*Obedience, Aspiration, and Duty; Commentary on 'The Polygamists'

*wrote this a while ago, thought I would repost it here. 

After reading Scott Anderson’s article, ‘The Polygamists’ from the 2010 February issue of National Geographic, I couldn’t help but think that I was being informed through the lens of Scott Anderson’s perspective interspersed with past events reported by the media and statements of history. Whether the events happened in the way Scott Anderson tells it, other than my own exposure to the events through external sources of information i.e. news on the internet, I wouldn’t know. Although I understand that there could be discrepancies within the details of history and its interpretation as there would be discrepancies between the experience of an actual event and the reporting of that event, I am no expert of history. Nevertheless, the history and the accuracy of representation do not bother me here. I am left to the faith in National Geographic and Mr. Scott Anderson’s professionalism as a journalist. I’ll take the quotation marks to mean literal statements/utterances from those Anderson interviewed and/or spoke with. What fascinated me, particularly, was the juxtaposition between Scott Anderson’s personal experience of the Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) community and with what he understood about FLDS history along with their involvement in the news. The values represented through utterance in quotations, or via Scott Anderson, contrasted with the values represented by media and law, via Scott Anderson, I think, from a social science perspective, presents a tension of value systems – conflicting senses of morality.

Just recently I was introduced to a dialectic in the morality of law – the morality of aspiration and the morality of duty. The morality of aspiration, I was explained, is much like what the Ancient Greeks have called, the “Good Life.” And of course there are variations and different takes on what the “Good Life” would be; America declared it as our “unalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness;” in life, we have the “unalienable right” to pursue happiness with liberty. For society, this is the morality of aspiration in law. The law stands to enable the individual with those rights to pursue happiness. The morality of duty is the basic rules of civility society must preserve to maintain order and civility for the functioning of society. Most commonly, it has come in the form of “thou shalt not,” steal, murder, and so on; the bottom-up approach I’m told. Eventually, these two forms of morality overlap when what one aspires to conflicts with what one isn’t allowed to do. In other words, these two moralities in their idyllic state – for the purposes of government – conflict at the experiential level, the phenomenological level, as what the pursuit of happiness is and how it manifests, carries its own set of hermeneutical issues for each individual and/or culture that may conflict with the morality of duty instilled within the law.

With regard to the FLDS community, as presented by the media, the moralities of duty and aspiration have come together in its enforcement and manifestation of raids, indictments, and convictions as well as their ensuing sentences in court – not only for the case of Warren Jeffs, and other members charged with forms of sexual abuse, but also for the community and their judicial consequences e.g. land, custody of children, and so on. The media and the judicial sentences strike a dissonant chord of disgust when we hear the charges of ‘rape as an accomplice’ and ‘sexual assault.’ I would assume that this comes under the morality of duty side of the law while preserving one’s right in the morality of aspiration; the enforcement of one for the preservation of the other.

In contrast, the morality of aspiration and duty has taken on a different tone within the polygamous sect. Rather than an emphasis on an individual level of value in aspiration the emphasis is placed on communal values. The opening scene of “several thousand” members in gathering to mourn the death of a wife and show support for the family; “old fashioned devotion and neighborly cooperation” where even the children help bring in the yield; where a sister shares her husband for her sister’s “happiness,” all of which has been centered around the motif of plural marriage “to build up the Kingdom of God.” Women are given the task to “build up the celestial family” that will continue for eternity.” In this sense, the morality of aspiration is centered on theological grounds for the afterlife reflecting a social governance centered upon the “law of plural marriage,” family, and community; the theological fueling the social – and of course how is variable from community to community, network to network. And it is in this morality of aspiration joined with the morality of duty that creates a dynamic tension within and between individuals, social networks, and overall governance.

As some of the women in the article have indicated, the concept of obedience has strained that sense of aspiration as it interjects into their embodied conceptual organization of what they are aspiring towards. Dorothy Jessop states, “to be honest […] I think a lot of women have a hard time with it, because it's not an easy thing to share the man you love. But I came to realize this is another test that God places before you—the sin of jealousy, of pride—and that to be a godly woman, I needed to overcome it.” In the cases of “reassignment, Warren Jeffs accounts, via Scott Anderson, that “One of his brother's wives had difficulty accepting the news and could barely bring herself to kiss her new husband. "She showed a great spirit of resistance, yet she went through with it," Jeffs records. "She needs to learn to submit to Priesthood." Similarly, Scott Anderson portrays a “wary” Melinda Jeffs – who presents a “stout defense” of Warren Jeffs and confidently stating, “that [reassignment] wouldn’t happen” – when she ponders the following question, would she “obey” if her “reassignment” were to occur.

At the same time, we have Joyce Broadbent: “from my experience, sister wives usually get along very well. Oh sure, you might be closer to one than another, or someone might get on your nerves occasionally, but that's true in any family. I've never felt any rivalry or jealousy at all." Scott Anderson indicates that the division of household duties (schoolteacher, kitchen, sewing, etc) and an awareness of their role “to bear and raise as many children as possible, to build up the "celestial family" that will remain together for eternity” helps mitigate the tensions of jealousy and allows sorority.

The approach and associated values within the moralities of duty and aspiration – beginning on theoretical, metaphysical, or in this case, theological grounds – are instilled within the social ethos of any network, community, or state. And yet, the social ethos of an individual, or even community, cannot be assumed to manifest in a one to one relation. The moralities as they are conceived do not come to being in the same ethos for every individual; automaton cannot be assumed. But rather, the moralities manifest through the understanding and hermeneutics of those moralities in the paradigm upon which they are grounded, which ranges to various degrees for each individual adhering to that paradigm. In turn, that cognitive and conceptual organization comes into consideration during the assessment, and emotional response, of social situations or circumstances individuals are placed in.

The FLDS members are submersed in a dynamic tension of theological aspiration (family and eternity) and a morality of duty enforced in the power of governance to perpetuate a social structure surrounding that morality of aspiration. This would seem to have resulted in an internal dissonance in the conceptualization of obedience. Not only is there an obedience to one’s personal understanding of self on a metaphysical level in relation to his/her understanding of God as one aspires to reach that celestial state, there is the obedience to a morality of duty that is grounded in a relation to the community, including household, and what has been deemed as revelations brought forth by a prophet; a tension that each member eventually reconciles considering their self in relation to the community and understanding of the afterlife.