haven’t had.

I am one of those men. I am painfully insecure about it. As in cripplingly insecure. I do not think it is even because of the embarrassment or the judgment from others. I am pretty open about my virginity, even in my non-anonymous circles.  I think it is something deeper than that, I don’t care so much what people think.

I get depressed just thinking about how people have sex. Every person, every girl I meet who has been or is in a relationship, I just feel sad. “She has had sex” I quietly say to myself. I look at most everyone and realize, “they have had sex.” And I get depressed. It has reached the point where even movies where people have sex in them make me sad. I watched horrible bosses for a few minutes with a girl the other day, and just began to feel terribly uncomfortable. “All these people have had sex, including this girl sitting next to me.”  I thought to myself. Luckily we stopped watching.

Why this huge feeling of inferiority at not having sex? I have burnt probably far too many CPU's on this silly question, especially since the answer is so clear.

My failure to have sex is a symbol of every failure of my life, and in general the failure of my life. In basically every way I am a failure, and not having sex is a manifestation of that failure in every way.

Up until this point in my life I am a complete financial failure. Surely if this were not the case I would have many more suitors to choose from.

I am in a biological and evolutionary sense a complete failure, by definition. In the biological scheme of things I was made for one purpose. Not only have I failed at that purpose, I have failed at even having the possibility of being a biological/evolutionary success. This is failure in the worse possible way. A small failure is not getting all the promotions you want so having a lower paying job. Bigger is to have never having obtained a job after trying many times. I haven’t even put in an application (in the biological sense). Not even one!

It is not because of what others think of me when they see that I am a virgin that bothers me. It is what I think of myself when I realize that everyone around me, everyone I meet and associate with has succeeded, where I have failed.

All those idiots from high school, the smart ones, the dumb ones, the ugly ones, the fat ones. All the kids that I helped in math. I have helped hundreds  of people pass math classes, all of which succeeded, and I failed. Essentially every girl I knew in high school or college or anywhere.

I stayed up late, I woke up early. I worked hard. I worked out, I did good in school, I am in good shape. Most of them did not. Lots of them are overweight. And I am the failure.

My virginity is my failure, and it reminds me of it every time I meet someone I know has had sex.

yours in virginity,
MV 

The LDS church one ups itself

I did not think I would live to see it happen, but I believe this church has just one-upped itself in level of deceit and deception.

When I was going through my faith crisis, I was looking for reasons to stay, as opposed to reasons to go. I had known about lots of the historical problems and had found ways to resolve them. True Brigham was racist, Joseph may or may not have been an adulterer, the Book of Mormon had some problems, but I was willing to accept lots of the “they were just flawed human beings” type answers. I could have done that, but the part that bothered me most was not all that stuff from the past, the racism and polyandry, it was bad, but it was in the past. What bothered me most was the continual deception and telling of half-truths by the LDS church. The cover up was far worse than the crime. That was bad, but the Church has just one-upped itself.

If someone lies to you and comes back within a few hours and admits to their lying and apologizes, it does not excuse the lie, but most all good-hearted human beings would be willing to forgive.

Now if the person lies, and then a few days later you catch them in the lie and confront them about it, and when you do they admit to it and apologize, that would be harder to forgive, but as I am the forgiving type, I would in almost all cases be willing to extend the olive branch. 

The next level up is when they lie, they are caught in the lie, confronted about it, and still continue to deny that they lied for several hours/day/years until some other external threat comes and they finally confess. That is a lot harder to forgive, and that is exactly what the church has been doing for the last hundred or so years. The church has essentially been denying racism, polyandry, and all this stuff for a hundred of years, denying, or purposely avoiding, which is the same thing. It was only recently that the church finally made confession, and really it was the outside authority of the internet which had so thoroughly exposed the church that we can hardly say “made confession” when in reality what happened is the church was forced to confessed due to the barrage of truth reaching the members from sources such as mormonthink.com and the CES letter. 

The church was forced to confess after a century of denial and avoidance. That is a hard sin to forgive. But I am a forgiving person, and I just may have been able to do it. I was just warming up to being more NOM (New Order Mormon) over the past few weeks I have been remembering lots of the good lessons I learned in church (“lift where you stand,” “by small and simple means are great things brought to pass”, and many more) I felt maybe with a good full confession, this relationship could be restored. If they had said “look we messed up really bad, we have been less than honest, and in many cases outright dishonest for the past few hundred years about these issues, and we are sorry.” I would have said it would have been nice if you had said this before (like a hundred years ago), but you know, things could work. But instead they dropped one foot deeper into the mud of pride and deceit.

