All posts by Octagon Sun

essays

On Edelgard: Moral Complexity vs Moral Greyness

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I would like to discourage applying “moral greyness” to Edelgard (by discouraging using “moral greyness” in literary analysis generally). Most of this is going to be theory about literary theory, not a discussion of Edelgard, because the facts about Edelgard are largely known and settled. I don’t think it’s productive to rehash one more time the arguments about whether act X or act Y of Edelgard’s is justified. What’s at issue is not her, it’s the theories of interpretation that are applied to her.

Morally Grey vs Morally Complex

So, let’s get to it. There is a difference between moral greyness and moral complexity. There are several models for moral greyness and moral complexity, and I can’t account for all of them.

At least for me, when a character is described as morally grey, it means that the character has mixed intents. They respond to both good and evil motivations in a meaningful fashion, beyond a hero’s ability to fail or misjudge or a villain’s ability to have good traits. E.g., a villain is not morally grey just because he likes dogs or defends his family. When he burns down an orphanage, he’s just evil: any good intentions or tendencies don’t really weigh against concrete, evil actions. What makes a character morally grey is how they “halt … between two opinions” or “serve two masters.” They willfully and knowingly do the right thing and the wrong thing. When they do the wrong thing, they are not trying to do the right thing but failing; they are doing exactly what they intend. And viceversa when they do the right thing. Moral greyness, then, tends to be impermanent in most characters.

Moral complexity, on the other hand, is what you have for difficult moral questions. A good person in a morally complex situation may not achieve good outcomes, despite good intentions. Less often considered is how an evil person, in a morally complex situation, may not be able to achieve the evil they desire. The litmus test I apply is this: a situation is morally complex if reasonable people could disagree about the right option.[1]

To better understand moral complexity, consider the law: executing the law is morally complex, no matter how wise or clever or studied you are. Most judges over criminal trials try to exercise lenience and harshness when each is appropriate. They try to recognize when a defendant is capable of or willing to reform and when they are not. Over the course of their career, they will all be lenient and harsh to some people who don’t deserve it. Or, to complicate it further, they will be lenient to someone who genuinely does deserve leniency, but that person will later abuse that leniency of their own free choice and seriously hurt someone. On top of all that, there’s a feedback loop: a judge may be tempted to be overly lenient or overly harsh if they’ve found success in leniency or harshness, or they may underuse one approach after seeing it fail. Which it should be reemphasized, both approaches fail regularly, because people are messy and deserve second chances, but it’s also not fair to victims to give people a chance to hurt people again, and there’s no perfect way to reconcile these two things without omniscience.

I believe that calling the law morally grey is inaccurate for one, but more importantly, it devalues the efforts, intents, and study of judges (a definition of moral greyness that includes this sort of thing is immediately overbroad in my eyes). The vast majority of judges in developed nations are trying to get the right results. The problem is that the right result is a matter on which reasonable people will disagree. Especially in the moment, before the consequences are known and knowledge is perfected.[2]

It’s worth mentioning here that moral complexity is not moral relativity: there are better and worse answers, and clearly wrong answers, and maybe even clearly ok answers, in morally complex questions. The complexity may be fact-specific, where it’s unclear how moral principles will apply to the specific people and circumstances involved, or it might be that the whole situation is gnarly and hard to resolve. But moral complexity presumes there are better and worse outcomes; it’s not just a wash between all the different options.

Now, just to be clear, moral greyness has its place in analysis. But it is a narrow one, limited. Moral greyness is overapplied and overused. Issues like politics, lawmaking, judicial decisions, and the like are morally complex and have resisted solutions for millennia—and will likely do so for millennia more. They are not, however, morally grey.

Edelgard Time

Edelgard is not a person of mixed intents. She intends to do what’s right. She largely rejects evil motivations like vengeance, even when they could technically coexist with her real motivations of reform and defense of the weak.

