Kvetch or Kvell

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by Reid:

kvetch – /k(ə)veCH/
(from Yiddish)
Noun
A person who complains a great deal

Verb
Complain

Oy vey! My last post has me on an extended tangent thinking about the persona and stereotypical portrayal of the chronic kvetch. Kvetch is a pretty cool word given that it's both a verb and a noun. Some have argued that it is also an art form. At the very least, it is learned behavior. The determinants that create a kvetch are complex and include societal, cultural and family dynamics.

From the biblical perspective, chronic complaining may be likened to murmuring. Both Hebrew and words translated as murmur in the Bible describe the kvetch. Though there are probably many examples of the kvetch in scripture, we really don't need to look further than the second chapter of The Book of Mormon for a great case study.

10% Happier

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by Eliana:

I walked by the new nonfiction book shelf at my library and a title caught my attention:

I didn't read the small text to notice that this was a memoir of sorts. All I saw was 10% Happier. It seemed intriguing and realistic. So I took it home.

Now I'm finished. It was interesting, though I don’t know anything about the author, Dan Harris, a news anchor for ABC news. Basically he tells of his career and finding meditation. That's what makes you 10% happier: it doesn't fix your life of course but it helped him change his whole way of thinking. Here’s a clip of him briefly discussing this:



For me and probably other Christians generally, meditation has always been mixed with prayer for me. But quiet thoughtfulness is different than meditation. Pondering I guess is the word I would use—thinking, feeling, working something out in your mind. Meditation is trying to be silent though, to not think about problems or anything. I appreciated Harris' descriptions of this, as well as his honest description of dealing with different 'gurus' or perspectives on mindfulness.

I feel like I need to try meditating, to give it ten minutes a day for a month, and see if it is a positive experience for me. I'm fairly sure, based on science and common sense, that it would be good. Maybe I'll report back. Here is a basic guide to meditation.

So, fellow Mormons, do you meditate? How do you feel about adding Buddhism to your Christian faith? Share your experiences, please.


Eliana Osborn was raised on cold weather and wild animals in Anchorage, Alaska, setting the stage for her adult life in the Sunniest Place on Earth in Arizona. She grew up in the church and didn't know there were places where conformity was preached. She has degrees. She writes. She teaches. She has some kids. She even has a husband. She's trying to do her best.

Oy Vey!

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by Reid:

I recently read a great article by Guy Winch, PhD on how to deal with chronic complainers (here). It is a worthy read, given the prevalence of this challenging personality type in the work-a-day world. Though we all have days when we are pessimists, Dr. Winch reminds us that there's a big difference between a pessimist and a chronic complainer:

Optimists see: A glass half full. Pessimists see: A glass half empty. Chronic complainers see: A glass that is slightly chipped holding water that isn't cold enough, probably because its tap water when I asked for bottled water and wait, there's a smudge on the rim too, which means the glass wasn't cleaned properly and now I'll probably end up with some kind of virus—why do these things always happen to me?!

Dr. Winch could have easily added oy vey to the end of the last sentence.

I have a sizable population of post-menopausal Jewish females in the practice and therefore know some medical Yiddish. Oy vey is definitely a keeper phrase for anyone that has to regularly ask the fateful question: How are you feeling? Oy vey means "woe is me, ouch, or Oh No!" The old Hee-Haw sketch Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me (here) captures the essence of oy vey nicely for those completely unfamiliar with Yiddish idioms.

Is Boredom a Sin?

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by Shawn Tucker:

Now, before you give the seemingly easy answer, “No!,” think about this for a minute. If you happened to serve a mission, were there times when you felt bored and felt guilty because you were bored? As a parent, have you ever felt bored around your children, like say listening to a long, tangential, and pointless story? And have you ever felt bad that this darling little child and her world and experiences are so excruciatingly dull for you? Or how about another experience—have you ever had a child complain that he was bored? And what did you do? Did you give him that “righteous indignation” look and then send him to do chores? After all, isn’t boredom just a fruit of one of the seven “deadly sins,” namely sloth? Isn’t boredom just the result of our failure to be properly and anxiously engaged in a good cause? And of course there is Spencer W. Kimball’s quote about having never been to a boring sacrament meeting. There is even a New Era article about “How to Never Have a Boring Church Class Ever Again.” 

Maybe it is our Protestant work ethic or the idea that we have precious little time here in mortality that must be used properly or the problem of sloth, but whatever the cause there seems to be an association between boredom and sin. This seems to be the underlying question: “how could a righteous, faithful, hard-working, and enthusiastic member of the church ever be bored?”

