I recently finished Brandon Sanderson’s first Mistborn trilogy -The Final Empire through Heroes of Ages – and loved all three books. They’re incredible works of storytelling and some of the best fantasy out there. Sanderson is easily one of the best fantasy writers alive. He is also a devout Latter-day Saint. As I was reading his books again and again I kept coming across ways that Mormonism influenced his writing in crucial ways, but was shocked to find so little online exploring these influences. This article is my attempt to demonstrate some of the major ways that LDS scripture, history, theology, and culture deeply influence Sanderson’s writing and appear in these books.
Tag: gender identity
How Language Is Used To Convince You Of Transgender Ideas And How To Fight Back
There is a lot being said right now about gender dysphoria, transgenderism, and the usage of personal pronouns to affirm a person’s individual gender identity. In this article I cite several studies to prove a few very important things: Language has a massive influence on the way that we see the world, that altering how we speak, even in small grammatical ways, has a huge impact on our consciousness itself, that the repetition of information over time changes the way we think and convinces us that what we are saying or hearing is true, and that ideas spread like virus, co-opting what we believe and how we live and changing them to turn us into ideological spreaders. I then put it all together to argue that the usage of preferred pronouns takes advantages of all these facts and act like a viral vector to infect us with the beliefs and ideals of transgenderism. The ultimate culmination of this is a form of reality control where what we believe is re-written by the things we hear repeatedly until we win the victory over ourselves and adopt the ideas in question as our own – in this case transgenderism. Finally, I discuss how we can resist this process and why liberty is so essential in establishing a society where all people can live as they believe.
If You’re A “Progressive Mormon” or A “Conservative Mormon” Then You’re The Wrong Kind of Mormon
It is common for people to complain about the political positions of other members of the church and to describe themselves as “Conservative Mormons,” “Progressive Mormons,” “Libertarian Mormons,” “Gay Mormons,” etc. The problem with this is that these types of identity politics are incredibly dangerous for all those involved- the person in question and the Church as a whole, not to mention society in general. It divides, marginalizes, and diminishes what should be one whole- the Body of Christ. The reliance on political ideology to create a better world through government violence has failed and will always do so. The more we allow political identities to define and divide us the less able we will be to do the real work necessary to create the better world we all hope our children will inherit. The Book of Mormon provides clear warnings about allowing political ideology to direct our lives while providing us with the blueprint to create a truly equal, just, free, and prosperous society for all.