Sources of optimism for the future

Some thoughts:

As you continue to let God prevail in your life, I know that He is just as optimistic about your future as He has ever been.

(2021, April, Russell M. Nelsonᵇ, ‘What We Are Learning and Will Never Forget,’ General Conference, April 2021, ¶ 1)

My hope is to give encouragement when life seems especially difficult and uncertain. For some of you, that time is now. If not, such a time will come.

That is not a gloomy view. It is realistic—yet optimistic—because of God’s purpose in the Creation of this world. That purpose was to give His children the opportunity to prove themselves able and willing to choose the right when it is hard. In so doing, their natures would be changed and they could become more like Him. He knew that would require unshakable faith in Him.

(2020, October, Henry B. Eyringᶜ, ‘Tested, Proved, and Polished,’ General Conference, November 2020, ¶ 1–2)

I imagine that others are feeling, because of careful preparation, more joyful, more optimistic, and more determined to serve in any capacity needed by the Lord. 

(2020, April, Henry B. Eyring, ‘Prayers of Faith,’ General Conference, May 2020, ¶ 5)

I am optimistic about the future. It will be filled with opportunities for each of us to progress, contribute, and take the gospel to every corner of the earth. But I am also not naive about the days ahead.

(2018, April, Russell M. Nelsonᶜ, ‘Revelation for the Church, Revelation for Our Lives,’ Ensign, May 2018, ¶ 36)

First, gain and keep a sure witness that the keys of the priesthood are with us and held by the President of the Church. Pray for that every day. The answer will come with an increase in determination to lead your family, in your feelings of hope, and with greater happiness in your service. You will be more cheerful and optimistic, a great blessing for your wife and family.

(2012, April, Henry B. Eyringᵇ, ‘Families under Covenant,’ Ensign, May 2012, ¶ 30)

My personal experience of living and interacting with people all over the world has caused me to be optimistic. I believe that light and truth will be preserved in our time. In all nations there are large numbers who worship God and feel accountable to Him for their conduct. Some observers believe there is actually a global revival of faith. As Church leaders, we have met with leaders of other faiths and have found that there is a common moral foundation that transcends theological differences and unites us in our aspirations for a better society.

We also find the majority of people are still respectful of basic moral values. But make no mistake: there are also people who are determined to both destroy faith and reject any religious influence in society. Other evil people exploit, manipulate, and tear down society with drugs, pornography, sexual exploitation, human trafficking, robbery, and dishonest business practices. The power and influence of these people is very large even if they are relatively small in number.

There has always been an ongoing battle between people of faith and those who would purge religion and God from public life. 

(2010, October, Quentin L. Cook, ‘Let There Be Light!,’ Ensign, November 2010, ¶ 19–21)

Brethren, we do feel very close to you. We love you, and we pray always for you. I have seen enough ups and downs throughout my life to know that winter will surely give way to the warmth and hope of a new spring. I am optimistic about the future. Brethren, for our part, we must remain steadfast in hope, work with all our strength, and trust in God.

(2009, October, Dieter F. Uchtdorfᵇ, ‘Two Principles for Any Economy,’ Ensign, November 2009, ¶ 6)

Those of us who have been around a while—and Elder Wirthlin and I have been around for a long time—have recognized certain patterns in life’s test. There are cycles of good and bad times, ups and downs, periods of joy and sadness, and times of plenty as well as scarcity. When our lives turn in an unanticipated and undesirable direction, sometimes we experience stress and anxiety. One of the challenges of this mortal experience is to not allow the stresses and strains of life to get the better of us—to endure the varied seasons of life while remaining positive, even optimistic. Perhaps when difficulties and challenges strike, we should have these hopeful words of Robert Browning etched in our minds: “The best is yet to be” (“Rabbi Ben Ezra,” in Charles W. Eliot, ed., The Harvard Classics, 50 vols. [1909–10], 42:1103). We can’t predict all the struggles and storms in life, not even the ones just around the next corner, but as persons of faith and hope, we know beyond the shadow of any doubt that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true and the best is yet to come.

