My CMS The View from a New City

Man may think of himself as an animal living among animals, by the day, or he may think of himself as a member of a family, or society, or a nation that lives for centuries. Or he may find himself obliged (because his reason drives him irresistibly to it) to regard himself as a part of an infinite universe, living in infinite time. And, therefore, in respect of the infinitely small phenomena of life that influence his behaviour, a rational person must do what in mathematics is called integration: that is, establish a relation to the immediate issues of life, a relation to the entire infinite universe in time and space, conceiving of it as a whole. And the relationship established by man to that whole, of which he feels himself a part and from which he draws guidance for his behaviour, is that which has been, and is called religion. And therefore religion has always been, and cannot cease to be, an essential and indisposable condition of the life of rational humanity. A confession and Other Religious Writings, page 87; Leo Tolstoy

From time to time I read articles discussing how the growth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has slowed or stopped. I think when I read these things that the popularity of the Church bears no relation to its truthfulness. If it is God’s Church, he can make it succeed or fail, at his whim. But I have just realized that the amazing progress of the Church is proof of the divinity of the Book of Mormon and the truthfulness of the prophecies contained therein.

Here are a few lines from 3rd Nephi chapter 20:

“I say unto you that when the Lord shall see fit, in his wisdom, that these sayings shall come unto the Gentiles according to his word, then ye may know that the covenant which the Father hath made with the children of Israel, … is already beginning to be fulfilled…. And when ye shall see these sayings coming forth among you, then ye need not any longer spurn at the doings of the Lord, ….yea, wo unto him that shall deny the revelations of the Lord, and that shall say the Lord no longer worketh by revelation, or by prophecy, or by gifts, or by tongues, or by healings, or by the power of the Holy Ghost!”

When Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery penned these lines they had no earthly reason to believe that anyone, other than their close friends and family, would ever read them. They were totally isolated and cut off from the centers of influence in the world. They needed to have a friend bring them potatoes to keep them from starving to death. The fact that the Book of Mormon is now distributed by the millions and that people are gathering to the Church from the four corners of the world in the millions is fulfilment of the foregoing prophetic words contained in that Book, and that, against all odds and massive persecutions and opposition. If this unlikely prophecy has come to pass, then the other propositions, and promises contained in that marvelous book are also true.

This week has been glorious beyond belief. Our youngest son, Brent, married Kylee Shrader in the Draper Temple. They are now in Hawaii on a two month honeymoon. That is one of the advantages of waiting to get married. Brent is 39 and Kylee is 27. One of the few. Although we had the only rain storm we have had in two months during our outdoor wedding dinner, the guests made it inside the house, after the lightning but before the rain, and the close quarters made for a very conversational evening.

For the last two months, I have been working on a project for one of Brent’s clients. It has nothing to do with the law. I am enjoying myself thoroughly. I get up, make my bed and go to programming in my pajamas. I am learning HTML, Javascript and Docker. I also was featured on a podcast of a well known, German programming guru named Adam Bien. The program aired on July 9th and was called “A Soldering, Agile, Geek Lawyer using Java and Quarkus.”

From Salon

“However, pervasive as it has become throughout our culture, the story of the selfish gene is based on fundamental misconceptions. In recent decades, researchers in evolutionary biology have overturned virtually every significant assumption in the selfish gene account. In its place, they have developed a far more sophisticated conception of how evolution works, revealing the rich tapestry of nature’s dynamic interconnectedness. Rather than evolution being driven by competition, it turns out that cooperation has played a far more important role in producing the great transitions that led to Earth’s current breathtaking state of diversity and beauty.

The trouble with the selfish gene story is not just that it is scientifically flawed; it’s also that it presents such an impoverished view of life’s dazzling magnificence. The discoveries of modern researchers showing how life evolved to its current state of lavish abundance reveal a spectacle of awe-inspiring complexity, mind-boggling dynamic feedback loops, and infinitely subtle interconnections.”