On "Know"ing

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by Brother Jake (bio)

Personally, I think the word “know” is overused among Mormons when expressing spiritual conviction. In modern vocabulary, to say you know something carries certain connotations about the thing itself. In a scientific context specifically, knowledge of a fact means that the fact can be empirically proven and, to at least some degree, objectively observable. Spiritual knowledge fails on both criteria: faith building events, i.e. spiritual confirmations, take place in a subjective, unobservable realm—within the minds and hearts of the believer. That isn't to say the experience wasn't real or valid or based in something true. But when I say “I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God” and “I know the Pythagorean Theorem is true,” I’m really saying very different things, even though I used the same word to convey it.

Obviously, spiritual knowledge and scientific knowledge are completely different. I’m comparing apples and oranges here. But I think we in the Church may have a tendency to conflate the two when we talk about the acquisition of faith. Take, for example, Moroni 10:3-5, which Church members often look to as the jumping off point of a real-life testimony. As a missionary, I (and I wasn't the only one) treated the passage like it was a set of instructions for an experiment—2 parts sincerity, 3 parts faith, 1 part real intent, a few drops of the prayer enzyme, and ding! You can say “I know.”

What I’m getting at is that I think we often use the word “know” not necessarily because our experiences really classify as “knowledge” in the most common sense of the word, but because sounding really sure of ourselves is what all the cool people are doing. Consider these two statements:

1. “My name is Brother Jake, and I know the Church is true.”
2. “My name is Brother Jake, and I feel in my heart that the church is true.”

Abiding Belief & Reasonable Doubt

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

Photo by Wally Gobetz

I recently spent four days in the local courthouse doing my first tour of jury duty. For two of the four days I served as presiding juror on a domestic assault case. A lot about the experience struck me as interesting, meaningful and memorable, but what I continue to reflect upon most was the jury's struggle with the following legal terms: abiding belief and reasonable doubt.

So I asked Max Power, emeritus MMM contributor and the smartest lawyer I know, to shed some light on these terms in both legal and religious contexts.

Max Power

The "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard is at the same time one of the most important principles of criminal law and one of the least clearly understood. There is no statute or clear case law defining the standard, and in fact courts disagree whether it is even appropriate to instruct a jury about its meaning, beyond merely stating the standard. In academia, the standard is typically described as requiring the prosecutor to prove each element of the alleged crime to the extent that there could be no doubt in the mind of a reasonable person that would affect that reasonable person's belief that the proved fact is true.

Clarity of the standard is not the biggest problem with the standard, though. For one, a typical juror is probably unable to access the mind of a "reasonable" person. The concept is not aimed merely at the "average" person, but rather at a legal fiction designed to approximate the collective judgment of society as a whole, incorporating all common normative and prudential judgments and acting perfectly consistent in accordance with those principles. Of course, no such person has ever existed, and no juror could ever effectively channel one. It would be even more difficult to do so than to adopt the "what would Jesus do?" credo. Jesus was perfectly principle-oriented and ultimately predictable; the reasonable person is the epitome of pragmatism, balancing virtue with expediency.

Can We Accurately Describe History?

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

Trying to describe the past as it actually was is a real challenge. I put forward that it cannot be done. Why? Because of the limitations all of us share in approaching any past happening, limitations that no analytical skill or linguistic or statistical tool can transcend. Taken from Richard D. Poll's History and Faith: Reflections of a Mormon Historian, these six limitations are:

Perspective: Each of us looks at what is happening from a certain point of view; we cannot see it in the round. We have invented machines that do a better job of looking at a thing from all sides than we are able to do with our human perceptions.

Bias: We bring not only a point of view to every event but also prejudices. We may think our approach to books and articles is relatively neutral and dispassionate, but bias—prejudgment—concerning subject or author had something to do with our decision to read and it will certainly affect what we retain.

Memory: Each of us can remember occasions, either amusing or stressful, in which efforts to recall a relatively recent conversation generated differences about the content and even the conclusions reached. Memory affects all events.

Records: As time and distance affect our memories of an event, we confront our dependence upon documents and artifacts and the problem of the incompleteness and impermanence of all records.

Que Injusticia!

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by Ben Johnson (bio)

No one likes to be dealt with unjustly. Most of us can accept losing if we feel like we tried our best and just came up short. It's not pleasant but at least you had a fair shot, a chance at winning. It's something else entirely when the deck is stacked and you don't have a chance. What do you do then?