It is her lot that her choices predominantly lie in areas of moral complexity. She is a warmonger and a lawmaker: neither war nor law admit easy answers to its moral questions.[3] But the questions that law and war pose need to be answered; we cannot delay, as we can with science, until we have a “right” answer. There is an urgency to human suffering that requires us to act. There are also fundamental flaws in our ability to research and recognize right answers: it’s not clear that we could find the right answer even with an infinite delay. Most often, we simply must act, and it is only in the action itself that the answer becomes clear (if that; in these fields many questions will never be answered by mortal means).

The discourse around Edelgard’s actions is proof itself that she is in a morally complex situation, not a morally grey one. The debate is almost never whether she has good or ill intent, it’s about whether her actions were justified. And, I think the past years have made it abundantly clear, reasonable people can differ on that for pretty much everything Edelgard did. Edelgard is capable of misjudging and you may feel free to disagree with any given action of hers. What is incorrect is attaching evil intention to any misjudgment you decide she has made.

Anyways, I am content to call Edelgard a hero and to say she did nothing wrong. Not because she “objectively” did the right thing in every circumstance, but because she always sought to do the right thing and took steps to do so. And, not only did she try to do the right thing, she tried to be the kind of person who can recognize the right thing even in complex situations, by studying law, history, and philosophy.[4] She repeatedly asks the player to be a person “swayed by [her] words and deeds,” because that is where the proof is.[5] Not in framings, not in perspectives, not in outcomes, and certainly not in “Red Emperor” tropes and comparisons within Fire Emblem, but in what she has sought out to do; what she has envisioned and intended, as proven by words and deeds.

A hero isn’t someone I agree with on every issue; they’re someone I trust to fight for the truth. And that’s what Edelgard does and that’s what she’s about.

Further Theory That Isn’t Required But At The Very Least Is Something I Believe And Find Useful

Mixing is the problem: good and evil don’t mix quite like lights and darks do in painting. Moral greyness is like the worst of videogame choice design. In most “light vs dark” games that leave the choice to the character, like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic or Mass Effect, good actions weigh directly against bad ones. But we all know it’s ridiculous to say someone who commits genocide and then saves an orphanage is morally neutral.

Yet, this is the idea that moral greyness tends to propagate: weighing good against evil. And, while it’s true that people do both good and evil, good actions and evil actions are incommensurable, incomparable. You cannot add triangles to the number five. You cannot mix good actions and evil actions.

To illustrate, I turn to the genre noir, a genre which happens to suffer greatly from being described as morally grey. Noir protagonists tend to start out with mixed intents. Much of what’s good in the genre is that it’s willing to depict goodness in people who do bad things. So that would make them morally grey. But the point of noir is the darkness: it needs its protagonists to love the dark more and to end in the darkness. Noir is not a genre of moral relativity or ultimate greyness: if it were so, it would lose its impact and force. Noir needs the darks to be darks and its lights to be lights, because its meaning is created by contrasting the two, not by confusing them.

It is not even clear that you can “add” good to good or evil to evil. People are not permanently good or evil in any way. Good people can abandon their past, as can evil people. A good person can remain good in an evil system, even when that evil system forces them to do evil. And viceversa. The same tragic backstories can equally justify a heroic tale of overcoming and a villainous tale of succumbing. We try to create good and evil identities, but identity is an ephemeral thing. Not just for characters, but for ourselves and all humanity. We can seek to preserve good and evil intents, but we cannot reach a point where our good and evil are unchangeable.[6]

Anyways, and in conclusion, please take care, stay safe, and may your intentions be pure.

Footnotes

[1] Now, you can still do evil in a morally complex situation by choosing a harmful option that reasonable people would not choose. If you want a good reputation coming out of moral complexity, you need to choose one of the options that could be reasonably motivated by goodness. But that’s not the scenario we’re dealing with.

[2] I will note that some people use moral complexity to disguise evil intents. They will intentionally seek evil outcomes but use the complexity of the matter to claim that their intents were good and abuse the theories of well-motivated people to justify their actions and minimize the harms. But this is still morally evil, rather than morally grey. And, it must be emphasized, an evil person abusing a good person’s theory to achieve evil doesn’t mean the theory is wrong either. The theory may still be a good one, because an evil person will not execute it properly and will only imitate the appearance of the theory, rather than the substance. In short, the substance may still be quite good. Rejecting the theory because it was exploited may well cut you off from a sizable portion of truth.

