Compensating for Something?
It's a crude joke, but it's also terribly appropriate for this particular post. I want to introduce my topic, social compensation, with an insightful piece about the huge, mysterious temples in Central America, thought to be built by the Mayans. Based on commonalities between the two cultures, many Mormons suppose the Mayans to be related to the Nephite and Lamanite civilizations in the Book of Mormon. Ironically though, the dating on these temples puts them not at the height of the civilization, but near the end:
"C. Northcote Parkinson has demonstrated with withering insight how throughout history really ornate, tasteless, and pompous building programs have tended to come as the aftermath of civilization. After the vital powers are spent, then is the time for the super-buildings, the piling of stone upon stone for monuments of staggering mass and proportion. It was after the disciples of the early church decided to give up waiting for the Messiah and to go out for satisfaction here and now that the Christians of the fourth century took to staging festivals and erecting monuments in the grand manner, covering the whole Near East with structures of theatrical magnificence and questionable taste."
Ironically, he theorizes that truly great civilizations demonstrate their greatness by the success of their systems of government and economy; large, ornate buildings are often erected as compensation for when those things begin to fail. Dr. Hugh Nibley is quoted as comparing this in a religious sense to Christianity: Jesus' church was about hillsides and sheep and homes and fishing boats. Cathedrals and fancy papal robes weren't developed until hundreds of years after real apostles had died:
"How unlike the building program of the Church today which can barely erect enough of our very functional, almost plain chapels to keep abreast of the growing needs of the Latter-day Saints.
Though such piles as the great pyramid-temple of Chichén Itzá yield to few buildings in the world in beauty of proportion and grandeur of conception, there is something disturbing about most of these overpowering ruins. Writers describing them through the years have ever confessed to feelings of sadness and oppression as they contemplate the moldy magnificence—the futility of it all: “They have all gone away from the house on the hill,” and today we don’t even know who they were.
"Amid the ruins of the New World, as in Rome, we feel something of both the greatness and the misery, the genuine aspiration and the dull oppression, the idealism and the arrogance imposed by the heavy hand of priestcraft and kingcraft, and we wonder how the ruins of our own super buildings will look someday.
"The great monuments do not represent what the Nephites stood for; rather, they stand for what their descendants, 'mixed with the blood of their brethren,' descended to. But seen in the newer and wider perspective of comparative religious studies, they suggest to us not only the vanity of mankind and the futility of man’s unaided efforts, but also something nobler; the constant search of men to recapture a time when the powers of heaven were truly at the disposal of a righteous people." (emphasis added)
( Nibley on Book of Mormon Geography — Believe All Things http://www.believeallthings.com/1601/nibley-book-mormon-geography/#ixzz1cYpzgqnX)
Dr. Nibley's comparison between the lavish buildings of a false church and the simple but supreme power of the true church are reminds me of the scene from Indiana Jones where the growling black-robed Arab swings and slings his sword ferociously, and then Indiana pulls out his gun and simply ends the fight. As impressive as a sword might look, it can't come close to what a gun can do. What are we compensating for? To take a completely different example, an interior decorator once told me that the most beautiful homes are those with love in them. No amount of matching sconces and throw pillows can compensate if it's not there.
Unfortunately, it seems like we often choose to dress up instead of perform, or polish pewter instead of heal our relationships. How many other essential elements are we missing in our lives and in our society, and how are we compensating by putting way too much emphasis, time, effort and money into something that doesn't really solve the problem? Here are just a few:
1. Obviously, for me, family comes to mind first. We put a lot more effort into friends, pets, and jobs when our families are corrupt, disintegrating or nonexistent. Nice, but certainly not replacements.
2. As an early childhood educator, I've also observed that our society's focus on children's physical and mental development often completely excludes spiritual and character education, as though having a healthy mind and body was sufficient to ensure them a life of happiness. While certainly those areas of development are important, happiness is not correlated with intelligence or one's physical appearance (see: http://www.expatica.com/nl/health_fitness/healthcare/happiness-is-16773_9479.html). It is, however, closely tied to long-term, committed relationships (read: people who have learned to love, be patient and committed, work hard, and be selfless). And anyway, we believe that happiness comes from love, not money, right? Based on our own values, we should recognize the need for children to be given a strong grounding in truth and values, far above our insistent paranoia about potty training or listening to Baby Mozart.
3. Another obvious overcompensation for the lack of long-term, committed relationships is our obsession with sex has made it an end in itself, rather than a means to develop lasting, meaningful, awesome relationships that bring far more happiness.
4. Finally, as I discussed in my last blog post, we have compensated for the lack of real manliness in our society by making masculinity a matter of how big or how tough you are, or whether or not you cry, or whether your interests include sports and video games, when the most obvious definition of manliness is whether or not you can and do exercise your "manliness" - ie., have sex. I know it sounds shocking, and that's not to say that men don't also have a responsibility to be good people and demonstrate respect, civility, thrift, responsibility, honesty, etc. But because there are fewer married men, and therefore fewer men who can have good sex whenever they want to, the generation of sex-starved men have gradually decided to define their manliness by other, frankly quite silly, characteristics that have nothing to do with the ultimately unique characteristic of males.
Whether or not the great pyramids in central America were built near the end of their great civilization because the spiritual and governmental leadership had died or become corrupted, the evidence illustrates a truth that we can see in our own society today. When true greatness, or good families, or true religion, or clear principles of happiness are absent, we tend to overcompensate in other ways. Find the evidence of overcompensation in your life and in society in general - the things that we put far more into than they ever give back, then identify the real missing piece. If you have the courage to make the change, reprioritize, and don't be fooled again.