(2008, October, L. Tom Perry, ‘Let Him Do It with Simplicity,’ Ensign, November 2008, ¶ 5)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4l6vRNm_AQ

Episode 2005 Scott Adams: Pretending To Care About Kids, Bill Maher & CNN, China Can't Make Chips

 

I love the fact

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that we think we live in some kind of objective reality where we figured out what's true and what's that

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and then I mentioned how Sweden did during the covid epidemic

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and I I triggered yesterday I triggered a Twitter graph or where everybody was

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putting up their graph to show that Sweden was either doing poorly or doing great

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and do you know how I can tell which Twitter graphs are the credible ones and which ones are garbage do you know

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there's a way to know right if it's on Twitter it's garbage

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also if it's not on Twitter it's garbage if it's based on data

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it's garbage if it comes from somebody you don't know it's garbage if their source of it is

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not shown in the graph and quite often that's the case on Twitter that's garbage

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so basically we got to this point and we can't even tell if Sweden did a good job or a bad job

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now I know you think you all know but when you see when you see the level of fighting on Twitter the people

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disagreeing whether it was a good job or a bad job we don't know we really don't it's actually kind of confusing

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so the fact that they're younger and uh thinner and they supplement with vitamin

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D I think is most of the story but but I will go back to my best

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probably the best prediction I've ever made at the beginning of the pandemic that at the

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end of the pandemic we wouldn't know who managed it well and everybody who are that disagreed oh

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we're gonna tell some people are doing it right some people not nope can't tell the narrow

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place where you can tell is whether People Protected the nursing homes right so in the case of DeSantis yes

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that was good work that that's one item that you can identify and say okay compared to New York yeah the leadership

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made a difference like that's there's no doubt about that one but on the country level

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on the country level hard to say still don't know

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I know some of you think you might know have you ever heard of uh oh then also

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the excess deaths are still a mystery now some of you think all the

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excess deaths or most of them are vaccine injury related

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but the excess deaths seemed to be in every demographic and they also seem to be across countries

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so the excess deaths are not an American thing it's everywhere and I think that they're doing different kinds of

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vaccines and you know all kinds of different policies but still the excess deaths are high wherever we can count

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them well in the Western countries anyway so I will put out one possibility

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psychogenic death how many of you ever heard that term psychogenic death

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it means basically you lose the will to live and you just die

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and I have a hypothesis that when I grew up no matter how

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bad things were at the moment I had in my mind a path to happiness

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and that path was you get a good job you get married you have a family

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the American dream was very clear

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it was just you could feel it like it everybody was moving toward it

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it seemed like and no matter how bad things were you have a future you had hope right

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now compare that to our lgbtq trans

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culture and by the way I'm you know big supporter of the lgbtq trans community

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but we can talk about them honestly right and I would say that the American dream had to disappear

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to make room for this other kind of wokeness and again

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I'm not criticizing it I'm just describing it that if you say well you know this you

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got to get married and you've got to have a family and go to church on Sunday thing that doesn't work for everybody

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so now it's a free-for-all and people are saying that there are more single people than ever, more

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people alone, people using their phones Tinder made it impossible to date unless you're a nine or above right so

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basically if if you were a kid and I've heard actually young people say this there's no future

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now of course there is there is a future but it's not it's not cleanly packaged

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and supplied to children as their hope. oh yeah, you're having a bad day today I

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get it but look at this you know American Dream you just get on this American Dream path everything you're

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doing today studying hard staying in school you're on the right path kid you're

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doing it right and here's your happiness in the future here's your meaning and now if you're a kid you don't see any of

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that do you? Who's selling the American dream? conservatives

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homeschoolers right homeschoolers. so my theory is if you tested the

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psychological well-being of homeschoolers you would find they have something like hope

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for the future because the homeschooling Community is likely to be more likely to say follow

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this path and you'll have a good life. I think Public School says you're all

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being discriminated against. Systemic discrimination is going to hold you back forever it looks like the police have

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tried to kill you because you're Brown and you better get on the streets and complain because complaining is the

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thing to do. Complaining will make things better and it does sometimes it does

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but that message would leave me feeling hopeless if I were a child

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I would just say well if I don't get married why am I doing anything

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right the marriage is more about having children in this case but what what's my future let's say I'm 12

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year old Scott today I make money for what? for what?

