On Re-Reading Nibley

I just recently finished a massive re-read of my collection of Hugh Nibley books.  Over the course of my 20s, I had amassed 12 out of the 19 volumes of the legendary LDS scholar's Collected Works.  This last Winter Break my Dad reminded me that, even if spread across a decade's worth of Christmases and Birthdays, that collection still indicated an investment of hundreds of dollars; my conscience piqued, I decided this last New Years that--especially now that I was now finally post-Comps--it was high time I re-read my entire Nibley collection.

Though the wealth of Nibley's knowledge is staggering, nevertheless when one reads his Collected Works all at once and in a row, certain repeated themes begin to foreground themselves, viz:

• Nibley's PhD dissertation at Berkley was on the ancient Coronation and New Years ceremony, which he found to be remarkably consistent all across the Mediterranean and Middle-East.  He much later claimed that the King Benjamin discourse in the Book of Mormon is yet another example of this rite, and that even the Hopi Native American Tribe still practices the ceremony to this day.  This identifies him with the Cambridge Patternist school and as a diffusionist--the belief that all these ancient ceremonies have a common source.  Though the Cambridge School has long gone out of fashion and Nibley lived to see much of his research superseded (often by himself), Nibley never essentially lets go of the thesis to his youthful dissertation, which influences the totality of his decades-long career (be careful what your thesis is, I suppose).
• Closely connected to his unfailing faith in Patternism, is Nibley's unflagging conviction that all of Joseph Smith's writings can be tested against these self-same ancient sources.  He does this first in the '50s and '60s by comparing the Book of Mormon to known Arabic and Hebrew sources and arguing for their close similarities on linguistic and textual grounds; he updates his claims as new documents are found--the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi texts, etc--but he never abandons his initial assumptions.  
• He later applies this same model to the Book of Enoch (claiming that Moses 6 & 7 in the Pearl of Great Price is a mini Book of Enoch), delving deep into the Enoch Apocrypha; then again to the Book of Abraham, which occupied him from the '70s till the end of his life in 2005 (turns out Egyptology is a very difficult field to master).  It is the same method he was using in One Eternal Round, his final book, published posthumously in 2010.
• Clearly there is a thread of monomania that runs through his works, as shown also by the fact that, embedded within his thousands of citations, the same few works keep getting cited over and over, e.g. The Clementine Recognitions, the works of Eduard Meyer (which he read in the original German), Brigham Young in Journal of Discourses, and the plays of Shakespeare.
• On Shakespeare: Nibley once claimed that he initially went to school to become a Shakespeare scholar, but found early English to be derivative, for behind it was the Latin, and behind that the Greek.  All of Nibley's writings display this same tendency to telescope outward back in time, ever seeking the earliest sources of, well, everything; nevertheless, he never abandons his initial love of Shakespeare either, whose quotations litter across his Collected Works--Hamlet primarily, but also MacBeth, the Henry plays, Julius Caesar, and Timon of Athens in particular.
• Though he is possessed of a great and biting wit and engaging personal voice, there is, frankly, a sort of slap-dash, careening approach to his writing style, which does open him up to accusations (both within and without the Church) of sloppy methodology, particularly for his over-reliance on Patternism.  Moreover, his aggressive style of apologetics (one that assumes the best defense is a good offense) has lately fallen out of fashion in Mormon academia, which now prefers a more holistic, self-critical approach--which is probably for the best.  
• Nevertheless, the man really did speak 12 languages fluently, with working knowledge of 25 total; as Henry David Thoreau once said of John Brown, the man cannot be tried by a jury of his peers because he has none.
• He has no patience for those who sought position within the Church, and correspondingly never held high ecclesiastical position himself.  He takes for his personal models the Book of Mormon heroes Ammon (the missionary who turned down the kingship) and Captain Moroni, who "seeks not for power but to pull it down."  He is also fond of quoting Joseph Smith, who said that "great big elders", those ambitious men who believed themselves wiser than he, were the bane of his existence.  This profound suspicion of the ambitious likewise informs his readings of the Fall of the Roman Empire, the Apostasy of the primitive Church, and the excesses of ancient dictators.
