The Trials That Don’t Go Away


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We hear all the time about overcoming trials—but what about the trials that stay with us? The ones that won’t go away? In Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Audrey Hepburn’s character, Holly Golightly, tells Paul (George Peppard) that she has the mean reds. “You know those days when you get the means reds?” “Same as the blues?” “No,” Holly replies slowly. “The blues are because you’re getting fat and maybe it’s been raining too long; you’re just sad, that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?” I’ve had that feeling. I’ve had that feeling for as long as I can remember. When I was in elementary school, I would get incredibly nervous when we would have scheduled fire drills. It wasn't the sound—in fact, I was fine when I didn't know there would be a fire drill. I became anxious when I knew it was going to happen. It doesn't make much sense, but knowing what I...

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An interesting article.  

One other tangent that occurred to me:

Breakfast at Tiffany’s, stripped of its 1960s charm, is basically a morally despicable movie about morally despicable people.

The Good Place (one of whose characters is cited in the article) is basically a show about morally despicable people doing and/or trying to get away with morally despicable things.

—Several of the Beatles (authors of the song Blackbird) were/are morally despicable people whose lives are not to be emulated in any meaningful way.

I wouldn’t blame anyone for being a product of the culture in which they were raised.  But, when are we going to look at the connection between the apparently increasing problem of depression/spiritual ennui, and the utter moral/spiritual bankruptcy that pervades our popular culture?  When are we going to liberate ourselves from mental and emotional servitude to the paragons of personal and relational dysfunction who are writing our movies and our music and our literature; and tell them to shove their nihilism and libertinism somewhere that the sun don’t shine?  Could it be that, once we work a little harder to break our residual ties with Babylon, we’ll find that the age-old techniques of Zion Memorial Hospital are even more effective than we’d ever thought possible?

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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18 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Breakfast at Tiffany’s, stripped of its 1960s charm, is basically a morally despicable movie about morally despicable people.

Soon after we married, my wife and I rented this movie. Classic movie with Audrey Hepburn—how can you lose? We started watching, and we kept waiting for it to get good. We waited literally through the whole thing, then looked at each other and said, "Why is that a classic movie?"

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If someone gets a leg cut off and then discusses overcoming that trial no one thinks the discussion is about regrowing the leg. It's always been strange to me that people talk about mental and emotional trials that way though. Like overcoming anxiety means you no longer have anxiety issues. If you have a missing leg you have a missing leg. But you can, without a doubt, overcome that trial.

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Guest Mores
10 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

—Several of the Beatles (authors of the song Blackbird) were/are morally despicable people whose lives are not to be emulated in any meaningful way.

I'd say all of them.

10 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

I wouldn’t blame anyone for being a product of the culture in which they were raised.  But, when are we going to look at the connection between the apparently increasing problem of depression/spiritual ennui, and the utter moral/spiritual bankruptcy that pervades our popular culture?  When are we going to liberate ourselves from mental and emotional servitude to the paragons of personal and relational dysfunction who are writing our movies and our music and our literature; and tell them to shove their nihilism and libertinism somewhere that the sun don’t shine?  Could it be that, once we work a little harder to break our residual ties with Babylon, we’ll find that the age-old techniques of Zion Memorial Hospital are even more effective than we’d ever thought possible?

Would you say the same of Mozart or Beethoven?

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2 hours ago, Mores said:

Would you say the same of Mozart or Beethoven?

By this question you seem to be implying a connection between classical music and "the apparently increasing problem of depression/spiritual ennui, and the utter moral/spiritual bankruptcy that pervades our popular culture".

That seems odd to me.

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24 minutes ago, The Folk Prophet said:

By this question you seem to be implying a connection between classical music and "the apparently increasing problem of depression/spiritual ennui, and the utter moral/spiritual bankruptcy that pervades our popular culture".

That seems odd to me.

What I got from JAG's post (to which I was replying with that statement to which you responded) was that those who listen/watch to the products of individual artists who are "morally despicable" will have a tendency to go down the road of "depression/spiritual ennui".  So, Mozart and Beethoven would fit into that category.  To test the premise that JAG put forth, then we'd have to find the same phenom with them as well.

@Just_A_Guy, if I misunderstood your intent, please expound a bit more.

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11 hours ago, The Folk Prophet said:

If someone gets a leg cut off and then discusses overcoming that trial no one thinks the discussion is about regrowing the leg. It's always been strange to me that people talk about mental and emotional trials that way though.