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For my entertainment? you know even at 12 I knew I would get bored entertaining myself all day oh I'm

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going to make money so I can party on the weekends and that's it. Like that's yeah oh I can

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have I can have short encounters with women and that would be a lot of fun

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but but that's it. That's what I have to look forward to is

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Brief Encounters with women who are having Brief Encounters with lots of other people

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and that's what I'm going to live for. I'm surprised there isn't a higher

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excess deaths because there's a whole bunch of people who just figured out there's no reason to live that's what we taught the kids. We taught

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the kids there's no reason to live. I think we did so I don't know if if that's any of it

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but I'd throw that in the mix it's probably some some small part of it.

 

 um here's a most useful thing to know if

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you're a consumer of news which news outlets are controlled by the

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CIA if you don't know that you really can't watch the news you're

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going to be all confused let me give you an example MSNBC

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who people who are smarter than smarter than me say is clearly and has always

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been as is NBC uh captured entities by our intelligence agencies

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right now you might doubt that you might say Scott Scott that's a little a little

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bit of hyperbole yeah they may have they may have leaned on the networks in some

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ways on some issues but in general you know they're independent

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and then there's this story I'm going to tell you this story and then you tell me if this is Independent

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News this is pointed out on Twitter by unhoodwinked a good follow for you you

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should follow on Hoodwinked uh there was a nine nine minute segment that's a lot of time on television

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nine minutes on a TV news show is forever that's a lot of time

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um he refers to it as the CIA run and snbc

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all right that's his characterization and she's talking about her coved and how she was diagnosed with pericarditis

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and myocarditis so for nine minutes she talked about how

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covet had probably given her pericitis and myocarditis for nine minutes

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and never mentions her vaccination status

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let me just say that again and MSNBC host

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talked for nine minutes about her own quite scary myocarditis and she was a young woman

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right too young to be having heart problems for nine minutes

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never once mentioned her vaccination status

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is there anything else you need to know about this story right do you wonder

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if this is independent reporting do you think do you think she may have

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mentioned well I don't you know do you think in her first draft I assume somebody sees her first draft don't you

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think her first draft was well I don't know what the cause is you know I did get vaccinated

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but I also covet and now I have myocarditis it's hard to know if it's a vaccination or the or the covid but I'm

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just letting you know my experience so that you can recognize it too don't you think the first draft might

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have said something like that now you could not be more obvious and

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you're trying to hide the story but suppose you didn't know

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that MSNBC and NBC are you know strongly suggested to be Democrat slash

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CIA run if he didn't know that you think that was the story

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you think that was something like a an objective representation of something that's happening and it wasn't not even

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close to objective now I'm not saying the vaccination caused a problem

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I'm not saying that at all I'm saying if you don't mention it as a possibility

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it's just amazing that anybody can watch that network with with that kind of situation

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all right uh the host was a Yasmin vasugin

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foreign

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I think that's all I had to say 

The best decade ever

To keep things in perspective...

29 And now, because of the steadiness of the church they began to be exceedingly rich, having abundance of all things whatsoever they stood in need—an abundance of flocks and herds, and fatlings of every kind, and also abundance of grain, and of gold, and of silver, and of precious things, and abundance of silk and fine-twined linen, and all manner of good homely cloth.

30 And thus, in their prosperous circumstances, they did not send away any who were naked, or that were hungry, or that were athirst, or that were sick, or that had not been nourished; and they did not set their hearts upon riches; therefore they were liberal to all, both old and young, both bond and free, both male and female, whether out of the church or in the church, having no respect to persons as to those who stood in need.
(Alma 1:29–30)

11 And behold, there was all manner of gold in both these lands, and of silver, and of precious ore of every kind; and there were also curious workmen, who did work all kinds of ore and did refine it; and thus they did become rich.