• He is possessed of an open and unapologetic contempt for intellectual laziness.  "The Glory of God is intelligence," and therefore a refusal to develop our intelligence is a God-given waste, and waste is sin.  
• His contempt first gets expressed in the '50 and '60s through his virtuoso take-downs of anti-Mormon propaganda (which is what first brought him to prominence within the Church), tearing apart their logical fallacies and shallow research with glee.  
• But beginning in the '70s, he shifts his ire from the anti-Mormons to the Saints themselves, taking us to task with the same viciousness he once reserved for the enemies of Joseph Smith.  He even expresses his gratitude for the anti-Mormons, since they force us to actually study our own scriptures for a change.  He never passes up an opportunity to take a swipe at Mormon anti-intellectualism, and his employer BYU in particular bears the brunt of his contempt.
• But what provoked his ire against his employer, the source of his career?  The same thing that started his career in the first place: the documents.  For if Nibley spends the majority of his time trying to prove that the ancient documents validate LDS scripture, he never loses sight of the question as to whether or not the scriptures actually have something to say (the truest test of all); and for Nibley, what the scriptures have to say, repeatedly and apocalyptically, is that the quest for riches, power, and gain are real evils, Satanic in nature (for Nibley, Satanism has nothing to do with pentagrams or goat's blood).  
• Power and gain for Nibley are not only the ruin of the world but the bane of the Church.  He has zero patience for our current glut of LDS businessmen, Utah Valley get-rich-quick schemes, and BYU business programs.  There has been and remains no blunter critic of Mormon materialism than Hugh Nibley.
• But that is not to say that Nibley is an anti-materialist in the philosophic sense; on the contrary, he is a fierce anti-Platonist, largely laying the blame for the Great Apostasy at the foot of neo-Platonism and its tendency to "spiritualize" and "allegorize" the gospel, refusing to entertain even the possibility of an embodied god, a physical resurrection, or of an expansive cosmos.  For Nibley, all cosmology is religion, and all religion is cosmology, and that is the key for understanding the Egyptians, the primitive Christians, and even the Native Americans.
• Business and the pursuit of wealth for Nibley are not the fruits of hard work, but evidence of an abject refusal on our part to engage in the real hard work of using our minds (he always has the Protestant work ethic square in his cross-hairs).  
• For Nibley, the search for power and gain is a sin as old as Cain and Able, and he cites all of ancient history, the Roman Satirists, the pre-Nicean Church Fathers (Origen and Clement of Alexandria are his favorites), Shakespeare, the Bible, Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and yesterday's newspapers, to prove its evil.  
• Nibley's screeds against wealth and power, more than his apologetics and scholarship, are what have influenced me more than anything else (you can probably blame him for me pursuing a career in the Humanities as opposed to anything remotely lucrative).  They are what I believe will keep him relevant to the Church long after the rest of his scholarship becomes museum pieces.  For his is a message as old as human history, and only grows in dire importance with each new passing Headline.
• But then, for Nibley, the question isn't whether we will heed the warnings of the scriptures in time to prevent our own destruction--we won't, frankly.  Rather, the question is whether we will be prepared for the Judgment of God when the End comes.  Eternity, not nihilism, is what Nibley repeatedly preaches we must prepare for.  What he desires above all else (and the reason why he gets so frustrated with us), is for us to lift our gaze up from the sordid little vanities of this failing world to instead behold the incomprehensible expansiveness of the cosmos.

I can do no better, then, than finish with an extended Nibley quote, in one of my all-time favorite passages (and that's a crowded field!):

“What are we afraid of? What do men fear most? Believe it or not, it is joy. Against joy, society erects its most massive bulwarks…It is not hell that men fear most, but heaven…Everything in our society conspires to dampen and control joy. Our sordid little pleasures are carefully channeled and commercialized; our pitiful escapes to alcohol and drugs are a plain admission that we will not allow ourselves to have joy in our right senses. Only little children can face up to it. They have no hidden guilt to admonish cautious behavior or make joy appear unseemly…Why do we insist on taking ourselves so seriously? Because we’re scared to death of being found out...

