Everyone is Counting on a Civilization-Level Deus ex Machina

I.

I attended the Faith Matters conference a few weekends ago. For those unfamiliar with the organization (most of you, I suspect) Faith Matters is an independent, privately run LDS nonprofit that defines itself as a “space in which an expansive, radiant approach to the restored gospel can be considered.“

I attended a handful of sessions, and in several of them this “radiance” was on full display. But for the purposes of this post I’d like to focus on one in particular.1 This presentation started in an unradiant manner. The speaker opened by listing all of the problems faced by the modern world. I don’t recall everything he listed, but I know that climate change and political unrest were in there, and possibly decreasing fertility. In any case, this list of problems culminated in the term polycrisis. A term I myself have used from time to time. That was the first half of his talk. The second half was his solution to the polycrisis.

Obviously a solution to all of our most pressing problems would be the biggest thing ever. In fact, if he could solve even one of the problems he had listed that would be a huge accomplishment! So, how did he propose solving the polycrisis?

Meditation…

This seems unequal to the task. Though maybe it was super special meditation? His meditative technique does have a greater focus on connection with others and opening oneself up to a “universal orchestra of meaning”.2 So it’s got that going for it, which is nice. Full disclosure, once the presentation took a turn towards maximum “woo” I kind of checked out.

When I say, “checked out”, I actually had my laptop open and I was getting a little bit of work done while I listened, but I don’t think I missed anything important. I’m pretty familiar with the many crises affecting the world, and I’ll wager I could come up with a few this guy had never heard of. And yes, I tuned out even more as he started talking about meditation, but I’m positive I’ve heard that pitch as well. In fact it’s the entire point of my post, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I should recount one humorous anecdote. As I said, I was on my laptop. I had a small software deployment that needed to be taken care of. About the same time I started my deploy, the speaker started his guided meditation section, asking everyone to close their eyes and open their souls to God. (Or something along those lines, I was doing a deploy, not taking notes.) This went on for a while, and eventually he asked them to open their eyes, and expand their senses and feel the love they had for the person sitting next to them. I did feel something from the woman sitting next to me, but it definitely wasn’t love… Fortunately, I was on the end of the aisle, so I was only getting barely concealed annoyance from one direction, not both.

One of the people I told this story to said that she felt that the woman’s annoyance was justified. To which I replied, “Of course it was justified! What kind of jerk works on his laptop through a guided meditation exercise! The point of the story is to shake your head at me, not her.”

II.

This was not the first time...