Approaching Zion

Key Takeaways

Read in 2014 on Darwin Harrison’s recommendation, and captured with a section-title on nearly every highlight — the titles are the marginalia here, and they cluster into a few insistent threads:

1. Not whether you work, but what you work for. “The whole emphasis in the holy writ is not on whether one works or not, but what one works for.” Labor in Zion is real labor — just not labor for money or for the self. The recurring target is the “first I’ll get rich, then I’ll help the Church” bargain, which Nibley calls hokum.

2. Consecration is a present, non-negotiable obligation — not a future one. “What is there to stop me from observing and keeping the law of consecration at this very day?” The repeated move is to strip away every rationalization (compromise, “easier payments,” seeking-the-kingdom-first-then-riches) and insist the covenant is binding now.

3. Goods of first intent vs. goods of second intent. Education, art, knowledge, and the life of the mind are ends in themselves (“goods of first intent”); money, degrees, and gadgets are only instruments (“second intent”) — and a culture dies when it lets the instruments become their own excuse for being. BYU’s drift “from humanities to business and law” is the running case study.

4. Zion / Utopia as a real, buildable order, not a fantasy. Zion is “a code word denoting a very real thing: any community in which the celestial order prevails.” The long closing survey of the historical utopians (Lycurgus, Solon, More, the 19th-century American communities) argues they were the most practical, successful people of their day — and that money and private property are the one insuperable obstacle they all named.

5. Only the individual can repent — alone, against the crowd. “You do not have to wait for the group to change… only an individual can repent.” The lemmings-to-the-sea image recurs against the one righteous person standing against the stream.

Connections

• Working Toward Zion — the direct sibling in the library. Lucas and Woodworth give the practical blueprint (United Order mechanics, cooperatives, Mondragon/Grameen); Nibley gives the prophetic indictment. Same doctrine of consecration, same “I’ll get rich then help the Church” target, opposite registers.
• American Zion — the historical arc of the LDS attempt to build Zion; Nibley supplies the theology of why it keeps failing (covetousness from within, as at the 1834 dissolution of the United Order).
• Amusing Ourselves To Death — Nibley’s “TV supplies the junk food, the school the other” and his contempt for Deweyite “New Education” is a religious cousin of Postman’s media critique: goods of second intent crowding out the life of the mind.

Highlights

• Zion is a code word denoting a very real thing. Zion is any community in which the celestial order prevails. Zion is “the pure in heart” (D&C 97:21), but Zion is also a real city or any number of real cities. it is a constant; it is unchaining. There are Zions among all the worlds, and there are Zions that come and go. Zion is a constant in time and place—it belongs to the order of the eternities. We’re not making Zion here, but we’re preparing the ground to receive it. As the Lord says, “My people must be tried in all things, that they may be prepared to receive the glory that I have for them, even the glory of Zion; and he that will not bear chastisement is not worthy of my kingdom” (D&C 136:31). We must be prepared to receive this glory; we don’t produce it ourselves. We must be ready, so that we won’t die of shock when we get it.

  Note: Definition of Zion — pg. 4

• But if the earth is perfectly adapted and completely outfitted for all our physical and spiritual needs, what is there left for us to do? Won’t it weaken our character to have everything handed to us ready, and prepared for our use? That question, the most natural one in the world to ask in our society, shows how far removed we are from the celestial order of things. It’s the same question that is asked by the small boy who comes to visit you for summer vacation: “If a guy can’t break everything around the house and the yard, drown kittens, shoot birds, cut down the apple tree, take the baby buggy apart, stick things in the piano, throw rocks at bottles, what can a guy do?” If we advise the little fellow to acquire more sophisticated tastes and follow our example, to seek his diversions more constructively as we do, watching westerns on TV, going hunting, playing golf, going to football games, attending X-rated movies, or driving a car, he can protest that such activities differ from his own only in being more passive and less imaginative, but really they are quite as trivial and immature and unproductive as his. We might then admonish him to hard work. Pope Gregory VII wrote a letter to the bishop of Rheims in the eleventh century in which he told how the barons of the time were literally destroying Europe in the thousands of private wars and feuds and raids on each others’ castles and lands and serfs, and how, when he protested what they were doing, they asked him in all seriousness, if we don’t do this, what else is there for us to do? For what purpose were gentlemen placed upon the earth? What else can a normal man possibly want to do? The activities of the modern world that go by the name of work may not have been as spectacularly destructive as those of the barons of the middle ages, yet we are beginning to find out now that they are destructive. And it is high time that we begin to ask ourselves, as we ask the little fellow who’s spending the summer with us, whether what we are doing is really what we ought to be doing. There is full-time employment for all simply in exploring the world without destroying it, and by the time we begin to understand something of its marvelous richness and complexity, we’ll also begin to see that it does have uses that we never suspected and that its main value is what comes to us directly from mere coexistence with living things — the impact on our minds and bodies, subtle and powerful, that goes far beyond the advantages of converting all things into cash or calories.

  Note: What Kind of Activity is Worth our Time — pg. 8-10

• The Hebrew word for financial activity of any kind is mamonut, and the financier is a mamonai; that is, financing is, quite frankly, in that honest language, the business of Mammon.

  Note: pg. 20

• Well, here we have it: the world we have made and are making is not the world God meant us to have, and the world he made for us in the beginnings is the world we must have. With our present limited knowledge we could devise a perfectly practical order of things in which there would be no need for doctors, lawyers, insurance men, dentists, auto mechanics, beauticians, generals, real estate men, prostitutes, garbage men, and used-car salesmen. Their work is justified as an unpleasant necessity, yet there have been successful human societies in which none of those professions existed, any more than dukes, earls, and ,ints need to exist in our society. Nature around us, such of it as has remained, admonishes us that paradise is a reality. Through modern revelations we have learned that Zion also is a reality. Paradise is the proper environment of Zion. Here we are faced with a clear-cut proposition that recent developments of world history, if nothing else, admonish us we can no longer afford to ignore. The Tenth Article of Faith contains our future: our glory or our condemnation.

  Note: How Is The World To Be? — pg. 22

• One may well ask if it is necessary to choose between such absolute extremes, and wonder if there is not a more moderate approach to the problems. By the very nature of things, there is no third way — as the early Jewish and Christian writers remind us repeatedly in their doctrine of the Two Ways. According to this oldest and best established of teachings (though quite unpopular with the conventional Christianity and Judaism of our time), there are Two Ways lying before every person in this life, the Way of Light and the Way of Darkness, the Way of Life and the Way of Death; and every mortal every day of his life is required to make a choice between them. Unfortunately for our peace of mind, any compromise between the Two Ways is out of the question, since they lead in opposite directions. As the wise Heraclitus pointed out long ago, “The up-road and the down-road are one and the same.” Which one you are on depends entirely on the way you are facing.

  Note: Every Moment Claimed By Christ or Counter-Claimed By Satan — pg. 30

• Even the cornerstone of virtue, “He that is idle shall not eat the bread… of the laborer” (D&C 42:42), hailed as the franchise of unbridled capitalism, is rather a rebuke to that system which has allowed idlers to live in luxury and laborers in want throughout the whole course of history. The whole emphasis in the holy writ is not on whether one works or not, but what one works for: “The laborer in Zion shall labor for Zion; for if they labor for money that shall perish” (2 Ne. 26:31). “The people of the church began to wax proud, because of their exceeding riches,… precious things, which they had obtained by their industry” (Alma 4:6) and which proved their undoing, for all their hard work.

  Note: Not Just Do You Work, But What Do You Work For? — pg. 48

• In Zion, you labor, to be sure, but not for money, and not for yourself, which is the exact opposite of our present version of the work ethic. “The non-producer must live on the products of those who labor. There is no other way,” says Brigham Young, and he gives the solution: “If we all labor a few hours a day, we could then spend the remainder of our time in rest and the improvement of our minds.” That is the real work we are called to do and the real wealth we are to accumulate individually. “Work less, wear less, eat less, and we shall be a great deal wiser, healthier, and wealthier peole than by taking the course we do now.” Work does not sanctify wealth: “I know that there is no man on this earth who can call around him property,… and dicker and work, and take advantage here and there—no such man ever can magnify the priesthood nor enter the Celestial kingdom.”

  Note: Work Less, Wear Less, Eat Less — pg. 48-49

• “The greatest temporal and spiritual blessings which always come from faithfulness and concerted effort, never attended individual exertion or enterprise.”

  Note: — Joseph Smith · pg. 50

• “Elders of Israel are greedy after the things of this world. If you ask them if they are ready to build up the kingdom of God, their answer is prompt—‘Why, to be sure we are, with our whole souls; but we want first to get so much gold, speculate and get rich, and then we can help the church considerably. We will go to California and get gold, go and buy goods and get rich, trade with the emigrants, build a mill, make a farm, get a large herd of cattle and THEN we can do a great deal for Israel.”

  Note: First I Will Make Money, Then I Can Help The Church — pg. 53

• I have heard this many times from friends and relatives, but it is hokum. What they are saying is, “If God will give me a million dollars, I will let him have a generous cut of it.” And so they pray and speculate and expect the Lord to come through for them. He won’t do it: “And again, I command thee that thou shalt not covet thine own property” (D&C 19:26). “Let them repent of all their sins, and of all their covetous desires, before me, saith the Lord; for what is property unto me? saith the Lord” (D&C 117:4). He does not need our property or our help.

  Note: First I Will Make Money, Then I Can Help The Church — pg. 53

• “It has been supposed that wealth gives power. In a depraved state of society, in a certain sense it does, if opening a wide field for unrighteous monopolies, by which the poor are robbed and oppressed and the wealthy are more enriched, is power. In a depraved state of society money can buy positions and titles, can cover up a multitude of incapabilities, can open wide the gates of fashionable society to the lowest and most depraved of human beings; it divides society into castes without any reference to goodness, virtue or truth. It is made to pander to the most brutal passions of the human soul; it is made to subvert every wholesome law of God and man, and to trample down every sacred bond that should tie society together in a national, municipal, domestic and every other relationship.”