Well, some brain things are like losing a leg (or being born without one), and other brain things are like breaking a bone and healing.   Figuring out which one is at play may be easy, or it may involve guesswork.

A shrink specializing in mood disorders I knew back in the '90's, once shared with me a little about what private practice was like.   He said he had two main types of clients.  One type needed help "leveling the playing field", so they could get their misfiring brain to work enough like everyone else's, so the odds of just being a human on planet earth weren't stacked against them.  The other type would come in and complain about being sunburned, and he'd treat the sunburn and work with them to develop plans to stay out of the dang sun so they wouldn't get sunburned so often.

 

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8 minutes ago, Mores said:

What I got from JAG's post (to which I was replying with that statement to which you responded) was that those who listen/watch to the products of individual artists who are "morally despicable" will have a tendency to go down the road of "depression/spiritual ennui".  So, Mozart and Beethoven would fit into that category.  To test the premise that JAG put forth, then we'd have to find the same phenom with them as well.

@Just_A_Guy, if I misunderstood your intent, please expound a bit more.

I think you about had it—though (once the media is old enough) there is perhaps a distinction to be made between the moral character of the individuals who happened to create the media, versus the mores openly espoused within the media itself.  

I really don’t know enough about the lives of Beethoven and Mozart to weigh in on their personal virtues or vices.  But for the purposes of this discussion, I haven’t seen anyone write a column about their ongoing struggles with depression and openly acknowledge that Beethoven and Mozart have been (and/or ought to be) highly influential in the way they have approached the problem. 

We have known for hundreds of years that certain attitudes and behaviors just plain don’t work, from a sociological/happiness perspective.  Then we find those attitudes and behaviors spreading, our culture doesn’t work as well as it used to, people aren’t happy, and we all say “golly gee willikers, maybe we can fix this by re-engineering the way our forbears approached the Gospel.”  

Well, maybe.  Or, maybe we could start taking all those scriptures about “fleeing Babylon” at face value; and then see if that doesn’t start making a dent in our woes.

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7 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

I think you about had it—though (once the media is old enough) there is perhaps a distinction to be made between the moral character of the individuals who happened to create the media, versus the mores openly espoused within the media itself.

I agree that this is a very important distinction.

With music, however, I wonder how much difference there is between music with "built-in" feelings of ennui (which classical artists did achieve) vs. the same songs with words about topics that may or may not have the same themes.  (If you saw Philidelphia, there was a scene where Hanks narrated the music from an opera).

Example Rocky Raccoon was certainly a listful song as far as the musical theory.  But the lyrics were completely playful and ridiculous.

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4 minutes ago, Mores said:

What I got from JAG's post (to which I was replying with that statement to which you responded) was that those who listen/watch to the products of individual artists who are "morally despicable" will have a tendency to go down the road of "depression/spiritual ennui".  So, Mozart and Beethoven would fit into that category.  To test the premise that JAG put forth, then we'd have to find the same phenom with them as well.

@Just_A_Guy, if I misunderstood your intent, please expound a bit more.

As for me, I don't think the moral character of an artist is relevant unless that moral character is known and thereby becomes an example. Moreover, I think there's a cultural difference between "rock star" idols and classical music composers in that kids who see some rock band partying might well choose to emulate that lifestyle (dress, language, ideals, etc), whereas someone who enjoys and studies classical music and may be aware that the composer was an adulterous drug user is probably less likely to be drawn into emulating that lifestyle.

I also think there is a fairly large difference between the moral ideas represented in The Beatles' music and Miley Cyrus or Taylor Swift.

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7 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

I think you about had it—though (once the media is old enough) there is perhaps a distinction to be made between the moral character of the individuals who happened to create the media, versus the mores openly espoused within the media itself.  

[Insert snide remark about this being the only way JAG will get into heaven.]

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8 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

We have known for hundreds of years that certain attitudes and behaviors just plain don’t work, from a sociological/happiness perspective.  Then we find those attitudes and behaviors spreading, our culture doesn’t work as well as it used to, people aren’t happy, and we all say “golly gee willikers, maybe we can fix this by re-engineering the way our forbears approached the Gospel.”  

Well, maybe.  Or, maybe we could start taking all those scriptures about “fleeing Babylon” at face value; and then see if that doesn’t start making a dent in our woes.

Yes.