Yesterday I participated in an Adam Bien video class on programming architectures. Adam Bien lives in Munich, Germany, so the class started at 3:00 a.m. and lasted until 11:00 a.m., Utah time. As a result of what I learned at the class, I have decided to retool my juristec.com web site to a more monolithic format. I have come to the conclusion that the only utility for this exercise is my own education. Why am I staying on the bleeding edge, you ask. I am not sure, but I will let you know if I find out.

Also, I completed a 64.5 hour, water only fast yesterday afternoon. got down to 209 lbs.

I recently wrote a project in Elm-lang. During my researches, I learned about the importance of “a single source of truth” in programming. I am wondering how that applies more generally. Here are two possible examples:

We have just recovered from four disastrous years of political misrule. In the 19th century, the Latter-day Saints learned that democracy can sometimes mean tyranny by the majority. When all recourse to the established governmental authority failed them, they established what has been called The Council of Fifty as an alternative remedy. This council functioned under the proposition that a theocracy would be a superior form of government. This is, of course, true, if you have access to the word of God on such matters and if the people have faith in the prophet and a willingness to obey his revelations.

It occurs to me that, if the leader is truly inspired and not functioning under any manner of self interest, other difficult issues could safely be entrusted to him. One such issue, which is currently troubling society is: what constitutes a family. Granting the inspired, good faith leader discretion to order such personal arrangements to best fit and benefit the individuals involved would be superior to the current solution of trusting legislatures and courts to set arbitrary, one size fits all parameters. Once again, however, the success of such a solution depends on actual access to the word of God on such matters and a willingness to implement the solutions received.

I have learned from experience that the policy of allowing the good bishop to distribute available welfare resources to those in need according to his best judgment is superior to distributing goods and money according to the firmly established rules and regulations of a governmental welfare system.

None-the-less, no system can successfully regulate human affairs when people, both leaders and followers, act only from crass self-interest without inspiration, self-discipline or regard for the general welfare.

Yesterday, in order to fill our Covid-19 restricted day, we watched two movies: a 1938 movie called Pygmalion, and a 1960s musical called My Fair Lady. Both of these movies tell the story of Eliza Doolittle, a lower-class flower girl in London who is tutored by a language professor named Higgins and successfully becomes a member of high-class society by changing her manner of speaking. The part of these movies that struck me this time was how unrepentant and unchanging professor Henry Higgins is in his attitude of superiority and contempt. This morning, I have been reflecting on another old movie I saw some time ago called Maid to Order. This movie is a reverse Cinderella story where the Fairy Godmother changes the young heroin from a spoiled rich kid into a homeless orphan who has to take a job as a maid to survive. In Maid to Order, the young woman transforms from treating all around her with contempt, to realizing that the servant class of people are also good and valuable human beings. Fairy tales like Cinderella, The Prince and the Pauper and The Bear Coat all teach the real-world lesson that the ordinary people we meet and treat each day may turn our to be royalty in disguise: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” Matthew 25:40. The message these stories contain about the human potential for change is icing on the cake.

The problem is that the the convergence of the many conditions necessary for life to exist is so improbable that an explanation is required. If the two leading candidates are the anthropic principle (an infinite number of universes over an infinite amount of time requires at least one like this) and a purposeful creation by an intelligent agent, then Occam’s Razor requires that the second be preferred. Especially in a universe where at least billions of examples of intelligent, purposeful action exist.

The pandemic is raging in America. We don’t know if we are at the beginning, middle or end — no work, no restaurant food, no church. Something good will come from this: humility in the face of trials. We will find out if life in this world depends on our usual frenetic economic activity or something more fundamental.

Watched the movie, Jo Jo Rabbit, last night. This movie tracks the hero, a ten year old boy, from naive enthusiasm for a system (German National Socialism) to disillusionment and rejection of that system. In the process the hero suffers a full range of experience including fear, danger, heart breaking tragedy and a developing love. At the end of the movie the following quote appears from a poem by Reiner Marie Rilke:

“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”

In that spirit, today I read the following quote from the Doctrine and Covenants to an invalid in my neighborhood:

And if thou shouldst be cast into the ^apit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the ^bdeep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to ^chedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of ^dhell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee ^eexperience, and shall be for thy good.

The ^aSon of Man hath ^bdescended below them all. Art thou greater than he?