Latter-day Satyagraha

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And I, Nephi, did take the sword of Laban, and after the manner of it did make many swords, lest by any means the people who were now called Lamanites should come upon us and destroy us; for I knew their hatred towards me and my children and those who were called my people. (2 Nephi 5: 14)

And cursed shall be the seed of him that mixeth with their seed; for they shall be cursed even with the same cursing. And the Lord spake it, and it was done. And because of their cursing which was upon them they did become an idle people, full of mischief and subtlety, and did seek in the wilderness for beasts of prey. And the Lord God said unto me: They shall be a scourge [cause great suffering] unto thy seed, to stir them up in remembrance of me; and inasmuch as they will not remember me, and hearken unto my words, they shall scourge them even unto destruction. (2 Nephi 5: 23-25)

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Why do they hate us? Ever asked yourself that question after 9/11?

In a knowledge base essay at Beyond Intractability.org, Heidi Burgess explains that ‘”the term ‘out-group’ refers to anyone who is not in your own group. ‘Your group’ [the in-group] can be any salient identity group: your nationality, your ethnicity, your race, your religion. In conflicts between groups of people, disputants usually view people outside their own group as less good, or in the case of the opposing group, as really bad. The term ‘enemy image’ refers to the same thing. The opposing group is seen as the ‘enemy’, who is inferior to one’s own group in many ways.

Enemy images also involve ‘scapegoating’. It is common for each side to decide that it is the other side (the “enemy”) that is the source of all their problems. If only the enemy could be vanquished or eliminated, then those problems would go away. For example, the enemy may be seen as stupid, selfish, deceitful, aggressive, hostile, or even evil. This perception remains, even if members of the out-group do nothing more selfish, deceitful, aggressive, or evil than do members of one’s own group. However, when they are engaged in a serious conflict, people will normally project their own negative traits onto the other side, ignoring their own shortcomings or misdeeds, while emphasizing the same in the other.

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The extreme form of this tendency is dehumanization, in which members of the opposing group are considered to be less than human. While such a view is unthinkable when people are not involved in a serious conflict, it is absolutely necessary to dehumanize an opponent if one intends to go to war against them. Otherwise, it becomes psychologically very difficult to kill people on the other side. If one is convinced that the other side is bent on one’s own destruction, and is less human than one’s own group, it is much easier to engage in war, human rights violations, or genocide against the opponent.

A grotesque example of this dehumanization was the Rwandan genocide. As described in a report from the U.S. Institute of Peace: ”An organized campaign of violence was carried out, during which the Tutsi were referred to as ‘cockroaches’ and ‘the enemy’, and Rwandan radio broadcasters exhorted every Hutu to kill Tutsi, complaining that ‘graves are still only half full’. In less than four months, between 500,000 and a million people were killed.”

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Were the ‘now called’ Lamanites defending their lands from Nephite invaders?

TheFireStillBurning explains in a comment to a post that “The Book of Mormon is silent about Laman’s story. Entirely. The Nephites go into the wilderness, settle in the land of Nephi, and suddenly enemies pop out of the woodwork in hordes — in less than 40 years from landing — that don’t look anything like Laman and Lemuel [since they were dark-skinned]. “Lamanite” becomes a general term for all Nephite enemies, probably because the Nephites have been expecting attacks by their brethren and have no reason believing anyone else is around. The irony: these “Lamanites” ARE defending their lands from Nephite invaders. When and how Laman makes contact with these people hardly matters; the enemy of my enemy becomes my friend, particularly when this new friend has knowledge that can help me defeat the invader”.

In support of this claim, I found that mormon apologetics also explain the enemy relationship between the Nephites and the Lamanites in the same way and that Jacob’s speech based on the teachings of Isaiah (chapters 6-10) is a way to bring Nephi’s followers to have a more nuanced view of their so-called enemies the Lamanites. In a FAIRLDS.org article on Nephi’s Neighbors: Book of Mormon Peoples and Pre-Columbian Populations, Matthew Roper explains the possibility that Laman, Lemuel and the rest of the “bad guys” might have united with other pre-existing populations on the American continent at the time of Nephi’s departure to the Land of Nephi, which would explain the blackness of their skin (the cursing) through mixed marriages with non-Lehite peoples already occupying the land. Relevant excerpts from the article follow here:

At the time the Nephites and the Lamanites separated, then, Nephi was accompanied by his own family, Zoram and Sam and their respective families, his younger brothers Jacob and Joseph, and his sisters, in addition to “all those who would go with me.” Who were these others who “believed in the warnings and the revelations of God”? The most likely answer seems to be other people living in the land, not of Lehi’s family. Significantly, at this point in the text Nephi introduces the term people of Nephi for the first time in reference to his followers (2 Nephi 5:9), a term that may be suggestive of a larger society including more than his immediate family.

