Based Camp - Perspectives on the Benefits of Mormonism from Ex-Mormon Trace Woodgrains

00:00:00.000 Hi, everybody. I had the best reading experience this week, thanks to our very special guest,

00:00:06.420 Tracy Woodgrains. He had actually tweeted on Twitter someone else's article. Someone wrote

00:00:12.340 for The Atlantic about what happens when America loses its religion. But Tracy included a 2020

00:00:17.880 substack piece that he originally actually posted on. So it was originally a Reddit thread,

00:00:22.760 but it's on his substack now. Related to this article, his substack write-up, which you should

00:00:27.160 all check out at tracingwoodgrains.com, is called Mormons and Voluntary Organization. And he

00:00:33.000 brought up basically this article because it describes the extent to which religious involvement,

00:00:40.060 especially in the LDS church, can be very profound and have a profound impact on people

00:00:44.480 and communities. So anyway, I read The Atlantic article, whatever, it was meh. It's nothing that

00:00:49.740 anyone who watches Basecamp wouldn't be very familiar with. It's all stuff that we're really

00:00:53.860 familiar with. What happens when cultures lose their religion? Not great stuff. But man,

00:01:00.080 Tracy, your article is great because what you do in it is you detail how different the life of a

00:01:07.940 practicing Mormon is vis-a-vis the life of someone just in a general atomized society. So we would love

00:01:15.340 to have you on today and discuss it because I think the implications of what you write about here are

00:01:20.640 pretty huge. Would you like to know more? Yeah, absolutely. What inspired you to write this,

00:01:27.820 by the way? So look, I grew up Mormon and I grew up in this somewhat isolated subculture that is so

00:01:36.580 very different to the life of, as you were saying, the standard modern atomized individual.

00:01:42.220 And so this was the water that I swam in. This is the air that I breathed. This was just what the

00:01:48.040 world was like for me. I was 11 years old before I realized that the majority of the world was not

00:01:52.620 Mormon. That is how much of a bubble I was in. And going through that, my whole childhood, going on a 0.86

00:02:01.160 Mormon mission, so forth, really, it has an impact on whoever goes through that sort of thing. And having

00:02:07.860 stepped away from it now, I feel like my job in large part is to paint a picture of what is possible

00:02:17.340 within something like that, recognizing the flaws that I saw that caused me to step away, but looking

00:02:22.840 and saying, how can the rest of us replicate the positive, powerful elements of this? What are the rest

00:02:28.700 of us missing? What have the rest of us forgotten about? And in particular, I feel inclined towards that

00:02:33.500 because you see a lot of people who step away from Mormonism, who really understandably feel very burned

00:02:39.200 by the whole thing, feel very frustrated that they've given their whole lives to what they feel has been

00:02:44.600 based on a lie and so forth, and just get really hostile to it all and feel essentially that there

00:02:51.400 is nothing good there, nothing good worth pointing out. And I had a much happier, gentler glide path out

00:02:58.240 such that I feel like I am in a much better position than many who have left to look at it and say,

00:03:04.260 here is what I see that I did value in it. And here is what is worth taking away.

00:03:11.340 So I'd love it if you could just start going into that for our audience. It's probably immediately

00:03:16.940 obvious why this is so interesting to us. But one of the things that we always say is that the

00:03:21.260 cultural change that's happened in America as it has secularized isn't just that we stopped

00:03:26.800 believing in God. That was actually the smaller part of the cultural change. The bigger part of

00:03:31.740 the cultural change was all of the changes to the way we interacted with our community and our daily

00:03:36.940 behavior patterns. And I think to what you said there, a person who has stepped back from that,

00:03:42.360 it is now in a secular world, but can look on it as an outsider can probably better see the contours

00:03:47.440 of what is actually unique about it. So I'd love if you could start by just going into what is it

00:03:53.620 that your average secular person doesn't understand about the daily life of somebody within one of these

00:03:59.800 hard religious communities. Absolutely. So I think that the standard secular view of the standard 0.85

