Only if you buy the strawmen of politics in the US of there being two 'sides' with everyone neatly falling into place on a pathetic line.
The further you get away from the shithole that is the US federal government, the more this becomes apparent. The things each 'side' is supposed to support completely changes at the state levels and varies from state to state.
The best thing you can do is dispose of the notion of a single political spectrum and you will be a lot less shocked when you encounter something contrary to the propaganda designed to divide people.
South Florida in general is politically interesting, with a large amount of socially liberal yet fiscally conservative immigrants. Both parties are focused on economic development above all else.
The 2-dimensional Political Compass is a huge improvement, but still isn't perfect. Reality is more complex and would require an N-dimensional political matrix.
^-- the most intriguing take on the political compass I've ever seen, albeit one with its own biases and issues (I'd replace feudalism with 'early human or tribal societies'). The main point was that it expanded beyond a strictly US view and I found the additional concept lines useful (Democracy line, inequality line, market line). It still runs into the same trouble trying to compress everything down into two dimensions does. Ideologies can end up next to each other that aren't very similar, which the end of the blog post acknowledged.
KSL-TV (LDS-owned NBC station) has an AppleTV app, and watching the SLC local news is far more interesting than I thought it would be. And there’s far less needless murder and mayhem plus more “good” news than is available in my market.
The perfectionist streak is real. The manifestation in cosmetic surgery is somewhat odd considering it's not explicitly taught (and has even been explicitly been panned). My own theory is that it's a weird combo of taking ideals seriously, religiously magnified & concentrated conscientiousness, and finally, heavily emphasizing the importance of having a mate and tying status to it.
However, I'm not sure the most ready explanation for any outlying antidepressant is oppressive religious expectations, outside of either some extra zealous backgrounds or key demographics like gay/lesbian individuals who are presented with a dilemma by the church that usually can't be resolved living inside church direction.
Given the famous abstinence from most common forms of self-medication (alcohol, weed, and tobacco), and a bit of a bent for being directed by authority, seems to me a good chunk of the difference is likely to essentially be displaced system-approved substance use.
I could restate this positively as "highest rate of treated depression," so I'm wondering if it also has abnormally high rates of depression?
That said, I believe that there is other data showing there is other perscriptio drug abuse more prevelance than usual. If that's from increased depression, or merely from being an easier "bad" coping mechanism that's easier to hide, I'm not sure.
There are a lot of judgemental (self righteous?) Mormons in Utah. There are a lot of nice ones as well, though I think you'll find the ratio of nice to judgemental higher in other states.
My take on it? Being mormon has become somewhat cultural in Utah. It's not nearly so much elsewhere.
I won't dispute this, but I will mention some interesting hypotheses that indicate rates of depression are highly correlated with altitude.
I see that commonly mentioned.
What is not concurrently mentioned is that Utah is 48th for drug abuse [1], 48th for excessive drinking and 50th for alcohol-related driving deaths [2], and 50th for tobacco use [3].
Depression sucks, but anti-depressants are far, far safer (if not cheaper) than self-medicating with alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs.
[1] https://wallethub.com/edu/drug-use-by-state/35150/
[2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/03/08/these-america...
[3] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6539a1.htm#modalIdS...
Utahns love porn.
Also all the crap LGBT Mormon kids go through.
Council of Nicaea, 325 AD [1].
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Cult#Warning_signs_of_a_potent...
However, I'm sure if you asked an LGBTQ person of their experiences with Christianity, especially with the uniquely conservative U.S. evangelical variety, they would say that some of those qualities clearly fit the bill.
Edit: One could also argue that the Catholic Church and its system of cardinals electing the pope (and whose very presence is regarded as sacrosanct) would qualify as both absolute authority and leader-worship. Albeit, I know the pope's own cop out is that God is the absolute authority, but I digress before my interest in theology leads us all down a dull rabbit hole.
In the same way it's said that a language is "a dialect with an army", I'm claiming the difference between a cult and religion is the same.
Also:
> Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Love the person. The sin is still a sin, but love the person. It doesn't get any more simple than that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excommunication
https://www.etymonline.com/word/excommunication
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/resources/politics/politi...
https://www.catholicvote.org/bishop-deny-communion-to-border...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregation_for_the_Doctrine_...
But GP's definition lacked significant nuance.
Pedantry aside, Christians are still human and thus succumb to sin and as such are not as charitable as they should be.
What? Do you mean Catholics? There are non-Catholic Christian churches, but they are still Christians.
On the flip side, there is no such distinct leadership/requirements in most other Christian organizations. Pretty much anyone call self a Christian.
Maybe Catholics are similar to LDS but I'm not too familiar with them.
I went on a mission to Peru for 2 years. It was amazing, I have no regrets, but I wouldn't do it again. It was incredibly hard.
In contrast, I've started two modestly successful companies (one bootstrapped, one backed by $16M in VC money) and I'm working on starting my third. Startups are grueling, but not as grueling as a mission IMO. :)
I.e. at times that are minimally disruptive to careers, families, etc.