That being said, I do believe that you can usually distinguish between genuine people and fakers if you are close enough to them. Not 100% of the time, since we all misjudge, but I would not say that moral complexity makes good and evil indistinguishable.

[3] Note that I use warmonger in a literal sense and not the normal pejorative one here.

[4] This is what sets Edelgard apart from the rest of the cast for me. Every character tries to do the right thing at least sometimes. However, Edelgard more than anyone else studies morality to increase how often she makes the right call. Especially in governance, it is not enough to desire the right thing: you must refine your understanding as well as your intentions. As Christ said: “Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”

[5] Edelgard’s focus on words and deeds evokes these passages for me: number one and number two. Much of what I have written here, not just the one section, is motivated by these passages, too.

[6] I’d recommend reading these two criticisms of identity: one by the Argentine author Borges and another by the transcendental Ralph Waldo Emerson.

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important things 5

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no reason but grimm’s hollow is a perfect little game, ideal length for a stream, and free. it’s a worthy thing.

//

no tengo razón de mencionarlo, pero grimm’s hollow es un jueguito perfecto, dura exactamente lo necesario para un directo y es gratis. es una cosita dignísima. y es disponible en español 🙂

see also: https://ghosthum.itch.io/grimms-hollow

but honestly may be my fav thing ive ever streamed, esp. of things i played just for stream

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Failure to Prove isn’t Proof of the Alternative, and Thoughts About a World of Belief

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What it says in the title. We like to have things proven, and it’s great when we can do that. But proof is hard (and the more you study the underlying principles of math and science, the more true that becomes). I mean, in the strictest sense, it’s probably most correct to say a true proof is impossible. But that’s not the focus tonight.

If you only accept what can be proven, you will miss out on a lot of good in life, and a lot of truth. So to speak, it’s necessary to anticipate the truth.

For example, you may know how calculus was codiscovered by Leibniz and Newton in the 1600s. What you probably don’t know is that neither of them proved calculus. It took 200 years to prove calculus did what Newton, Leibniz, and basically every mathematician said it did (it was Cauchy and Weierstrass who are responsible for the proof). For those two hundred years, calculus was unproven; the arguments explaining calculus literally divided by zero throughout. But calculus worked just fine for those 200 years. The proof was great to have, it enriched the theory for certain, but the world would in no wise have been benefited if it had waited for the proof before it relied on calculus. Indeed, if calculus had not been used, it’s hard to know whether people would have had much urgency at all when it came to finding the proof (while I doubt it would have happened this way, one can imagine a world where the failures to prove calculus led to its abandonment).[1]

It is troubling to see scientific and mathematical methods applied to things for which they are ill-adapted. It’s worse to see people abandon ideas, or hate their holders, because the proof is not there. We do not live in a world of proof and, after any honest study of epistemology, I struggle to see how you could not be full of trepidation about the whole idea of proof. I’m not even sure that a world of proof is desirable in the first place. Trying to create a world of proof, based on the limitations we face as mortals, seems dangerous and in cases ruinous. Efforts to reduce literature and law to science produce more pseudoscience than anything and cheapen the beauty and brilliance of each field.

It’s hard to explain your beliefs to an argumentative society once you give up on proving everything. But that’s the arguer’s fault, not yours. The modern view of argument is fictitious, abusing science and stretching its claims while failing to acknowledge the essential role of belief in science itself. People like Richard Dawkins are confusing because they hate religion so avidly while their beliefs of choice are often not proven at all. One of Dawkins’ darlings: evolution as a history of all life and speciation, is far from proven–it’s natural selection as a source of speciation that’s been the subject of rigorous experimentation. And for all his criticism of dogma, Nietzsche ultimately felt compelled to acknowledge that he had in fact created a new dogma (zealotry is quite visible in his devotees).[2]

Now, the value of belief in the absence of proof applies heavily to religion. Religion is an important field, but a classic example of knowledge resistant to the scientific method. But religion is not the only reason to value belief: It is incredibly difficult to prove:

  • The falsity of every flavor of fascism;
  • The evil in every form of racism;
  • That being good is worthwhile, even when doing the right thing is not in one’s self-interest.
  • Pretty much every debate like these, whether religious, ethical, ideological, or otherwise.

