Clark, In view of the volume and repetition of “follow the prophet” and “obedience is the first law of heaven,” and in view of such things as “[only] one earring per ear (for women, none for men) is sufficient” (per GBH) being made a rule and exalted by an apostle into a standard for rejecting a developing relationship, and in view of recurring appeals to authority rather than thought, and in view of pronouncements such as President Nelson’s [in]famous Hawaii speech, Elder Oaks’ declarations as to what will never change, etc., I fail to see a reasonable basis for your opinion. Perhaps the volume and consistency of repetition of the contrary examples is not the same in your circles as in mine. Here, I would have to say that it appears, in recent decades, that most of what the hierarchy is doing is announcing that they have it all figured out, that people are responsible to seek personal confirmation from God which is only from God if it matches what the hierarchy has already figured out and announced. I hope someday to perceive a basis for your expressed opinion. Maybe you’ll be willing to explain further.

I don’t want to bring the whole honor code debate in, I’ll just say that I don’t think the honor code office has ever been terribly good. However I worry some want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We should definitely demand a better performing office. A lot of internal reform is needed, but not knowing what their internal policies and regulations are nor how well they follow them I can’t say much there. However I’m far from convinced that has much to do with following the prophet or not following the prophet.

Regarding leaders, I’ve definitely been around good ones and bad ones. My wife was actually told by her Bishop to break up with me which four kids and 13 years and a lot of love later I think has been pretty well disproved. It seemed inappropriate at the time. I’ve also had a few kafkaesque dealings with leaders. But by and large most have been great, loving and doing a job I couldn’t even remotely imagine doing as good a job at. If ever there were a calling I don’t want to have it’s Bishop. The amount of time demanded of lay members is staggering. It’s a lot of responsibility and they already to a surprising amount of training. Yet people bring their biases, misunderstandings and bad habits. Typically what shocks me aren’t the occasional egregious leader than the fact we have so few of them. When you consider how many Bishops there are just in the US over a 15 year period, it’s startling we don’t have far more problems than we do. Which isn’t to excuse the problems we have – we should always be striving to improve. Still, it’s kind of remarkable to me how well people do in the callings.

I agree that most problems come from a lack of “following the prophet.” For the most part the Church has much more to offer than its set backs and sins (and these are not small). Still, in a world where so many organizations are set up only for themselves, an imperfect Mormon Church is a good thing to have and to hold on to.

I can say that I have become increasingly uncomfortable in how the teaching “follow the prophet” is taught in Utah County Mormonism however. It went from “follow the prophet” to “follow the prophet no matter what” to “follow the prophet no matter what even if he tells you to do something wrong.” I have heard this preached not infrequently. It is disturbing and shows a cultural infantilism that is a product of obedience without knowledge. At the end of this road is not Zion, but something closer to Al Qaeda.

I think it is a trend that should be nipped in the butt, knowing, that such a thing must be done from the top down. So much for my idea of Zion.

This “prophet-topia” is of course the exact opposite of the teaching of Christ, and is very much central to Walter’s arguments for the story of Abraham. Indeed, the way Abraham is taught in the church feeds the latter ideology that one should follow the prophet even if he tells you to sacrifice your own child. This is disturbing. And the fact that I’ve heard this taught not just from the random Elders, but also from Bishops and leaders, shows that this is a deep seated cultural problem.

I understand that this thinking is well intended. But good intentions pave the way to suffering. Just look at the BYU Honor Code Office fiasco. Here is putting the cart before the horse. Whatever that young woman did to break the honor code pales in comparison to what the HCO did to that woman. And you know what, had that woman not stood up and spoke out for herself such behavior would have just kept going on as if it were not only normal but also moral! How quickly we bureaucratize the gospel. More disturbing, such things are actually a little more common than one might expect, judging from how I have seen Bishops handle various moral issues. Sometimes its a little funny. Sometimes disturbing. And sometimes just sick. Alas, the Church needs better training for their leaders. And if not that, then we need to stop teaching the infallibility of these leaders, at any level. And now.