(Your point about relative comfort at this fact may remain true independent of this observation.)
Just because some member of the Church believes or says something doesn't make it doctrine.
This is a problem for most religions these days. Some random person says something is part of their religion, and everyone on the internet and the media believe it.
It's like whenever some Catholic priest in some backwater says something that is not in line with Catholic teaching, the news picks up on it as if it came out of the Pope's mouth. Then it gets repeated ad nauseam across the internet by people who don't know, or can't be bothered to find out, if it's true or not.
The LDS church has an interesting tiered conception of doctrine, wherein some things that have been taught by LDS prophets are not in fact official doctrine. People tend to ignore the "space doctrine" most of the time too.
Well, it's got pre-medieval, medieval, and post-medieval elements.
> There is definitely set dogma
Depending on who you believe (yes, there are actually doctrinal disputes over which doctrinal pronouncements are in fact dogmatic, though there are a handful of cases which are dogmatic and not in dispute as to that) there is between very little and extremely little definitively set dogma, though.
How doctrinaire the Church is a pastoral question that (in terms of the central authority at least) changes considerably over time and especially with changes in Popes. Because, for all the accumulated history, tradition, and specialized language the Holy See had accumulated, it's still essentially an absolute monarchy, and the approach of the institutions reflects the personality of the person at the head of all of them.
It's like trying to maintain a codebase for 1,700 years with only one major revision.
An aside, smog is really bad in Salt Lake due to its geography and that is probably one of the reasons they are taking this so seriously.
[0] read No Man Knows My History, for an historical perspective.
It's a shame. Real life is so much richer. In my real life I've often come across Mormon missionaries (in the past knocking at my door - not sure if they still do this?), and despite radical differences in view, have mostly had warm & engaging interactions.
There is nothing kind about their treatment of the LGBT population in general, and LGBT youth in particular.
And if they were really that good at taking care of each other, I don't think that Utah would rank 5th in the nation for adolescent suicides (children 15 - 19 years) with a per capita suicide rate more than double the national average.*
They really do like to put on a good face, but their actions and the data says something rather different.
* https://www.statista.com/statistics/666791/states-with-highe...
As for the suicide rate, you are making very careless and dangerous assumptions. Yes, it’s higher than most other areas. The reason for why is still very much unknown, and could be attributed in part to a wide variety of factors, ranging anywhere from demographics to the high altitude. Assuming it’s high because Mormons are awful people is baseless and clearly an instance of someone who has looking to confirm their biases.
If you are going to bring data into the conversation you should try and be more empirically minded about it.
I am perfectly willing to accept that more rural areas tend to have higher suicide rates, and that is not necessarily going to be correlated with religion, but at the same time, 1/3 of the population lives in the SLC metro area, which should be a moderating influence on the state's suicide rate if this is the primary cause.
The only other statistic I know of regarding Utah that is an outlier over the US in general is the percentage of individuals who identify as Mormon. As such, a hypothesis that the higher adolescent suicide rate has something to do with religion is perfectly valid, although still only a hypothesis.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/suicide-rates-teen-girl...
https://health.usnews.com/health-care/articles/2018-03-22/cd...
1) Whatever causes the higher overall rates in Utah (altitude and/or other variables) that interacts in a non-linear way with whatever is causing the national increase.
2) Whatever factor that is driving the national increase is more influential in Utah for whatever reason. (e.g. maybe social networks are more harmful to more-judgmental Mormon communities)
3) There is some recent change in Mormon culture that has driven a change in teen suicide rates.
4) Mormon culture has caused a change in suicide rates despite not changing.
Do you have any support that would make (3) or (4) sound more reasonable? Or do you have another hypothesis?
* Claimed it is from God
* If you are gay then you are declared apostate and excommunicated (the strongest punishment that can be applied by the church, with extreme social repercussions)
* If your parents are gay, you're not allowed to be baptized at age 8 like other children, even given parent permission. Instead you must wait until age 21 and submit a signed affidavit disavowing your parents' relationship
* If your parents are gay you cannot get a baby blessing
Along with this policy came a strong increase in the anti-gay rhetoric from the prophets and apostles at the bi-annual general conference that all members attend.
Try putting that data point on a chart that shows the suicide rate and the correlation gets eerie.
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/preventing-suicid...
Given that LGBT is maybe 4-10% of the population of the population, it's not likely to be driving such a big spike in the total numbers. I'd be interested in a more careful breakdown if anyone has it.
Additionally, my interactions with Mormons suggests them (and pretty much everyone else) becoming more tolerant of LGBT, not less. However, that's anecdotes, not data.
The issue is that the uppermost echelon of church leadership is a lifetime calling, they aren't replaced until one of them dies. This leads to the prophets and apostles all being the _oldest_ members of the church, and usually the most regressive. Combine that with the fact that obedience to leadership is tantamount to even personal revelation, and you get lots of hate speech over the pulpit even while the members in the pews are actually rather tolerant.