  Note: Money Buys Monopolies & Covers Up Incapabilities — pg. 58

• He felt no guilt, since this was fair competition. Abel could take care of himself: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Moses 5:34). It was all free competitive enterprise where “every man prospered according to his genius, and… every man conquered according to his strength; and whatsoever a man did was no crime” (Alma 30:17). This is no mere red thread running through the scriptures but the broad highway of history.

  Note: Cain & Abel: Healthy Competition — pg. 59

• But why this crippling limitation on our thoughts if we are God’s children? It is precisely this limitation that is the essence of our mortal existence. If every choice I make expresses a preference, if the world I build up is the world I really love and want, then with every choice I am judging myself, proclaiming all the day long to God, angels and my fellowmen where my real values lie, where my treasure is, the things to which I give supreme importance. Hence, in this life every moment provides a perfect and foolproof test of your real character, making this life a time of testing and probation. And hence the agonizing ry of the Prophet Moroni, speaking to our generation: “I speak unto you as if ye were present, and yet ye are not, but behold, Jesus Christ hath shown you unto me, and I know your doing” (Mormon 8:35). He calls upon us, “Be wise in the days of your probation… ask not, that ye may consume it on your lusts” (Mormon 9:28), in other words, that you may use up or consume your probation time just having a good time or doing what you feel like doing — nothing could be more terrible than that: “But wo unto him… that wasteth the days of his probation, for awful is his state!” (2 Nephi 9:27). It is throwing our life away, to think of the wrong things, as we are told in the next verse, that the cunning plan of the evil one is to get us to do just that —trying, in Brigham Young’s phrase, to “decoy the minds of thy Saints” to get our minds on trivial thoughts, on the things of this world, against which we have so often been warned.

  Note: When We Can Only Think of One Thing at a Time We Haven’t Time To Waste on Sin — pg. 66

• Sin is waste. It is doing one thing when you should be doing other and better things for which you have the capacity. Hence, there are no innocent, idle thoughts. That is why even the righteous must repent, constantly and progressively, since all fall short of their capacity and calling. “Probably 99 per cent of human ability has been wholly wasted,” writes Arthur Clarke; “even today… [we] operate for most of our time as automatic machines, and glimpse the profounder resources of our minds only once or twice in a lifetime.” “No nation can afford to divert its ablest men into such non-creative, and occasionally parasitic, occupations as law, advertising and banking.”

  Note: Sin is waste. — pg. 66-67

• Our search for knowledge should be ceaseless, which means that it is open-ended, never resting on laurels, degrees or past achievements. “If we get puffed up by thinking that we have much knowledge, we are apt to get a contentious spirit,” and what is the cure? “Correct knowledge is necessary to cast out that spirit.” The cure for inadequate knowledge is “ever more light and knowledge.” But who is going to listen patently to correct knowledge if he thinks he has the answers already? “There are a great many wise men and women too in our midst who are too wise to be taught; therefore they must die in their ignorance.” “I have tried for a number of years to get the minds of the Saints prepared to receive the things of God; but we frequently see some of them… [that] will fly to pieces like glass as soon as anything comes that is contrary to their traditions: they cannot stand the fire at all.” If “I…go into an investigation of anything that is not contained in the Bible,… I think there are so many over wise men here, that they would cry ‘treason’ and put me to death.” But, he asks, “Why be so certain that you comprehend the things of God, when all things with you are so uncertain?” True knowledge never shuts the door on more knowledge, but zeal often does. One thinks of the dictum, “We are not seeking for truth at the BYU, we have the truth!” So did Adam and Abraham have the truth, far greater and more truth than what we have, and yet the particular genius of each was that he was constantly “seeking for greater light and knowledge (Abraham 12) #Spirit of Humility

  Note: True Knowledge Seeks More Knowledge, Never Being Satisfied — pg. 70-71

• Also, we are repeatedly instructed regarding things we should NOT think about. I would pass by this negative thing lightly, but th scriptures are explicit, outspoken, and emphatic in this matter; and whenever anyone begins to talk about serious matters at the BYU, inevitably someone says, “I would like to spend my time thinking about such things and studying them, but I cannot afford the luxury. I have to think about the really important business of life, which is making a living.” This is the withering effect of the intimidating challenge thrown out to all of us from childhood: “Do you have any money?” with its absolute declaration of policy and principle: “You can have anything in this world for money!” and its paralyzing corollary: “Without it, you can have NOTHING!” I do not have to tell you where that philosophy came from. Somebody is out to “decoy…[our] minds,” to use Brigham Young’s expression, from the things we should be thinking about to those we should NOT care about at all.

  Note: I Would Like To Pursue Such Truths But I Must Make A Living — pg. 76

• Brigham Young says if we continue “lusting after the groveling things of this life, [we will] remain fixed with a very limited amount of knowledge, and, like a door upon its hinges, mov[ing] to and fro from one year to another without any visible advancement or improvement… Man is made in the image of God, but what do we know of him or of ourselves, when we suffer ourselves to love and worship the god of this world — riches?” “I desire to see everybody on the track of improvement,. . .but when you so love your property. . .as though all your affections were placed upon the changing, fading things of earth, it is impossible to increase in the knowledge of the truth.”

  Note: Seek After The World’s Riches, Lose the Knowledge of Truth — pg. 77-78

• Playing a piano and making a piano are related, but in your short time on earth you can’t do both. That’s just the way it is. I’m not saying that temporal things are not important—they are indispensable. We must have them at the outset free of charge. Our welfare is a very important matter to God. And God has recognized that and has taken care of it. He picks up the tab and expects us not to concern ourselves with it, certainly not as constantly and exclusively as we do, or even give it priority. He supplies us with bodies free of charge and with their upkeep, also free of charge. “Well isn’t this idealistic immaterialism quite unrealistic?” Indeed it is, for non-Latter-day Saints; it is simply laughable in the present world. Remember, what we regard as real and what the rest of the world regards as real are by no means the same thing. For us the great reality is the visitation of heavenly beings to the world. Nothing could be further from reality or distract one’s mind further from cold, factual workaday realities of life than an angel with gold plates or a gold book. The Latter-day Saints will tell you a story that to them is perfectly real, whatever the world may think about it.

  Note: The Balance of Immaterialism and Reality — pg. 101-102

• You don’t have to go into business to develop character. On the contrary, consider statistics: There are over one half million millionaires in the country—but how many first rate composers or writers or artists or even scientists? A tiny handful.

  Note: Positions — pg. 103

• So many students have told me (hundreds of times), “I would like to study this. I would like to study that (music, astronomy, and so on). But after all, I have to do the important things, the real things of life — I have to go out and make money.” The Lord says that if you do that, you will never get to the banquet. We are told this in each of the Gospels, in the Doctrine and Covenants, in the Book of Mormon, and in the Pearl of Great Price. We are told it again and again. “Take no thought for what you should eat, or what you should drink or what you should wear.” We are clearly told what we should not be doing. “Well, what should we be doing, for heaven’s sake?”

  Note: Told Again and Again What is Important — pg. 105

• Every day of our lives we have to make a choice, a choice that will show where our real interests and desires lie. From the very beginning of the world the choice was provided as a test for each of us during this time of probation.

  Note: pg. 125

• The choice is a hard one. Would I make a living first or would I take a chance on the lunch? It was not meant to be easy. It is hard to give up financial security to demonstrate your faith in the good intentions of your Heavenly Father. It is a seemingly sensible and innocent concern: to get rich. Speaking on “Sixty Minutes” last Sunday, Malcolm Forbes (publisher of Forbes), the arch apostle of the rich, was shown addressing the students at a commencement at the University of Ohio. He made a remark which I immediately wrote down, for to me it said everything: “Nothing gives you freedom like a buck in the bank!” I immediately thought of Cain’s cry of joy and triumph when by a conspiracy (D&C 84:16) he succeeded in putting his brother out of the way for the sake of getting gain; he was not ashamed at all, we are told, but “gloried in that which he had done, saying: I am free; surely the flocks of my brother falleth into my hands[!]” (Moses 5:33). But almost all the young people I know today want to believe that we do not have to make such a drastic choice as between trusting in God entirely and working for money in the bank. Again may I remind you, the choice was deliberately designed to be a hard and searching one. But surely, I hear all the time, there must be a compromise, a common ground between them. The favorite text to support this is “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). This is commonly interpreted as meaning that I should first go on a mission or get a testimony, thus seeking the kingdom of God, and then I will be free to seek the other things. First wisdom, then riches. But you NEVER cease seeking wisdom, and you are forbidden to seek riches. This is a classic case of a text out of context. There is no thought here of seeking the other things — if you need them they will be added: When are you supposed to stop seeking the kingdom of heaven?

  Note: You Never Stop Seeking Wisdom In Order To Seek Riches — pg. 130-131

• “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth [securities, annuities, investments, and so on; as President Kimball says: seeking security in these things is an act of little faith, a vote of no confidence in God]… But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven [note again that you can’t have both]… For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also [you must choose the one OR the other]… No man can serve two masters… . Ye cannot serve God and mammon [meaning in this case explicitly business security, as the Lord continues to pour it on]. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink [your three squares a day, no less]: nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on” (Matthew 6:19-21, 24-25)

  Note: You Cannot Have Treasures In Earth AND Heaven — pg. 131

• “How much did he leave behind? All of it.”

  Note: You Cannot Have Treasures In Earth AND Heaven — pg. 131

• All the students I have talked with at the beginning of this semester intend eventually to go into law or business; Brigham Young University is no longer a liberal arts college. They are not interested in improving their talents but in trafficking in them.

  Note: BYU Has Moved From Humanities, To Business and Law — pg. 159

• If I keep all the other commandments, says Amulek, and ease up on this one, my praters are vain, and I am a hypocrite (see Alma 34:28).

  Note: Keeping All Commandments But One Is Still Disobedience — pg. 169

• When the United Order was dissolved in 1834, it was through no pressure from outside but because of greed and hypocrisy (“covetousness, and with feigned words,” D&C 104:4, 52) within the Church. Brigham Young revived it again — the Brigham Young Academy at Provo was founded for the explicit purpose, in his words, of countering “the theories of Huxley, of Darwin, or of Miall and the false political economy which contends against cooperation and the United Order.”