Blogs are blogs. I take everything I read here with a grain of salt. And I take every comment I write here with a mustard seed. I only read T&S as something to think about besides the normal tedium I get in Church (yes Clark, during Sacrament Meeting I’ll probably be thinking about spontaneous emergence and Zion). But practically speaking, Church has so much to offer. Above all, I like practicality.

While I think the “follow the prophet no matter what” can cause problems (and it’s not hard to find examples) I often think as a practical matter the problem is not following the prophet enough. And I say that looking at myself and where I fall down relative to counsel heard over the pulpit the last 20 years. For instance to pick one that I think is hugely important, yet hugely neglected, I’ve been horrible at my home teaching the past six months. I have excuses due to being ridiculously busy and out of town a lot. But ultimately I’m not sure the excuses are anything but self-justification. (Appointment made for this weekend though)

The discussion, especially on blogs, about “follow the prophet” quickly devolves into all too typical political debates. And that’s where the real issue usually is on these things. Yet on the things the prophets actually show they see as most important by talking about the most, I’m not sure we are doing a good job with. That we can look to the political as a way of repressing the non-political is deeply troubling to me.

On those issues of Zion it seems like we’re worrying about things that, while perhaps important, are dwarfed by how practically we’re worried about each other in our wards. I just don’t think we do a good job there and at night I often point the finger first at myself. If you see a ward that seems to be more Zion, it’s those simple things they typically are doing better and not the sorts of debates you hear of on blogs.

I believe the fractal metaphor is the best I can come up with because it is multi-directional. Scale invariance means what occurs at one level is a very real reflection of what is occurring at another, whether your go up or down, right or left, bigger or smaller, more complex or simpler.

However, I like very much your metaphor of emergence. Taking this as a cue, Zion becomes the wings that spontaneously emerge at the Cross. Zion is not so much a consciously constructed society from the corporate ladder, as much as it is a emergent consequence of conscious sacrifice for another. Something to think about anyway….

All metaphors will have their limitations. What I can say for sure is that Zion is not a bank, it is not a department store, and it is not the Church. It is this last fact that should give one pause and long reflection in our thought experiments.

Always a pleasure to talk with Clark. Your math background impels precision. My background sort of simmers in aesthetic ambiguity that exists somewhere between the realms of reason and faith. So, I enjoy your comments as they seek to refine and define ever narrower units of knowledge, despite the fact that theology very often resists such categorization.

The slime mold metaphor seemed better to me than the ant or bee metaphor precisely because of how the parts to whole are organized that’s different from bees or ants with their queen. After all if heaven is being a drone, who wants heaven? The idea of parts that can come together for tasks seems much more compelling.

That said I confess the idea of bottom up emergence seems wrong too. If only because Zion does have God and Christ in a key position. I’m not sure the factal metaphor works because it gets the direction of the imaging wrong.

Regarding Zion as an arbitrary construct I’m not quite sure what you mean. Again this gets into certain issues with emergence. To use an example from an other thread, it seems like wings evolve independently time and time again and with very different creatures. As such it seems like while wings might be an arbitrary historical construction in an other sense they represent something atemporal to which things tend given a certain environment.

I’m not sure if you are referring to Zion in a manner akin to the evolution of eyes or wings or if you’re referring to Zion more akin to the rules of some arbitrary sports game. If the former I’m all with you. As such Zion as structure is timeless in important ways. If you mean the latter then I’ll strongly disagree.

I will tell you that my ideas of Zion really come from the temple. The great thing about the temple is no one is lecturing or sermonizing and one is happily capable of transparently applying whatever ethos they wish upon the experience, despite the man in the funny hat snoring next to me….

By my way of thinking, one only comes to Zion at the Veil. Here, and only here, is Zion.