“…to lend dignity and authority to this pretentious fraud, we have invented the solemn business and drudgery of every day life. To avoid answering questions, we pretend to be very busy–my how busy!  In every conservatory of music, there is the student who practices scales and exercises with dedicated zeal, for 8 or 10 hours a day; or works away for months or years, with terrifying persistence, at a single piece. This is the devoted grind that impresses others with his matchless industry, but don’t be fooled! This drudge is not working at all! He is running away from work. His ferocious application to dull routine is but a dodge to avoid the novel and frightening effort of using his head. And never, never, for all his years of toil, does he become a real musician. (He usually becomes an executive.)

“In the manner of this poor dupe, the whole majestic world goes about its ostentatious enterprises, the important busy work of every day life… Sorrow is a negative thing…to live with it requires only resignation…humanity, in a thousand ways, declares it’s almost unanimous preference for drab and depressing routine.

“If the world is a dark and dreary place, it is because we prefer it that way; for there is nothing in the world that can keep a man from joy if joy is what he wants…It’s altogether too much for us to bear. We must learn by degrees to live with it. It isn’t strange that we are afraid of so strange and overpowering a thing, that we are overawed by the feeling that it is all too good for us; the fact is that it is too good for us! Much too good!…We are not ready yet…we [must] come to support not the burden of great suffering, but the much greater impact of limitless joy.” (Collected Works of Hugh Nibley Vol. 3, The World and the Prophets, pg. 265-267).                                                                                                                                                

Some Notes on LDS Singlehood, Now That It's Over, With Some Lingering Survivor's Guilt, and a Growing Conviction that Older Singles Are the Rocks of Our Faith

I've been married less than a month now, and while we are undoubtedly still in the Honeymoon stage, well, it's been great.  In fact, I have some survivor's guilt about it--I got married much later than many of my peers, but I know even more wonderful people who still haven't married yet.  Why did I "get out" (for lack of a better term) while so many others still haven't?  The whole process feels capricious and unfair.

Of course, I am here falling into the easy fallacy of assuming that marriage is a finish-line, not a work-in-progress; I know not to take that for granted, because near the end of my 20s, I had begun to go on dates with a distressingly large number of divorced girls younger than I--not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with being divorced, only that I began to get a sense of the sheer, tragic scale of failed marriages out there, of far too many young folks rushing in unawares, "where angels fear to tread," often before they knew who their partners were, or even who they themselves were.

Part of that divorce-rate is the fault of the rash impulsiveness of youth, of leaping before they look (which is argument itself against young marriages but that is a different topic).  But part of that divorce-rate, too, is rooted in an LDS Church culture that fetishizes being-married-ness to a near-fanatical degree, for a host of both doctrinal and sociological reasons; it is an emphasis rooted in this naive assumption that being-married automatically endows you with some sort of greater knowledge or wisdom or grace that will magically change you--that if you can just check off the married-box on your tax-forms then everything will work itself out--when in fact you are still the same person with the same virtues and the same flaws as you were when single, only now with another human being to magnify them.

This marriage culture finds expression in a plethora of condescending manners:

I'm thinking of the YSA Branch President I once had who kept inviting outside speakers instead of local Branch members to speak in Sacrament, apparently out of the unstated belief that a bunch of doctoral candidates and med-students lacked insights of their own to offer, that we were mere children in need of juvenile pep talks;

I'm thinking of all the times Church Presidents have taken "the Priesthood" to task for putting off marriage, as though it were our idea, which felt the equivalent of yelling at cancer patients for not being healthy;

I'm remembering the time I foolishly attended a YSA FHE because I thought we were carving Jack-O-Lanterns, only to then be treated to a 20-minute devotional from some newly-wed on how wonderful being married is, on how great sex is, as though we were unclear on that point, as though that idiot-girl wasn't just rubbing it in;

I'm thinking of the Stake President I once had in Salt Lake who changed the name of our "Singles Stake" to a "Pre-Marriage Stake," as though there were some bizarre confusion as to what exactly we thought we were supposed to be doing;

there is also the sheer fact that Singles Wars and Stakes exist in the first place, based as they are in the (sadly accurate) assumption that the Church's Young Single Adults would never have any opportunities for leadership or responsibility within Family Wards, where a 21-year-old with half an Associates and a part-time job is welcomed with greater respect than a 27-year-old with a Graduate Degree and an established career, simply because the former has a signed marriage license whilst the latter does not.

