My Thoughts on the Mormon Superorganism

[_Meadowchik]

If you're familiar with Infants on Thrones, I submitted a listener's essay podcast called "My Response to Jonathan Haidt."

I am not at all good at editing, and I was quite nervous, but the substance it still meaningful to me. If anyone is interested in hearing a sorta cringy but maybe semi-enlightening perspective on Mormon social cohesion, here's the link:

http://infantsonthrones.com/listener-es ... by-miriam/

The general idea responds to Haidt's talk comparing religion to superorganisms. I posit that Mormonism is too tightly cohesive, that one of the best features of human society is when people are able to leave the group and start again.

[_Dr Exiled]

I will listen to it later today.

[_Meadowchik]

An excerpt from my transcript:

"Speaking of apostates, first, more background from Haidt: human beings form cohesive groups similar to superorganisms, yet they are not the most cohesive and are not as cohesive as bees. This is where, in my opinion, humanity surmounted a threshold of existence, because people can leave their groups. They can leave their groups, then forms other groups, then the new group can compete against the original group, even absorb its members. Then another group might form from leavers, which competes, and so on.
On a whole, this ability to break away mathematically improves our ability to adapt. Instead of being tied to one group and also one type of cohesion, the superorganism groups can be variant and offer people more options and more viable options improve adaptability."

[_Fence Sitter]

Interesting thanks for sharing.

[_Meadowchik]

Interesting thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the reply. by the way, here's the TED talk by Haidt:

https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haid ... nscendence

[_Fence Sitter]

Interesting thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the reply. by the way, here's the TED talk by Haidt:

https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haid ... nscendence

Have you read his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion?

I really liked his description on how we make moral decisions.

[_Meadowchik]

I really liked his description on how we make moral decisions.

So did I! The rider and the elephant is an extremely helpful metaphor.

[_Maksutov]

Fascinating subject. I've toyed with all kinds of analogies, like Mormons as eusocial colonies with memes acting like pheromones to organize and control behavior.

[_Meadowchik]

Fascinating subject. I've toyed with all kinds of analogies, like Mormons as eusocial colonies with memes acting like pheromones to organize and control behavior.

I really enjoy the superorganism model, it is generic enough to allow for the human peculiarities that effect tighter cohesion, like institutions and the more concrete tools. I talk about the pencil, for instance.

Here's the full transcript:

Jonathan Haidt shares an animation of microscopic organisms to illustrate the dynamic of living things functioning as groups. He describes the fascinating eventuality where, sometime in the deep prehistory, one organism swallowed another and together they began to function as a new organism, a superorganism.

This superorganism becomes stronger than the sum of its parts, more robust and more adaptable.

Humanity is much like a superorganism. As social creatures, we need each other and benefit greatly from each other. Groups provide interaction that produces more strategic and material resources beneficial for individual survival.

In a way, the individual is "swallowed" into a social group and then becomes one of many functioning organs of the whole creature, the group.
This group distinguishes itself, Jonathan Haidt continues, with transcendence. Euphoria, and ecstasy within the group coalescs the group members into a like mindset focused on a joint belief or cause. Imagine a hunting party spread out at important landmarks on a game trail, each playing a role in finding, separating, and then killing the hunted prey. They each contribute and for the time act in consonance as one, and they each benefit from the kill.

Collaboration like this is found at virtually all levels of human society. It it in our institutions, in our traditions, in our genes. Babies are born with proportionately large heads and facial features that induce affectionate feelings in adults, they cry in ways that cause us physiological distress, creating incentive for attending to their needs. Rites of passage like circumcision, quincinearas, weddings, and funeral wakes attach meaning to different life stages and events, producing repeatable feelings of union with others and a sense of communal belonging.

Participating in traditional events signals that you are in the group, and Mormon has its own brand of validation:

In one moment, a new move-in to a Mormon ward can communicate their credentials:

"Hi, I'm Lehi Johansen, this is my wife, Jessica, and our kids Joseph, Natalie, Taylor, Mahonri, and Elisabeth. " The males have white shirts and ties, the females have white tees and jumpers, everyone is clean-shaven, scriptures inhome-sewn scripture satchels in hand.
This gesture occurs in a matter of seconds, but effects passage of these would-be strangers through the barrier. They are on the other side, they are part of the ward, family members to be congealed into pre-determined roles in the group superorganism.
Haidt goes over the boating race scenario, where individual members of each respective team may compete within their team, but one boat carrying an entire team works in concert to win the race against competing boats. The boat is a superorganism, members following commands and captains issuing orders.

Imagine the deep doctrine debates in high priests' group, or Relief Society mothers comparing and judging each other based on their groomed children. Such in-group competitions differ drastically from debates and comparisons with outsiders and especially differ when an apostate enters the scene. The same complaint from a believing, contributing member in the boat will be treated differently than from an open apostate, who is outside the boat, for example.

Speaking of apostates, first, more background from Haidt: human beings form cohesive groups similar to superorganisms, yet they are not the most cohesive and are not as cohesive as bees. This is where, in my opinion, humanity surmounted a threshold of existence, because people can leave their groups. They can leave their groups, then forms other groups, then the new group can compete against the original group, even absorb its members. Then another group might form from leavers, which competes, and so on.

On a whole, this ability to break away mathematically improves our ability to adapt. Instead of being tied to one group and also one type of cohesion, the superorganism groups can be variant and offer people more options and more viable options improve adaptability.