00:04:08.300 church going life is basically, you do more or less the same things for most of your life, and then you

00:04:14.220 go to church on Sunday, and you call it good. And perhaps in some religious communities, it is

00:04:20.100 something akin to that. Within Mormonism, it is a much more all-encompassing situation. 0.91

00:04:26.840 So the day-to-day in the life of a Mormon. First off, it's important to understand that almost every

00:04:35.080 clergy member within Mormonism, almost everyone who has any sort of official position in the church

00:04:40.080 is a volunteer. It's only up at the top that you start getting actual salaries, actual living stipends,

00:04:45.660 what have you, for the global leaders. But everyone on down, so Mitt Romney, for example,

00:04:52.100 spent years as what's called a stake president, where for no pay, in addition to his regular job,

00:05:01.100 he had the job of overseeing six or seven local congregations, each of which would have a hundred,

00:05:08.120 a few hundred members, where he was on some level responsible for the organization and spiritual

00:05:13.260 welfare and what have you of all the people in that. Below that, you have bishops who, same thing,

00:05:19.020 they have to spend 20 hours a week, however long, in addition to a full-time job on all of this over

00:05:24.320 a period of, I'm forgetting the exact number of years, something like eight years, that a bishop 0.97

00:05:29.280 will stay in that position where one day a regular schmuck working as a computer programmer or a garbage 0.99

00:05:35.360 collector or what have you will be called into the office and be told, so how would you like to be

00:05:40.320 given this volunteer position where you will work 20 hours a week for no pay for the next eight years?

00:05:45.180 Come on in. And every person within Mormonism, every adult and most of the youth will have some 0.79

00:05:53.560 sort of position like this, some sort of calling. I would play the organ in church. Someone will be

00:05:58.200 called to teach a Sunday school lesson. Someone will be told, hey, you're going to come up and give a

00:06:03.940 talk on Sunday. Someone will be told, hey, you're leading the young men's group. So for example, I had,

00:06:09.000 when I was on my mission, I met this professional athlete down in Australia, a rugby player, and he,

00:06:15.880 I would go to church and he would be the leader of the young men's church group on Sunday because that is

00:06:21.540 just what they do. A lot of things like that.

00:06:24.700 So before we go further, there's a few points here I want to elevate because Simone was talking to me about

00:06:29.180 this today and just commenting on how emotionally healthy this is because when a lot of people think of

00:06:35.880 community, they think of what the community is going to do for them when what they're actually

00:06:42.580 probably getting the most benefits from is the burdens the community places on them. And when I

00:06:48.480 say burdens, I guess tasks or responsibilities. And that you have a community where it's an individual

00:06:54.140 rises in status within the community. They are basically given more unpaid labor and their skill

00:07:01.240 within that unpaid labor rises their status further, which likely has pretty positive effects

00:07:08.180 on an individual's mental health because the more independent things you are doing within your life

00:07:13.900 that you feel are things of value and that you are improving on, the more areas you have to potentially

00:07:19.720 succeed. If you're not doing as well at work, at least you're doing well within what you're doing for the

00:07:24.300 church or if you're not, and it helps move you forward. And it also allows less time for like

00:07:28.740 rumination, which, which likely also has a positive effect. Another thing you noted there that I want

00:07:32.600 to elaborate on is you're like, except for the senior people at the church. But as I remember

00:07:36.920 from Simone discussing your pieces of me, they, the people who are paid by the church, like the very

00:07:41.240 senior people, they don't make like that much money, right? It's like 120 K or something.