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On a side note: I knew that some of my nieces were huge Taylor Swift fans and their mom took the to Taylor Swift concerts and the like and so was under the impression that she (unlike Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, or the like) wasn't overtly sexual, suggestive, and evil. So the other month a Taylor Swift concert came out on one of the streaming services, so I checked out part of it. About the third song in I turned it off horrified that my nieces were consuming this sort of thing. I couldn't believe how overtly sexual and awful it was! I mean, sure...still not Cyrus/Gaga territory...but not the moderately wholesome stuff I imagined by a LONG shot.

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19 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

Well, some brain things are like losing a leg (or being born without one), and other brain things are like breaking a bone and healing.   Figuring out which one is at play may be easy, or it may involve guesswork.

Honestly the analogy between the physical and the mental/emotional falls apart pretty quickly because they aren't, actually, analogous in most cases. Where they are analogous is when there is literally physical damage to the brain or endocrine system. But even that gets complicated

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47 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

I think you about had it—though (once the media is old enough) there is perhaps a distinction to be made between the moral character of the individuals who happened to create the media, versus the mores openly espoused within the media itself.  

I really don’t know enough about the lives of Beethoven and Mozart to weigh in on their personal virtues or vices.  But for the purposes of this discussion, I haven’t seen anyone write a column about their ongoing struggles with depression and openly acknowledge that Beethoven and Mozart have been (and/or ought to be) highly influential in the way they have approached the problem. 

We have known for hundreds of years that certain attitudes and behaviors just plain don’t work, from a sociological/happiness perspective.  Then we find those attitudes and behaviors spreading, our culture doesn’t work as well as it used to, people aren’t happy, and we all say “golly gee willikers, maybe we can fix this by re-engineering the way our forbears approached the Gospel.”  

Well, maybe.  Or, maybe we could start taking all those scriptures about “fleeing Babylon” at face value; and then see if that doesn’t start making a dent in our woes.

Elisha, the primary author of this post, talks about struggling with anxiety since she was a very, very little girl — during a time when she probably watched "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood" rather than "Breakfast at Tiffany's," when "The Good Place" wasn't out, and when her music choices probably consisted mainly of primary songs. I don't think her lack of morality — or associating with people or things that are morally repugnant — was an issue at that point. She also talks about experiencing deep, debilitating anxiety on her mission, a time when you're completely separated from "Babylon." 

Similarly, she said nothing about the Church needing to reorient itself; instead, she focused on how Heavenly Father has helped her through her trials. 

Anxiety is a real, genuine brain disorder that needs to be treated through therapy and sometimes medicine — rather than pointing the finger at all the things you think she's doing wrong by associating herself with "bad" things, perhaps we could consider that she has a real, psychological problem that needs addressing and that simply changing what she watches on the television isn't going to fix the problem.

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12 minutes ago, amykeim said:

Elisha, the primary author of this post, talks about struggling with anxiety since she was a very, very little girl — during a time when she probably watched "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood" rather than "Breakfast at Tiffany's," when "The Good Place" wasn't out, and when her music choices probably consisted mainly of primary songs. I don't think her lack of morality — or associating with people or things that are morally repugnant — was an issue at that point. She also talks about experiencing deep, debilitating anxiety on her mission, a time when you're completely separated from "Babylon." 

Similarly, she said nothing about the Church needing to reorient itself; instead, she focused on how Heavenly Father has helped her through her trials. 

Anxiety is a real, genuine brain disorder that needs to be treated through therapy and sometimes medicine — rather than pointing the finger at all the things you think she's doing wrong by associating herself with "bad" things, perhaps we could consider that she has a real, psychological problem that needs addressing and that simply changing what she watches on the television isn't going to fix the problem.

Two points:

1) We are not completely separated from "Babylon" on our mission. I know missionaries who embraced "Babylon" even on their mission.

2) Anxiety isn't a brain disorder. Let's review scriptures from the Book of Mormon:

Jacob 2:3, "but I this day am weighed down with much more desire and anxiety for the awelfare of your souls than" (emphasis mine)

Jacob 4:18, "I will unfold this mystery unto you; if I do not, by any means, get shaken from my firmness in the Spirit, and stumble because of my over anxiety for you." (emphasis mine)

To some degree the majority of the population experiences "anxiety." Even our prophets of old recognized how "anxiety" is able to increase our desires, and our "over anxiety" can cause us to fear more than we should, and I find Jacob's words enlightening that over anxiety can cause us to stumble and be shaken from a firmness in the Spirit. (obviously, Jacob probably used a different word than anxiety, but that is how the Lord translated the word used by Jacob)

As one who struggled with anxiety, it took me four years to overcome a specific over anxiety I faced. There is an aspect in my life where I have to watch my levels, and I haven't yet found/discovered the root of this anxiety. Anxiety doesn't "need" to be treated; however, if a person feels therapy or medicine will help that is a personal choice. Line upon line, precept upon precept, over four years (two of those on my mission) the Lord showed me the catalyst to my over anxiety and through the atonement helped me to overcome.