As a result, the entire human superorganism, global and dynamic, is more adaptable. Don't believe this superorganism mumbo jumbo? Consider the pencil, the yellow painted iconic Number Two pencil with the aluminum band and eraser at the top. It literally takes hundreds of thousands of people, possibly millions, to make one pencil from scratch, to mine, find, and grow the raw resources, to build and power the ships to transport those resources, to refine and mix those materials that eventually, after hundreds and hundreds of steps, until these components are mechanically formed into a pencil.
Go off the grid, even, and you will likely take something with you that is as sophisticated and work-intensive as a pencil, be it a hammer, or seeds, or nails, or medicines. Try to reproduce and raise a family and you will need such things to survive and continue in perpetuity.

So, back to that cultural membrane, one more specific and tightly-binding than capitalism and trade: the religions, and specifically, Mormonism. Mormonism's membrane is belief, centered around the claims of Joseph Smith, the passage of central authority through his male successors and the limited distribution of that authority to local male "priesthood" leaders.

Remember the ward's new family, the Johansens? They walk into a ward of complete strangers, consider the process by which they are to accept the new bishop, the man who has final priesthood authority over the ward and over their future participation in it:

"Hi, I'm Bishop Jones, nice to meet you!"

((pause))

That's it basically.

The Johansen's take his divine authority on faith. Lehi, Jessica, Joseph, Natalie, Taylor, Mahonri, and Elisabeth will all eventually pass through Bishop Jones' office to stand before him and be judged on their personal worthiness before God. Bishop Jones will decide if they pass. Lehi and Jessica are showing their children that they can trust the Bishop, and by extension, that they can trust all the males exercising priesthood roles in the ward.
Inside the Mormon cultural membrane, there is a special protection, the feeling of being safe because we believe the same and we believe that we believe the best beliefs. It is a warm feeling untainted by cynicism or fighting. The feeling is produced and reproduced by the signals of language, appearance, and practice. When others signify their loyalty, "we know they are one of us." Especially when priesthood males signify their loyalty, other Mormons know they can be trusted.

This authority is then used thoroughly, establishing the general path of a person's entire life but also dictated small details like what we eat, what we wear under our clothes, how we have sex, and what we do on any given day of the week.

Yet in this membrane, the priesthood authority exists exclusively through the males. Half the population does not ever have representation in the ultimate authority of the church, be it on the ward, stake, or church-wide level, not even in the home. Thus, none of those with the final say can, from an experiential perspective, see, understand, or addressing basic problems of the human experience faced by a near-majority of human beings. Except it feels good, so good and warm, because "we believe that we believe the best beliefs" and that the patriarchal order works the best of anything that works.

And thus, even in people with the best intentions, there is an abundance of certainty in Mormonland. With certainty, it is very hard for doubts to encroach and disrupt the framework. Thus it is very hard for problems, especially systemic problems, to be addressed, understood, or even seen. This is compounded by the concentration of priesthood authority because it keeps the authorities in ignorance of experiential knowledge since it excludes half the members. This is further compounded because individual members are taught to trust priesthood authorities to the extreme on an intimate basis, making them more vulnerable to improprieties of leaders and making leaders more impervious to criticism.

Thus, Mormons are working on a boat that is very good at promoting loyalty and trust in the group, and with that, many of the benefits associated with tightly supportive groups. Yet when things go wrong with the boat itself, you could say the loyalty is so tight that it takes a great deal to change the boat or fix it.

I enjoyed Jonathan Haidt's talk and how it helped me think about Mormon culture, of somewhat how it functions and how we functioned in it. Most of all, I like the idea of not merely transcending self from time to time and becoming part of something more, but of transcending culture for something more and better and hopefully creating some thing better.

There is something that makes Mormonism inevitably counterproductive to individual progress, it inhibits that thing that makes humans as adaptable as we are because Mormonism inhibits group disloyalty. Is it a coincidence that Utah is called the Beehive State? Mormonism makes humans more cohesive than they should be or need to be for their own good. This is what is so untenable and this is what ultimately damns the church.

The genius of humans is that they can both collaborate in cohesive groups but then also break away from groups to form competing alternatives, improving overall human adaptability. So inasmuch as the church denies an individual their ultimate personal authority over their own lives, it denies them their selves. Stomp out this basic genius of the human condition and you destroy collective and individual progress.

My name is [Meadowchik] and unfortunately I speak from experience. Also fortunately I also speak from experience. Most of my immediate family left the church earlier this year: a family of nine, hubs and I met and married at BYU, our first three were born in Provo when we lived at Wymount Terrace. We've experienced the church in three US states and three different countries and languages. Our children age from 6 to 18 and we are so, so glad we can start course-correcting now. We have two LGBT children and two agnostic kids. Since the start of this year, they can openly acknowledge those parts of themselves and their father and I can respond to the needs of all our children in healthier, more rational and compassionate ways. I am so happily mindful of the intuition I have and the brain I have that has led me to this place and helped me bring my family to my place. So glad to adapt and learn. Thanks, Infants, for helping.

[_Meadowchik]

"Remember the ward's new family, the Johansens? They walk into a ward of complete strangers, consider the process by which they are to accept the new bishop, the man who has final priesthood authority over the ward and over their future participation in it:

"Hi, I'm Bishop Jones, nice to meet you!"

((pause))

That's it basically. "

In reality, they don't even have to meet the bishop to be subjected to his authority, nor he them.

This excerpt is worth highlighting, especially given the current emphasis on the power bishops have in members' lives, and the consequences of that power.