12 They did raise grain in abundance, both in the north and in the south; and they did flourish exceedingly, both in the north and in the south. And they did multiply and wax exceedingly strong in the land. And they did raise many flocks and herds, yea, many fatlings.

13 Behold their women did toil and spin, and did make all manner of cloth, of fine-twined linen and cloth of every kind, to clothe their nakedness. And thus the sixty and fourth year did pass away in peace.

14 And in the sixty and fifth year they did also have great joy and peace, yea, much preaching and many prophecies concerning that which was to come.
(Helaman 6:11–14)

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/12/25/the-best-christmas-present-to-humanity-ever-weve-just-had-the-best-decade-in-human-history/

The best Christmas present to humanity, ever: We’ve Just Had The Best Decade In Human History

Anthony Watts / 17 hours ago December 25, 2019

by Matt Ridley

Let nobody tell you that the second decade of the 21st century has been a bad time. We are living through the greatest improvement in human living standards in history. Extreme poverty has fallen below 10 per cent of the world’s population for the first time. It was 60 per cent when I was born. Global inequality has been plunging as Africa and Asia experience faster economic growth than Europe and North America; child mortality has fallen to record low levels; famine virtually went extinct; malaria, polio and heart disease are all in decline.

Little of this made the news, because good news is no news. But I’ve been watching it all closely. Ever since I wrote The Rational Optimist in 2010, I’ve been faced with ‘what about…’ questions: what about the great recession, the euro crisis, Syria, Ukraine, Donald Trump? How can I possibly say that things are getting better, given all that? The answer is: because bad things happen while the world still gets better. Yet get better it does, and it has done so over the course of this decade at a rate that has astonished even starry-eyed me.

Perhaps one of the least fashionable predictions I made nine years ago was that ‘the ecological footprint of human activity is probably shrinking’ and ‘we are getting more sustainable, not less, in the way we use the planet’. That is to say: our population and economy would grow, but we’d learn how to reduce what we take from the planet. And so it has proved. An MIT scientist, Andrew McAfee, recently documented this in a book called More from Less, showing how some nations are beginning to use less stuff: less metal, less water, less land. Not just in proportion to productivity: less stuff overall.

This does not quite fit with what the Extinction Rebellion lot are telling us. But the next time you hear Sir David Attenborough say: ‘Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth on a planet with finite resources is either a madman or an economist’, ask him this: ‘But what if economic growth means using less stuff, not more?’ For example, a normal drink can today contains 13 grams of aluminium, much of it recycled. In 1959, it contained 85 grams. Substituting the former for the latter is a contribution to economic growth, but it reduces the resources consumed per drink.

As for Britain, our consumption of ‘stuff’ probably peaked around the turn of the century — an achievement that has gone almost entirely unnoticed. But the evidence is there. In 2011 Chris Goodall, an investor in electric vehicles, published research showing that the UK was now using not just relatively less ‘stuff’ every year, but absolutely less. Events have since vindicated his thesis. The quantity of all resources consumed per person in Britain (domestic extraction of biomass, metals, minerals and fossil fuels, plus imports minus exports) fell by a third between 2000 and 2017, from 12.5 tonnes to 8.5 tonnes. That’s a faster decline than the increase in the number of people, so it means fewer resources consumed overall.

If this doesn’t seem to make sense, then think about your own home. Mobile phones have the computing power of room-sized computers of the 1970s. I use mine instead of a camera, radio, torch, compass, map, calendar, watch, CD player, newspaper and pack of cards. LED light bulbs consume about a quarter as much electricity as incandescent bulbs for the same light. Modern buildings generally contain less steel and more of it is recycled. Offices are not yet paperless, but they use much less paper.

Even in cases when the use of stuff is not falling, it is rising more slowly than expected. For instance, experts in the 1970s forecast how much water the world would consume in the year 2000. In fact, the total usage that year was half as much as predicted. Not because there were fewer humans, but because human inventiveness allowed more efficient irrigation for agriculture, the biggest user of water.