  Note: BYU Was Originally Created To Contend With The Forces Against The United Order — pg. 171

• “I want you to understand,” said Heber C. Kimball, “that you make covenants with God, and not with us. We were present and committed those covenants to you, and you made them with God, and we were witnesses.” Paul recognizes this in his lucid statements about the law of consecration in his letters to Timothy, which should be studied carefully.

  Note: Covenants Are Made With God, Not Men — pg. 172

• What is there to stop me from observing and keeping the law of consecration at this very day as I have already covenanted and promised to do without reservation? Is the foundation too broad for us to build on? We are in the position of one who has inherited a number of fabulously rich and varied franchises. Only two or three of the enterprises really appeal to him, and so he devotes all attention to them and neglects all the others. How often have we heard, even from outsiders — if the Latter-Day Saints only realized what riches they possess! Well, there is a clause in the will stating that if the heir neglects ANY of the franchises, he will forfeit them all. What am I doing with genealogy, temple work, Sunday School, priesthood, home teaching, scripture study, and all my meetings? I silly can’t do them all; I cannot begin to do justice to them. Why not? Because I am, as my grandfather used to say and not entirely in jest, too taken up with the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches, by which he meant business. But must you spend so much time at it? Don’t you know that if you lived by the law of consecration you would have time enough for all of it? But that is out of the question; our way of life demands the other. Which is exactly why God has always commanded his people to give up that way of life, come out of the world, and follow his special instructions. The main purpose of the Doctrine and Covenants, you will find, is to implement the law of consecration.

  Note: What Is Stopping Me From Living the Law of Consecration Right Now? — pg. 173-174

• The number of possible solutions to any problem is legion, limited only by our own mental resources, and God is anxious to give us all the light and guidance we are willing to receive in solving our problems (D&C 88:32-33).

  Note: pg. 174

• “But seek ye first (proton) the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added” (Matthew 6:33). It has become customary to interpret this as meaning that one should first go on a mission or get a testimony some other way, and then turn to the business of getting ahead in the world. But the word for first, proton, means first in every sense — first and foremost, before all else, in preference to all else, and so on. It usually refers to time, but not in this passage. We are not told to seek first the kingdom and then seek “all these things”; nothing whatever is said about seeking them except the explicit command not to seek them. There is no idea of a time sequence here: Does one ever stop seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness in this life, or was there ever a time before, during, or after a mission when one did not need food and clothing? We are not to seek them ever, for God supplies them ever.

  Note: Seek Ye First The Kingdom of God Always — pg. 233

• Altruism, argued Ayn Rand, is the greatest weakness in our society and the greatest obstacle to the unhindered operation of free enterprise.

  Note: pg. 238

• A few weeks ago, the TV show “60 Minutes” showed the inability of a group of typical California college students to answer the most elementary questions on geography, history, literature, politics, and so on, in other words, the world we live in. Were the students ashamed of their ignorance of the fundamentals? On the contrary, they were indignant or indifferent when challenged. Why should we learn that stuff? they asked. Why should we know anything about faraway times and places? They could see no point in being concerned with anything that is not right at hand and in the hand. “We want it all, and we want it now!” is the slogan. Intelligence, said William James, is the ability to react to absent stimuli. The cockroach and the mouse act to what is immediately around them and no more: “Still thou art blest compar’d wi’ me!” says the poet to the field mouse, “The present only toucheth thee.” Knowing that, Burns can expect to be concerned as “But och! I backward cast my e’e, on prospects drear! an’ forward, tho’ I canna see, I guess an’ fear.” Our present day grads want none of that. The more intelligent animals know that it pays to heed the rumble of a distant drum, like flood waters advancing from far up in the canyon — survival depends on it. That is why the new generation are letting themselves be dangerously exposed. The great tragedy, perhaps, is that no one, including their teachers, has ever told them why they should be interested in anything but money. In teaching classes in a College of Education in California, I never heard a hint of any reason but one for being in the business — salary was the name of the game.

  Note: Intelligence is the ability to react to absent stimuli — pg. 254

• He said he was “appalled and frightened” by what he saw around him. He singled out three primary objects: (1) contempt for the environment, (2) the quest for affluence, and (3) trust in deadly weapons. In all three of these vices, Utah leads the nation. I will not harrow up your minds by reading the long list of appalling statistics about Utah. Suffice it to say that what was designed to be Zion has turned out to be the purlieus of Babylon. For us (1) environment and ecology are dirty words, blocking access to the wealth of the land, which is meant for corporate developers. (2) “Working in the service of a self-image that includes sufficient money, stocks, bonds, investment portfolios, property, credit cards, furnishings, automobiles, and the like to guarantee carnal security throughout, it is hoped, a long and happy life,” President Kimball continues, has given us a mindset that is firmly grounded in Satan’s first article of faith, “You can have anything in this world for money.” (3) Implicit trust in military hardware gives us the means of keeping the whole thing going —worldwide markets with mounting production and consumption, continuing to spread the gospel of virtuous violence “until the consumption decreed hath made a full end of all nations” (D&C 87:6).

  Note: Appalled and Frightened by the World Around Us — pg. 255

• “The things of God are of deep import; and time, and experience, and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out. Thy mind, O man,…must stretch as high as the utmost heavens.” They don’t seem to realize that we need such knowledge even for survival: “The Saints ought to lay hold of every door…to obtain foothold on the earth, and be making all the preparation that is within their power for the terrible storms that are now gathering in the heavens…Any among you who aspire after their own aggrandizement, and seek their own opulence, while their brethren are groaning in poverty…cannot be benefited by the intercession of the Holy Spirit.” Students today greet such statements as alien and hostile.

  Note: Aspire After Their Own Aggrandizement As Their Brethren Groan In Poverty — pg. 259

• You are king only to the degree to which you are just and true, and if you do not do what is right and honest, you are no king. In the kingdom, the rex must be truth itself, in short, like “mine Only Begotten Son who is full of grace and truth” (Moses 6:52). There is no need for anyone in this life to feel lost for a lack of problems to work on.

  Note: You Are Only A King As Far As You Follow After Christ — pg. 263-264

• In this life we have too many options. There are thousands of good things any of us could be doing at this moment but will never be allowed to do, because of the shortness of time and the peculiar need we have to focus on just one thing at a time. As I lie in my bed and stare at the shelf-lined wall of my room, **I suffer pangs of frustration, seeing there a wondrous array of books which I have spent many years preparing to read and gleefully collecting in dusty bookstores of Europe and America. But now, just as I am able to handle the stuff, I must forego the temptation and the delight because there is other work at hand **— it’s the Egyptian stuff that will keep me going the rest of my days. What can any of us do in such a predicament? We can only “hear the word of the Lord,” and to hear is to obey; that is why the Egyptian Opening of the Mouth actually begins with the ears. From the very first amid a million possible paths we are lost and bumbling without God’s instructions; and in fact both his works and his words are for our benefit (Moses 1:38-39), the words always going along with the works to put us into the picture: “My works are without end, and also my words, for they never cease” (Moses 1:4).

  Note: Forego The Delight Because There is “Work” At Hand — pg. 266

• It is interesting that the less people are doing in the building of the kingdom or in seeking light and knowledge, the more they worry about their bodily functions, as our TV commercials amply attest.

  Note: Vanity Is Born of Idleness — pg. 269

• Whenever a creator creates, it is something that has never been done before. “Lord, how is it done?” Admittedly we are launched into a daring enterprise of fearful commitment. “I saw the father work out a kingdom with fear & trembling, & I can do the same.” The creative moment is entirely one’s own, or it is not creative; one must find oneself in a new and unprecedented situation and all alone, with nothing to sustain one but faith. Yet, strangely, the reality of one’s existence is sufficient guarantee to keep one going; if we can seek no further, neither do we need to: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were formed by the word of God” (Hebrews 11:3). Faith suggests something like the four elemental forces: we know that they exist by observing their effects, and we can profit by respecting the rules they seem to prefer. But no one has even an inkling of an idea of what they are.

  Note: To Create Is To Be Completely Alone In Unknown Territory With Nothing But Faith — pg. 278

• Zen implies there is nothing there. Nothing is real. It is all your own invention. The wisdom of the East is “Don’t expect anything and you won’t be disappointed.” But that is not so. The new physics turns that notion right around. It used to be said, “Nothing is real. It is just all your own invention after all, isn’t it?” And you have to admit, “Yes it is.” The new physics tells us, “If you can think of it, it is real. It must have come from somewhere. There is real experience behind it. You wouldn’t have invented it out of nothing.”

  Note: Is Is Not That Nothing Is Real, But That Everything Is — pg. 297-298

• Zion is a code word that denotes a very real thing: Any community in which the celestial order prevails. Specifically in the Old Testament, all the prophets speak of Zion as the place that can receive the Lord, to which he will be willing to come and in which he is willing to dwell. Not every place can receive the Lord as his habitation - only Zion, a place fit to receive God himself. We ask when we are going to have the millennium; it will be when the pure in heart are able to receive the Lord. But it is also a real city, or any number of real cities. It is constant, it is unchanging. There are Zions among all the worlds, and there are ions that come and go. Zion is a constant in time and place. It belongs to the order of the eternities. We are not making Zion here; we are preparing the ground for the upbuilding of the kingdom of God and the establishment of Zion. As the Lord says, “My people must be tried in all things, that they may be prepared to receive the glory that I have for them, even the glory of Zion; and he that will not bear chastisement is not worthy of my kingdom” (D&C 136:31).

  Note: What Is Zion Here And Now — pg. 317

• It’s not surprising, the records tell, that travelers and birds alike learned to avoid the rich cities of the plain, while the poor emigrated to other parts. “If a stranger merchant passed through their territory, he was besieged by them all, big and little alike, and robbed of whatever he possessed.” As the Amarna letters show us, this was a world in which every man was for himself. What a terrible state of things. Being grossly materialistic, they rated the hardware high above the software. A famous quotation recurs a numbers of times: “If a man was killed working on the tower, he was ignored. But if a brick fell they sat down and wept. Abraham, seeing them, cursed them in the name of his God” for doing this sort of thing: “Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom” (Ezekiel 16:49).