If a friend lies to you, doesn’t confess, is confronted with the lie, and continues to deny for a lengthy time before finally being forced to admit, that is bad, but what makes it worse is when some other person confronts them about the lie and confession (say a whole bunch of media outlets all reporting on how you have denied the truth for over 100 years) and instead of admitting to what happened you say, “Oh yeah, we have said this all along,we have been completely honest about this for the 100 years.” That is when you know that person has not repented. To use the church language, that person is full of pride and stiffnecked, there is no humility or honesty left in them. They are just as deceitful and full of B.S. as they have been from the first, because it isn’t about honesty, it isn’t about telling the truth, all they are saying is whatever they can say and get away with. That is how you know they would not have told anything if they had not had to, they would not have confessed if  they had not been confronted, they would not have done anything except they were backed in to the corner.

Anyone who says the church has been upfront about these issues all along knows they are being completely dishonest. Maybe there was reference to these issues in some obscure ensign article, or 150 years ago a seventy said such and such at the pulpit. But look through every church student manual, Sunday School manual, etc. etc. and you will find no reference to Joseph Smith having a 14 year old wife when he was 38. It will be Joseph and Emma, Joseph and Emma, and that is it. If not outright lies, the church has at least not told the whole truth, which according to how I learned about honesty in Sunday School, is the same as lying. 

The church has to know that people are hurting right now. Hurting bad. I just read a heartbreaking story about a Stake President and Bishops in Honduras learning about the truth they had been told to fight as lies for years. Can the church not see that people have given their entire freaking lives to this, given years and years, hours and hours, and their last drop of income to this, all based on lies? How incredibly insensitive can a church be? To drop this truth on them, they have to know it is going to hurt like hell (Not that the truth hurts or is bad, but rather the fact that they have been dedicated to a lie). And then to tell these people who are, in the spiritual sense, bleeding and writhing in pain, “oh, well we have known about this all along, we have always been honest about this.” That is to just spit in their face. That is more than adding insult to injury, that is adding injury to injury.

I have had hopes that the institutional church could be repaired, that it would somehow be honest and make amends. That obviously Is not going to happen. To use the language of the church, the church is itself ‘past feeling.’ The church is a stone face that not only lacks a contrite heart and spirit, it has no heart at all.

There are good people, even great people who live in the church, people I love and admire. There are great lessons and morals that I learned in the church. But I cannot stay with the church because I love those people and love those morals. To stay with the church, is to stay with the person that insults and mocks the people I love. To stay with the church is to be a part of an institution that abhors (in practice, regardless of what they say), the morals I respect.

I love people and I love morals too much to sell myself to that whore who pretends to love both, but really is just using them to take their money, give them nothing, and lie to them about it the entire time. 

Elder Anderson

Elder Anderson, I don't think you thought through all of your comments about Joseph Smith the other day, so I decided to help you..

You quoted Neil A. Maxwell in your talk: “Studying the Church … through the eyes of its defectors,” Elder Neal A. Maxwell once said, is “like interviewing Judas to understand Jesus. Defectors always tell us more about themselves than about that from which they have departed.”

I would just like to point out to you that whenever you make a statement like that, make sure to follow it all the way through and realize the implications. Joseph Smith was a defector from mainstream Christianity, as was Brigham Young, and many of the current members of the LDS church. So does this mean that we are not supposed to learn about Christianity from Mormons? After all they are defectors or were founded by defectors, so if we follow your advice, we really should not learn about Christianity from them.

Also what about the American revolutionaries? What about Martin Luther? Are all these people supposed to be thrown in the waste basket of "defectors" and ignored?

Often it is the defectors of history that we most admire, because they were able to stand up for truth and honesty when everything and everyone around them told them just to stay with the group. Here are some famous defectors:

Moses defected from his Egyptian family and the ways of the Egyptians and went to Israel.
Jesus Christ defected from the current religious practices of the time.
Martin Luther defected from the Catholicism ("I cannot and will not recant").
George Washington defected from the British crown.
Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin did also. "Give me liberty or give me death!")
Joseph Smith defected from the religious teachings of his time.

In fact every large religious movement was started by a defector. So unless you want to throw out the testimonies of Moses, Martin Luther, Joseph Smith, and even Jesus Christ, you probably should not throw "defectors" under the bus.

regards,

The Mormon Virgin.

Behind the Excommunications

The Face of Dogmatic in the LDS church. 

The extremely strange events of June 2014 beg a few questions and speculation.

This event on the surface makes no sense. I have seen some speculation as to why, but no one has really had any sort of sensible answer, but I have yet to read any decent explanation.

