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