Anxiety in and of itself is not bad (not a brain disorder), over anxiety is what we have to watch for in ourselves.

 

 

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Pretty sure Jesus Christ was suffering from anxiety in Gethsemane.  So it even occurs in Gods.

As we overcome challenges and become educated, strengthened both physically and spiritually our fortitude to resist anxiety increases.  

But there is always more out there.

We have to recognize that we have to co-exist with anxiety and have faith that we can overcome situations with personal strength and providence. 

Heavenly Father sent Michael to strengthen Jesus Christ while in Gethsemane.  

God is aware of our anxiety.

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2 hours ago, amykeim said:

Elisha, the primary author of this post, talks about struggling with anxiety since she was a very, very little girl — during a time when she probably watched "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood" rather than "Breakfast at Tiffany's," when "The Good Place" wasn't out, and when her music choices probably consisted mainly of primary songs. I don't think her lack of morality — or associating with people or things that are morally repugnant — was an issue at that point. She also talks about experiencing deep, debilitating anxiety on her mission, a time when you're completely separated from "Babylon." 

Similarly, she said nothing about the Church needing to reorient itself; instead, she focused on how Heavenly Father has helped her through her trials. 

Anxiety is a real, genuine brain disorder that needs to be treated through therapy and sometimes medicine — rather than pointing the finger at all the things you think she's doing wrong by associating herself with "bad" things, perhaps we could consider that she has a real, psychological problem that needs addressing and that simply changing what she watches on the television isn't going to fix the problem.

Whether any disorder is naturally occurring from disease or a result of choices made doesn't really change the fact that the disorder exist.

It's like the whole nurture vs. nature debate regarding homosexuality -- a debate which has no point. The implication, of course, of those who argue that it's natural is that it cannot, therefore, be wrong. But that's clearly not consistent with Christ's gospel in the idea of the natural man being an enemy to God. It doesn't matter if it's natural or learned.

Of course anxiety can be naturally caused from hormonal imbalances and can be learned from habits or experiences. I think it might be useful to know the root cause in the treatment -- but maybe not. It depends if the habits and experiences that teach anxiety result in the same hormonal imbalances or not. I suspect there may be some crossover, but I don't know. But it seems to me that whether such things are learned or not doesn't mean they won't necessarily be with us for the rest of our lives.

What's my point? Attacking the idea that we shouldn't look at potential overall causes for growing anxiety in our society isn't helpful. The point isn't to accuse an individual of bad choices that lead to their anxious state. It's to view society and it's consumption habits and general moral attitudes which align with Babylon and consider how those might be affecting the way individuals are raised and think, and how that might be affecting anxiety levels and the like.

When I was a kid I was raised on television -- and even though a lot of it was akin Mr. Roger's neighborhood, I'd dare say it wasn't healthy. Now kids are raised on social media and youtube as well. The world has grown smaller. Communication is easier. Isolating children from Babylon has grown more and more difficult. And anxiety and depression continue to worsen. Suicide rates rise.

We're noting the connection. That doesn't mean that every instance of anxiety was caused by too much TV.

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Speaking of  Isolating children from Babylon having grown more and more difficult. (I know this has been discussed in the forum before, so this is merely a reminder):

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/allthemoms/2019/05/13/arthurs-mr-ratburn-has-gay-wedding-pbs-kids-show/1193952001/

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1 hour ago, Anddenex said:
15 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

spiritual ennui,

I want to remember and use this word, but will probably forget it tomorrow and will be a word on the tip of my tongue at some point. :)

Ennui is French for "boredom", and it has that basic connotation in English. Ennui is a restlessness, a deep dissatisfaction with one's condition, about which one can seemingly do but little. It's actually intimately related to boredom. If we suffer from spiritual ennui, the likeliest cause is that we're spiritually flabby and out of shape. We're probably spending our time "nourishing" our spirits with the so-called entertainment of Babylon and adopting Babylon's foolish, short-sighted ideas as our own to champion. The solution to spiritual ennui is always the same: Come out of Babylon and gather to Zion.

Since Elder Uchtdorf introduced us to Weltschmerz a General Conference or two ago, here's an article to help you decide whether you're suffering from angst, ennui, or Weltschmerz. Good luck, soldier!

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