The church has been more open and less likely to excommunicate ever since the September six as the church has realized the public backlash that comes from excommunicating “thought criminals” in particular very public and even well-liked thought criminals, such as John Dehlin, and Kate Kelly.

That was one of the lessons of the September six, the other lesson which I thought the church had learned was that they end up excommunicating those who are in the best position to help the church. There is no other person who could have helped the church more during these years of increased historical visibility than D. Michael Quinn. Think about it, he is Gay, he knows all the issues better than most anyone, and he believes. What better mark of openness and understanding for the church to point to than that. He could have been a great asset. He would have been as good or better than Richard Bushman at handling the Swedish issue, and would have been able to address the issue of the historical “essays” much better as well. But the church excommunicated him. Excommunicated the person who could have been their best ally during the internet years. This is one of the many signs the church is not run by Prophets, Seers, or Revelators. 

D. Michael Quinn: the man who could have saved Mormonism.

The church apparently has not learned its lesson that the liberal elements in the church can be its savior. John Dehlin in particular has made enormous effort to help those stay in the church that desire to and who have had faith crises and would have otherwise left. He has been one of the church’s biggest advocates and has done more than anyone to try in some way resolve the historical mess the church has created by being dishonest about its history.

On every level, the excommunication makes no sense. Excommunicating the guy who started stayLDS.org? Can there be more irony than this?

Could it be that this is a local issue? Did two local leaders just feel (were inspired?) to get rid of these two troublemakers? This is the theory the church has claimed. This cannot be true. This had to be organized by Salt Lake, because in the LDS church everything is ordered by Salt Lake. Bishop’s are pawns of the Stake President and the Stake presidents of the General Authorities. Obedience is the first law of the LDS Church, to paraphrase LDS scripture.

First off, the chance that two completely independent excommunication letters were sent within a day of each other is essentially zero. Next, any church leader has to know that taking action against someone as public as John Dehlin or Kate Kelly is going to cause a huge public out roar. If they did not know this they would have to have an IQ of 27, have never used the internet, and require help to tie their own shoes. Honestly, would any leader bring that much public criticism to the church without first questioning Salt Lake?

When I went to the national Scout Jamboree with a refugee troop in my Salt Lake City ward, we were interviewed by the local press. They wanted to interview the Stake President. Before being interviewed he said he needed to call headquarters and ask. He did, they said he could not be interviewed. He was in a suit and tie and it was for something completely positive about the church. Is it possible to imagine that a  Stake President would do something that would draw loads of press and attention to themselves and the church without first consulting Salt Lake? I think not. These leaders almost for sure were under pressure from someone “higher up” whether this was officially, or more interestingly, some apostle or GA was informally pressuring them, but the chance that they acted alone is about as likely as me throwing skittles into a pond and having rainbows and unicorns come out.

Who is behind it?

Obviously I don’t know. But it might be helpful to look to the September Six. The September Six happened because the Prophet was incapacitated and so Boyd K. Packer exerted more influence in the quorum of the Twelve. Packer had to know that once Hinckley was at the helm, this was not going to happen. So he acted and acted fast. I see no reason to believe that this is any different. I do not know the health status of the Prophet, but I have heard he is having difficulties. It is not hard to imagine that the situation is much as it was in 1993. Packer also knows his days are numbered and needs to act. I don’t know. Could it also be Oaks? Maybe.

One thing is clear, there is a faction within the quorum of the twelve that is very conservative. There is a lack of love in the quorum. There was heated disagreement about whether to release the historical essays. Some of the conservative factions were less than excited. It is easy to imagine that faction being the one taking control of a somewhat unhealthy prophet and exercising “unrighteous dominion" (to say the least).

Ever more intriguing is the possibility that an apostle simply decided to do this on his own. What stake President or Bishop would say no to a call from Boyd K. Packer or Dallin H. Oaks? Seriously. If you are in power in the church, that word has real meaning, they do have power over people, particularly apostles over Stake Presidents and Bishops.

This was centrally organized because the church is centrally organized, and as much as they try to deflect the blame to local leaders, they know, and we all know that they control the local leaders.

Obviously the church has not learned the lessons from the September Six, in particular the “conservative” apostles, if they are behind this, have not learned the lesson. This is because those men must be so prideful and arrogant and disconnected from reality that they literally look at the blue sky, call it magenta, and think that it is so.

This will of course backfire on the church (the more liberal apostles already know this but as Oaks said about Packer at one time, "you don't stage manage a grizzly bear"). The flight from the church will only accelerate.