If you tried to prove every theory of fascism wrong, you’ll be amazed how many subtle variations fascists can come up with, each required different arguments and disproofs. It’s a Sisyphean task (it might be closer to the slaying of the hydra if the hydra could not be burned). It is much easier to convince someone to abandon fascism or racism, if they choose to believe in doing good, than it is to convince them that fascism or racism themselves are not in their rational self-interest, scientifically invalid, etc. An anti-Semite can always find a reason to hate, no matter how often you introduce him to wonderful, kind, and good Jews. The anti-Semite will only abandon their hate by choosing to believe in Jews as a people.

And this is where we end up. Belief is the domain of most knowledge, not proof. Proof is seductive because we believe that we can force people to believe us via proof and, to be certain, this does happen once in a while. But such a proof must be unassailable and, more importantly, the audience must be willing to believe, or they will find some way to reject it. We all understand, for our own beliefs, that there are odd things we haven’t fully figured out. But we trust that the problems will ultimately get sorted out, whether in this life or the next. What I ask, or what I recommend, are two things. First, let other people have their beliefs; let them wait for things to get figured out. Give them, as people, the leniency you give your ideas. Second, let yourself believe and grow. Don’t wait for proof, don’t demand it, and, whenever you discover you were wrong, freely believe something new. And, as always, stay safe and take care.

[1] In many ways, this whole article is a rehash of The Analyst: A Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician: Wherein It Is Examined Whether the Object, Principles, and Inferences of the Modern Analysis Are More Distinctly Conceived, or More Evidently Deduced, Than Religious Mysteries and Points of Faith by George Berkeley and the history around it. He correctly criticized mathematics for its lack of rigor, even as scientists and mathematicians demanded a level of rigor from religion that they had not achieved for themselves.

[2] While I’ll take Nietzsche’s stated opposition to the Nazis and anti-Semites at face value, I’ll note that it’s not surprising at all that fascists immediately appropriated his work.

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dividing online spaces between minors and adults as we do is super irresponsible

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adult-only online spaces are gonna be a fiction as long as the internet is anonymous.

like, imagine securing bars with the question: do you promise you’re not underage? it’d literally be criminal negligence.

children are present.

some notes:

-this is not kids’ faults. they are constantly pressured to act precociously adult.

-adult spaces are often opaque about why they’re limited. they range from “no real reason besides the owner’s dislike of kids” to “literal footage of terrorism.” incoherent.

-kids deserve a chance to participate in society and learn by experience what the deal is. a lot of ‘adult’ content could tweak itself a little bit and be fine, giving kids access to more mature, nuanced, and diverse experiences over the garbage that usually gets peddled to them.

-it’s on adults to accommodate kids and design appropriate rules and systems. we’re supposed to be the responsible ones.

-requiring kids to self enforce is never gonna work.

-kids deserve to be taken seriously. they’re human.

to end: never assume children aren’t present.

fiction

Wispit

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Wispit are actually two, almost inseparable symbiotic lifeforms. One is a docile, cloudlike mass, while the other is a small, winged humanoid (height clocking in at 2 to 3 ft). When necessary, wispit refers to the humanoid, while wispit cloud is, well, the cloud. In addition, wispit have no legs, but a sort of tail that helps them nestle into the cloud. Their hair tends to be long, and their ears are more like horns, being long, spiked, and sturdy.

The two species are totally defined by their symbiosis. For example, wispit are intellectually precocious compared to other sapient species. The cloud protects the young wispit and allows it to develop its mental faculties faster than its physical ones. While the cloud allows both to fly (their main mode of movement), the wispit’s wings make for much quicker movement. And, naturally, a wispit is strongly incentivized to nurture, feed, and protect their cloud.