Let me run the numbers here though - if we have 100,000 youth then in 2015 there were 11 (0.011%) that committed suicide. If 4% of them are gay, that is 4,000 gay youth, and if their suicide rate is 3x the average then we'd expect 0.033% or 1-2 LGBT youth suicides.
If that were the end of it, I'd agree with you that it can't explain the near doubling. But would we expect LGBT youth to commit suicide more often, less often, or the same in a community with the above "November policy" kind of standards? I'd wager that LGBT youth suicides in Utah account for closer to 30% of all youth suicides.
I agree it doesn't completely explain the rise, but it seems a significant enough factor to be including in discussion.
I would submit the following hypothesis:
As the nation moves in a direction where religion plays a smaller and smaller role culturally and legally, many follows of religion double down and attempt to prevent their children from moving in that direction. In places with a lower percentages of people who consider themselves religious - or at least very religious, this crackdown happens less, but when it does adolescents have other friends or family they can turn to for support. More insular communities - such as Mormons - do not offer the external support structure to young people, leaving them fewer options they see as viable.
So while this is not necessarily a problem only in the Mormon community, it certainly is exacerbating the problem.
Any proponent of this hypothesis will face quite the uphill battle explaining why suicide rates are growing nowhere near as fast in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, or Nevada.
> 2) Whatever factor that is driving the national increase is more influential in Utah for whatever reason. (e.g. maybe social networks are more harmful to more-judgmental Mormon communities)
Certainly possible. There are plenty of judgmental religious clusters in the US, but it's the state with all the Mormons that seems to be the outlier, which would need explanation.
> 3) There is some recent change in Mormon culture that has driven a change in teen suicide rates.
There certainly is a lot of recent changes in mormon culture as well as mormon teachings as of late, and ramping up quite dramatically for a good 20 years now. Before prop 8, there was almost no focus on homosexuality, now it is a regular topic. There have been some major policy changes, such as disallowing baptism of children of gay parents.
There has been a huge growth in focus on pornography and modesty over the last two decades. For example, you can find plenty of strapless and sleeveless dresses in the BYU homecoming archives, but none recently. You can read conference archives from 20 years ago and find few, if any, references to pornography or modesty...whereas every conference now will focus a large amount of time on the subjects.
> 4) Mormon culture has caused a change in suicide rates despite not changing.
It demonstrably has changed, so this one is out.
> Do you have any support that would make (3) or (4) sound more reasonable? Or do you have another hypothesis?
It's a combination of 2 and 3. For example, pornography is drastically more available now than 20 years ago, but that wouldn't be much of a problem if not coupled with the shame and judgment of mormon teachings combined with the drastic growth in focus on the subject. Same goes for everything related to sexuality: modesty and social media, homosexuality and the various legal/policy actions that the church has taken, etc. The combination of of social change, technological change, mormon shame/guilt/judgment, mormon obsession with perfection and social image, and recent mormon heel-digging behavior is precisely what I would think is the most plausible hypothesis.
I'd be interested to see gender breakdown to see if modesty is an issue. I find it implausible, but would love to see data showing me wrong. Especially because when I grew up Mormon (I'm now atheist), a bikini was pretty risque but now I see conservative Mormons wearing bikinis as often as not. A priori, I would also expect modesty to decrease, not increase suicide rates (especially among the overweight or otherwise less-attractive). I'm not rooting for sexual modesty. I think it's probably good for society, but I don't care for it.
Pornography is interesting. I don't know how much Mormons have focused on it, but I'd be fascinated to see if that was a factor.
I do not see it this way. Communities with shared values (republican or democratic), usually find it easier to agree on and build public services that they find useful. Getting efficient, inexpensive transport that does not cost too much to the state is pretty easy to justify.
By the same token, most Republicans know that they will eventually get old, likely sick and finally die; thus they are not opposed to public healthcare as long as it is efficient and does not overburden public finances. However, they think (with some justification given past national federal projects) that if the US Federal government designs such a system it will be an inefficient and super costly monster pandering to special interests. And they are dead set against it.
That's a pretty laughable statement. Tons of local government (town, city, state) projects are just as much (or more) over budget with massive special interest pandering as well. The Federal government is not unique in this aspect.
I think you described every government project to date.
The key property of this is that the costs are clear and must be paid directly by those who voted for a new functionality. LDS may be the glue that allows something similar at the city/state level in Utah.
http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=53794385&itype=cmsi...
It’s true that the state is empty, but it’s actually a better candidate for transit than one would think, because the Wasatch Front, where 2M people live, is small geographically.
And very lax emissions regulations and oil refineries in the middle of everything.
In Orem (Utah County) the city is building dedicated bus lanes in the center of University Parkway; my guess is that this is a precursor to Trax rails down the line (so to speak).
To add to the list, Texas is going to be the first state in the US to have a proper high-speed rail system, and it's actually going to be very affordable to build.