Until recently, most economists assumed that these improvements were almost always in vain, because of rebound effects: if you cut the cost of something, people would just use more of it. Make lights less energy-hungry and people leave them on for longer. This is known as the Jevons paradox, after the 19th-century economist William Stanley Jevons, who first described it. But Andrew McAfee argues that the Jevons paradox doesn’t hold up. Suppose you switch from incandescent to LED bulbs in your house and save about three-quarters of your electricity bill for lighting. You might leave more lights on for longer, but surely not four times as long.

Efficiencies in agriculture mean the world is now approaching ‘peak farmland’ — despite the growing number of people and their demand for more and better food, the productivity of agriculture is rising so fast that human needs can be supplied by a shrinking amount of land. In 2012, Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University and his colleagues argued that, thanks to modern technology, we use 65 per cent less land to produce a given quantity of food compared with 50 years ago. By 2050, it’s estimated that an area the size of India will have been released from the plough and the cow.

Land-sparing is the reason that forests are expanding, especially in rich countries. In 2006 Ausubel worked out that no reasonably wealthy country had a falling stock of forest, in terms of both tree density and acreage. Large animals are returning in abundance in rich countries; populations of wolves, deer, beavers, lynx, seals, sea eagles and bald eagles are all increasing; and now even tiger numbers are slowly climbing.

Perhaps the most surprising statistic is that Britain is using steadily less energy. John Constable of the Global Warming Policy Forum points out that although the UK’s economy has almost trebled in size since 1970, and our population is up by 20 per cent, total primary inland energy consumption has actually fallen by almost 10 per cent. Much of that decline has happened in recent years. This is not necessarily good news, Constable argues: although the improving energy efficiency of light bulbs, aeroplanes and cars is part of the story, it also means we are importing more embedded energy in products, having driven much of our steel, aluminium and chemical industries abroad with some of the highest energy prices for industry in the world.

In fact, all this energy-saving might cause problems. Innovation requires experiments (most of which fail). Experiments require energy. So cheap energy is crucial — as shown by the industrial revolution. Thus, energy may be the one resource that a prospering population should be using more of. Fortunately, it is now possible that nuclear fusion will one day deliver energy in minimalist form, using very little fuel and land.

Since its inception, the environmental movement has been obsessed by finite resources. The two books that kicked off the green industry in the early 1970s, The Limits to Growth in America and Blueprint for Survival in Britain, both lamented the imminent exhaustion of metals, minerals and fuels. The Limits to Growth predicted that if growth continued, the world would run out of gold, mercury, silver, tin, zinc, copper and lead well before 2000. School textbooks soon echoed these claims.

This caused the economist Julian Simon to challenge the ecologist Paul Ehrlich to a bet that a basket of five metals (chosen by Ehrlich) would cost less in 1990 than in 1980. The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, Simon said, arguing that we would find substitutes if metals grew scarce. Simon won the bet easily, although Ehrlich wrote the cheque with reluctance, sniping that ‘the one thing we’ll never run out of is imbeciles’. To this day none of those metals has significantly risen in price or fallen in volume of reserves, let alone run out. (One of my treasured possessions is the Julian Simon award I won in 2012, made from the five metals.)

A modern irony is that many green policies advocated now would actually reverse the trend towards using less stuff.

---

Full story here

Originally published 12/19/19 by Matt Ridley, in The Spectator

Faith crisis is no surprise at this point

In a day when the Gospel Topics Essays, the Saints book, Book of Mormon Central, and the Ensign openly teach things that, in past generations, were taught only by critics and apostates (things that were specifically opposed by Church leaders at the time), it doesn't seem surprising that the topic of "faith crisis" is on the minds of so many members of the Church.

Readers contact me all the time with questions about friends, family, and ward members who have left, usually over credibility issues; i.e., they can no longer believe the basic truth claims because LDS intellectuals have promoted such hoaxes as M2C, the peep stone-in-a-hat, and the unreliability of the teachings of the prophets.