Wispits and their clouds are born and raised together and have nearly identical lifespans. A wispit that loses its cloud is crippled, while a cloud without its wispit becomes ill and will often stop eating. Much like a body will reject an organ transplant if it does not recognize the organ’s cells, a wispit and clouds’ bodies will reject attempts to be separated or have the other replaced.

Since gasses can’t naturally retain their shape, carry weight, or anything like that, wispit clouds need a touch of magic to live. Consequently, there are no wispit in nonmagical rings.

miscellany

!8ball

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sure, i guess
I won’t recommend it
I would say no
search within yourself or somethin
(magic conch shell) – maybe someday
(magic conch shell) – follow the seahorse
(magic conch shell) – I don’t think so
(magic conch shell) – no
(magic conch shell) – yes
(magic conch shell) – try asking again
you’re stressing me out >.>
it is a good day to do what has to be done
the law requires i answer no
nothing but air, heads up

>.> don’t ask me that
José Arturo Castellanos Contreras (San Vicente, El Salvador, December 23, 1893 — San Salvador, June 18, 1977) was a Salvadoran army colonel and diplomat who, while working as El Salvador’s Consul General for Geneva during World War II, and in conjunction with a Jewish-Hungarian businessman named György Mandl, helped save up to 40,000 Jews and Central Europeans from Nazi persecution by providing them with Political Asylum (Salvadoran nationality).
yes and no
yesn’t
yosh
ogey
yoshi
sí
the answer is logically equivalent to the continuum hypothesis
affirmative
negative
roll a die, if you roll a 2, then yes, otherwise, no
not a chance
many bothans died to bring you this information but the information didn’t arrive
as sure as the sun rises
this is a fundamental truth which has governed the development of the universe
as long as you have enough rubies
See 1 Nephi 13:22
~yes
it do be like that
yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
no no no no no no no
yes with the axiom of choice, no without
nunca jamás
no~

miscellany

!curse

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You have been cursed, generically.
You have been cursed with a sinus infection.
subscrb fro free free iPad (real)
free (unlimited) vbucks tutorial . mp3 download 240p punjabi subtítulos en español
People will always ask you things that they could answer with a 2 second search.
Your playlists are decidedly not fire and anyone who listens to them will tell you so.
You have to watch this stream RIGHT NOW!!!
You are now left-footed (your right foot is as awkward as a nondominant hand).
You are aware of how many licks it took to get to the center of every single tootsie pop. Your brain will bring this information up in an inconvenient fashion.
All pasta and noodles that you try to eat are now penne. Even things like ramen.
The Lich personally calls you a nerd.
Your faucets will always leak.
You are cursed, but also double-cursed to never know what the first curse is.
Your KDR will always be embarassing.
You’ll have to live with the consequences of your actions.
Blankets will warm you up too much. No more cozy.
You will feel your skin as if it were a skintight suit over your flesh.
Your nose will be so long that kissing will become impossible.
Your teeth will have the flexibility and texture of noodles, but the same durability.
Your living space will have an infestation of ankle-high sonic ocs.
Someone in your life will ensure you end up tied to a train track in a cheesy villain kinda way.
Hippity hoppity your tongue is now my property.
The IRS will repossess your kneecaps. For you and you alone, this will be legal.
You can only sleep with the fishes. Figuring out the air situation is on you.
Go live in Nebraska. (not necessarily a curse)
You forgot to cook with the vegetables you bought while trying to be responsible.
Your burger king has foot lettuce.
Your eyebrows can grow as long as the hair on your head and grows quite fast.
كان عليك ترجمة هذا.
pay $5 to unlock your curse.
Your pet rock is having second thoughts.
You are not forklift certified.
bonk bonk bonk bonk
Your footsteps naturally squeak.
It is a terrible night to have a curse. (it was going to be a good night to have a curse.)
sentenced to League of Legends.
Shadow the Hedgehog will whisper in your ear at inopportune moments.
Garfield thinks you are the lasagna.
You will slowly transform into Eggman. Is this really a curse Kappa
You hav 2 speak in uwu
Catspeak. You know, like, nya.
Kirby’s gonna eat ya :3
anime
a rat is gonna climb on your head and ratatouille you
Your stomach feels wobbly :<
You have received left pizza with none beef.

