NOTES: Nibley, Enoch the Prophet

<p>I recently reread Hugh Nibley's <i>Enoch the Prophet</i> with an eye toward what it has to say regarding Millennial Social Thought (MST). Most of these passages come from the end of the book, and I will relate them here without much comment, just some ideas about Latter-day Saint Zionism.</p><ul><li>Their gathering together is the first step in a long process of withdrawing from a wicked world. (p. 252)</li><li>The interests of the Latter-day Saints in the city of Enoch is not simply a literary or even a scientific one. It is historic and prophetic. The city of Enoch is very much our concern. (p. 255)</li><li>...we are committed to forming as quickly as possible the closest possible partnership with that society. (p. 255)</li><li>Prophets emphasize the moral aspect of Zion, while the Psalms...favor the political. (p. 255)</li><li>...Zion actually has been on the earth in the past and can be enjoyed by the Saints again as soon as they are willing to "return to the original relationship with Yahweh".... (p. 256)</li><li>the only order of society acceptable to God.... (p. 256)</li><li>Zion is any society in which the celestial law is operative.... (p. 256)</li><li>Yachad (lit. unity, oneness) it was a reminder that <i>unity</i> is the first law of Enoch's society by which the Saints are expected to live in every dispensation. (p. 263)</li><li>Until the separation is complete the powers of destruction are held in check. (p. 266)</li><li>The Church itself, never again to be taken from the earth, must ever more closely approximate the Zion of Enoch.... Even though the work is still in its preliminary stages, one is justified in saying "this is the new chapel," when only the foundations are in. (pp. 272-3)</li><li>Let our anxiety be centered upon this one thing, the sanctification of our own hearts.... (p. 274)</li></ul><p>I also ended up with notes to look into the following sources: <i>Journal of Discourses</i> 9:3, 10:306, 15:3, and 17:113; <i>Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith</i> p. 66; Doctrine and Covenants 78, 105, and 119; and "Abraham the Seer" by Martin Buber (1956).</p>

REVIEW: Desmond, Poverty, by America

I once read a quote from the author Nick Hornby about how he regrets naming his About a Boy the way he did because it makes for awkward sentences like, "I'd like to ask about About a Boy." I wonder if this author feels the same way about his book Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond. Or perhaps it creates the opportunity for fun, like I can say this post is a review of Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond, by Brandon Minster. Then YOU can write a reply to a review of Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond, by Brandon Minster, by whoever you are. Eventually one of these will get the attention of Matthew Desmond himself, and if HE then replied.... But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

As someone interested in Millennial Social Thought (MST), I take an interest in poverty. The stated goal of economic zionism is the end of poverty. Desmond's book ends with three basic ideas of how to reduce, if not end, poverty in America. But the majority of the book makes an argument that what causes poverty in America is not so much the improvidence or fecklessness of the poor, and not even the indifference of the non-poor, but the actual carefully uninformed approval of the middle class. It's a bold take, given that most people who read the book are probably going to be in this group. But by the time you've read all of his argument, it's hard to disagree.

To begin with, Desmond would define poverty a little differently. Most folks would probably say poverty is a shortage of money, but Desmond writes, "Poverty isn't simply the condition of not having enough money. It's the condition of not having enough choice and being taken advantage of because of that" (p.78). Just as the benefit of money comes from the opportunities and experiences it facilitates, the thing that matters about poverty isn't the small amount of cash in your hand but the exploitation that results. Desmond sets for himself the task of convincing exploiters that they exploit. Not some nebulous, "somewhere" rich person, but you in the suburbs. And to paraphrase the famous Upton Sinclair quote, it is difficult to get a man to understand his exploitative gains when his social position and self-regard depend on him not understanding it.

Hiding most of this from the prosperous is the duality of American life. The middle class think they understand the poor because their lives include the same basic activities: procuring housing, buying food, working for income. But the fact that these things have the same name doesn't mean they are the same activity. As Desmond explains (p. 78),

There is not just one banking sector. There are two--one for the poor and one for the rest of us--just as there are two housing markets and two labor markets. The duality of American life can make it difficult for some of us who benefit from the current arrangement to remember that the poor are exploited laborers, exploited consumers, and exploited borrowers, precisely because we are not. Many features of our society are not broken, just bifurcated. For some, a home creates wealth; for others, a home drains it. For some, access to cresit extends financial power; for others, it destroys it. It is quite understandable, then, that well-fed Americans can be perplexed by the poor, even disappointed in them, believing that they accept stupidly bad deals on impulse or because they don't know any better. But what if those deals are the only ones on offer? What good is financial literacy training for people forced to choose the best bad option?