It is also at this point that the term Lamanite first appears. Nephi explains that he made preparations to defend his people “lest by any means the people who were now called Lamanites should come upon us and destroy us; for I knew their hatred towards me and my children and those who were called my people” (2 Nephi 5:14). As demographer James Smith observes, “One reading of the latter phrase is that ‘Lamanites’ is a new name for the family and followers of Laman, Nephi’s brother-enemy from whom Nephi fled. Another possible reading is that some people not previously called ‘Lamanites’ were now so called, presumably because of Laman’s affiliation with them.”

After explaining how he and his people separated themselves from Laman, Lemuel, the sons of Ishmael, and their people and having told how the people of Nephi became established in the land, Nephi quotes a prophecy of the Lord. “And cursed shall be the seed of him that mixeth with their seed; for they shall be cursed even with the same cursing. And the Lord spake it, and it was done” (2 Nephi 5:23). This prophecy anticipates future mixing and intermarriage with the Lamanites, but the immediacy of Nephi’s personal observation that “the Lord spake it, and it was done” suggests that the process was already underway at the time Nephi left or very shortly after the separation. That is, unidentified people had, at this early period, already joined with the Lamanites in their opposition to Nephi and his people and had become like them, and Nephi saw this event as a fulfillment of the Lord’s prophecy. Since Nephite dissensions are not explicitly mentioned until several generations later, Nephi’s statement about unidentified peoples intermarrying with the Lamanites seems to indicate the presence of other non-Lehite peoples who had joined or were joining the Lamanites.

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Are your Enemies innately evil?

In an article at Less Wrong, Eliezer Yudkowsky explains that, “we tend to see far too direct a correspondence between others’ actions and personalities. When we see someone else kick a vending machine for no visible reason, we assume they are “an angry person”. But when you yourself kick the vending machine, it’s because the bus was late, the train was early, your report is overdue, and now the damned vending machine has eaten your lunch money for the second day in a row. Surely, you think to yourself, anyone would kick the vending machine, in that situation.

We attribute our own actions to our situations, seeing our behaviors as perfectly normal responses to experience. But when someone else kicks a vending machine, we don’t see their past history trailing behind them in the air. We just see the kick, for no reason we know about, and we think this must be a naturally angry person – since they lashed out without any provocation.

To understand why people act the way they do, we must first realize that everyone sees themselves as behaving normally. Don’t ask what strange, mutant disposition they were born with, which directly corresponds to their surface behavior.  Rather, ask what situations people see themselves as being in.  Yes, people do have dispositions – but there are not enough heritable quirks of disposition to directly account for all the surface behaviors you see. Most people see themselves as perfectly normal, from the inside.  Even people you hate, people who do terrible things, are not exceptional ‘mutants’.  No mutations are required, alas.  When you understand this, you are ready to stop being surprised by human events.

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Yea, they did murmur against me, saying: Our younger brother thinks to rule over us; and we have had much trial because of him; wherefore, now let us slay him, that we may not be afflicted more because of his words. For behold, we will not have him to be our ruler; for it belongs unto us, who are the elder brethren, to rule over this people. (2 Nephi 5: 3)

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Realistically, most people don’t construct their life stories with themselves as the villains. Everyone is the hero of their own story. The Enemy’s story, as seen by the Enemy, is not going to make the Enemy look bad. If you try to construe motivations that would make the Enemy look bad, you’ll end up flat wrong about what actually goes on in the Enemy’s mind. Once you know which side you’re on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all arguments that appear to favor the opposing side; otherwise it’s like stabbing your soldiers in the back.

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If the Enemy did have an evil disposition, that would be an argument in favor of your side. And any argument that favors your side must be supported, no matter how silly – otherwise you’re letting up the pressure somewhere on the battlefront. Everyone strives to outshine their neighbor in patriotic denunciation, and no one dares to contradict. Soon the Enemy has horns, bat wings, flaming breath, and fangs that drip corrosive venom. If you deny any aspect of this on merely factual grounds, you are arguing the Enemy’s side; you are a traitor. Very few people will understand that you aren’t defending the Enemy, just defending the truth.