  Note: Every Man For Himself Creates A World Of Things Without People — pg. 323

• “The Latter-Day Saints who turn their attention to money-making soon become cold in their feelings toward the ordinances of the house of God. They neglect their prayers, become unwilling to pay any donations… . The providences of heaven seem to shut out from them — all in consequence of this lust after the things of this world.” When you see the Latter-day Saints greedy and covetous in the things of this world, do you think their minds are in a fit condition to be written upon by the pen of revelation? Joseph Smith said, “God had often sealed up the heavens because of covetousness in the Church.”

  Note: Covetousness Closes Off The Pen of Revelation — pg. 332-333

• This is one of the last speeches Brigham Young ever gave: “Many professing to be saints seem to have no knowledge, no light to see anything beyond a dollar or a pleasant time, or a comfortable house, or a fine farm.” These have their place, but what do we enjoy? “O fools, and slow of heart to understand the purposes of God and his handiwork among his people.” “Go to the child, and what does its joy consist in? Toys, we may call them,…and so it is with our youth, our young boys and girls; they are thinking too much of this world; and the middle-aged are striving and struggling to obtain the good things of this life, and their hearts are too much upon them. So it is with the aged. Is not this the condition of the Latter-day Saints? It is. What is the general expression through out our community? It is that the Latter-day Saints are drifting as fast as they can into idolatry.” This was all Brigham Young could preach in his last year: “fast into idolatry, drifting into the spirt of the world and into pride and vanity.” “We wish the wealth of things of the world; we think about them morning, noon and night; they are first in our minds when we awake in the morning, and the last thing before we go to sleep at tight.” “We have gone just as far as we can be permitted to go in the road on which we are now traveling. One man has his eye on a gold mine, another is for a silver mine, another is for marketing his flour or his wheat, another for selling his cattle, another to raise cattle, another to get a farm, or building here and there, and trading and trafficking with each other, just like Babylon… . Babylon is here, and we are following in the footsteps of the inhabitants of the earth, who are in a perfect sea of confusion. Do you now this? You ought to, for there are none of you but what see it daily… . The Latter-day Saints [are] trying to take advantage of their brethren. There are Elders in this Church who would take the widow’s last cow, for five dollars, and then kneel down and thank God for the fine bargain they had made.” This is the great voice of the economy of Babylon. It does not renounce its religious pretensions for a minute. Many in it think they are identical with a pious life. Now to Brigham’s final word — his last speech, as a matter of fact: “Now those that can see the spiritual atmosphere can see that many of the Saints are still glued to this earth and lusting and longing after the things of this world, in which there is no profit… . According to the present feelings of many of our brethren, they would arrogate to themselves this world and all that pertains to it… . Where are the eyes and the hearts of this people?… All the angels in heaven are looking at this little handful of people, and stimulating them to the salvation of the human family. So also are the devils in hell looking at his people, too, and trying to overthrow us, and the people are still shaking hands with the servants of the devil, instead of sanctifying themselves, [given a choice between the two.]

  Note: Brigham’s Final Words: The Road We Are Currently On — pg. 333-335

• (1) Do you, first of all, agree to do things his way rather than your way - to follow the law of God? (2) If so, will you be obedient to him, no matter what he asks of you? (3) Will you, specifically, be willing to sacrifice anything he asks you for? (4) Will you at all times behave morally and soberly? (5) Finally, if God asks you to part with your worldly possessions by consecrating them all to his work, will you give his own back to him to be distributed as he sees fit, not as you think wise?

  Note: Consecration Is a Matter of Asking Yourselves These Questions — pg. 342

• “Every man who is afraid, covetous, etc. will be taken in a snare,” for fear and covetousness are the twin offspring of insecurity. To be ambitious and competitive have been have been the natural tendencies in the New World: “Now, in this world, man-kind are naturally selfish, ambitious and striving to excel one above another… Some seek to excel. And this was the case with Lucifer when he fell.” To counter that, the Prophet assures us that “the greatest temporal and spiritual blessings which always come from faithfulness and concerted effort, never attended individual exertion or enterprise,” and that “the advancement of the cause of God and the building up of Zion is as much one man’s business as another’s… Party feelings, separate interests, exclusive designs should be lost sight of in the one common cause, in the interest of the whole.”

  Note: Natural Tendency Towards Unrighteous Advancement — pg. 352

• “The Latter-day Saints, in their conduct and acts with regard to financial matters, are like the rest of the world. The course pursued by men of business in the world has a tendency to make a few rich, and to sink the masses of the people in poverty and degradation. Too many of the Elders of Israel take this course. No matter what comes they are for gain - for gathering around them riches.”

  Note: Make a Few Rich and Sink The Masses — pg. 362

• What can we look forward to now? “Happy is the man whom God correcteth!” If the Lord still loves the Saints, he will treat them as before and give them some very rough times indeed to bring them to their senses. Meanwhile the constant cry of their great leader Brigham Young still reverberates in the hearts of the faithful: How long, O Lord? How long will it be? “We may travel for many years before the sunshine appears. It does not yet appear to this people, they are merely in the twilight.” “Could we expect them to become prepared to be the disciples of the Lord Jesus in one, in five, in ten, in twenty, or in thirty years?” On the eve of the Civil War, he asked them: “Are the Latter-day Saints preparing themselves for the calamities that are coming upon the earth? or are they covetous?” And when the war is over: “We look forward to the day… when we will be prepared to hold up Zion. Are we prepared now? No, we are not. We are only professedly Latter-day Saints.” The feigned words of the profession covered an ever-growing covetousness that blossomed into spectacular flower in the Gilded Age of the nation’s history: “We are constantly receiving communications from the elders laboring in the States… There is a coldness in the minds of the people, a total indifference to the gospel and its glorious truths and the whole sum of their inquiries [is] how and where we can make the most money.”

  Note: Are We Prepared To Meet Zion? — pg. 369

• And consider this: I am not free to lay out my own plans or justify special routines as the equivalent of keeping the law of consecration. Every attempt at rationalization fails. The plain fact is that I have promised to keep a law, and to keep it now. I know exactly what I am supposed to consecrate, exactly how, exactly why, exactly when, and exactly where. Consecration is the whole of the covenant of Israel. The chosen people themselves are consecrated, qadosh meaning “cut off, set apart,” the same meaning as saints - sanc-ti, sancta-fied (cf. sanctum, “a place set apart”). They are called sigillim, which is translated “peculiar” in our King James Bible, but which means “sealed, reserved.” What is con-secrated is then made sacred, withdrawn from the ordinary economy, dedicated to a particular purpose and to that purpose only. It can never be recalled or used for any other purpose without being de-secrated.

  Note: I Don’t Live My Law, I Live His — pg. 388

• What could they possibly find to do? Like the barons of the Middle Ages who, when the Bishop of Rheims rebuked them for slaughtering each other, could only answer, “What else can noblemen possibly be doing?” On what other terms can human beings possibly exist together? Any change would be a disturbing culture shock, and they didn’t like it at all. President Harold B. Lee once talked to a group of us after he visited a stake conference; at a meeting of a high council, an undertaker lamented that he would have no work to do in the next world. At this a banker, a dentist, a real estate promoter, a policeman, and various businessmen all chimed in with the same complaint.

  Note: What Else Can We Do? What Else Will The Millennium Be For? — pg. 391

• C.S. Forester wrote a novel about a general whose whole ambition in life was to end up in a bath-chair in Bournemouth, because that is what respected and tolerably wounded British generals have done for generations. Faust won all the honors and credentials there were in the learned world and concluded that the next logical step for him was suicide. How long can one continue to be upwardly obile in the corporation? What comes after the lifestyles of the rich and the famous? All the generations seem to go through the same routine, for all are taking the same test and all have been given the same standard orders, which do not change: “I gave unto them their knowledge in the day I created them; and in the Garden of Eden,” says the Lord to Enoch, “gave I unto man his agency” (Moses 7:32). Agency to act, and knowledge to act by. What more do you need? Either supernatural wisdom or higher instruction. And that we also have — “and I also gave unto him commandments” (see Abr. 3:25). That takes care of everything, and these are the things we don’t change, because one generation is much like another and must be tested by the same standards, “to prove them herewith, whether they will be true and faithful in all things.

  Note: What More Can We Do With The Agency We’ve Been Given? — pg. 411

• What I consider the changes I have seen, I recall how often my grandmother used to say (and we firmly believed it as children), “It is a sin to kill a fly; much more to harm a greater thing.” Who would buy that today? Back then the first rule was that life as such was sacred. Today, of course, we don’t think tis a sing to kill anything at all except the good guys, the ones we haven to like. We get little credit for that, for, as the Lord says, the publicans and sinners like their friends. What merit can we claim in that? Today we accept half of the Ten commandments: You should not kill your friends, but you get medals for the others. You should not lie, at least not to those you like; the others are fair game. Such a shift in morals gives an idea of how far the ship has drifted in our own day; and now it is caught up in the full current and is racing for the falls with nothing to stop it.

  Note: What Thank Have You For Loving Your Enemies — pg. 414-415

• In the great and irresistible rush of lemmings to the sea, change both unavoidable and uncontrollable, what is the individual to do? What difference can one person make? We are told that the only control in our time must come through repentance, but what difference will it make if one person repents and nobody else does? Well, that’s the story of Jerusalem and the prophets, of the Book of Mormon, and the book of Abraham, and the book of Moses, and the New Testament, and the Joseph Smith story. Each one is the predicament of the one righteous repentant person against the stream. The Book of Mormon is a long list of men who stood almost wholly alone, from Ether to Moroni

  Note: What Difference Does it Make if One Person Repents and No One Else Does? — pg. 415

• “You do not have to wait for the group to change, for the society to repent, note do you have to change your ways to comply with theirs; the individual is free to ignore the multitude, and only he is free. Only an individual can repent. Repent is a reflexive verb - you can’t repent somebody else or force somebody else; you just repent.”

  Note: Don’t Wait For The Group To Repent, Just Repent — pg. 417

• The Lord observed to the apostles that the rich just can’t take it; nevertheless, any alternative plan, any proposal of compromise, easier payments, or tax write-offs, was out of the question. The Lord did not say, “Come back; perhaps we could make a deal.” No, he had to let the young rich man go. One does not compromise on holy things. Unless we observe every promise we make in the endowment, we put ourselves in Satan’s power. Christ’s disciples were already observing the law, for Peter on that same occasion declared, “Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?” (Matt. 19:27). In reply he was given the most satisfying answer possible, being assured by the Lord that he was on the high road to salvation.