Several weeks ago I took my motorcycle to the local shop to have some work done. When I picked it up I noticed a crack in the fairing that hadn't been there when I dropped the bike off. I questioned the service manager and his response was, "That was there when you brought the bike in."

Immediately I felt the anger well up in my heart. I was about to be taken advantage of and there was nothing I could do about it. My mind raced in a thousand directions: How do I respond to this? Do I know any lawyers? Could I prove the crack wasn't there when I brought the bike in? Do I drive by the shop at night and throw a brick through their window?

I also felt conflicted and embarrassed. The natural man in me said I should be furious and I should seek revenge and 'no one takes advantage of me!' The spiritual man in me answered that prayers are offered for manipulators, cheeks should be turned, and coats and cloaks are a package deal. 

Every man chooses for himself what path to take but as Christian men it seems to us more like a tightrope. Too far to the natural side and your soul cankers and wears out from always taking offense. Too far to the other side and you become a doormat and a joke. I'm not sure where the balance is. Even looking at the Savior's life we see the contradiction. The same Man who flips over tables and whips scoundrels from the temple also stands silent while being mocked and beaten.

In the end, after a few days of back and forth with the service manager, I took my bike and went home. I feel cheated. There will be no satisfactory resolution forthcoming. The fairing is still cracked and won't be fixed. How can I forgive and move on now that every time I ride my motorcycle I will see a big, fat injustice staring back at me?

Being Enough

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by Pete Codella (bio)

Image by Libby Williams.

I vividly remember my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Scales, telling me daily that I wasn't quiet enough. And since I tested into her class for all the subjects that year, I also felt like I wasn't smart enough to be with some of my friends in other teacher's classes.

Have you ever felt like you weren't skinny enough? Strong enough? Bold enough? Good enough? Anything enough?

Well, enough already!

Those two words — enough already — have been swimming around in my head for a good while now. I'm just over half-way through a demanding executive MBA program at the University of Utah, and true to my upbringing, it has been way too easy to be negative and pessimistic and basically feel like I'm not bright enough or in general up to the task of completing the MBA program.

Sure there are plenty of uber-intelligent people in my cohort of 68 classmates. And I admittedly do not (ever) receive top academic placement in our coursework. But seriously, how hard should I be on myself when I'm back in school in addition to trying to be a good husband, father, family member, employee, friend, church-goer, neighbor ... and the list goes on and on ... ?

I think being content is very similar to being happy. Being content is a choice; an attitude of gratitude, so to speak. I do think being content is based on living correct principles, but you still choose to be content.

So here's my paradigm for the next eight months of my MBA program, and hopefully for hereon out: I AM ENOUGH.

Although — news flash — I'm not perfect, I can be happy in my own skin. I can choose to be optimistic instead of following an all too easy pattern of pessimism and negativity.

From now on, when I find myself thinking or saying, "I'm not fill-in-the-blank enough," I'm going to stop and say to myself, "I AM ENOUGH!"

And I invite you to join me!

Guest Post: Reclaiming Tragedy As Our Natural Birthright

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Have something to say? Anyone can submit a guest post to Modern Mormon Men. Just send us an email with your post, a post title and a paragraph of introduction (on yourself).

godasman served a mission for the Church in the Philippines and now has three beautiful children. Having taken seriously the injunction to study from the best books, he secretly carries with him to church a copy of Moby-Dick alongside his quad. For a long time he has considered himself a Mormon not in the traditional vein, though he has heretofore maintained a respectful silence about his less-than-orthodox views. Ever the self-justifier and amateur Church Historian, he has a ready defense for all of his oddities of opinion. You can check out his blog here and his first guest post here.

Image via Wonderlane.

We sat in silence. My psychologist was not writing anymore, his hands folded neatly on his lap. He stared at me, breathing slowly, unable to speak. For months I had been meeting with him to discuss my addiction to pornography, my crisis of faith in the LDS Church, and the growing divide between myself and my wife, which had recently brought us to the brink of divorce. For months we had worked together, my psychologist and I, trying to to find a middle ground, a workable solution to these divisive tensions within me. Maybe I needed a new profession in academia, a place to vent my intellectual steam in ways not related to the Church. Maybe I needed to move to a more liberal city, where I wouldn't feel so alone in my Ward. The other option, one which we were loathe to even mention, though it screamed silently from my falling tears and wringing hands, was the possibility that I needed to leave my wife and the Church, and pursue my intellectual interests without fear or compromise.