00:07:46.180 Right. They don't make banks. They, yeah, about 120 K or so, as I recall. So it's not anywhere near what

00:07:52.460 someone, uh, at the head of any secular organization, anywhere near that size would be

00:07:58.680 making. Yeah. Yeah. And I'd love it if you could talk a bit about, because another thing that she

00:08:02.760 was elevating was even at a very young age, like speaking to crowds is something that's expected a

00:08:07.540 lot. Yeah. There was one funny tweet that I saw recently where someone was talking about at a Quaker 1.00

00:08:14.080 ceremony, they went to where at Quaker ceremonies, a lot of them will just be silent until people feel 0.96

00:08:19.920 moved by the spirit to speak. And so I was like, yeah, at this Quaker ceremony, I went to one guy

00:08:24.980 the past couple of weeks has just stood up and given his dune reviews. Mormonism has that about 0.99

00:08:30.900 once a month. It's called fast Sunday, fast and testimony meeting where they spend that Sunday

00:08:36.700 fasting, not eating, not drinking for supposed to be 24 hours. And at church, they'll get up and

00:08:42.380 rather than having the regular talks that members of the congregation are delivering, it will just be

00:08:46.480 extemporaneous speech from anyone who feels like it going up to the podium and saying whatever they

00:08:51.180 feel like. So you'll see adults come up and you'll see kids come up. And usually it's fairly generic.

00:08:57.760 I know Joseph Smith was a prophet. I know the Book of Mormon is true. I know Jesus Christ is the

00:09:03.420 savior, all of these standard Mormon beliefs. And sometimes people go off the rails, but you'll see

00:09:08.720 even very small kids like wander up and stand and say all that. And there's a little bit of

00:09:14.640 discomfort for me now looking at it and seeing these kids training themselves into these very

00:09:19.260 specific patterns of thought from an early age. You can examine that. But very early, they are getting

00:09:25.120 this experience going up and seeing a few hundred people in the stands, staring at them and speaking

00:09:30.320 to them. And then as they get a little older, as they turn 12, 13, what have you, then usually a couple

00:09:36.800 of the, there will be like three to four talks. That is short speeches in the first hour of church on

00:09:44.200 Sunday. And usually the first one to two of those, at least in the congregation I was in would be from

00:09:50.520 a youth, people 12 to 18. And so from the time you're pretty young, you're again, standing up in

00:09:56.820 front of a crowd and giving a scripted five minute speech. And there is something really healthy, I

00:10:03.280 think about that sort of environment that immediately is training those skills in people. You have not just

00:10:09.000 those speeches and stuff. You have say the young men's group organization, you'll have the adults

00:10:13.860 tasked with overseeing it. And you'll have one of the 13 year olds placed in as the president of it.

00:10:20.020 And another placed in as his secretary and so forth. And so really early on, all these kids are,

00:10:26.680 again, getting experience with these same volunteer positions.

00:10:29.700 Yeah. When I find it pretty interesting from a social dynamic, what's happening here is that you're

00:10:35.000 having a community of people who differ from society, specifically due to their beliefs and

00:10:39.760 practices, affirm those beliefs and practices to each other in a way that like when you are very

00:10:46.760 young, because what's being affirmed is the ways in your beliefs that you're different from

00:10:51.780 the other, the mainstream society, likely creates much more a feeling of community, not just a skill

00:10:59.600 set, which of course can be looked at with malevolent intent by people who choose to look at it

00:11:04.840 that way. But one of the things I always note as somebody who, when I grew up, I was around the

00:11:08.760 atheist movement and stuff like that is in the atheist movement, specifically the new atheist

00:11:14.080 movement. And then the atheist plus movement, a huge portion of the leadership cast of that

00:11:19.580 movement was X, which was really interesting to me. It was almost like they were training the

00:11:24.420 Mormons something that allowed them to out-compete other ex-religious members in terms of social 0.97

00:11:32.100 skills or at least like mass media social skills.

00:11:36.020 Yeah, I think there's definitely something to that. And one big part of that, I think, is that

00:11:40.980 every Mormon man and many Mormon women, virtually every Mormon man, will go on a mission sometime

00:11:48.840 between the ages of 18 and 26, usually towards the early end of that. So I went at 18, where they

00:11:54.560 spend two years. People hear mission trips and different religions have a lot of different

00:11:59.180 approaches to whatever mission trips. Mormon missions are hardcore. They are intensive.

