Why??????

Ok, let’s just get one thing out of the way:  The primary motivation of humans is social.

To my sweet wife’s chagrin, this is my new mantra.  It came as such a shock to me when it hit me.  We were in Portland, Oregon, walking to the second location of Voodoo Donuts right before we needed to catch a plane home. 

It’s a moment that has crystallized in my brain.  I remember the sticky heat of the afternoon; the shrub I was looking at as we rounded the corner to arrive at the donut shop.  I remember the kind of nauseous feeling as another piece of my positive worldview slipped away, and a new corner of surreality fell into its place. 

Despite what they say, truth is not the most important thing to humans.  They don’t realize it.  They aren’t cognizant of it.  But observation is absolutely clear; truth is not the primary motivation of humans.

It was another in a moment of horrifying Stepford realizations.  So much of my world has slipped out from under my feet in the last few years, but I really didn’t see this coming (although, like so many other things, I should have).

What do people care about most?  Social pressure.  Relationships.  Acceptance.  Tribe.  We are the MOST SOCIAL SPECIES on the planet.  (Consequently, also the most successful.)

I don’t know if this is testable or not, but I am reasonably convinced that my brain is seasoned with a dash of autism (there are some reasonable heritable validations of that thought).  Whatever the reasons for that, I have had to teach myself to appreciate many of the social quirks of life.  Frequently I still don’t get it.  Take, for instance, the moment when I am engaged in ANY KIND of debate.  The world narrows around me and I am able to focus enthusiastically on the words and the concepts, and I am able to resynthesize and verbally parry… quite well.  But I am completely unable in that moment to give a flying f*** about the emotional impact of my words.  I exhibit all kinds of unvirtuous attributes in those moments, which happen to coincide with a cold-blooded love of objective rationality.  Hardly anyone appreciates this, even those who appreciate rationality.  I come off wrong; condescending; cold; intense; inhuman. 

On the one hand, I don’t like this.  On the other, I think it’s interesting… See, that’s my problem; I think everything is interesting.  I think it is interesting to verbally back someone into a corner and see what happens (nothing constructive, I can tell you; but it’s still interesting).  I think it’s interesting to ask my wife what the difference is between giving a baby up for adoption after having four kids and giving one up before you’ve had them.  I know she finds the question… wrong.  I don’t know how to regard it that way.

In the last 6 months I have had many, MANY conversations about the Church.  Conversations about truth, God, testimony, faith.  On top of the real conversations, I’ve had 100 times more conversations in my head, circling around this in every possible way.

I have heard all of the constructive suggestions about stage 5 faith, the rich theology, everything else.  I’ve thought about approaching the Gospel metaphorically.  I’ve thought SO MUCH about the impact of this on my relationships; family, friends, professional.

I guess I’ll make everyone a little happier and concede that life is long, and that I may change my position, but the thing I keep running up against is this: it can’t be true. 

There isn’t any single thing that is necessarily false, it is the whole.  In whole, the LDS Church narrative, as presented, cannot be true.  It has to be adjusted in a multitude of ways from the standard narrative.

Let me be absolutely clear on this; the shocking thing is not uncovering that after following a massive trail of subtle clues.  The shocking thing is realizing how COMPLETELY OBVIOUSLY FALSE it is, and yet there are millions of people who have literally bet everything on it.  There are BILLIONS of people who have bet everything on other traditions that are just as transparently nonsensical. 

You don’t get to feel like a smart guy for figuring this out.  You get to feel like a complete idiot for not having seen it when you were 11.  It should have been obvious right about the time that Santa Claus took permanent leave from your childhood belief structure.

Although none of the apologists, or even the reasonably thoughtful faithful, talk about it in such a straightforward way, they all participate in some modification of the narrative to try to make it work.

In fact, you have to.  Despite Russell Nelson’s insistence otherwise, everyone has to pick and choose because, at the very least, there are doctrines that are mutually exclusive. 

But does it work?  Does it bring good?  I imagine I’ll get around to talking about those things another time.  The thing I can’t get around is, I can’t think of a single reason to believe.  Once I tore back enough layers of the onion to see it through, it became obvious to me that there is only ONE reason people believe.

The primary motivation of humans is social.