I once had a job working for a firm that advised banks on schemes to increase financial literacy, but nowhere in those schemes was the underserving of poor neighborhoods addressed. You cash your paycheck at the check-cashing store when the bank branch is a multi-transfer transit ride away, not because you have been misled to think that the check-cashing store is better than the bank.

Desmond also seeks to undermine middle-class anti-welfarism by identifying the many ways the middle class benefit from welfare by a different name. The largest example is the home mortgage interest deduction, which results in a transfer many times that of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Desmond identifies three possible reasons for not seeing tax deductions as welfare. The first is just economic confusion--it can't be a government handout if it never came from the government's hands, right? He patiently explains how letting you keep a sum of money is financially identical to sending you a check for that amount. His second reason is that the well-off believe they are entitled to government assistance, but the poor are not. I guess this would be like looking on government as an insurance program, and if we have paid in through taxes we feel entitled to withdraw. If this is the case, then progressive taxation is actually shooting the poor in the foot, and they'd be better off with a flat-tax system that allows the poor equal claim on government resources because they paid into the system, as well. Finally, Desmond's third possibility is "we like it. It's the rudest explanation, I know, which is probably why we cloak it behind all sorts of justifications and quick evasions" (p. 102).

This is in line with Leo Tolstoy's conclusions in What Then Must We Do?, which Desmond quotes (p. 119).

I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means--except by getting off his back.... It is really so simple. If I want to aid the poor, that is, to help the poor not to be poor, I ought not to make them poor.

But the self-awareness of Tolstoy is missing in the American discourse. We aren't on their backs, they have drug problems. We aren't choking them, no one wants to work anymore. Desmond writes, "If this is our design, our social contract, then we should at least own up to it. We should at least stand up and profess, Yes, this is the kind of nation we want. What we cannot do is look the American poor in the face and say, We'd love to help you, but we just can't afford to, because that is a lie" (p. 102).

Desmond ends with three propositions: "Life the floor by rebalancing our social safety net; empower the poor by reigning in exploitation; and invest in broad prosperity by turning away from segregation. That's how we end poverty in America" (p. 170). It's the second idea that I want to spend some more time pondering. Desmond advocates for replacing profit maximization with profit sufficiency, but what would we take as the idea of sufficient? The long-run growth rate? That's doable, but how do we still get the efficient allocation of resources without the availability of supernormal profits? Extremely high marginal rates? But then how do we undermine the view that government resources are for the wealthy because they paid for them with taxes?

While those questions might remain, Desmond's book is still worthwhile and important. The first step to correcting an unjust system is recognizing the injustice. Poverty, by America does just that, and goes a long way towards making the average American face up to it.

Human Fragility and Evolutionary Advantage: A Possible Answer

Last week I wondered why humans are so uniquely fragile. Since then I've read Elizabeth Kolbert's book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, and she has something to say that might be related. With regard to humans causing the extinction of prehistoric megafauna, she notes that species gain from gigantism by being too large to have a predator. Such animals have longer gestation periods, which makes them more susceptible to extinction. (I'd reference page numbers but I already returned it to the library, so you'll just have to trust me: it was in the last couple chapters.) So humans are threatened by childbirth because we have giant babies so our adults are too big for most predators to eat.

Meh, maybe. But why does every wound get infected and kill us? It's not just childbirth fragility that seems odd. Another explanation from Kolbert's book might be that these viruses and bacteria have emerged too recently for our immune systems to have learned how to fight them, but wouldn't that be true for all animals' immune systems? Why are we alone in dying from wounds at so high a rate?

Thomas Jefferson, Murderous Psychopath

I started reading The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert. In the second chapter, she writes of mastodon bones discovered in Kentucky in 1739. No one knew what they were for a while, and one European doctor called the animal the incognitum. And this is where psycho Thomas Jefferson comes in.

Writes Kolbert:

Jefferson concocted his own version of the incognitum. The animal was...the largest of all beasts--"five or six times the cubic volume of the elephant."...The creature...was probably carnivorous. But it was still out there somewhere. If it could not be found in Virginia, it was roaming those parts of the continent that "remain in their aboriginal state, unexplored and undisturbed." When, as president, he dispatched Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to the Northwest, Jefferson hoped that they would come upon live incognita roaming its forests. [p. 27]

Say what? Jefferson thought there was a carnivorous animal six times the size of an elephant and he sent Lewis and Clark to GO BE EATEN BY IT. That is some straight-up psychopathic scientific discovery. Imagine his disappointment when they returned.