00:12:05.620 They are not a time where someone's playing around and having fun and then taking a few

00:12:10.020 pictures of them building houses or something. My daily schedule as a missionary, every day

00:12:15.120 for two years, pretty much every day, with a few exceptions, looked like this. 6.30am, wake

00:12:21.220 up, exercise for half an hour, eat breakfast, do independent study personally of scriptures for one

00:12:28.300 hour, do a study of scriptures with my mission companion for another hour, then go out and from

00:12:35.280 10am to 9pm with breaks for lunch and dinner, be knocking on doors, talking to people on the street,

00:12:41.960 going into people's homes and teaching them, going around just looking for people to teach,

00:12:45.940 looking for people to instruct. And this is all you and your companion independently in whatever area

00:12:51.520 you're assigned to. And you do that until 9pm. You come home, you plan for half an hour, you have

00:12:58.640 maybe an hour of downtime-ish, and then you go to bed. Every day for two years. No movies, no books

00:13:06.860 except church books, no music except church music, no TV, internet once a week to write home to family,

00:13:13.900 and that's about it for that. Just very structured, restrictive, rigorous.

00:13:19.640 And I note for the audience, you have to pay to do all of this. This isn't paid. You are paying to do

00:13:24.880 this. And you have to pay for training to do this before doing it.

00:13:30.440 Yes and no on the paying for training. You pay a flat sum for the two years, which includes the

00:13:35.620 training and then wherever you're sent. Oh, okay. I thought that was separate. So something I,

00:13:40.340 an interesting point I have before we go deeper on this is, or I've wondered, because this is what

00:13:44.820 I've noticed anecdotally, and maybe you've noticed it, is I've always seen the mission trip as actually

00:13:49.880 a huge, I guess I'd say like problem with modern Mormonism is it seems to be the part where most 1.00

00:13:54.840 people start deconverting is during, like when people question their face, Mormons, at least my

00:14:01.300 deconversion stories I've heard, it seems like the majority of the ones I've heard, it was during their 0.99

00:14:06.340 mission trip. Is that a trend you've noticed as well? Or am I noticing something that's not

00:14:10.240 there? It's a good question. I would say that a mission is really a time of focusing very

00:14:18.320 intensely on all these spiritual questions and really figuring out where you stand with all of

00:14:23.080 it. And because you're spending so much time and so much focus on it, it, wherever someone goes in

00:14:28.420 their spiritual journey from that point, like that is going to be a hinge point, no matter what happens

00:14:33.360 from there. What I'll say in my own story with it, in my own process, before my mission, I always

00:14:39.800 fancied myself a skeptical kid. And so I went in my teenage years and dug into all the apologetics and

00:14:45.780 all the counter apologetics, all the responses, all the like intellectual side of things. And at some

00:14:50.920 point, I knew I had questions that I couldn't answer, but felt I, that was causing some distance for me

00:14:57.880 wasn't really something I wanted to address head on. And wasn't really something that I figured would be

00:15:02.100 productive from within the Mormon framework, where within the Mormon framework, it's really

00:15:05.680 emphasis. Their emphasis is really on do the basics, focus on spiritual things, see whether this is good

00:15:12.300 for you, and then develop your testimony that way. Pray to God and God will tell you that sort of thing.

00:15:16.940 And so at some point, after those teenage years, I stepped away from that sort of really intellectual

00:15:23.220 process and just decided I'm going to commit myself to this. I'm going to lean in, I'm going to do what

00:15:27.380 I'm supposed to do. And God is going to speak to me with all of that. And for me, it was specifically

00:15:33.620 on my mission. This is where I'm going to figure everything out. And I would spend 45 minutes a

00:15:39.480 night, sometimes kneeling down, begging for some sort of witness from God. I would go around, I would

00:15:44.220 be trying to be exactly obedient. I would be doing everything I could possibly be doing within the