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the words of Isaiah on ethnic and social diversity

Now back to our FAIRLDS.org article: “In light of the possibility that additional non-Lehite peoples had united with both the Nephites and the Lamanites, the teachings of Nephi and Jacob relating to Isaiah take on greater significance. After explaining that “we had already had wars and contentions with” the Lamanites (2 Nephi 5:34), Nephi inserts a lengthy sermon delivered by his brother Jacob (2 Nephi 6-10). Jacob indicates that he has previously spoken about “many things” (2 Nephi 6:2) but that Nephi now wants him to preach from Isaiah. In fact, Jacob says that Nephi had even selected the scriptural passages he was to discuss: prophecies of Isaiah that concerned the relationship between scattered Israel and the Gentiles (2 Nephi 6:4). Further, Jacob asks his people to liken these passages from Isaiah to their present situation (2 Nephi 6:5) and suggests that the application of these teachings concerns “things which are” as well as things “which are to come” (2 Nephi 6:4). As Latter-day Saints, we quite appropriately focus on the latter, but what was the context that made likening Isaiah’s words to themselves meaningful to the Nephites?

Certainly, Jacob’s sermon looks to the future, but in likening Jacob’s teachings to themselves, Nephite contemporary listeners would have drawn the obvious parallel with their own situation. As a branch of scattered Israel in a new land of promise, they sought to establish Zion but were opposed, hated, and persecuted by their former brethren. Even when Jacob applies these prophecies to the latter days, his words have immediate relevance to his contemporary listeners, who would likely have seen their Lamanite persecutors as the “Jews” of Jacob’s prophecy and the “Gentiles” as those non-Lehite peoples who had joined with the Lamanites against the people of Nephi. However, in his application of Isaiah to the Lehites, Jacob explains that not all Gentiles would oppose Zion and that some would be joint heirs with the people of Lehi in the blessings of the land: “But behold, this land, said God, shall be a land of thine inheritance, and the Gentiles shall be blessed upon the land” (2 Nephi 10:10). How would the Gentiles in the land be blessed? By being numbered among the children of Lehi [remember 2 Nephi 1: this land was made for you and me].

Wherefore, my beloved brethren, thus saith our God: I will afflict thy seed by the hand of the Gentiles; nevertheless, I will soften the hearts of the Gentiles, that they shall be like unto a father to them; wherefore, the Gentiles shall be blessed and numbered among the house of Israel. Wherefore, I will consecrate this land unto thy seed, and them who shall be numbered among thy seed, forever, for the land of their inheritance; for it is a choice land, saith God unto me, above all other lands, wherefore I will have all men that dwell thereon that they shall worship me, saith God. (2 Nephi 10:18-19)

The Lord’s promise, delivered to the people of Nephi by Jacob, is a perpetual one, having application from their own time forward. In the context of its time, Jacob’s sermon can be read as addressing the immediate question of how Lehite Israel was to relate to and interact with non-Lehite peoples in the promised land. The answer was that they might, if they so chose, join with the people of God in seeking to build up Zion as joint inheritors of the land. Once they did so, they too became Israel and were numbered with Lehi’s seed. Some have wondered why, if other people were present in the land during Book of Mormon times, they were not mentioned more frequently in the record. The precedent of making no distinction between Lehi’s descendants and converts from the rest of the population, introduced by the Nephites’ first priest, would have been foundational to the unity of Nephite society, would have influenced the words of later Nephite prophets, and may have set the additional precedent of viewing all peoples in the land in polar terms, such as Zion/Babylon or Nephite/Lamanite. Previous cultural identity would have been swallowed up in this polarized frame of reference.

Now the people which were not Lamanites were Nephites; nevertheless, they were called Nephites, Jacobites, Josephites, Zoramites, Lamanites, Lemuelites, and Ishmaelites. But I, Jacob, shall not hereafter distinguish them by these names, but I shall call them Lamanites that seek to destroy the people of Nephi, and those who are friendly to Nephi I shall call Nephites, or the people of Nephi, according to the reigns of the kings. (Jacob 1: 13-14)

An example of this process can be seen in the case of Nephi’s righteous brother Sam. When Lehi blesses Sam, he promises, “Blessed art thou, and thy seed; for thou shalt inherit the land like unto thy brother Nephi. And thy seed shall be numbered with his seed; and thou shalt be even like unto thy brother, and thy seed like unto his seed; and thou shalt be blessed in all thy days” (2 Nephi 4:11). Lehi blesses all his children, but only Sam is promised that his seed will be numbered with Nephi’s. Interestingly, when Lehite tribal designations are mentioned, there is no tribe of Sam (Jacob 1:13; 4 Nephi 1:35-38). Why? Apparently because when one is numbered with a people, one takes upon oneself the name and identity of that people. Similarly, Gentiles, once numbered with Israel or Lehi, are thereafter identified with their covenant fathers without respect to biological origin. From then on, they too are simply Israel.

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Nephi’s emphasis on the universal nature of God’s love is even more meaningful if written and taught to a people grappling with issues of ethnic and social diversity. “And he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile” (2 Nephi 26:33). Nephites would understand Jews to be those who came out from Jerusalem, yet the additional reference to Gentiles and heathen would only make sense to a Nephite if there were others in the land.