This patronizing infantilization of older singles in the Church (where they are often--sometimes literally--consigned to the kid's table) is a greater impediment to their personal growth than whatever their relationship status happens to be.  I only attended a Mid-Singles event once--I was 29 and my gf at the time was 30, and we always went Latin Dancing; I wanted to shake things up, so she suggested this mid-singles dance she had heard about.  I assumed I would just encounter a group a slightly-older professionals mingling and flirting, but instead saw a bunch of folks with graying-temples and spreading-wrinkles dressed and acting like teenagers, a live-band playing the Hokey-Pokey, and a "Speed-Dating in the Dark" set up in a blackened hallway.  We stayed only 5 minutes, then headed straight back to a Latin Dance.

There was just this depressingly stunted-adolescence about the room--but then, it is too much to expect older singles to behave any differently when that is exactly how the Church treats them.  Yes, a strong-willed individual can rise above one's culture, but the Church should be facilitating such self-actualization, not serving as one of its obstacles.

But now I am still being far too mean to older LDS singles, as though they haven't been humiliated enough as it is.  No, here's the God's-honest truth I have recently realized: older singles are the rock and strength of the Church.  These are our strongest, most faithful members. 

Think about it: these are the members who receive every subtle signal that they are not wanted (sometimes not-so-subtle, as when a 31-year-old is unceremoniously booted out of the Singles Ward), who are given every reason to just drift away and seek out a scene that does not stigmatize single 30-year-olds, but who instead just shrug it all off and keep attending Church anyways.  What deep wells of faith, what profound religious conversion, is necessary to keep going in the face of all that indifference!  (Remember that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.)  Older Singles are not a problem for the Church; the Church is a problem for Older Singles, which does not value its strongest members like it should.

Now, I have heard it argued that part of this valuation for couples over singles in the Church lies in the fact that there is a certain profound knowledge one can only gain from being a parent--I don't doubt it, and I look forward to such knowledge for myself.  But I can also testify from personal experience that there is likewise a certain profound knowledge that can only be gained from being so long single.  We are lucky to have people with such knowledge, and it is to the Church's condemnation when we don't respect it, of which we must needs repent.

For contrary to assumption, it is no great miracle for a whole family to stay in the Church--young families in particular need a social support network, which the Church provides in spades.  It is as strange for a young family to leave the Church as it is for an older single to stay (though both happen far more often than we care to admit).  No, no, it's the older single members who are the true examples of real faithfulness--they are those who ever wait, like Father Abraham, the proverbial 99-years for the fulfillment of the covenant, to at last have progeny like unto the stars in the heavens.  I declare it boldly: their trial is Abrahamic, and is therefore deserving of the same level of respect, reverence, and awe.

Handbook of Research on Foreign Language Education in the Digital Age

Oh hey guys!  I recently copy-edited a forthcoming academic textbook entitled Handbook of Research on Foreign Language Education in the Digital Age, co-edited by CongCong Wang of the University of Northern Iowa and Lisa Winstead of California State University, Fullerton!  Many of the contributors were non-native English speakers, so my copy-editing often went far beyond the standard grammar checks; in fact, so extensive were certain of my edits that I am actually listed as third author on Chapter 10, "French-Chinese Dialogical Interaction via Web Collaborative Blog-Writing: Code-Switching to Extend Online Tandem Language Learning".  The volume over all compiles a number of recent research studies into how to best integrate digital technologies into the instruction of various foreign languages.  If you have $192 to burn, well, first give it to me; but if you are also a professional in the field of second-language acquisition and pedagogy, you might consider purchasing up a copy!

