Invisible Bullets

Methinks that I cling to intellectualism...maybe I'm just bitter because all the religious people seem happier than I do...

Well, now my friends I'm feeling like it's "Big Question/Sweeping Statement" time...yes, I speak of those "big ideas" that tend to be absurdly abstract, horrifically vague, and almost hopelessly Ivory Towerish...

But then again, who is better equipped to handle such questions than a faithful, thinking Latter Day Saint? Who else has the beautifully practical wisdom of Boyd K. Packer: "It has always been my feeling that the doctrines of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are not vague, nor mysterious, nor elusive. Rather, the gospel is what we do in our everyday lives, or, perhaps I ought to say, the gospel is what we ought to do." Meanwhile, Elder Neal A. Maxwell graces us with such provocative ruminations about almost every known philosophical question, ranging from faith and intellect, agency and omniscience, government, politics, and more. Our intellectual tools are well-equipped to such a task...

Stephen Greenblatt wrote a remarkable piece entitled "Invisible Bullets" some years ago. In the piece, he recounts a Thomas Harriott's visit to the Virginia colony of the New World and his first contact with the Algonquin tribes. Through an examination of Harriott's own account of the visit, Greenblatt posits a model through which cultural supremacy is gathered and maintained. Greenblatt starts with a discussion of athiesm in the early 17th-century, noting Machiavelli's comments that religion was the most effect form of civic discipline, that Moses was simply a learned magician, and that, as Christopher Marlowe noted, Harriott could do better than Moses at fooling dupes into buying into the act. Finally, Greenblatt discusses how Harriott depicts his interactions with and superiority over the Algonquin tribes. What does it come to, Greenblatt asks: technological superiority of the same brand as Moses over the Hebrew. How is it then that Harriott is able to talk of such notions that are so utterly subversive to his own conception of God? Here is where Greenblatt's model comes, and where it gets interesting for faithful Later Day Saints.

Greenblatt maintains that when an individual encounters a notion subversive to their own views, they engage in a three-step process: test, reorder, and explain. In so doing, we place the encounter at a sufficient distance from our core values, thus protecting ourselves from their subversive influences. By distancing ourselves, we contain the potential harm. Nevertheless, Greenblatt insists, attaining such a safe distance requires including the subversive elements in one's dialogue first. When Harriott discusses such foreign notions as aristocratic birth and demonology, we are not affected. We contain the effects these subversive notions have on us by distancing ourselves through place and time.

We also see this also in romantic comedies, in soap operas, and war films where a romantically involved couple hurl stinging insults yet are expected to get together in the end, where a terminally ill lover expresses her eternal romance. We see this when we read a story about a drug-dealer who meets the Mormon missionaries and then goes to prison later drugs later ("they planted a seed"). When someone loses a loved one to an accident, we talk about "the plan," about "experience," and about the refining capacity of suffering. Containment is our way of holding off meaninglessness, even as the book or movie jerks us through "our own constantly shifting allegiences."

Indeed, the Book of Mormon itself should be a horrendously subversive document to our sensibilities...an entire people essentially destroying themselves through pride, vainglory, and their own depravity? Yet Mormon/Moroni go through the same process as Harriott: they test (see Mormon chpts. 6 when Mormon faces cold reality about his people's agency: "Oh ye fair ones, how could ye have departed from the ways of the Lord"), they record (compare Greenblatt's description: "the moments in which we hear voices that seem to dwell realms apart" from the power structure to Moroni's "I speak unto you as though ye were present"--"you" meaning the only hope for writing the BOM") and explaining ("For the purpose of convincing Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ"). Wherein there was once madness, now there is sense.

How can we adopt this to our own purposes? After all, this might sound like academic mumbo-jumbo, but we do it all the time. Is it good? Is it bad? Stay tuned.