  Note: The Lord Doesn’t Offer Us a Compromise With Our Riches — pg. 438-439

• The first objection to the law of consecration is that it runs counter to the spirit of the times. Our people are so conditioned as to view any substantive sharing of the wealth with great suspicion. When Scott Nearing bought a farm in Vermont for $2,200 and the opening of a ski resort nearby raised the value to $6,000,000, the Nearings, opposed to any form of exploitation or neared income, gave the property to the town of Withal for a town forest or park. The town meeting expressed not a single word of gratitude for the gift, though they accepted it; and many accused Mr. Nearing of being a communist for dealing so lightly with natural property. Yet in our society today, people can deed everything they have to anything or anybody, from a cat to an asylum or orchestra, and nobody raises any objection.

  Note: We’ve Become Suspicious of Any Form of Consecration — pg. 442

• We think there is something heroic about working our way through college. Actually the work that students do there isn’t a tenth as hard as they would do if they really studied. It’s hard work. College is practically a handout. Is money or things money can buy the only thing one can work for? That’s the new code at Brigham Young University - why do you study? Because it’s going to make you more money. It was the whole teaching of Brigham Young that the law was adorable because there are so many other and better things to do than simply accumulate goods.

  Note: Acquiring Knowledge Would Require Greater Effort Than Wealth — pg. 444-445

• The virtue is the virtue of getting ahead. Of course that’s the virtue in any field. We make it seem as if that fact obliges a person to go into business - because this is where it counts, because then you possess these qualities. Anyone knows that cheating pays off very well in this country. But the solid businessman will of course protest that the law of consecration is impractical. After all, men are not really created equal. But why did God give some superior advantages? Answer: to put their time, talents, and so on at the disposal of their less fortunate brethren, as God himself does when he makes it his work and his glory to exalt us lowly creatures (Moses 1:38-39).

  Note: If Men Are Created Equal, Why Is Privilege Distributed Unequally? — pg. 445-446

• Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaims the doctrine: “I learned English and then started taking business courses, because that’s what America is best known for: business. Turning one dollar into a million dollars in a short period of time… . I have emotions. But what you do, you keep them cold or you store them away for a time… This is sometimes called selfish. It’s the only way you can be if you want to achieve something. California is the absolute combination of everything I was always looking for. It has all the money in the world there… You have beautiful-looking people there. They all have a tan… I am a strong believer in Western philosophy, the philosophy of success, of progress, of getting rich.” For better or for worse, such is indeed the philosophy of acquisition, expansion, exploitation - energetic and competitive, and admirable in ways as Homeric heroes are admirable, but inevitably ending as Homeric heroes end, doomed, as we shall see later.

  Note: The Philosophy of Acquisition — pg. 449-450

• The stable society is equally ancient, and of course no community is completely the one or the other. The glorious Old Kingdom of Egypt, which saw the peak of its civilization, leaves no evidence whatever of military aggression or expansion, whereas the New Kingdom (Asiatic Kings) was explosively acquisitive. I had welcome opportunity to study a stable civilization in my frequent visits to the Hopis in the 1940s and 1950s. During the Great Depression there was a federal project to pipe and pump up the water from the springs below to the top of the First Mesa. The Indians emphatically rejected the proposal. The carrying of water by the women from the spring to their houses was a time-honored ritual, an important social function, an integral part of the ay things were done and had always been done. But that way, the agent protested, they would never have progress. Progress to what? The great industrial civilization that offered to show them how things were to be done at that time was on the verge of collapse (it as the Works Progress Administration that wanted to build the pump), seized with wild disarray and hysteria. Yet during those same years the Hopis were as well off as ever; they had carried on there for at least a thousand years, and now they were expected to give all that up? Carrying water, putting corn in the ground, weaving blankets or baskets, making pottery, grinding corn at the matte, making piki or dyes, seeking herbs, nuts, feathers, rare clays in the washes — all was part of a single organized activity, thoughtfully and prayerfully pursued, but not without much fun and laughter on the side. And of course everyone had to be at the dances. “What a bore!” we would say. But it was not. I always looked forward to going down there because everybody had such a good time. And I never saw people work so hard — but not for money. “If one of us has corn, they said, “we all have corn”; and they worked very, very hard, for we had left them nothing to live on but dry sand. What impressed me more than anything else was that their weekly dances and ceremonies to which everyone looked forward with eager anticipation followed most exactly, even to astonishing detaisl, the doings of the Greeks, and the Egyptians, yes, and the Israelites, the most stable and the most productive societies, those that have given us our history, our culture to this day, those to which we owe our civilization, those that have given us our history (Chinese and Indian religions), and the one to which we owe our whole civilization. This thing goes on and on for thousands of years, apparently without “progress.” Sister Maria Harvey’s house was the first one they ever tried out the true ring dating on. That’s at Walpi beyond the first Mesa, and her house is eight hundred to eleven hundred years old. It’s been standing there, ad t the Hopis have been doing the same things, for eleven hundred years. It goes on, it at least survives. With nothing to live on, you say. All we see on the mesa is rock and dry sand.

  But where among the Hopis is the progress then? Do they progress? It is exciting and marvelous to see progress in the learning experience of each generation. As an unceasing stream of children enter the scene, they must learn it all from the beginning, and for them it is as fresh and new as th world in the creation, and nothing is more delightful to their elders than to teach them and watch them learn and grow while the teachers themselves discover wonder upon wonder, more than a lifetime can contain, both in the world around them and in the contemplative depths of their own minds. For theise people, who seem to us to be stuck in a rut, the world is always changing, for they move with the miracle of the year and the revolutions of the heavens from one ambience to another. And beauty swallows them up all the time. They revel in it. They have to express themselves in prater as they go out to their fields or come back. And this is common to all the great civilizations of the past. To endure long enough to make a contribution, a culture had to be stable. In bad times of world crisis caused by major climatic changes, many were forced to become marauding nomads, the hordes of the steppes, the expansion warriors who made their final camp the capital of the world and sought to spread their empires over all people as their divine calling. Of course, that is the Roman heritage, and our heritage too.

  We have two cultures, and between them mortal enmity. You can’t compromise between them. For the horse of the steppes feel it their sacred obligation to extend their domination over all who have not yet been subdued, for such, of course, are potential enemies who, having rebuffed the invitation to surrender, are now in a state of open rebellion and must be made to do the will of God. So its the world, divided into the two camps, each trying to swallow up the other. That was the Roman dictum. The whole world was either ager pacatus, pacified and broken to the will of Rome, or ager hosticus, that is, unsubmissive and and rebellious, and therefore the mandatory object of conquest. God wants the world to live in peace, so we cannot live with those people on our borders. “The calling of Rome was to rule from the rivers [the natural boundaries] to the ends of the earth — imperium Oceano, famam qui termine astris”; this was the formula that makes sure that the lands from the end of the earth qui terminet (“which ends”) and the renowned Rome will end only with the stars, and the imperium will end only where the land ends. Pax Romana (“Roman peace”) assurred that none would molest or make afraid, in other words, threaten Roman holdings. This is the formula followed in the world since.

  This is not a mere indifference to or distaste for each other that separates the two cultures, but a vivid antipathy. There is a powerful enmity between them, and this again can best be expressed in what goes on with the Hopis. The president of a firm that supplies equipment for coal and oil companies wrote a letter in January (1985) to the Navajo Tribal Council, protesting referential treatment in the hiring of their own people to work on their own reservation: “Given the historical facts, we consider ourselves to be memvers of the conquering and superior race and you to be the members of the vanquished and inferior race… [The law of Moses strictly forbade the Jews to engage in such activities (Deu. 2:4-5).] Through the generosity of our people, you have been given a reservation where you may prance and dance as you please, obeying your kings and worshipping your false gods.” There was no public outcry when the statement was published, and the writer, Ronald Vetrees, said he had no regrets about sending that letter. The Mormons learned, especially in 1906, at Moencopi that “it was government policy to aid missionaries [of other churches] in converting the Indians to one or another of the Christian denominations,” using, among other things, the well-known “Religious Crimes Codes” that curtailed the Indian freedom of religion.

  Note: Progress Vs. Sustainability — pg. 450-454

• “Seek not for riches but for wisdom, and behold [mutually exclusive] the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto you, and then you shall be made rich. Behold, he that hath eternal life is rich” (D&C 6:7). The two are mutually exclusive, but to satisfy our desire for riches, we are told that we may indeed seek them, but only the true riches of eternal life. Who would want anything else? A young man of my acquaintance who has majored in business, and at an early age made a good deal of money, recently decided to study something else for a change, the things he had really been yearning for all his life. When he announced his intention to his stake president, the man was furious: “Do you mean to tell me that you are going to be spinning your wheels reading books instead of making money?” Here was enmity indeed: anyone who was making money was fulfilling the measure of his existence; he who has made money has already fulfilled his calling and has no further obligation — in fact, the whole virtue of money is that it frees one from any feeling of obligation to anyone, so says Malcolm Forbes.

  Note: Reading Books Instead of Making Money — pg. 459-460

• “Competitiveness always rests on the assumption of a life-and-death struggle: ‘There is no free lunch’ is the clarion cry. The name of the game is survival — a dirty word; we hear it a lot. It means to still be on the scene after everyone else has been wiped out. John Crysostom tells how in his city of Antioch just before the great earthquake a common joke went around the town, with everybody saying, “I wish there would be an earthquake and kill everybody in Antioch but me, and then I would be the richest man in the city.” Well, they got their earthquake, and Antioch was never rebuilt. The chairman of the board of one of the biggest banks in the nation, Gaylord Freeman, says, “Business is so *#!$ competitive! The head of a business is really competing… with your friends in other businesses, your dearest friends.” “My good friend Milton Friedman [whose word is gospel at the BYU] says the worst thing is for a businessman to feel responsible to society. He says that’s a lot of baloney, and it’s contrary to the businessman’s assignment.” As the head of Beatrice has said, “If you’re going to be successful, you can’t let any person stand in the way.”

