How the RLDS Church destroyed my Family

Anytime we believe in a Myth, we are in trouble, and often big trouble. 

This story begins in 1947, when our family moved from Ft Madison, Iowa, to Nauvoo, Illinois. This was a big break for me because it was so beautiful. I have been a Small Town Boy ever since. 

My parents thought the Church was wonderful when I could see it was nothing, and getting more nothing every day.

This affected our family business - whole wheat flour, and later, whole wheat bread. 

We thought Church Members would bake their own bread - using our flour, of course. 

This did not happen, but the Church did buy our property -  enabling my parents to retire comfortably in Mexico. 

Making other People Dependent on You

Why do this? I don't know, but is a common enough practice, and one we have to be on the alert for. 

Detecting it may be difficult because sometimes we have to be dependent on others. This is what schools are for. 

Let's begin by discussing some of the reasons for this, which are all mental. 

You may feel inferior to others, and this may be an accurate assessment. Some people are very smart, and you will always be stupid compared to them. A baby is always less intelligent than an adult - but they learn fast! 

You have to take into account other people's assessment of our intelligence. How do they feel about it? Is it ok with them?

I keep referring to the Religion of my Family: Mormonism, Which is loaded with examples of deviant behavior, Which always reflects the behavior of the people around them. 

Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, has to be seen in the light of the people of his time and place. Especially the many people who followed him. They wanted to be deceived, by a person like him. 

When he died, Brigham Young ( and a few others) took his place. And they are still active. 

Adverse Reaction to a Vaccine Shot

I got my shot yesterday, as I told you all. Overall, I was impressed with the whole process  

Costa Rica's Public Health Service was up to the job.

I got my shot, then had to sit down for half an hour, just in case.

I did notice something strange going on in my body, but nothing I could put into words. 

Today I am fine. 

Emma's Dysfunctional Family

The more I get into this subject, the more this analysis makes sense. It is fairly new, but more and more useful all the time, as any psychotherapist knows. 

Emma refers to Emma Smith, the wife of Joseph Smith, who certainly had her problems. It's no wonder they drove her nuts. 

The Big Event in her life, as well as for thousands of others, was the death of her husband Joseph Smith. This, in turn, was caused by the many ervents causing the Civil War..

Abraham Lincoln was also active during this time, and in this same area. but the two avoided each other. 

This universal unknown problem is common in dyfumctioal families. 

The RLDS Church in 1960

This was when the book Memoirs of Joseph Smith III were published by the Herald House. 

This is a huge book and has not been read very much. It can be seen as another step in a downward direction toward the Church's end. 

Helpless Hal

 This was me in Silicon Valley in the Nineties. I was a complete mess, and I was not the only one. 

We were trying to switch from an Industrial Economy to a Computer one but had no idea what we were trying to do. 

Looking at it this way makes me feel better about myself, but does not improve anything. Or fix the usual solution of being nothing. Which makes us completely helpless. 

Life in Old Nauvoo

I am still reading The Memoirs of Joseph Smith III. And I finally hit paydirt beginning on page 5, when he recalls his life as a boy in Nauvoo when it was first being settled, and everyone was living in log cabins. 

This is valuable historical material, and people should be reading it for that. But I am probably the only one to do so. 

Ir is hard to get. You have to order it from Amazon. 

Dad and the Boat

This was one of our failures when moving to Nauvoo. Dad could not get the boat to work and he gave it up.

This fault was not his, it was the mud that was quickly filling the river, especially below our place, and which we had not planned on. 

Our boat was a fine boat and had wheels that were used to move it from Ft. Madison. But the rubber part of the wheels was gone. 

I made it my personal project to get the boat working again.  The biggest part of this project was getting the boat out of the ravine it, and the boathouse was in. I don't remember how I did this, but it was done.

I could not buy new wheels, so I improvised by bolting rubber onto the wheels, which was good enough to get the buat to the beach. I then built a surfboard that other users could ride behind rhe boat

Joseph Smith was Dishonest

You could say many things about this guy, and perhaps this is the least of them, but this was bad enough.

Let's start with his first profession, a finder of buried treasure, using a seer stone. He would put this stone in a hat, then place the har over his eyes. He would then be able to see the buried treasure. 

But this was illegal and he had to leave New York State to avoid arrest and trial. 

Topfreedom

This on Wikipedia.

You will be interested in it.

How the Computer made People Stupid

The Computer, when used properly, can make us smart, very smart. Bur usually, this does not happen. We have gotten stupid instead. Why?

Because People do not understand Computers and do not want to understand them. Somehow, they feel not understanding them is the proper way to work with them. 

They don't want other People to Understand Them

There must be reasons for this, probably quite a few of them. But the proper way of dealing with this is to notice the problem first, then figure out the reason for it.,  

For example, the religion of my family is Mormonism. which was founded by Joseph Smith, a strange person. Every member of this religion should be asking themselves "What was he like?"

But they will quickly find that this question cannot be easily answered, because he didn't want it answered. He wanted to remain a mystery, which would be answered as circumstances dictated. 

For example, he wanted to get into Banking and founded the Kirtland Safety Society, (KSS) which quickly went broke. 

How Battle dress (for women) Became Popular

Once upon a time, a man and his daughter wrote a book about how to Modernize Afghanization, and the man went to Afghanistan to implement his ideas, while his daughter stayed to teach a class at Georgetown University. 

Georgetown was not important, but it was close to DC, was a favorite for Think Tanks. Tine went on, but the Peace Process (in Afghanistan) was not working. 