I felt like an outsider in the Church. For years I had devoted myself to the contemplation of philosophy and poetry. At first I looked in these writings for validation of my own religious teaching. When I read Socrates espouse a theory of learning as recollection, my mind went immediately to the Pre-Mortal realm and the veil of forgetfulness as taught by Joseph Smith. When a physics instructor challenged the Christian notion of creation ex nihilo on the basis of the First Law of Thermodynamics, I smiled and remembered that we Mormons understand that God only organized existent matter to form the Universe. But with time, I wondered if seeing everything through a Mormon lens might limit my understanding of these important ideas. I began to develop the ability to set aside my religious biases and encounter these thinkers on their own terms. Fidelity to dogma became replaced by permeability and open-mindedness. This led naturally to questions about the fundamental tenants of the faith of my youth: What if there isn't a God? What if Joseph Smith's claims to revelations and the origin of the Book of Mormon are better explained along naturalistic, rather than miraculous, lines?

We had stewed together for a month, my psychologist and I, over what seemed an impossible situation: I desperately love both my wife and my Church, and yet these represent an all out war on my most natural physical and philosophical inclinations.

Mouse Killer

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by MAB (bio)

Since we moved to an apartment in Amsterdam nearly a year ago, we've had a little mouse problem. Apparently it's nearly impossible to not harbor a few of the pests when living in this old city with its old buildings. One of the many perks, I guess, of living the exciting international life.

One of the first things I did was go out and buy a couple of those old-fashioned mouse traps. The kind that are difficult to set and apparently don't work very well. At least not with our mice. I would wake up in the morning to find they had cleaned off whatever I put out as bait but nothing was ever caught. 

After a few weeks of inadvertently feeding them off the traps, I stopped my attempts and decided to just let them be. I figured they were just cleaning the crumbs off our floor anyway. But over time I got this nagging feeling that these mice were direct descendants of the mice (or was it just the rats?) that helped spread the Plague. No, there are no fleas so my fears are irrational, but still mice are supposed to be dirty right?

Anyway, two days ago I entered our shower room (showers and bathrooms are separate here, long story) which is all tile and leaves little egress for adventurous rodents. While flossing I caught a glimpse of a wee mouse from the corner of my eye. It was trapped in a tiled corner with no where to go.

21 Days to More Happiness

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by Dustin (bio)

I recently watched a TED talk by Shawn Achor (also included at the bottom of this post), one of the highest-rated professors at Harvard University for more than a decade, and it rocked my brains. The focus of the talk was on happiness, of which I'm a fan. In the talk, Achor suggests that our idea of the link between success and happiness is distorted. In fact, it's backwards.

I often tell myself, "as soon as I achieve ________ then I'll be happy," as if happiness is just on the horizon and all I have to do is close the distance between it and me. The problem, according to scientific research on happiness, is that each time we experience success our brain changes the bar for success. In other words, once I achieve a goal, happiness is short-lived as my mind automatically begins to explore what else could be possible. I raise the bar and begin anew, searching for more happiness by being more successful. I read my scriptures five nights a week and the goal becomes to read them seven times a week. I find a job that aligns with my strengths 80% of the time and now I need to find one that aligns 90% or 100%. Run a mile? Now run two. Score high on the GMAT? Could've been higher. If, in my mind, happiness lies just beyond success then I will never get there!

Achor says that if we can raise someone's level of positivity in the present then we increase the likelihood of success. We've got to reverse it. Your brain at positive performs significantly better than your brain at negative, neutral, or stressed. In fact your brain is 31% more productive (this is called the "happiness advantage")! In other words, we've got to flip this equation -- success = happiness -- to this: happiness = success.

So how do you increase your happiness to then yield more success? You've got to rewire your brain. In the talk, Achor suggests several things you can do, all of which are unsurprisingly principles of the Gospel. The one he teaches to businesses he consults with is to do this one simple thing:

Agency in 1Q84

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by MAB (bio)

I just finished reading "1Q84", a thousand page novel by Haruki Murakami. I've read four of his novels now and couldn't put any of them down. This, his latest novel is probably my least favorite though. I'll talk a little about the book but won't give anything important away.

The book follows a girl "Aomame" and her eventual boyfriend "Tengo". They first meet in grade school but only say a few words to each other and very briefly hold hands. Shortly after Aomame's family moves to another part of Tokyo. Many years later they realize they are deeply in love with each other and always have been. It's a good love story (note: R rating) with a healthy dose of magic realism. I'm no expert on love stories but I would bet the grade school fling that comes back to haunt young adults is a common theme. One book that used this to great effect was "Love in the Time of Cholera." So, to delayed love gratification, add some Romeo and Juliet style star-crossed love baked in the magic realism oven and you get 1Q84.