  There is a Jewish legend of how when the waters of the flood began to rise, the people took their children into their arms to protect them. As the water rose higher, they placed their little ones on their shoulders above the water level. When it rose still higher, they held them on their heads; but when the water level continued to rise, they placed them under their feet to save themselves.

  In the end you are competing with everyone, or as everyone was saying when I was young, “Self-preservation is the first law of nature,” a doctrine that justifies the commission of any possible crime in the name of survival. Nobody loves the rat race, but nobody can think of anything else — Satan has us just where he wants us. Also when I was young it was assumed that anyone seeking knowledge was willing to pay the highest price and go without the luxuries of life, and for years without even the necessities (that isn’t so anymore), out of his pure love of learning. How the scene has shifted. People were horrified when General Barrows, at the time president of the University of California at Berkeley, bluntly proclaimed at a commencement exercise, “The only reason anyone goes to college is to increase his earning power.” I was petrified by the statement, little realizing that the time would come that it would be treated by everyone as a universally accepted truism and even an idealistic proclamation.

  You say, well, if you’re not in business, then what are you supposed to be doing? It is, as usual, Brigham Young who puts things into perspective: “Will education feed and clothe you, keep you warm on a cold day, or enable you to build a house? Not at all. Should we cry down education on this account. No. What is it for? The improvement of the mind; to instruct us in all the arts and sciences, in the history of the world, in the laws of… how to be useful while we live.” Useful here and fulfilling hereafter. “Truth, wisdom, power, glory, light and intelligence exist upon their own qualities; they do not, neither can they, exist upon any other principle. Truth is congenial with itself, and light cleaves unto light.” (Brigham is a marvelous man. Here’s a man who went to school eleven days, yet he’s the best master of English prose we have, and he saw the light on every side.) “It is the same with knowledge, and virtue, and all eternal attributes; they follow after each other… Truth cleaves unto truth because it is truth; and it is to be adorned, because it is an attribute of God, for its excellence, for itself.” There can be no ulterior motive in the study of heavenly things: “Knowledge is Power” is the slogan of a rascally world. “What do you love truth for? Is it… because you think it will make you a ruler, or a Lord?

  Note: Education: Increasing Spending Power or Eternal Worth? — pg. 460-462

• A highly successful corporation president said, “One of the great tragedies of American business life is what happens to talented executives who dedicate their lives to their company, who are successful and part of a system that is so bad. I didn’t take the company from a million-dollar loss to a million-dollar profit without hurting a lot of people… . You do to others, and then it is done unto you… One morning, I found my own resignation on my desk. Absolutely no reason was given. I didn’t know what to think… . I left immediately. That was part of the deal. They used the same formula I had used. You do to others, and then it’s done unto you… You begin to wonder about this capitalism you preached, the profit motive. I used to tell young executives the name of the game is profit. You wonder whose game it really is… . Our profit system, the one we all live by, is presented as a fund game for young people training to be managers. If you can reduce the time it takes to do something, you increase the profit. Growth and investors’ happiness are based on this. You can expand your facilities… that’s why America is the land of plenty [a bitter note]. I’m so proud of the system,… that we all have television sets and cars and pollution and everything. There’s no place like it.”

  Note: Profit Is The Name of The Game: But Whose Game Is It? — pg. 462-463

• “It seems beyond doubt to me, my dear More, if I would speak frankly, that where private property rules, where money is the measure of all things for everyone, it is virtually impossible for society to flourish under righteous administration. That is, unless one thinks it right and proper that every good thing be owned by immoral people, or that prosperity consists of a few owning everything, albeit the favorite few themselves are not at all happy, while all the others live in abject misery… How much better and nobler the arrangements of the Utopians seem to me where everyone has more than enough although nobody has more than another… Compare with that the nations of the world which must be constantly inventing new legislation and yet never have good laws; where every individual thinks to own for himself alone what he has earned and the daily accumulation of countless laws is adequate to keep people safe in their possessions. One just admit that Plato is right… He realized that the only way to cure the evil was by economic equality, which is simply not possible as long as property is privately owned… .Granted there are ways of improving the situation without abolishing private property, there remains no other cure for evil.”

  Note: Evil Will Exist As Long As Private Property Exists — pg. 464-465

• “But after they have divided among themselves in their insatiable greed all that should go to the society as a whole, they still are not happy.” The law can avenge but never hinder the deceptions, thievery, riots, panics, murders, assassinations, poisonings, and so on, all of which spring from one source — money. That is is Thomas More writing — and it cost him his life.

  Note: The Law Can Avenge Evil But Never Hinder — pg. 466

• How would such a world take the law of consecration? If we have objections, surely the world must have much stronger objections. Yet that is not the case, as Gaylord Freeman in reply to his “good friend” Milton Friedman observes. “There’s nothing sacred about a profit-oriented society. There’s no guarantee in the Bible or the Constitution that you can have private property. If we’re going to continue to have these opportunities, it’s only because this is acceptable to a high enough proportion of our people that they don’t change the laws to prevent it.” What many Latter-Day Saints are saying is that they are perfectly willing to put the law of consecration into practice just as soon as the rest of the world is ready to receive it. We will have to wait and see. When we ask others what wonderful plan the Lord has reserved for his chosen people, people tell us it is, of course, nothing more nor less than the conventional and accepted economy.

  Note: How Can The World Accept Consecration If We Cannot — pg. 467

• I have spent a lot of time speaking here. It’s insolent for me to speak after the Lord has spoken. We should just go read the written word. What does every civilization leave behind? What is going to be the net product of our civilization? It’s garbage, it’s junk. You can see that, and it’s mounting. It sounds rhetorical: we have to produce things (expand in producing); then we have to increase consumption, so we have to increase desire for things with advertising film-flam; then we have to consume very fast and discard a great deal, because there is available a new and improved version. So discarding goes on, as Congressman Wright pointed out recently: “The principal exports of the United States today are used packages and scraps.” We are impatient of the slow ways of nature. We have to go faster and faster, and the biggest question has become the dumps.

  Note: Our Biggest Contribution Is Waste — pg. 483

• What do the other civilizations leave behind, the ones I call the stable ones? The ones after the manner of the old people. They leave themselves behind. Their next generation takes over and carries on. Time means nothing to them. It’s an eternal order of the law. The law of consecration is an eternal order. We will just leave ourselves, the culture, behind, without any loss of product. People will have plenty to do, and plenty to think of.

  Note: Sustainability Means The Continuation of the Next Generation — pg. 484

• I define utopia in the generic sense as simply the ideal society, the best imaginable. The task of describing my utopia has been both simplified and complicated by the fact that the breakthroughs, changes, and utopias I would like to see are all the same.

  Note: What Is a Utopia — pg. 487

• Plutarch’s Lycurgus stands at the head of most recommended reading lists on utopia; this is the utopia that serves as a pilot study for all the others, ancient and modern, who follow it in form and substance. Plutarch tells us that later utopians followed his lead, including Plato, the most influential of them all. Lycurgus begins his work in a state on the verge of total collapse: “For there was an intolerable inequality, with swarms of impoverished and helpless people burdening the city while all the wealth had been concentrated in the hands of the few; arrogance, and envy, and crime, and luxury prevailed, and the fundamental cause of this chronic social disease was plutos kai penia, the conjunction of wealth and poverty.” Lycurgus, who on the death of his brother became the guardian of his brother’s young son and hence became the strongest man in the state, resorted to drastic remedies, beginning with redistribution of all the land into equal plots, each producing enough to feed a man and his family adequately - and no more! Even more daring was the equalizing of personal property, but Lycurgus was able to do it quickly and effectively simply by abolishing money. He did that very simply by replacing gold and silver with cast iron as a medium of exchange, which he was free to do, since money is only a token. The new money was so inconvenient that people quickly gave it up. This discouraged foreign trade and corruption; it meant that luxury items practically vanished, while indispensable commodities were all homemade, and Sparta became renowned for the high quality of the things things it produced for use, and the high technical ingenuity displayed in them.

  To counter wealth and luxury, common dining-halls and dormitories were provided, the unfailing mark of every true utopia. The meals were delightful affairs, with fifteen friends at each table exchanging wit and wisdom, for friendship and fun are the theme of this utopia. The whole society was a school, with no distinction between male and female; dress was uniform, simple and light weight. There was a public stigma on bachelors, and adultery was unknown. For all their vigorous physical regime, “To be a Spartan was to love philosophy more than gymnastics”; since “the busy and demanding activity of amassing money had no place at all, there being nothing admirable or honorable in wealth,” they had more leisure than any other people. “Dances and songfests, parties, games, and athletics, hunting and conversation took up their time when they were not on military duty.” The conversation, if one knows the Greeks, was no idle chatter, but the discussion of serious things in a lively and often humorous way — and it was never boring. The ideal, Plutrarch tells us, was that of a hive of busy and happy bees — a little Zion.

  For their leaders they chose not the swift or the strong, but the wise. The well-known grim Spartan military state, says Plutarch, took over only after an earthquake in 464 B.C. and the campaign of Lysander, which for the first time poured gold and silver money into the city. Satisfied to remain a city and a people with few wants, they had no ambitions abroad except to secure their way of life at home, which sometimes meant discouraging imperialism in others; but in that their policy was never to bring undue military pressure to bear on a foreign power, which would only make trouble for Sparta by forcing the offending state to feel threatened and to arm itself. When Agesilaeus was wounded in Thebes, a fellow general told him, “This is what you deserve for making the reluctant Thebans go to war and at the same time teaching them how to do it.” They refused to strike an enemy when he was down and would not even allow the laws to be written: Like the laws of Moses, practice should write them on the hearts of the people.

  The wisest of the Greeks was always held to be Solon, the father of democracy. Before Solon, the idea of a democratic state with the people ruling themselves was considered wildly utopian (for example, in the Furstenspiegel literature), so that Solon as the true father of democracy can be considered the most successful of utopians. He calls his great work the Eunomia, “the proper order of things,” or the way things should be — a better name than utopia for the ideal society. Like the prophets of Israel with whom he was contemporary, Solon begins by describing the world as it is, a dismal picture.