And look at what one has had to do to get there. One had to transcend the Telestial plane by living the Law of the Gospel: learning to be obedient to the commandments of God. By living the Law of the Gospel you build a true church. Here is your superorganism. But this is not Zion. One had to transcend the Terrestrial plane by living the Law of Chastity, which does not just refer to sex, but to appropriate living in all of one’s stewardships. This living is church, justice, and equity in community. But this is not Zion.

One approaches Zion only in the Celestial Order by living the Law of Consecration. That’s the key. And what is the Law of Consecration? Well, every time I hear it taught in SS I am told that it is the equal and equitable distribution of my 401K. This is of course only a Telestial vision of Zion, which, if I might say, is perhaps the most comical mixed metaphor of the evening (or of the Age, I forget which). The Law of Consecration is that final act in which Christ nailed the hopes of the whole onto the infinite potential of the individual by taking on—literally—my own moral nucleotides as his singular consideration. The Law of Consecration is Atonement. And Zion can only be built upon this Law.

Well, anyway, that’s how I see it.

Yes. I see. And it was on purpose, though the end result appears to be a mixed metaphor, so you’re point is well taken. (I was an English Lit undergrad who always favored the Romantics, so a penchant for some mixed metaphor might be a weakness of mine.)

I am well aware that in a complex organism the parts obtain their meaning from the whole. Me and my nucleotides are grateful for this. For me Zion is a different kind of organism, and this was the point I was trying to make. Zion comes to be when the whole derives its meaning from the parts. This is why I used the image of a scale-invariant fractal, and followed up with the example of the atonement. The power of the atonement works because it is the process of cosmic divinity coming in direct relationship with the parts, and meets those parts on their own terms. The whole only derives its meaning in this kind of relationship. By transcendent individuality I meant to be a Christ, which ultimately means one derives their meaning from the grace and sacrifice of their cross.

Clark, these are real differences I was trying to make. We treat the atonement like a corporatized superorganism. Such an approach can build a robust church and working community which can give only the illusion of Zion, but does so at the expense of creating a vast cult of personality for its leadership and a wispy cult of warm fuzzies for its theology. That which works for the whole (church and community) often sterilizes the potential for the individual, and thus the individual is given the most marketable product of Zion in a strict and obvious command structure and a belief system set up to produce emotional comfort like a spiritualized Soilent Green. (Oh come on now, that was a great mixed metaphor.) People are not ants and bees. And Zion is not slime mold. I am working the metaphor the other way.

So don’t mistake me. I fully agree it’s a transformative concept and that it didn’t really change thinking to the degree it should have until the 1970’s and arguably really not until the late 80’s did it reach a critical mass. The transformation such that even popular shows about science had to include the notions happened in my life time. That said, Readers Digest was printing abridged forms of Hayek’s views decades earlier. And within more narrow disciplines complexity and systems thinking was engaged before that. Just not as much as it should have been.

I think my difference with you is I see this less as a revolution happening in a short time so much as a slow understanding of many issues starting first at the dawn of modernism and then more significantly in the late 19th century. It’s problematic to point to a particular point, whether it be the 1940’s with the beginning of thinking through computational issues or the 1970’s and 80’s when chaos and formal emergence get considered more carefully. It’s a problem precisely because we then miss how complexity and emergence are so key to earlier ideas, like the “invisible hand.” That the implication and power of these ideas was neglected seems undeniable. That those ideas entail these issues can’t be neglected though.

Something like Conways game of life perhaps demonstrates these things better for the popular mind than what came before could. As do things like fractals. But it’s important not to conflate the popular recognition of issues with the ideas where they originate. The rise of chaos theory, for instance, in the 80’s certainly is far more detailed than what came before. More significantly it gives relatively concrete mathematical models for how these things work. But the invisible hand entailed by game theory is just as much a demonstration of complexity and was decades earlier.

Perhaps this is just me being pedantic though. Yet I think it is just very hard to grapple with the ideas of Darwin, Peirce, or Smith without inherently having to deal with just these issues of complexity, networks, and emergence.