Trump Is

Trump is Rorschach from The Watchmen, an unhinged sociopath shouting at his fellow inmates (i.e. the GOP) "You don't get it, do you! I'm not stuck in here with you, you're stuck in here with me!"

Trump is whom Cristopher Walken shakes hands with in The Dead Zone, then realizes he has a moral obligation to assassinate to prevent nuclear war.

Trump is the prologue to a bad YA dystopic novel.

Trump is the villain in a hackneyed, ghost-written first novel by some minor ex-Daily Show correspondent, one that receives middling reviews that describe it as "too cartoonishly outlandish to be believable," and "tries way too hard to nail the zeitgeist" through its "rather tiresome, predictable, far-too-on-the-nose critique of 'Reality TV' culture."

Trump is who just barely lost election at the start of that one Ray Bradbury story, when a time travel safari heads back to the Jurassic to kill a T. Rex; but then the rich client loses his nerve, steps off the path and squashes a butterfly. They return to the present to find history changed and Trump elected. The client falls to his knees, crying, "it was only a butterfly, a butterfly!..." while the safari leader points his rifle at the client's head, and

A Sound of Thunder.

On My First Triathlon

Over a year ago, I bet Kristina that if she read The Brothers Karamazov, that I would run a triathlon.  Naturally, I assumed this meant I would never run a triathlon.  She finished it in 6 weeks.

Yesterday, I finally fulfilled my end of the bargain.  As I ran the TryByKnight Sprint Triathlon at Wartburg College in Waverly, IA.

My swim featured an embarrassing amount of backstroke, my biking had more than its fair share of coasting and fidgeting with the gears, and my 5k was scarcely better than a light jog (though it was a consistent jog, no walking). I was fat, slow, tired, and hangry, and hated almost every minute of it.

Almost.

Because when I got that runner's high almost in spite of myself, I caught a glimmer of why so many people spend so much of their precious time and hard earned money for the privelege to run themselves ragged; as for myself, I felt the sense of accomplishment that comes of doing something I'm not naturally good at; and what's more, no matter if they take everything else from me, I can now always say: I am a triathlete.

It's OK For Church To Be Boring Sometimes

Once in an interview, Slajov Zizek attempted to discuss the thesis of his new book through the example of a small child not wanting to visit Grandma, but his Dad just says "shut up, we're going"--that was the older model, said Zizek; now, in our more modern, "Enlightened" form of parenting, we tell the kid he doesn't have to go, it's his choice, but Grandma has been looking forward to seeing him for so long, and how terribly disappointed she'll be if he doesn't come. 

Though this newer version is certainly less nakedly forceful, says Zizek, it is actually a far more insidious form of coercion--for not only are we still in fact forcing the kid to go to Grandma's, but we are also forcing him to enjoy going, as well.

"So you're saying we should go back to that older form of just forcing the kid?" asked the interviewer.  "Yes," said Zizek, "It's more honest."

Now, Zizek is a misanthrope and a plagiarist, and at some point it doesn't matter if he's just kidding about being a Stalinist, it's not funny; nevertheless, that doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong, at least not on this particular point.  Because growing up, I've heard sermon after sermon about how, if you're bored at Church, it is more a reflection of your own lack of spiritual preparedness. As in Zizek's example, we coerce not only our kids but each other and ourselves into liking Church, even if it's dull.  And you know what?  Sometimes it is on us--we show up in a bad or lackadaisical mood, we're not paying attention like we should, and we're the one who misses out.  Sometimes it really is us.

But here's the thing: sometimes it's not!  Sometimes the speakers really are dry and dull.  Sometimes the Sunday School teachers really are unprepared and class discussion is nil.  Sometimes Church really is just boring.

And that's OK! I am convinced that if we all just admitted Church is boring sometimes, that it would actually make it far easier to go.  We would quit blaming ourselves for others dullness, our repressed resentment would go down, it would explode far less frequently into a faith crisis, and we would feel far less coerced into attending something that should only be by our own freewill and choice. 

