Green Oasis

These two Mormon teens from Idaho come of as pretty funny, and they’re much better informed than I was at their age. Three cheers for the internet!

• first interview
• second interview

(via kottke.org)

Update: I should warn that funny is probably relative to whether or not you’re a believing Mormon. These youth seem controlled and stifled and therefore bitter.

The Situationist (one of my new favorite blogs) posted about our ability to judge our own bias relative to others’.

Because bias tends to occur non-consciously, searching for it in one’s explicit thoughts is a little like looking for one’s car in the refrigerator. In assessing other peoples’ bias, however, we tend to look at their behavior.

In other words, we overestimate our ability to judge the intentions of our own mind. We scan our conscious thoughts for bias even though bias is often unconscious and therefore opaque, even to ourselves. We don’t know ourselves as well as we think.

People’s willingness to recognize their own biases is, of course, an important first step in prompting them to correct for and overcome those influences. Once people are able to recognize that they can be biased without knowing it, perhaps they can stop relying on their good intentions and introspectively clean consciences for evidence of their own freedom from biases that range from corrupt, to discriminatory, to unfairly conflictual behavior. From that more humble starting point, they may be more open to engaging in efforts to rid themselves of their own biases and to understanding how others can be biased without knowing it. Such efforts are not just scientifically sensible, they are socially wise.

So there is hope.

Practical advice with a dash of timeless wisdom: The universe tends toward maximum irony. Don’t push it.

Some of my recent posts have been rather angry and bitter. This isn’t an apology because I feel justified in my anger, but I recognize that it’s not healthy to center my life around that anger. It was disturbing my peace.

I compare my bitterness and anger to the birthing pangs required to bring a new person into the world. To confuse the metaphor, it’s like when you’re a teenager and you start asserting your individuality as separate from your parents. This individuation sometimes manifests itself as anger, but this anger is part of the natural order of things. It helps us to create our individuality by breaking with the old. The same with leaving Mormonism.

Some of those of us who leave Mormonism go through an angry period that helps us leave Mormonism behind. Some of the bitterness that you saw on my blog recently was only temporary. On the other hand, I foresee many parts of Mormonism angering me for a very long time. Maybe I will see Mormonism with a more temperate attitude in the future, but to refuse to be angry about the bad things in Mormonism would only delay my maturation as a post-Mormon person.

I just hope that I don’t get obsessed and intoxicated with my anger. I hope that Mormonism (the bad parts of it anyway) can play an increasingly insignificant part in my life.

OK, so I’m infantile. I can’t be the only one who thinks God swearing is funny.

• Part 1
• Part 2

Artwork courtesy Make-O Your Own Stinko!