00:15:49.220 Mormon framework. And if you have two years where you're really trying to do that and really trying

00:15:53.800 to figure out, is God speaking to me? Is God guiding this? What's going on? Do I have answers

00:15:58.560 to all these things that I'm trying to figure out? That's a long time to think through it and to

00:16:03.400 really start settling in on, I don't fully align with this, especially as more complicated things

00:16:10.240 started happening towards the end. It really became clear that my differences with it were

00:16:14.160 irreconcilable. So that was my path that very much, I was already on my way out. Then I went on my

00:16:20.560 mission and knew when I got back from it. I stayed in two years after that, but I knew when I got back

00:16:26.140 from it that I just didn't, did not fit within and could not answer the questions I needed to.

00:16:32.160 But for others, it's hard to say. I will say that the way it's conceived of, particularly among the

00:16:37.920 leadership, is that this will be the time that will really lock people in and really anchor them in,

00:16:43.020 anchor their testimonies of the church in, and make them really stalwart and solid moving forward.

00:16:47.160 And I, yeah, I agree that it's a hinge point. I don't know that it's necessarily the cause of any

00:16:54.340 leaving. That's a good point. Yeah. And that would explain the pattern I'm seeing. So a question I

00:17:00.560 have in regards to this, because this is another thesis we have, and you can tell me if this aligns

00:17:05.740 with your experience as well or not, is that was in religious communities. The perception is that the

00:17:12.100 reason why people deconvert is often by wanting to do the things that aren't allowed in the

00:17:17.080 community, when in fact, I think usually it's specific theological questions that they couldn't

00:17:23.760 make work. Or like, what was it for you that that was like your key, like pushing out point? And

00:17:31.900 how could it have been circumvented by the community?

00:17:34.520 Yeah. So there was a Mormon apostle, so one of the 12 global leaders of the church some time ago,

00:17:45.400 who gave this speech where he was talking about the great threats to Mormonism. And he appointed out

00:17:51.020 feminists, the LGBT movement, and so-called intellectuals. I was a so-called intellectual.

00:17:57.000 So what I would say is that Mormonism works really well for people outside of those three 0.61

00:18:03.240 categories. I didn't think of myself as gay back then. I thought I didn't really recognize my own

00:18:10.200 sexuality, didn't consider any of that. And that wasn't really anywhere on my radar. What was on my

00:18:15.320 radar was all of these intellectual questions and all these doctrinal questions and just trying to figure

00:18:20.020 out where do I stand on these very specific points of history and very specific points of doctrine and

00:18:26.480 very specific points of theology. I really liked the commandments structure that I was in. I've

00:18:32.560 always valued structure. I've always valued having a framework. And I was able to very convincingly

00:18:38.960 persuade myself of this is why all these commandments exist. This is why it makes sense that we don't

00:18:43.920 drink alcohol. This is why it makes sense that we go to church on Sundays. This is why it makes sense that

00:18:47.960 we pay a 10% tithe. This is why it makes sense that we don't drink caffeine. This is why all of these

00:18:52.740 very specific rules make sense. This is the broader metastructure like that I could do. What I couldn't

00:18:58.280 do was answer some of the very specific theological questions with it and some of the very specific

00:19:03.520 historical questions with it. And the more I tried to dig and the more I tried to answer some of those

00:19:09.060 and the more I looked through every part of the framework trying to find the answers for some of

00:19:13.480 these things, the more I realized that the answers really just were not there. But that's not quite

00:19:20.600 what made me step away from activity. That's what made me realize I couldn't believe in Mormonism.

00:19:25.780 But what made me step away from activity in Mormonism specifically, it's well known at this

00:19:30.320 point that Mormonism changed its doctrine on whether Black people, whether Black men could get

00:19:35.740 the priesthood, that is have the power of God working through them, whatever, within Mormonism in the 1970s.

00:19:41.620 What's less well known, so Mormons will internally frame that as, oh, this was just a policy change.