She was sent back to Afghanistan to find, why not?

With the assistance of her father, she wrote a report on the situation and came back home. But this was not enough, they wanted her to fix it.

To her extreme reluctance, they sent her back again, where she found the situation she remembered, even worse. 

Somehow, she managed to get back and found, to her amazement, that battle dress (for women) was popular. The boots and the underwear we free, but she had to buy the matching dress at Macy's. 

She became fashionable and made lots of money.

Mormonism is a Difficult Religion

And it hasn't gotten any easier. This is probably why the RLDS (using the Herald House) published the Memoirs of Joseph Smith III, in 1960.

I am reading this, and frankly, I am baffled by it. We should acknowledge the RLDS has ended, and there is not much left. 

In fact, you are probably wondering what I am writing this. Why I am thinking about the Church at all. You have gradually left the Chuch and cannot see why I have not done the same. "Ler dead dogs lie, "you are probably thinking. 

But I think a summary of how the Mormon churches have diverged, would be useful to everyone. My cousin Florence has already started this work, but we need more collaboration.  

The book Saints Without Halos has a touching chapter on Lymon Wight, who died in Texas. Our relatives, the Fishers, joined his movement for a while.

Another cousin, Lynn Ourth, would probably be willing to help Florence.

It is also true that when the RLDS became the Community of Christ, it ceased competing with the other Mormon churchs, and gave that territory to the LDS.

The Mormons in Missouri

Being there was a huge mistake, almost anywhere else would have been better. But their leader, Joseph Smith, did not know this. Missouri was eas trying to be a slave or a free state. And the people there were not so nice. 

As a result, he ended up in prison, in Liberty Jail. And his followers had to leave the State, leaving their possessions behind them. 

Eventually, much later, they returned, after things had settled down in Missouri, and a Civil War had been fought over the slavery issue. 

We noticed Nothing Unusual in our Family

I am still reading JS III Memoirs, and I noticed the same thing there. His family was the most unusual in the 19th Century, which was full of unusual people. 

My family was also unusual, in a minor way.

This was common in Mormon families, and different people had to cope with it in different ways. If they couldn't, they had some serious mental problems. My ex-wife ended up killing herself.

Saints without Halos

This book was written by a Utah Mormon to benefit his fellow-Mormons. But every Mormon can benefit from its detailed record-keeping. 

It's available in the Kindle Format.

A Strange Happening at Our House

In the middle of the night, I was awakened by a loud noise, and running footsteps. I got out of bed and hollered "Ray!|" in my Bathroom, but there was no response. I opened my door and continued hollering "Ray!" around the house, again there was no answer. I walked to the front of the house turning the automatic light there, still no response. I checked the time: it was 2:59, and I went back to sleep.

At 6:00 in the morning, I hear noises coming from Ray's part of the house, and I got up again. But Ray was awake and in bed with his dogs. 

Something strange is going on. 

JS III cannot be Understood

I bought the book of his memoirs, hoping to understand something about bim. But eventually realized there was nothing about him to understand. 

And there is nothing to understand about his followers either.

Sex means you aprove of each other

But how deep that approval may be varies considerably. 

My mother and father did not love each other very much. and considered that normal. They went to church instead. 

When I worked in Silicon Valley in the Nineties, the Computer employees were sexually active,  extremely so. And considered this part of their approval of their profession, and were quite put out if you did not have sex with them.

It is well-known that Cleopatra had sex with Julius Ceaser and bore him several children. How these children of complicated parentage managed this is not known, but there were plenty of them. 

Robot Guns that would Kill Taliban

These would not be hard to build, once we got a prototype working. 

They would be like small battle tanks with treads instead of wheels and a rotating gun turret.

Once it meets something, it must ask these questions:

is it a person? Does it have human brain waves?

Is it a Taliban? Does it not have the code assigned to the non- Taliban? This could be encoded and changed frequently.

Shoot it!

Every second or so, the system could send the following message:

From XXXXXX to XXXXXX time
in area from XXXXXX to XXXXXXXThis many
XXXXXX killings 

A demo could be parked on the White House lawn and would track people walking on the sidewalk outside the fence. This would show how smart it is.

Another way of doing this is with spacial-purpose aircraft, working with obsevers on the ground. Thry would decide what needed to be destroyed, and the plane would destroy it. 

Stupid Emma

The Emma I am referring to,  was Emma Smith the Wife of the Prophet. Her husband was killed by a mob in 1844, leaving her with three of his sons, all small boys. 

Her first decision must have made sense to her: she stayed in Nauvoo, because she owned most of the place. She owned a ghost town that was quickly becoming less valuable. But she did not realize this. 

Her oldest sub, Joseph Smith III, joined the RLDS church, and ended up in Lamoni, Iowa. But there is no record of her being part of this church.

She died in poverty, and all her buildings were sold at a Tax sale.

Joseph Smith was a Religious Dictator

He had the amazing ability to make other people obey him. And there were plenty of people willing to obey him.  

This is part of the leader/follower syndrome that is part of the human condition. 

There is no reason to panic over this, it's just another one of life's common problems.  

We Know who we are, and we don't Like who we Know

Can We Make a Better World?

No, there are too many things against us. 

I am not saying we should not try, but we should not expect too much. 

A better question would be "What things can we do to make a better world?" Or maybe "What are the easiest things we can do to make a better world?"

We have to start by defining the Good Guys and the Bad Guys. Or the Guys that are trying to be good (but can't quite make the grade, liked me) and those who are trying to be bad.