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RE:The term “mormon”

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For when this comes up.

I am what is most commonly known as a mormon, a member of a minority/nonmainline Christian denomination. Mormon is not a correct term (outside of a limited number of historical events and objects). Mormonism is never correct. To refer to people, Latter-day Saint(s) is correct. For the institution, it’s the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

See this style guide for more info on how to use the terms exactly. Latter-day Saint and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will always be fine in their respective contexts. I ask you to use these terms rather than “mormon,” “mormonism,” “the mormon church,” or any variation thereof.

It’s easier to remember the name if you understand it’s two parts:

Church of Jesus Christ: Very early in the history of the Church, the entire name was Church of Christ. We follow Christ and base our religion on Him. However, there are plenty of different churches with the same or similar name. Second, we believe in continuing revelation by God and that God requested that the following phrase be added:

of Latter-day Saints: Latter-day Saints is based on two things. Of the periods mentioned in scripture, we live in the latter-days, that is, late in time based on what prophecy covers. Saints is just what we call followers of Christ, because we seek and, by the power of Christ obtain, sanctification (saint and sanctification are related etymologically).

Why “mormon” isn’t great

In the following sections, consider why the term is not accepted. Issues with the term include false association, misinformation/discrimination, and denial of Christianity:

False association: Multiple groups are called “mormons,” of which mine, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, is the vast majority. Most of these groups separated over 100 years ago and have no influence or relation to each other any more. However, because we are all called “mormons,” people think the activity of any one of these groups applies to all. This has been most problematic because fringe “mormon” groups have garnered international attention in recent years, for their involvement in crimes such as polygamy and child abuse.

Those groups are not associated with us, and we really would like not to be wrapped up with them. Because many of these groups are in Utah, which is majority Latter-day Saint, whenever these crimes are discovered, many of the criminal investigators and prosecutors on the case are in fact Latter-day Saints. Because these groups practice isolation, gathering enough information to support a warrant is difficult. We don’t know that all of them engage in criminal behavior either and people don’t deserve criminal investigation merely for isolation or nonstandard cultural practices. But the point is, when these big cases were discovered, Latter-day Saints were just as appalled as everyone else. We are not “protecting” them; they avoid us too.

There are also some radical altright groups that try to use the doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to justify their actions. Properly speaking, they are more ideologically aligned with sovereign citizens than us and rely on cherry-picking and stripping statements of context. Their beliefs have been condemned time and time again, whether it’s antiimmigrant sentiment, antigovernment sentiment, or white supremacism. They don’t listen to the Church. They’re on their own stupid path and we’d get them to cut it out if they actually cared about the Gospel and weren’t just using it to justify their power-tripping. We believe in upholding the law and that everyone is a child of God and a recipient of His love.

Misinformation and discrimination: Latter-day Saints have been victims of false information, exoticization, and alternative facts since the beginning. As many early Latter-day Saints were immigrants to the US, they were victims of intense antimigrant sentiment in the US. There’s also the general hatred for non-Protestant religions rampant in the country at the time. Then our opposition to slavery caused a lot of problems, then our opposition to attacks on Native Americans, etc. We’ve never been popular and yellow journalists have always been happy to profit off that. There’s a good chance you have heard misinfo that dates back to the 1800s and was never corrected. We were literally attacked by the US Army on claims of treason and the government didn’t even bother to verify them first (at least that became a scandal for Buchanan).

Just a handful of stuff my family and I have dealt with: claims that we kidnap children, that we have horns, that our leaders are part of a great conspiracy dating involving Nixon and Eisenhower to form a new state called “Mormonia.” My father has been sued and had challenges to his bar membership solely for being a Latter-day Saint (and while the challenges were easily defeated, they still cost us time and money). That’s some of the more ridiculous stuff, but we’ve been the subjects of deliberate exclusion and hostility. My first experience was when I was 10 or so. It’s also the reason why I don’t necessarily bring up the subject often, because I cannot assume that a random person will treat me as a human if I say I am a “mormon.” Or, more commonly, people will treat me immediately as a villain or undesirable, even if we’ve been civil up to that point. When I see the term “mormon” online, I immediately experience anxiety because, 95% of the time, it’s to call us cultists, insist we’re idiots, spread sensational claims about us, and so on. This happens even in fora completely unrelated to us: many people feel completely at liberty to hate us, even in circles that recognize persecution of other religious minorities is inappropriate.