00:19:46.260 Yeah. What's less well known is just how deeply that permeated within the doctrine. So there were

00:19:52.780 letters that the leadership sent to this sociologist in the 40s who was trying to persuade them God's

00:19:59.500 children are equal, this or that, things that they now in modern times espouse. And the Mormon global

00:20:05.840 leadership sent this very emphatic letter describing how racial intermarriage had always been wrong since

00:20:11.780 the dawn of time, how the races were absolutely not equal and how God had definitely cursed Black 1.00

00:20:18.780 people, this or that. And just very emphatically that he needed to repent, he needed to get in line 0.74

00:20:23.320 or he would be in peril. And that's not the sort of thing that modern Mormons really think about.

00:20:29.820 That's not the sort of thing that modern Mormons really look at. But what that made me think about,

00:20:33.720 what that made me realize is I was really letting what the prophets said control the direction of my

00:20:43.220 own thought. And if my thoughts were out of line with what the prophets said, I would work really

00:20:47.620 hard to figure out how to align them. And in as much as something wrong crept in, and it was really

00:20:52.700 clear to me that was one absolutely wrong per modern Mormonism, absolutely wrong thing that had 0.93

00:20:57.740 absolutely crept in and had absolutely controlled the minds of members. In as much as anything wrong

00:21:02.820 crept in, I would be doing a very good job persuading myself to think that wrong thing or to think that

00:21:09.860 I was in the wrong for not thinking that wrong thing. And as soon as that really sunk in for me,

00:21:14.280 I felt like I needed to step away. Okay. And was it in part, if I was going to word this a little

00:21:19.180 differently, did it bother you that if the church could have been quote unquote wrong about something

00:21:23.800 back then, and you're trying so hard to follow all the rules right now that how do you know the rules

00:21:29.980 aren't going to change again? Was that sort of it? Yeah. So that played in again, even at that point,

00:21:36.240 I didn't think of myself as gay. And honestly, all through that point, I was perfectly okay with the

00:21:40.580 church's stance on gay marriage, which was one of those rationalizations that I had. And one of those 0.87

00:21:45.640 ways that I was justifying the framework to myself, I was like, this all makes sense. And at some point I

00:21:49.700 shifted to, if I stepped away from Mormonism, I would start supporting gay people getting married.

00:21:55.200 Uh, or, or sorry, if the church changed its stance on gay people, I would support gay people getting

00:22:00.840 married. And then I would leave the church is what I thought about it at that time. And then when I

00:22:04.820 stepped away from Mormonism, I was like, okay, now my stance has changed. And then after that, I was

00:22:09.080 able to have a better space, think about what do I want realized that I was interested in dating men fell

00:22:14.840 in love with a man, the rest is history. But the point is that it wasn't any sort of, I am struggling

00:22:20.620 with this aspect of the doctrine, I'm struggling with this aspect of the commandments, I wish this part was

00:22:24.860 different. I want this part to be different. I need this part to be different. But it was very much

00:22:30.020 if the church is wrong on something, it is impacting the way I am thinking about that thing on a very

00:22:35.040 fundamental level. And that is a problem. Interesting. So as somebody who wants to become a

00:22:41.140 parent, what aspects of these systems are you going to try to incorporate in your own childbearing?

00:22:48.080 That's a really good question. I was lucky to have a phenomenal childhood, which a lot of it I do

00:22:54.540 attribute to Mormonism, and a lot of it I attribute to my parents. I had loving parents in a stable home

00:22:59.900 where, in a neighborhood where I knew all of my neighbors, and we had all sorts of rich community

00:23:06.640 activities, all within the context of this church. And quite frankly, that's not directly

00:23:11.380 replicable. There is not a structure that I can step into that fills that same role. So in terms of how I'm

00:23:18.580 going to bring it into the lives of my kids, I can't just go and say, oh, yeah, you'll go to church

00:23:23.760 every Sunday, and you'll go on a mission when you turn this age, and you'll do this, and you'll do