There is much I could write about in the book. For instance, Aomame has a spiritual awakening at one point. But for me it wasn't as thought provoking as it could have been. I had no desire to slow down while reading about it, like I did when reading Ivan's religious thoughts and discussions in "The Brother's Karamazov".

On the Clock

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by Kyle August (bio)

I was going to clean out my closet.

I was going to read a compelling novel.

I was going to dunk on a camper.

I was going to work on my prayer style.

I was going to polish my interviewing skills.

I was going to fly using a water jetpack.

I was going to take up planking.

I was going to, but then the NFL lockout ended.

Is this post about the lockout? No. Clearly, I’m talking about our most coveted asset – time. You see, time is something that always seems to escape us. We can never quite find enough of it. Today more than ever we are required to do more with less time.

You know, the typical routine, right? I'm talking about the "work full time, stay in shape, update my Facebook status, tweet about the weather, check-in at the bathroom on Foursquare, watch Sportscenter so I have something to talk to my coworkers about in the morning, watch the Bachelorette so I have something to talk to my wife about at night, write in my journal, plank, index names from the 1645 census, understand why ceilings are so important to our government, keep up with the Kardashians," and on, and on.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that in order to get the real important things done, we have to sacrifice. Time sacrifices are different for everyone. They can range from the self-destructively unproductive to the worthiest of endeavors. No matter what it is, we don’t have time for it all.

Today I ask you – the extremely good-looking MMM reader – how do you juggle it all? What is worth juggling? What makes something worthy of your time? When do you know its time to drop something?

Philosopher for a Day

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by Bitner (bio)

My final class at business school was a unique leadership course called Leadership & Diversity Through Literature. It was taught by one of the sages of the school who hand-picked various iconic stories to use as case studies for leadership. We read about Chief Joseph, Don Quixote, King David, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Joan of Arc, and many others. It was a really fun exercise.

The classroom experience was heavily dependent upon class participation -- it was often half our grade, if not more. During one discussion about Joan of Arc, someone in class was discussing Joan's claim to be called of God. "I can't think of anything that we can be absolutely sure of, so it's hard for me to imagine myself being that certain that I was right [if I were Joan and thought I had received a 'call'.]"

Surprisingly, the professor did not drill down on the point of whether or not we can be certain of anything. And the idea that we are sure of nothing struck me as a non-truth.

I sat there stewing on it for a few minutes while the class discussion quickly moved on to other topics.

Soon, the professor called on me for my thoughts on 'what we can take away from the story of Saint Joan.' My response (it's not verbatim, but it's pretty close):

"For me the salient message of Joan of Arc is that she was certain about what she was called to do and she had the courage to act on that thing about which she was certain. Now, the question was raised earlier, 'Can we be sure of anything?' and I think the only answer to that question is, 'Yes!' because if the answer is 'No' then in the very act of saying we cannot be sure of anything, we are, therefore, saying that we are sure of something! (lots of laughs erupt, not sure if they are at me or not). I believe that we can be sure of some things. And that gives me hope."

[Sidenote: My mind must have been so drained from philosphizing that I failed to wrap up the comment by neatly tying it back to Joan and leadership.]

It may never happen again, but on that day I was a philosopher.

Can the Future Influence the Past?

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by Scott Heffernan (bio)

Imagine you have an important test to take. You study beforehand and then you take the test. What if I told you you can increase your score by also studying after you take the test?

There are some fascinating experiments being conducted by Cornell Professor Daryl Bem. And this is not some crackpot “doctor” you might see on The Secret or What the Bleep!? He is one of the most widely published and respected psychology professors in the country.

In one of the studies participants are shown 48 words (one at a time) on a computer screen, then asked to recall as many as possible. Participants type as many words as they can remember and that is the score they receive on the test. Then they are shown 24 randomly selected words from the list and asked to type them again. Obviously this would help participants better commit these words to memory. But the test is over by this point, the scores are set.

Test results showed that participants were better able to recall words that they had retyped after the test. Dr. Bem states, "The results show that practicing a set of words after the recall test does, in fact, reach back in time to facilitate the recall of those words." What the what? Can we somehow feel the future? Are events that are occurring in the future affecting the present?

What are your thoughts on retrocausality and precognition? Is time linear? Does this have any doctrinal implications? Fascinating stuff!