  “The ruin of our state will never come by the doom of Zeus; … it is the townsfolk themselves and their false-hearted leaders who would feign destroy our city through wantonness and love of money;… they are rich because they yield to the temptation of dishonest discourses… They spare neither the treasures of the gods nor the property of the state, and steal like brigands one from another. They pay no heed to the Unshaken rock of holy Justice… our beloved city is rapidly wasted and consumed in those secret deals which are the delight of dishonest men.”

  Note: Those Utopias of Days Gone Past — pg. 490-492

• More’s Utopia is divided into two parts, the first a vivid account of the present state of the world, followed by the second part, which gives us a better way of doing things. The word utopia, “the place that is not,” has been interpreted by the opposition as synonymous with Never-Never-Land, Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, or any unworkable and crackpot social order. But we must bear in mind that More was a preeminently hard-headed, practical, experienced, common-sense Englishman; and that his work had great appeal among the most influential magnates, merchants, and artisans in the Netherlands, Germany, France, England and Italy. The thing was really meant to work.

  He deals first with general principles to establish guidelines for his utopia. The work takes the form of a dialogue, which begins when More in Antwerp (Lollard country) meets Raphael the sailor, who has spent five years on the Island of Utopia near Brazil. “It seems beyond doubt to me, my dear More,” the sailor Raphael Hytholdaeus begins, “if I would speak frankly, that where private property rules, where money is the measure of all things for everyone, it is virtually impossible for society to flourish under righteous administration. That is, unless one thinks it right and proper that every good thing be owned by immoral people, or that prosperity consists of a few owning everything, albeit the favorite few themselves are not at all happy, while all the others live in abject misery… How much better and nobler the arrangements of the utopians seem to me where everyone has more than enough although nobody has more than another; … compare with that the nations of the world which must be constantly inventing new legislation and yet never have good laws; where every individual thinks to own for himself alone what he has earned and the daily accumulation of countless laws is inadequate to keep people safe in their possessions. One must admit that Plato was right;… he realized that theo only way to cure the evil was by economic equality, which his simply not possible as long as property is privately owned; . . .granted there are ways of improving the situation without abolishing private property, there remains no other cure for the evil.”

  He points out that laws limiting ownership, sumptuary laws, laws against corruption in government, and so on — none of these will cure the fatal disease as long as we have private property, which indeed is the disease.

  Note: A Utopia: A Place That Is Not, But a Plan That Was Always Meant To Be — pg. 501-502

• The People are a capricious and stupid beast that doesn’t know its own strength and bears burdens and blows with patience;… it knows not what fear it inspires, or that its masters have prepared a magic potion to stupefy it. What a fantastic situation! The People beating and tying itself up with its own hands; fighting and dying for a few pennies from the King, … totally unaware that everything between heaven and earth really belongs to it and stoning to death anyone who would remind it of its rights.

  Note: Excerpts From “The People” By: Thomas Campanella — pg. 505

• The list of utopian writings inspired by the above is a long one, the most important contributions being Hobbes’ Leviathan, Harrington’s Oceana, and Fenelon’s Telemaque. But theorizing about utopia always seems to suggest doing something about it, and the Western world was never without stirrings of utopian movements. Lilburne and the Levelers were rebuffed by Cromwell, even as the German peasants were by Luther; and Lilburne ended up as a Quaker. And that gives us an excuse for jumping over to the New World, the to Ephrata community in Pennsylvania in 1732. The Mennonites, like the Quakers, did better on this side of the water than on the other. George Rapp’s project in New Harmony, PA, moved to Indiana, where Robert Owen took it over and founded New Harmony in 1828. His work brought forth lasting results in the first kindergarten, the first trade school, the first free library, and the first public schools in America, all of which have endured until the present administration. The Shakers flourished in eighteen villages in eight states, and Charles Fourier’s Brooke Farm experiment spread to twenty-eight colonies in the 1840s. John Humphrey Noyes made a lasting contribution at Oneida, New York, in the same decade, and when the Mormons left Nauvoo, the place was taken over Etienne Cabet and his Icarians. Historians have often observed that of all the utopian projects that swarmed in nineteenth-century America, only Mormonism, which they all ridicule as the craziest of all, has flourished.

  Parley P. Pratt paints a picture of utopian bliss in a letter to his brother written from Salt Lake City just a year after the arrival of the pioneers: “All is quiet — stillness. No elections, no police reports, no murders, no wars in our little world… No policemen… have been on duty to guard us from external or internal dangers.” That would get nowhere in the Nielson ratings — what on earth would the people do if they would not die of boredom? Answer: “Here we can cultivate the mind, renew the spirits, invigorate the body,… or polish and adorn our race. And here we can receive and extend that pure intelligence which is unmingled with the jargon of mystic Babylon.” This qualifies Brother Pratt as a full-blown utopian, and indeed the revelations to the Church back him up: “and all this… that every man may improve upon his talent, that every man may gain other talents, yea, even an hundred fold.” (D&C 82:18). The “all this” is the law of consecration by which all is “to be cast into the Lord’s storehouse, to become the common property of the whole church — every man seeking the interest of his neighbor, and doing all things with an eye single to the glory of God” (D&C 82:18-19) The “all this” is the law of consecration, by which all is “to be cast into the Lord’s storehouse, to become the common property of the whole church — every man seeking the interest of his neighbor, and doing all things with an eye single to the glory of God” (D&C 82:18-19). This is no pilot study or tentative arrangement: “this order I have appointed to be an everlasting order unto you, and unto your successors, in as much as you sin not” (D&C 82:20).

  Note: The Examples of The Utopias With Mormonism At The Top — pg. 509-511

• None endorsed the doctrine more ardently than Augustine, until in the end of his life reality caught up with him and he had to explain that the city of God was after all only spiritual. Let us hark back to Vergil’s fourth Eclogue. It made him a saint in the Middle Ages; for its picture of the coming of the Messianic age, foretold from the beginning, unites the Christian and the pagan world in the shared oracle of the Sibyl — glorified alike in Vergil’s poem and Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. More than that, it was picked up by the Founding Fathers and placed on the Great Seal of the new nation; Vergils’s magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo (“the great line of the centuries begins anew”) is indeed the novus ordo seclorum (“the new order of the ages”) of the Great Seal of the United States. In both documents, the heavy emphasis is on the bold new beginning and the return to primal purity. Lycurgus’s first step, says Plutarch, was to recognize that his great society would have to be a whole new system from the ground up; all utopias are brand-new heavens. Vergil’s theme was iam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto, a new generation descended from heaven”; and now toto surget gens aurea mundo—“a new golden race has taken over the world.” If you will look at the back of a dollar bill, you will see added to the picture of the Great Seal, with the words novus ordo seclorum, the upbeat announcement annuit coeptis (“he approves what we have begun”)—with the all-seeing eye on the capstone of an Egyptian pyramid— the ancient hope fulfilled, another new age, another utopia, and all ironically announced on a dollar bill! We proclaim it from the housetops: “Thine alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears” —but when? “Beyond the years;” to be sure, but for the present it is hail and farewell. Utopia is already past — and it was the dollar that killed it.

  Note: A New Utopia Built From The Old — pg. 512-513

• Here is what all the great utopians have in common:

  1. They were not losers with axes to grind but the most successful and respected men of their times.
  2. They were preeminently practical men of the world, with far more experience in leadership and organization than their critics
  3. All attempted to implement the setting up of societies that they believed had existed among men in the past and would again in the future
  4. Whether Jew, Heathen, or Christian, all thought of their utopias as religious societies, and they preached both religious tolerance and the cultivation of faith.
  5. Yet all, inspire of all the great esteem in which they and their works were held, were persecuted by the powers that be, and few escaped violent death.
  6. All suffered disillusionment in their own day; their communities were either violently destroyed or went underground.
  7. They taught that they object of life was joy, and none of them either displayed or recommended stern puritanical judgements. Their utopias were liberal and easy going.
  8. The advantage of technology and its possibilities for bettering the human condition were first fully realized by the utopians.
  9. They all realized that joy is to be found only in the active mind— the glory of man is intelligence, and knowledge is the stuff on which the mind feeds.
  10. Science, art, scholarship, philosophy, literature were all cultivated as the principle activity of the citizens. There is quite enough there to keep us all busy even without the urgent imperative of getting lunch. It is because of this that what appears to us as a disturbing uniformity in dress, housing, and so on, presents no problem but rather removes obstacles to the proper studies of mankind.
  11. The joy derived from the senses — beautiful surroundings and impressions — and from the vigorous exercise of our physical as well as our mental faculties is never neglected.
  12. Goods of “secondary intent” (Campanella uses the expression)— clothing, housing, food, medicaments, transportation, etc. — are essential to assist in carrying on the more serious work of the mind and body, but they never become primary, in other words, their own excuse for being, as is the case with us, where to make and market such goods fulfills the measure of one’s existence.
  13. Money and private property are the insuperable obstacles to the achievement of utopia. The two are inseparable because the idea that there is no limit to what money can represent is necessary to implement the equally outrageous idea that there is no limit to what an individual can own. The relationship is succinctly stated in a formula propounded by one of awesome authority in the very beginning, in the first utopia, where he cast the long, dark shadow ahead of those ominous words: “You can have anything in this world for money.”

  Were all of these shrewd, experienced, and concerned observers being simplistic in unanimously tracing the root of all evil to money? Well, make a list of some of those evils that today as never before threaten the whole world with disillusion — drugs; pornography; terrorism; nuclear armaments; fraud; corruption; soldiers of fortune; corporate outrages; opportunistic preachers; pollution of air, water, food, and information; acid rain; extinction of species; and so on. Which of these does not have big money as the driving force behind it? The drive for power and gain is the soil in which they all flourish.

  Enoch, Abraham, and Moses all sought against frightful opposition to restore the order that alone offers happiness to earths inhabitants. Their program is renewed in full force in the law of consecration. To consecrate is to set aside, to dedicate to a particular purpose; what has been dedicated is no longer at the donors disposal.

