Welcome to the Thang and good point. Pondering does look like laziness to many people in our hyper-busy world.

The number one problem with management in this country is that it has become increasingly divorced from morality – treated more like an optimization problem where the law is the only relevant constraint, that within those bounds all is fair game. In other words it is all about the letter of the law, and runs directly contrary to the spirit of the law.

The businesses that get rewarded are professional swindlers, operating barely in the bounds of law, and infuriating one time customers who have little choice but to stick with them or switch to another organization specializing in their exploitation for profity. That is the dark side of corporatism – no longer are we dealing with individuals who have principles and reputations to maintain, but impersonal combinations who have nothing but a fiduciary obligation to get gain at any cost to ethics and morality. The competition of criminality instead of the competition of creativity. We need a cult of fairness, not a cult of use and abuse.

Case in point – why do you think the telecom giants want to end network neutrality except to charge monopoly rents on services we now get for commodity prices? That is flat out immoral – the motives of the telecoms are evil writ large. Who cares about the public welfare – just charge exorbitant rates for services with no added value. The ideology of patent exploitation – creating “property” out of thin air is similar.

I hope you don’t mean to say my statement in #6 was a cop-out because it followed a list of clarifying comments, one of which specifically made your follow-up point about us having to become “smart” at some point.

I think you are basically getting my point. I am obviously drawn to metaphysical/philosophical questions. But I am also a deeply practical man. The point I was making is that these two things need not and indeed should be at odds with one another. We should stretch our minds here and in the process of so doing we can make great progress toward the ultimate purpose we are here to begin with. You know that great quote from Joseph Smith:

The things of God are of deep import; and time, and experience, and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out. Thy mind, O man! if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity – thou must commune with God.

I also think I’ll post later the metaphysical implications of the Parable of the Talents though. We have this tension between absolute progress and relative progress that I think is hard to resolve — especially with a naive My Turn on Earth model of eternity (though I know y’all don’t hold naive views on that.) But I do think there is a tendency to cop-out on this issue like when Jacob said in #6 “I see no reason to believe you must be smart in this life to make it to heaven”. That may be true on this planet but God is more intelligent than they all so we have to be “smart” at some point before being exalted. Clearly it is sufficient to “double our talents” here and the celestial law seems to be to give everything we have to God — whether that be a mite like the widow or a treasure like the rich young ruler. Like I said, there is interesting stuff here to be mined. I hope to get to it more in a separate post.