See NPR’s (more professional) report here and Dr. Bem’s original article here.

Am I Just a Bunch of Synapses?

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by MAB (bio)

I think I'm just a bunch of interconnected neurons. The essence of who I am, seems to me, to be nothing more than that.

I don't know what to make of the commonly held belief that we are made of body and spirit that together form a soul. It doesn't make sense to me for a few reasons. Take sleep for instance. If I have a spirit that forms the essence of who I am, makes decisions and so forth, then what happens to it when my body sleeps? Personally, I think my brain goes through the various sleep cycles, I dream, etc. But rarely do I remember what happens while I sleep because of course I am unaware or semiconscious. It would seem that if I had a spirit it would not need to sleep and would continue to be aware even though my body slept. I know there are a lot of very smart people researching how our brains manage all the sensory data, make decisions and so forth to create an overall stream of conscious. That research, like a lot of brain research seems to be in its infancy so maybe things will make more sense as new information becomes available.

Another reason I am baffled by the body + spirit = soul concept is because the essence of who we are seems to be tenuous. I think our personalities can change in drastic, permanent and nearly instantaneous ways that shouldn't, to my way of thinking, apply to immaterial spirits. Obviously, we mature as we age so that's one form of change. As we mature we probably make wiser decisions. Drugs can also change a personality. Steroids are an easy target here with their common side effects such as aggression. Do steroids make a spirit more aggressive? If so how do drugs (material) impact the spirit (immaterial)? Could it be that our spirits are filtered through imperfect bodies and come out distorted? That seems less likely to me for some reason. I think psychoactive drugs change body chemistry and the way a brain works. To my way of logic that's the reason someone behaves differently. A brain is behaving differently, not a spirit. Drastic and nearly instantaneous changes in a personality can happen after injury to certain portions of the brain. Another sad example is Alzheimer's disease, where victims exhibit personality change as the disease takes hold of their brains.

To me the idea of a soul is perhaps incorrect, incomplete, or maybe just oversimplified. But there is a good chance I don't understand the idea of a soul very well. I certainly don't understand precisely how a brain works.

Guest Post: Unfolding the Heavens

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A close friend of MAB's, David is multilingual, writes music and is a math and chess fanatic. He also writes dense papers related to the gospel. We were lucky enough to be invited to read his latest paper, titled "Unfolding the Heavens." If you want to read the rest of the paper after reading the first two excerpted paragraphs below, email us and we'll put you in touch with the author.

"Spanning the chasm between God and man has been the underlying design of theologians throughout history. We desire association with the divine - we push toward ascension to see the unknown. We crave to pull back the veil and peer into Heavenly Father’s realm and see reality from His glorified perspective. Although an understanding of Heavenly Father’s nature and the expanse of his domain may not be directly relevant to our ability to learn and follow the Gospel’s teachings, I do believe that catching a glimpse of His relationship to us may inspire confidence in His omniscience and build our trust and hope in Him and His Plan.

I believe that Heavenly Father, as the architect of our tangible universe, has a perception of His creation that allows Him to communicate with us according to His will. I propose a conceptual model that, although not entirely unique, helps explain God’s glorified perspective and physical relationship with this world as described throughout LDS scripture. The model is based in dimensional geometry."

When CTR Gets Complicated

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by MAB (bio)

I recently finished a New York Times bestseller “Justice, What is the Right Thing To Do?” a book by Michael J. Sandel, Professor of Government at Harvard University. My wife saw it at the library and checked it out thinking one of us might have the time to read it. I saw that it covered some aspects of philosophy, which is a recent and probably short-term interest of mine, so I dug right in. It’s brief at approximately 275 pages but it took me about a month to read because I continued to read other books and also started to learn Dutch. I add those details to help provide context to this post, the context being that I didn’t pay too close attention to what I was reading. You now have every right to roll your eyes, but before you move on to something else let me say that the book was quite interesting and I’m certain I can pull some concepts out that will make this worth your while.

In the beginning Sandel gently exposes the reader to basic philosophy and poses some of the classic conundrums for consideration. In the rest of the book he does two important things: first he gives the reader a framework of philosophical perspectives upon which modern day moral questions can be considered, then he analyzes current moral debates through one or all of the perspectives.

The first perspective is Utilitarianism (Bentham), which states that to determine the right thing to do you calculate how to achieve the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. This however could lead to the unfortunate hypothetical situation where one person in a city is tortured for no other reason than to make everyone else happy. Which leads us to the next perspective.