When we started this blog over a year ago, we had a general sense of the type of material we wanted to post. Somewhat unexpectedly, as one government “crisis” passed and as another was introduced1, it seemed important to note and point out the continuing, yet rapid transformation of American society further away from the traditions and principles upon which the United States was founded.
Much of this transpired just a few short years after the largest temple building program The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had ever undertaken.2
Although we hope things will improve and a renewed sense of liberty will awaken in the hearts of American citizens, the events of the last century or more in this country parallel the process of polarization – as described in the Book of Mormon, and elsewhere – in ancient societies.
For example, Hugh W. Nibley wrote,
At the center of ancient American studies today lies that overriding question, “Why did the major civilizations collapse so suddenly, so completely, and so mysteriously?” The answer now given by the overwhelming majority of those scholars as contained, for example, in T. P. Culbert’s valuable collection of studies on the subject, is that society as a whole suffered a process of polarization into two separate and opposing ways of life, an increased distance between peasant and noble, as W. T. Sanders puts it, that went along with growing hostility between cities and nations as resource margins declined.3 The polarizing syndrome is a habit of thought and action that operates at all levels, from family feuds like Lehi’s to the battle of galaxies. It is the pervasive polarization described in the Book of Mormon and sources from other cultures which I wish now to discuss briefly, ever bearing in mind that the Book of Mormon account is addressed to future generations, not to “harrow up their souls,” but to tell them how to get out of the type of dire impasse which it describes. Moroni is explicit: “And this cometh unto you, O ye Gentiles, . . . that ye may repent, . . . that ye may not bring down the fulness of the wrath of God upon you as the inhabitants of the land have hitherto done” (Ether 2:11). And again Moroni says: “Give thanks unto God that he hath made manifest unto you our imperfections, that ye may learn to be more wise than we have been” (Mormon 9:31).
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- For examples, see the posts tagged Financial Crisis and Health Care; see the post on Participatory Fascism on how government leaders use crises towards illicit ends.↩
- LDS Church Continues Temple Building Throughout the World.↩
- W.T. Sanders, in T. P. Culbert, ed., The Classic Maya Collapse (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973), 345—46.↩
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