Mormonism's Anti-Dystopia in Utah
Learning from the LDS Church, elites and conflict , and more in this week's digest.
I was in New York City this week for some meetings in the Midtown area, particularly around Bryant Park. Bryant Park is a must visit if you ever go to the city. And if you are in that area, here are a few stores to check out:
Kinokuniya (1073 6th Ave). It’s the rare US outpost of a Japanese bookstore chain. Lots of English language products as well as great content from Japan such as a great selection of washi paper and Japanese magazines.
Muji (475 5th Ave). A remarkably cheap and high quality Japanese clothing and housewares chain. The name basically means “no brand.”
Magazine Cafe (15 W 37th St) is solid magazine shop in Midtown
Elites and Conflict
Conflict is inevitable, but we should try to resolve it and move on when it becomes counterproductive. One of the ways that elites differ from others is precisely in their great willingness to move beyond conflict.
There was another example this week when Anduril and Meta (Facebook) announced a partnership. Palmer Luckey created the hugely successful virtual reality firm Oculus, which he sold to Meta. He was then fired from the company simply for being a Trump supporter, and later started the defense tech firm Anduril. The company’s X account posted this image:
Luckey could well have held onto a grudge against Zuckerberg over his firing, but he didn’t let that sabotage his current firm. Now, Luckey still has some ongoing feuds with other people, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he put an end to them as well if they interfered with his goals.
Too many people at the sub-elite level seem constitutionally incapable of resolving conflict and moving on. It’s a skill and orientation more people need to adopt.
AI Data Centers and Economic Development
My latest policy piece is over at Commonplace, where I show that AI data centers, despite generating impressive headlines, aren’t especially great economic development projects.
One Nebraska article’s headline read, “Google: 2024 capital investment in NE is $930M, for a five-year tally of $4.4B”. Nothing makes a city sound like a tech hub like an announcement of billions of dollars of investment by blue chip Silicon Valley firms. Every mayor or governor is interested in news like that.
But while these data centers can be a positive, they are vastly overblown as economic development stories. For one thing they don’t employ very many people…
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America needs to build data centers to win the AI race. Those data centers, like warehouses, have to go somewhere. And like warehouses, data centers can play a positive role as part of an overall diversified economic base for a community. But they are hardly an economic development gold mine in the same way a development like an electric vehicle manufacturing plant or chip fabrication plant would be—even if there’s a Google logo plastered on the outside.
Click over to read the whole thing.
What the Mormons Can Teach You About Not Living in a Dystopia
My Member group just did a great Zoom call last night discussing a case study about the LDS (Mormon) Church. If you want to learn more about becoming a Member and getting access to our Zoom sessions and more, visit my Support page.
A anonymous Substack writer also recently posted an essay talking about what she, a non-Mormon, learned from the LDS culture when she moved to Utah:
If you had told me, when I moved to Utah 20-odd years ago, that one day I’d be writing exhortations about how everyone should become more like the Mormons, I would have been appalled.
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The world opened up and everyone got online, businesses and people flooded here, and it’s now a golden era where LDS culture is still dominant enough to keep Utah from turning into a dystopian hell-hole that reeks of marijuana, but cosmopolitan enough to enjoy the best that modern life has to offer. In another ten years, it may jump the shark and end up like everywhere else. But I sure hope not. And before Utah becomes exactly like every other place in the American monoculture, let me tell you about just how right they’ve gotten things.
Because all the modern ills that I hear everyone talking about online…kids that don’t play outside, anxious teenagers that don’t date, events where everyone is staring at their phone instead of interacting …it’s not visible here, at all. I literally would have no inkling of any of this, if not for reading about it on the internet.
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One of the most crucial things that would make having kids A LOT easier would be dropping all the insane over-investment in children and making an entire family’s lives revolve around the desires of a six-year-old or trying to give teenagers the lifestyles of 19th century royalty.
Out here, people have as many kids as they can afford, and that means two things: 1. No one has the time, energy, or inclination to helicopter parent even if they wanted to, and 2. Even affluent people don’t have extra money to spoil kids, because orthodontists and CEOs just have 5-6 kids and when there’s that many, you don’t have the extra cash for spoiling and indulgence – those kids need to get a job.
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Utah was the first state in the nation to adopt a “Free Range Parenting Act” in 2018, which expressly allows children to engage in activities like walking to school or parks by themselves, playing outside unsupervised, or staying home alone, and protects parents from CPS or being prosecuted for neglect. Since then, eight other states have joined suit – blue and red states alike! But when Utah was the first state to do this, they were just codifying in law what was already the cultural norm.
I see kids every single day running around outside by themselves. They’re playing roller-blade hockey in church parking lots. Groups of girls are running around with the bossy-pants eight-year-old issuing orders to her minions. My neighborhood has what is basically a full-on biker gang of nine year old boys, who have each strapped an old lawnmower-engine onto a scooter or bike, and who terrorize the neighborhood coming blazing around the corner on their loud lawnmower vehicles, screaming over the noise. Any park you go to here, you will find bike-jumps and forts and treehouses that have been built. It’s like…well, it’s like the 80s.
It’s a great piece with many more observations, so be sure to read the whole thing.
Related: LDS member Michael Perrone posted a piece about how to stop being a normie.
Best of the Web
Institute for Family Studies: Women Still Marry Up—But the Spousal Income Gap is Narrowing
Axios: Young men are leading a religious resurgence
NYT: Not Just More Babies: These Republicans Want More Parents at Home
WSJ: Women Are Drinking More—and Doctors Are Worried
Compact: Faith Makes a Quiet Comeback
Brad East: Low Church in High Places: The Fate and Future of American Protestantism
New Content and Media Mentions
New this week:
Reject Violence - As violent actions and rhetoric ferment on the left, stay self-controlled
Baby Boomer Secrets of Power - What younger generations can learn from Boomer self-confidence
My Member Zoom this month was on learning from the LDS church.
My regular podcast returns on Monday. Subscribe to it on Apple Podcasts, Youtube, or Spotify.
Can you give some more specific examples of how elites supposedly move on from conflict whereas non-elites don’t? I can’t say I’ve ever noticed this but I’m intrigued.
There was another article in the WSJ recently about how fantasy romance books were incredibly popular with young and middle-aged women. I wonder if there’s a connection between that and the increased drinking?