00:23:27.640 this, and you'll do this. You have all the structure to hang on. What I do feel obligated to do is, first

00:23:33.000 of all, I need to find communities of like-minded people, and I need to find some place to give the

00:23:38.200 kids a sense of community. And I need to find some way to start cobbling together this structure for

00:23:42.820 them. But it is very much a cobbling together structure versus stepping into this pre-existing

00:23:48.780 and really solid structure. Because I don't really see any that is lacking the really major

00:23:58.660 flaws that would keep me away from it. And so I'm basically looking and saying, I see the value of

00:24:04.060 this. I see what this brought into my life. I want to figure out how to replicate this for my kids.

00:24:08.860 I don't think the world as it stands right now is really equipped for that. And so it will be a lot

00:24:13.920 more piecemeal, figure it out. I'd like to follow up on that, though, because there's a community

00:24:20.540 aspect that is really important. But then there's also, I can't get over just how much responsibility

00:24:25.480 is put on people at all ages. And also, the responsibility gets piled on more, the more

00:24:31.540 competent or successful you show yourself to be. So it's just you get more and more of a burden.

00:24:37.320 And it seems to be extremely beneficial. You've left the church, but now you are

00:24:42.300 like doing, you're writing these amazing pieces. You're going through law school. You're going to

00:24:47.620 start a family soon. And you are working on blocked and reported. Like, you just keep it going.

00:24:54.160 Do you have any plans for your kids to give them extra responsibility in life? And how would you

00:25:01.740 structure that? Because it's not exactly, it's not exactly hardship that's being given to people.

00:25:08.000 It's responsibility.

00:25:09.040 Yeah, like maybe you can utilize secular institutions to give them or burden them with this responsibility.

00:25:15.380 Like, what do you want?

00:25:16.520 How would you do it?

00:25:17.620 Yeah, that dovetails with a lot of my thoughts on education. I do think kids are a lot more capable

00:25:22.780 a lot earlier than we often give them credit for. And I would say that my thoughts on that get

00:25:28.380 filtered a lot more through my thoughts in terms of education than they do with my thoughts on

00:25:32.760 Mormonism at this point. And that I think particularly early on, I will be really trying to figure out

00:25:39.980 what is the appropriate level and pace of education for them? What can they handle? What are they going

00:25:45.460 to be able to handle? And yeah, there will be a lot of fairly academic focus with all of that. I do hope

00:25:51.820 to find organizations that they can participate in and get early responsibility in. There's this idea,

00:25:57.700 let kids be kids. And of course you want to let kids be kids, but childhood is very long. There are

00:26:03.180 very many hours in a day. And there is plenty of time, both for kids to enjoy a lot of unstructured play

00:26:10.600 and to take on more serious structure and more serious responsibility. So both with my thoughts

00:26:16.400 on Mormonism and my thoughts on education dovetailing, I think that a lot of it really

00:26:20.000 will come down to, I think there is a lot of productive structure that you want to stick

00:26:24.320 into people's lives. Not so much that it is overwhelming, but enough that it gives them

00:26:28.460 something to build off of something to hang on and something that gives them an idea of just how

00:26:32.300 much they can do. Something that Simone touched on today when she was referring,

00:26:36.880 like talking about your story to me, was that you did the math on how many hours a day you

00:26:41.680 actually spent on religiously dedicated activities growing up. And it was something, what, two hours

00:26:46.180 a day or something, Simone? Yeah, including your mission. And then it was, if you took out your

00:26:50.260 mission, it was still about one hour a day. Yes. And like, when you think about this, how do you think

00:26:59.200 that this is broadly beneficial to people? And if it is, how can you structure it secularly?