I've come to the conclusion that it's far less healthy to say, "I didn't get much out of Church today, there must be something wrong with me," than it is to say, "You know what?  Church was boring today.  Oh well.  I'll be back next week." 

Because we don't go to Church to be perfected at a perfect institution, but to help deal with each others many failings mutually.  That means there's going to be some screw-ups, that means some Sundays will be plain boring.  But it's OK, it's all a work in progress, we'll be back next week to keep working on it.  Teaching people to blame themselves when an imperfect institution is imperfect, only sets them up for their entire world to collapse out from under them when they do finally wise up to these rather obvious imperfections.  But teaching people that sometimes Church is boring but we're going anyways just makes it all the sweeter when it is good!

This is all just a round-about way of saying that, whenever someone preaches the importance of coming to Church "spiritually prepared," I just roll my eyes and grin, and say to myself: "No, actually, sometimes Church really is just boring; but that's OK, I'll be back next week."

On Art Actually Mattering

In Book X of Plato's Republic, Socrates, in describing his ideal Republic, calls for the complete removal of the poets, considering the lot of them to be charlatans, pale imitators of truth, and corrupters of public morals--"Notwithstanding this," he concludes, "let us assure our sweet friend and the sister arts of imitation that if she will only prove her title to exist in a well-ordered State we shall be delighted to receive her."

Over the past 2,400 years, Western poets have attempted to answer Plato's sally, arguing in turns that poetry--and art & literature generally--is indeed useful for moral instruction (which argument still colors our discussions today on whether certain art should be banned or censored), or that literature is beneficial towards stimulating the imagination, and thereby engendering empathy (Percy Shelley's defense, still in use by most literary scholars I know today).  All of these attacks against and defenses of literature, of course, presuppose that art and literature have some sort of definable influence upon people and society.

Which by the end of the 20th century is no longer a given.  Kurt Vonnegut once noted that the totality of American writers during the '60s focused like laser beam on stopping the Vietnam War, and didn't make one iota of difference.  Art may perhaps make a good coping mechanism, goes this argument, to make one feel less alone in this sordid world of ours, but its actual influence is vastly overrated.

In fact, by the 21st century, many artists and critics have begun to glory in art's pointlessness--since it all has no real influence, questions of censoring and banishment are silly, because they are ultimately irrelevant.  We are hereby free to enjoy all the banned-books and "deviant" art we want--not to protect freedom of expression mind you, but simply because it's all so harmless.  We are likewise now liberated to enjoy all the trash we want--reality shows and the like--because what does any of it matter, anyways?  Real Housewives are no more likely to corrupt public morals than Hamlet was gonna save 'em.  So goes the argument.

But I've lately come full 360 on this argument (and yes, I'm using that term correctly) to consider that art really does matter after all, that maybe Plato was right all this time, that perhaps art--or, at least bad art poorly handled--can in fact have a genuine, traceable, tangible impact upon the political state.  Part of this comes from a paper I've worked on, about William Butler Yeats's very real influence upon the 1916 Revolutionaries in Ireland.

But, much more negatively, my other recent example is, well, Donald Trump.  Call it correlation if you must, but it's no accident that a Reality TV star became a Presidential candidate custom made for Reality TV audiences.

I remember when Reality TV first saturated the airwaves, 10-15 years ago.  There were all the standard, unoriginal jokes about how it was making us all actively dumber, a sign of the decadence of Western civilization...to which the viewers would simply respond, "Oh, lighten up!  It's just entertainment!  No one takes this seriously."

But oh my, how we have!  A Reality TV star, one who has honed his skills at playing to his audience's basest desires, continues to manipulate his supporters towards the nomination.  Is this for real??  Is there really such a thing as bad art after all, and can bad art have a verifiably bad influence on society?  Was Plato right all along?!  Of all the things for him to be right about!

On one hand this is terrifying--but on the other hand, it's weirdly encouraging.  Because if there is such a thing as bad art, that has a bad effect on society, this by corollary means there can also be good art too, that can have a good effect on society, as well!  Art matters again in this model! Or at least, maybe it can be used for good instead of evil.