  Note: What Do All Utopias Have In Common — pg. 519-520

• Yet there is certainly that which is good, true, and beautiful in the workmanship of goods of second intent; a well-made knife is a beautiful object in itself and therefore of first intent. Socrates in Xenophon gives us an extreme case when he tells us that a dung basket can be as beautiful as a golden shield can be ugly. And what makes it beautiful? How can that be? What makes a dung basket beautiful? Its functional perfection. This is a paradox: it is beautiful because it fulfills its secondary function, and its beauty gives it primary value. What, on the other hand, would make an ornate golden bowl ugly? To be sure, its meaningless embellishments and especially its lack of proportions — its lack of a particular proportion. Measurements have been made of thousands of Greek vessels in museums and were found to present in the overwhelming majority of cases the famous “golden proportion” or “golden section.” That is an exact measure, an exact number — 2.618 to one. It’s an unreal number, not a round number; it goes on forever, but that is the number. In 99 percent of cases, you say that a vase is beautiful because it follows that proportion.

  Note: Goods of First and Second Intent: Function Over Form — pg. 526-527

• Who then is to judge what is good, true and beautiful? You are. Plato says it is the soul: the proper dimensions and proportions are already stored in our minds, and when we recognize the good, true and beautiful—how is it that we do it? It is by anamnesis, the act of recalling what we have seen somewhere before. You must have received an impression of what is right somewhere else, because you recognize it instantly; you don’t have to have it analyzed; you don’t have to say, “That is beautiful,” or “That is ugly”; you welcome it as an old acquaintance. We recognize what is lovely because we have seen it somewhere else, and as we walk through the world, we are constantly on the watch for it with a kind of nostalgia, so that when we see an object or a person that pleases us, it is like recognizing an old friend; it hits us in the solar plexus, and we need no measuring or lecturing to tell us that it is indeed quite perfect. It is something we have long been looking for, something we have seen in another world, memories of how things should be. That is the basic principle of Plato’s idealism: you know when a thing is good and what the ideal proportion is because you have seen it somewhere, and you recognize it.

  Note: We Recognize Inherently What is Right, Good and Beautiful — pg. 528

• The purpose of education, of course, is to bring the two goods together in proper balance: Mens sana in corpore sano (“a sound mind in a sound body”)—the two must go together. We all stand in need of constant nourishment for both body and spirit. The trouble is that we are not allowed to forget the hunger of the body; it will always remind you that you are in need of nourishment. But what about the other? We think the hunger of the mind can wait, but if we separate the mind and the body, we nourish neither. Both are susceptible to junk food and anorexia: TV supplies the junk food, the school the other. But it is always the mind that stands to lose the most.

  Note: Nourishment of Body and Mind — pg. 530

• And so when limited secondary intent steals the show, we are left with a phenomenon we find all through literature: you devote your whole life to the second thing, and “the summer has come and gone, and our souls are not saved; vita brevis est, ars longa (“life is short, art long”); gaudeamus igitur iuvenes dum sumus, and so on—the most famous of all school songs which goes back to the fourth century: “Let us rejoice while we are young because after miserable old age, nos habebit humus, the dirt is waiting to receive us.” It is the realization too late that there has bee nothing for us beyond the business of day-to-day, and that we are not going anywhere. The humanist stands proudly with William James “on the firm foundation of unyielding despair.”

  Note: Let Us Rejoice While We’re Young, The Dirt Waits to Receive Us — pg. 531

• In my high school days, in first year, everyone in the school system was required to read Milton — “L’Allegro,” parts of Paradise Lost, and, notably, “Il Paneroso,” all of a strong religious and holy resonance. We read and memorized extensively Julius Caesar (which was often dramatized in class, as you will recall), Ivanhoe, Pilgrim’s Progress, and even such heavy stuff as Macbeth — all in the freshman year of high school. All these were serious reading in which it was quite impossible to escape the mention of God. But that was in the 1920s, which was also the great day of the smart alecks and debunkers; we all remember the Scopes Trial, so badly bungled by both celebrated lawyers. We recited the “Rubaiyat” of Omar Khayyam to each other and devoured H.L. Mencken and Robert Ingersol and the Haldeman-Julius Little Blue Books. But the interesting thing to me was that the debunkers themselves simply could not get God off their minds. They were always talking about him as if they had a personal vendetta with him. Why not “take the cash and let the credit go,” as Omar said; if people were silly enough to worry about God, that was their business. But they could not leave it there. The subject bugged them, and aside from that, the religious issue was the only way any of them could get an audience.

  Note: The Debunkers of The Literature of God — pg. 531-532

• The best example of sound education is that which contemplates the possibility of things beyond, that sense of infinite possibilities, which, according to Alfred North Whitehead, gives to the Bible and Plato a transcendent importance and recommends them to all mankind. It is that forthright education that does not evade the issues enjoyed by the Founding Fathers, a club including men of every religious persuasion. An official religion was one thing they were determined to avoid, because each had his own ideas on the subject, and no two were alike. Education invites the young to join that club, and at an early age. The Founding Fathers were brought up on the Bible, Plutarch, Cicero, and the philosophers of the Enlightenment, steeped in sacred and profane poetry, alert to every new science, given to discussion and philosophy. Then along came John Dewey and his army of “New Education” peddlers. For them the education of the past was nothing but hoary, outdated, antiquated, authoritarian, narrow-minded rote-learning. He is the pragmatist and the father of our modern educational society. Forget the musty books and take the class on field trips to the farm, the store, the factory, or the bank, to learn how things are done in the real world. How is cheese made, how do you board a bus? How do you discuss traffic problems, dress, and the cafeteria? Why are whales interesting? Why, to be sure, because that is where we get soap from! That is typical of Deweyism. We explore the nature of the universe by having each child tell the class what his opinion of it is; so then we know. When I was at Claremont teaching in the school of education, the instructors had a lot of farm kids in Corona chewing up paper to make paper-mache to construct a cow in order to show children how milk was made. There were a couple of decades when students learned to write only in block letters because they could learn faster that way. For years I had hundreds of students who could neither read nor write cursive script, which was regarded as an elitist, antiquated, old-fashioned, non progressive, and ornamental device. In the 1940s, on the eve of entering the war, there was a great demand for mechanical drawing, so urgent that in the Pasadena School District some classes were devoted entirely to drawing horizontal lines, while in others, students drew only vertical; they never found out what they were drawing — it was all second intent simply perverted, because there was no first intent. At the same time it was proposed in the same school district that the teaching of history be supplanted by the more pragmatic discipline of dry-cleaning.

  Note: The Idiocy of “New Age” Learning By What We Think of The World Rather Than What It Is — pg. 533-534

• It is not the economic man at all that keeps the culture going, but his questions about his position in this life as well as the next. As long as a distinct set of answers are satisfactory, the distinctive aspects of a culture remained constant and offered that degree of continuity which made for stability. It appears, on the other hand, that experiment, innovation, and change are response to inadequacy or outright failure in some sector of a culture’s general view of the world. Note that it is the good of first intent that keeps a culture going, not the tools and gadgets to which anthropologists are fond of attributing the evolution of thought. The implements are secondary; if people cannot answer the big questions, the whole show runs down.

  Note: Goods of First Intent Maintain a Society, Not The Gadgets — pg. 542

• The Muses could not very well be separated from the schools, since mousike (the art of the Muses, which is our word for music) is simply the Greek word for education or culture. The museum was not a shrine; the teachers were elected in a general public assembly, which, however, began with prayer. The term museum became synonymous with didaskaleion and paideuterion, public schools.

  Note: Museums Were Not Without Schools In The Beginning — pg. 543

• “‘Will education feed and clothe you, keep you warm on a cold day, or enable you to build a house?’ Let us remember that no one knew the necessity of those more than Brigham Young in the conditions under which he led the people. ‘Will education feed and clothe you, keep you warm on a cold day, or enable you to build a house? Not at all. Should we cry down education on this account? No. What is it for? The improvement of the mind; to instruct us in all arts and sciences, in the history of the world, in the laws of nations; to enable us to understand the laws and principles of life, and how to be useful while we live.’ This is the knowledge that makes us really useful. In Utah today we cry down this education as “frills,” which we cut from the program. The mind craves knowledge as the body craves food.”

  Note: Education Will Not Feed Us, But It Is For The Improvement of The Mind — pg. 546

• Today we have given up entirely on goods of first intent. The most eminent universities for the first time are now places where one goes primarily to buy MBA and law degrees. The full measure of the success of their graduates is the avoidance of criminal prosecution. I believe there should be more to education than that. Remember General Barrows, the president at Berkeley long ago? He used to say that the only reason anyone goes to school is to increase his earning power.

  Note: Shouldn’t Education Be More Than Buying Degrees — pg. 547

• The higher you get in heaven, the lower you get in this world. The Psalmist says, “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God, than dwell in the pavilions of the princess of the wicked” (Psalm 84:10). Better the lowest position in the best of worlds than the highest position in the lowest of worlds, which is what Satan wanted, remember? “Hail, horrors, hail!… Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.

  Note: Better To Serve in Heaven Than To Reign In Hell — pg. 549

• Of all the things you could be doing— and the list of them is a mile long — you could only do one or only get started on one in a short lifetime. But a taste is not enough; we rightfully feel cheated of what is ours by right. All belongs to us that we are capable of conceiving, and containing, and enjoying. But what happens? We go and spoil everything, and then in our feelings of guilt, we petulantly slam the door on faith and repentance, and we doggedly pretend to find fulfillment after the “vision splendid” of our immortality has faded into the light of common day, which we smugly call “the real world.” In the dialogue with his friend Georgias, who was bringing the exciting “New Education” to Athens, Socrates admits that his teaching has no more chance of competing with Gorgias’ easy, business-oriented courses than a competent pediatrician would in competition for juvenile patients with a pastry cook who prescribed nothing but desert. Goods of the second intent will always win out with the public, bringing with them sickness and debility. Let us hope it does not prove fatal this time, as it did in Athens, and at many other times in the past.

  Note: How Can Medicine Compete With Desert? The People Will Always Want Desert. — pg. 550

• Is this all there is? If you are a saint, you know that this is a wicked world; if you are the most cynical and worldly unbeliever, you still know by experience that it is a vicious one. It seems that everything we want here is either destructive or trivial.

  Note: Everything Is Destructive or Trivial — pg. 554

• Nobody wants to live forever in a sewer, yet according to Shakespeare even that is preferable to the alternate: “The weariest and most loathed worldly life that age, ache, penury, and imprisonment can lay on nature is a paradise to what we fear of death.”

  Note: Any Life is Preferable To Death — pg. 555