00:27:04.900 I think that it could be a lot more beneficial. I think that if you look at the specific activities

00:27:11.820 Mormons are doing, a lot of those specific activities, some of them are good uses of time 1.00

00:27:16.560 in a general distant view sense. Some of them, Mormons will go into temples and sit and watch a 0.96

00:27:22.620 two hour video, the same video on repeat fairly regularly throughout adulthood and go and do baptisms

00:27:29.880 on behalf of dead people, things like that. And things like that, they have sense and structure

00:27:34.720 within the Mormon theological context. But outside that theological context, it just looks like a lot

00:27:39.140 of very confident people spending a great deal of time on nothing in particular. And I think that

00:27:45.140 if you redirect that same energy towards more explicitly altruistic, more explicitly outward

00:27:52.540 facing ends that lack the same theological context, I do think there's a lot of potential. But you need

00:27:59.360 something to give that energy and something to give that drive towards building those structures.

00:28:03.740 You need the organized structure to do it. You need the organized framework to have permission

00:28:07.820 for people to do it. It's not something that you can just go out and do on your own without the backing

00:28:14.020 of a community and the backing of expectations and the backing of a framework within which to do it.

00:28:19.060 And so I think that's a major task for secular people now is to build that sort of structure.

00:28:23.100 Interesting. Yeah. And something we haven't talked about on this, did you ever do one of those Mormon trips

00:28:26.780 where you try to reenact what the founders, like the first people who moved to Utah, went through?

00:28:34.240 Yeah, I did a pioneer trek.

00:28:35.880 Yeah, pioneer trek. Can you talk to that a little bit?

00:28:38.940 Yeah. So that's a shorter experience. That's just a few days where you get thrown into a

00:28:43.860 quote unquote family. You have your people volunteering as parents and you have the other

00:28:47.880 youth around you who are siblings. And you'll all just drag this handcart together and walk all day

00:28:53.000 long, dragging this handcart and then camp at night and eat what the pioneers ate and share your

00:28:58.600 testimonies of Mormonism and your testimonies of this and that and do it again the next few days.

00:29:02.520 And it's this fairly short, fairly intensive, really spiritually meaningful for the people in

00:29:07.960 it experience that's just basically camping on steroids.

00:29:11.440 Would you do something like that for your kids or do you think it's like too intense?

00:29:15.340 Yeah, it depends on the ritual context. It depends on what the opportunities are. It depends on what

00:29:22.880 the situation is. I think it's hard to invent things like that from scratch. It's hard to just

00:29:27.560 pull something like that from scratch and say, we're going to do this and we're going to make

00:29:30.400 it meaningful. But if there is something that makes sense, if there's something that fits a role

00:29:34.520 like that, I think something like that is help. Yes, I think it's cool.

00:29:38.300 That's really fascinating. Yeah. When you do have kids, we would love, you can reach out to us. We'll be

00:29:43.000 putting together like pseudo religious stuff for our kids to try to recreate some of this

00:29:48.500 technology. And we'd love to give you like our contact when we do it, because the more people

00:29:52.700 we can have our kids around that are like thoughtful and intentional, the more, the larger a community

00:29:57.580 we could build, the more effective these sorts of rituals are. But yeah, I have absolutely loved

00:30:03.320 having you on. And this was really fascinating to learn about. Yeah, we're really big nerds about

00:30:08.680 finding a better way to build culture. Like just going back to the old ways, going back to

00:30:12.900 tradition, we think is not the right solution. You seem to share that sentiment to a great

00:30:16.160 extent. And we're really interested in how can you make it better from a first principle

00:30:20.560 standpoint. So to come across this right up to come across your thoughtful commentary

00:30:24.880 and analysis makes us so excited because it means that you're going to really take a crack

00:30:28.780 at this. And the more people doing this, the better. So thanks for that. And everyone

00:30:32.640 make sure to check out tracingwoodgrains.com and at Tracy Woodgrains on X. He's really

00:30:39.960 awesome. All right. Thank you guys so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

00:30:43.840 Wonderful. All right. I'm going to hit in recording here.

00:30:46.620 Cool. Yeah. Thank you so much.

Based Camp - April 16, 2024

Perspectives on the Benefits of Mormonism from Ex-Mormon Trace Woodgrains

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