In literature it tends to represent characters who act only according to their role in the plot. Again I think for all his flaws Sartre is actually fairly useful here. But when I move from literature to life I get a bit more confused. I assume what Dave was getting at is that we fulfill stereotypical roles but nothing beyond that.

Again I just don’t see that. But maybe that’s because I’m far enough away from the stereotypes? Although if I was far from the stereotypes you’d think I’d be getting bothered by all these stereotypical people with no interests outside of their functional roles. (What roles are those anyway?) But again it’s hard for me not to raise the question of ignorance. Have those making these label calls tried to see if people have interests and practices outside of the stereotypes? I’m just curious as to what information is leading to these judgments. My suspicion is that people are conflating “people aren’t interested in what I’m interested in” with “people aren’t interesting.”

Think about the pressure for conformity within Mormonism and how it might appear to outsiders. Like sustaining votes at general conference, where every single hand goes up, apart from perhaps a handful of opposers who make everyone uncomfortable (because they are departing from the Mormon script). To an outsider, it looks like a North Korean election. Or how every missionary looks the same with short haircut, white shirt, suit coat, and name tag. That conformity, where everyone is encouraged to look the same, is just another aspect of the one-dimensionality I noted in the post, where everyone is encouraged to sound the same and act the same. Deep down there is diversity, we just tend to repress it for the sake of appearance.

If you disagree … don’t take offense, just share your own view or be quietly thankful you live in a particularly diverse Mormon enclave.

There are of course stereotypes of Mormons and in some ways we do foster those stereotypes. Overall though I think most non-Mormons who have met actual Mormons recognize a lot of diversity. (At least that’s my experience with non-Mormons)

“Most real-life Mormons are one dimensional. OK, not really, but sometimes we come across that way.”

See the difference? If you don’t then maybe you are being too one dimensional.

And unlike Jerry and yourself I have no qualms about chasing down this seeming tangent. Real life conversations ebb and flow and take surprising and interesting turns and deviations. When you are with friends do you police them with stern warnings that someone’s comment is off topic and caution them to not misdirect the conversation? Or do you enjoy the give and take and the realization that people are engaging in what you say, even in ways that you might not have imagined? Chiding people about how a conversation develops, either in person or online, is more often than not just an attempt to shut down honest discourse.

“Most real-life Mormons are one dimensional. This realization was my payoff for reading the book. At least they (well, we) come across that way, because Mormons often speak and act following a script, the “what Mormons are supposed to do and say” script that we all learn while growing up in the Church.”

On that last point, I think that probably applies more generally to how we think and talk and construct narratives about our own lives. If we think God is micromanaging things, we will explain that everything happens for a reason, and will search diligently to find what that reason might be.

Also, sorry to follow the tangential discussion of the one line in your post, but I think you’re spot on in saying that Mormons come across as one-dimensional. That’s not by accident either. The major goal of Correlation is homogeneity. All the talks telling us that a “real” testimony has to contain a certain set of elements, for example, are targeted at polishing off the rough edges that might make one Mormon different from another. We may be multi-dimensional people, but as Mormons, especially in the way we relate to non-Mormons, the Correlated ideal is that we all be pretty much the same.

It’s an easy trap to fall into to assume that because our engagements are superficial and often functional that’s all there is to people. Ideally we should be moving past that with activities, home teaching, and more. However (speaking guiltily as I’ve not done my home teaching the past month primarily due to ridiculous time commitments as my wife’s in her 9th month of pregnancy) it’s far too easy to be superficial even there. Don’t get me wrong. I often don’t care at all for the way Mormons in Utah engage with each other. I just don’t care for it and thus it’s not particularly socially enjoyable for me. Socializing ends up being something I have to concentrate on and get me out of my comfort zone. But the problem is me, not the other people even acknowledging some problematic aspects to typical Utah culture.

The benefit of fiction is that often the author can take an omniscient or semi-omniscient view and plumb underneath the level of superficiality. However let’s be honest. This is contrived typically. The author controls people and intentionally makes characters that are interesting to them. Ironically this leads to a certain superficiality of it’s own where characters seem deep and layered yet still function along traditional tropes. They’re no less functional than the superficial characters who exist merely to move a plot along.

Real life though isn’t so convenient. The complexities people have are not necessarily what we’d find enjoyable. Further we don’t have that mind reading that the omniscient or semi-omniscient narrator is able to do. In a certain way this is why avoiding the omniscient or semi-omniscient narrator is so much more difficult for an author – you have to figure out how to present people to the reader in a way the reader can plump their depths without the easy methods of doing so. Effectively you have to make people interesting while dealing in the superficialities of how we as humans actually engage with each other. That kind of literature perhaps is helpful because it’s attempting to teach the reader what they should be doing all of the time.