Denial of Christianity: the term’s original function is to claim we are something besides Christian. Now, I am not remotely interested in any argument to the contrary; I have heard many and not a one was compelling. I will leave it at this: I have spent my entire life studying the words and life of Christ. All I really want in life is to be His disciple and changed by Him, based on the power of His Atonement. In the Church, “we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins” (2 Ne 25:26). I would like to think we deserve to call ourselves Christians.

History of the term

The word “mormon” itself is in fact a name: Mormon was an indigenous American historian who lived in the 4th Century. He compiled, wrote, and edited the majority of the Book of Mormon. The remainder was either written by his son after Mormon died to genocide or was part of primary documents included by Mormon in the Book of Mormon.

Latter-day Saints don’t really use the term internally (except as a reflection of pressures discussed in the next paragraph). If I’m with other Latter-day Saints, we use some variation of Latter-day Saints. It came to be a label for Latter-day Saint when hostile groups began to use it as a pejorative. While the term is not as explicitly pejorative as it was in the past, it is certainly not divorced from the pejorative sense (and I have had ample encounters with the term being used pejoratively).

Latter-day Saints are in a position where the term “mormon” is much, much more common, in no small part thanks to the aforementioned yellow journalists. So, when dealing with others, we’re kinda forced to use the term or people will have no clue what we’re talking about. Even with the issues of misinfo. Most people are kinda just in the position where they know the term, have picked up a mix of true and false things, but don’t necessarily hate us. It’s also worth noting some Latter-day Saints don’t particularly mind the term.

There have also been periods where we attempted to reclaim the term “mormon.” We are not doing so now. As mentioned, we believe in continuing revelation from God. He recently said that He did not approve of the term “mormon,” that He had given us a name, and that we were to use that name.

Thus, we’ll often mention that we are called “mormons,” but that the term is improper and ask people to use a different name.

Final Thoughts

As a general rule, not even just with respect to us, please use endonyms, not exonyms. Endonyms are names that groups choose for themselves; exonyms are names given to a group by outsiders. Example: you may have heard the name Anasazi used to describe the indigenous Americans who lived in places like Mesa Verde. Anasazi is an exonym, given by the Navajo, that means ancient enemies. Not really a proper thing to call a group. In this case, we don’t quite know what the right endonym is, so we’ve had to settle with calling them Ancestral Puebloans.

Anyway, endonyms > exonyms. Latter-day Saint > mormon. I’d invite you to follow this principle as much as you can. Even with historical groups, people across the planet, and the dead. It’s not just about using endonyms when someone asks you to do so, or when you’re with someone who’s a part of the group in question. It’s about accuracy and truth in ethnic/religious/historical relations.

Using endonyms is about helping yourself and others understand people on their own terms. When you know a group by an exonym, that should be a red flag that this group doesn’t even get to control their own name. Groups like this tend to be victims of serious, enduring misinformation and often serious prejudice. Whether it’s Latter-day Saints, Romani, Inuit, or any other group, switching from an exonym to an endonym is a valuable chance to learn more about one of the peoples who share(d) this world with you (and expunge false information you may have absorbed).

I’ll end by repeating the request, please just don’t use the term “mormon.” I do not like it. It stresses me out. Even for Latter-day Saints who are ok with the term, many’d prefer Latter-day Saint. In any case, take care and thank you for the consideration.

Originally written on Jun. 26, 2022. Small update on Feb. 20, 2023, mostly to add the discussion on exonyms and endonyms.

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Sapient AI

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Just writing this down quick after seeing a number of articles on artificial intelligence. I think an AI would probably be sapient if it could actually understand language (or that sapience is right in that area), but I also think understanding language is computationally impossible :/