The specific example I discussed in August involves the peep stone vs. the Urim and Thummim. This and other revisionist Church history ideas were featured prominently at Education Week in Provo.

stone-in-a-hat hoax

As I expected, tens of thousands more Latter-day Saints left Provo believing that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon by reading words that appeared on a peep stone in a hat (the supernatural teleprompter), while the plates sat nearby, useless and covered with a cloth. This theory requires an "intermediary translator" between Joseph and the Nephite records because, according to the intellectuals, Joseph could not have possibly translated the plates.

Of course, this means that Joseph and Oliver misled the Church when they consistently and persistently said Joseph translated the Book of Mormon from the plates by using the Urim and Thummim that came with the plates.

But according to Book of Mormon Central and other M2C intellectuals and revisionist Church historians, Joseph and Oliver misled the Church about lots of things.
_____

This example surfaced in comments to a review by Jana Riess of the book Bridges: Ministering to Those Who Question by David B. Ostler.

https://religionnews.com/2019/08/09/every-mormon-leader-and-teacher-and-parent-should-read-this-book/

Riess observes these statistics.

In the absence of information, leaders sometimes “jump to conclusions because they need to explain it and understand it.” These include the ideas that people are lazy, they are sinful, or they got offended.

Ostler decided to test those ideas on two different populations. In addition to the Faith Crisis Member Survey mentioned above, he also conducted a parallel “Local Leader Survey” in which he asked bishops, Relief Society presidents, and other leaders why they think people leave.

The disconnect was startling. For example, 84% of local leaders said that people leave because they don’t want to live the commandments, but only 9% of Faith Crisis respondents said that actually applied to them.

Instead, they said they were concerned about problems in Church history, the Church’s stance on LGBT issues, unequal gender roles, judgmentalism, and other issues.

The comments include this exchange:

Howard Kay • 5 days ago

I think there are a few aspects of this situation that Dr. Riess' article touched on, but did not emphasize. (? Perhaps the book did not get into these?)

That's the idea of "how did these bishops (et al) 'know' why these Mormons left? What was the source of their "knowledge"?

It would appear that in fact they had no real knowledge of the reasons these individuals left. Rather, they appear to have made up reasons that would be satisfying to the LDS authorities.

The first obvious question that raises is, "why?" My guess is that the "answers" were very satisfying to all concerned, and reinforced their ideas about LDS beliefs and culture.

And I think this situation raises another interesting question: is there any in-depth curiosity among LDS authorities about these matters? My guess is that they learn quickly that curiosity is not a good characteristic!
•Reply

• Or, perhaps those who left did not provide the "real" reason they left. Bishops are aware of many situations, but not al, and have no way to determine if anything they are told is the true and real issue, versus a distraction from or scapegoat for the true and real issue.

  
  

  
  

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    Danny  worried American citizen • 4 days agoYour response presumes there is an inquiry by the bishop into a person's reasons for leaving. My experience, and plenty of others anecdotally, is neither most bishops nor most members want anything to do with that conversation. After tireless and faithful service of 50 years, my wife and I resigned. Except for a brief visit from a leader, crickets for years after. We've remained cordial to those we bump into once in a while. All those people who used to come up to us and tell us how much they loved us on Sunday? Not so much.
  • It seems that cognitive dissonance is mistaken for a "loss of the Spirit", rather than for what it really is--two mutually incompatible ideas vying for the same space. Just one example of many: Claim: Joseph translated the gold plates using the Urim and Thummim. Dissonance: No, Joseph used a seerstone he placed in a hat. The same seerstone he used when convicted of being an unruly person (bilking neighbors through treasure-seeking). More dissonance: Wait, we weren't taught about a seerstone in a hat in church. Why don't ANY of the church illustrations use in ANY programs show him with his face buried in his hat? And, if he was able to use the seerstone, then why did God make Moroni lug his abridgment around to hide it from the Lamanites?
• worried American citizen  Howard Kay • 5 days ago