Zion Wisdom: Kleptocracy Versus Prophecy. An AI Alternative?

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Leland41-2
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Zion Wisdom: Kleptocracy Versus Prophecy. An AI Alternative?

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Zion Wisdom: Kleptocracy Versus Prophecy. An AI Alternative?


We have people within the LDS church who claim the title of prophets, but do they ever engage in any meaningful prophecy? We have the scriptural example of Jonah who was supposed to call the people of Nineveh to repentance to save them from destruction from outside forces, but he ran from his assignment. He finally completed his assignment under duress, and was surprised to see that the people actually did repent and avoided destruction.

The people who call themselves prophets today say, by implication, that they cannot speak on any issue that has any connection with politics. That seems to mean that anything more politically relevant than church meeting schedules is out of their purview. They either affirm exactly what civil authorities say, regardless of its wisdom, or they say nothing at all. Politics is the area in which our morals are put to the practical test, so it would seem that a church which is promoting a certain moral framework ought to be aggressively involved in at least theoretical politics, if not practical politics. The Doctrine and Covenants explicitly endorses the United States Constitution, but the church administration today does not. They are more likely to see it as a hindrance to what they would like to do.

We might ask whether we deserve to be saved from destruction like the people of Nineveh. Apparently, based on the silence of our prophets, we are not worthy enough or entitled enough to be warned of impending destruction and how we might avoid it as a society. I put such issues in the category of "building Zion," or, perhaps, "saving Zion."

Since our prophets refuse to speak on or even recognize the importance of political/moral questions of the day, I propose that we use our modern information resources to create our own semi-inspired sources, guiding us towards an improved society, sometimes referred to as Zion or the Millennium. A person might be called a prophet if they merely relay and interpret the words of the Scriptures. (This was probably especially true when there may have been only one copy of the Scriptures available to an entire society.) With nearly all human knowledge now available in one place on the Internet, the wisdom of an industrious ordinary person can approach that of the most inspired wise men and prophets of an earlier time when knowledge was harder to come by. We do not need to make deals with the devil or enter a monastery to get that knowledge, but can merely ask the right questions and look up the answers.

Since our current leaders who claim the title of prophet have decided to retire from the gospel battle with the world and to be silent on any matters of current social importance, it is time we ignore them and create our own useful sources of large-scale political, economic, and social wisdom.

It appears that our prophets have simply joined the ranks of all the government kleptocrats who now control every nation on the earth, and who are seeking to further centralize that control into a single global monopoly. Those prophets have ideologically joined the side of those who should be their religious and political enemies or competitors for the hearts and minds of the people, so that now they are colluding with their new compatriots, all to the great detriment of the actual church members they claim to represent.

Among other things, I have been reading books and watching the YouTube videos of a gentleman named Peter Zeihan who would probably like to claim the title of secular prophet, and has done a huge amount of homework which makes him a plausible candidate for being such a real secular prophet. He is a bit of an egotist, imagining that he can wisely judge and categorize all past and current world leaders, and is probably not much of a religionist, but there is no doubting that he and his research assistants have compiled a large amount of useful information about the world and its prospects for the future.

Peter Zeihan Presents Disunited Nations: The Trade Breakdown | Upfront Summit 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-1MquvFmUA

If one has the ability to compute a correct religious and social answer for the world at a specific time, then classical prophets may indeed have become almost unnecessary except in the most extreme situations. We can learn correct principles, and so we should be able to govern ourselves, to paraphrase a quote from Joseph Smith. Christ was always for freedom, so merely making the choices that enhance the freedom of every living person on the earth can have a very high likelihood of being the correct set of choices.

In the following video, Peter Zeihan explains how, whether by accident or intent or divine providence, the United States became the guarantor of a highly efficient international trading regime, the first such world order to operate on such a grand scale in the history of man. That seems to have been as close to a Zion society as men can achieve, on their own, unaided by explicit heavenly instructions. This would be the perfect time for some actual heavenly instructions which could first save, and then improve, this worldwide implementation of a reasonable approximation to a Zion society (now on its way to dissolution).

However, since our so-called prophets refuse to comment on such matters, no matter the urgency involved, and pretend these matters don't exist, or are of no concern to them or to church members, we need to move ahead separately and become a force of our own. The uncomfortable truth is that the church leaders today see themselves as competing with church members for control of their lives and money, rather than seeing themselves as being on the same side. They spend enormous amounts of effort strategizing against church members, rather than strategizing on their behalf.

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