Transformation
What is interesting is the power of the gospel in our lives to affect transformation through a combination of actions and priesthood power: the Atonement, the Spirit, and combined with the Repentence Process, right down to the very literal “renewal of our bodies” as spoken of in scripture. Very often we speak about these things in discussions as distinct from one another, yet they all form a part of a complex chain that leads directly into the concepts of stasis/progression. So often in literature and in pop culture we see transformations as being instantaneous and immediately lasting, and yet Mormons know that this is a fallacy. Transformation is a long-term cycle of learning.

Mental-Physical Trial
Every time I hear a talk in Sacrament meeting about Pioneers, I hear the same thing: that the early Saints had physical trials while today in the modern church it is more about mental trials. hmmm. The adversary tempts us with every kind of trial possible, and always has. Porn is porn not matter the generation or dispensation. Starvation and deprivation are the same no matter the generation or deprivation. It all just takes different forms in each generation and dispensation.

There needs to be a literary acknowledgement that we suffer every kind of trial (and always have) and somehow these themes could play a strong role in every kind of LDS literature. I always find it so strange that LDS lit dealing with the early American Saints deals with the physical trials they suffered, and leaves out all the other kinds of trials one can be hit with.

This is a great line: “Without a window through the veil and into the premortal past, her characters have no recourse, no explanation of events that leaves their ability to choose for themselves intact.”

Wm: “Sounds good. I expect you to get right on that.”

I am offended, William, that you do not know that I already have delved deeply into both those pools.

You asked: “How is agency different from simple consumer choice or libertarian freedom in terms of what our characters actually think and do?”

I think the answer ties in with other “productive theme” — a dichotomy I once termed in an AML paper “The Individual vs. the Zion Community.”

Libertarian freedom — Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” or Rand’s Objectivism — is at its root a selfish freedom, a freedom of one. That selfishness may or may not (eventually) result in great good to others, but its decision tree is all trunk and no branches, if you will. Boiled down, Libertarianism is “leave me alone.” ‘Properly-exercised’ libertarian freedoms arrive at that goal.

“Leave me alone,” however, is assuredly NOT the goal of Mormonism. Properly-exercised agency arrives at the goal of personal salvation, a salvation that is in truth anything but personal, anything but solitary. Personal salvation requires agency exercised not only by the individual, but by others: the Atonement of the Savior; the laying of of hands by others for necessary ordinances; the eternal bonding to other in temple marriage, the turning of the heart of the fathers to the children, the fellowship of the Zion Community.

Individual agency in the Mormon sense almost always has an “others” component to it. The decision tree for agency not only looks at the trunk and the roots and the branches and the leaves, but often at the other trees in the forest.

Science fiction. due in large part to its Golden Age libertarian roots, is a very individual-centric genre. I suggested in my AML paper that this is what makes SF written by LDS authors so distinctive: a very pronounced, almost Asian communal group dynamic. The ‘Zion Community’ undertones of the Mormon worldview.

The tension in the paradox of individual salvation being a group effort — the dichotomy between the individual and the Zion community — I think will prove one of the great hallmarks of a fully matured Mormon literature.

I’m not really interested in worrying about the people who don’t get what we’re going for here while at the same time I want to be careful not to alienate myself too fully from the more dominant Mormon cultures. I have no problem being the one doing the difficult balancing act. Others mileage may vary (and I have had the fortune of living in some very cool wards).

I think that what you describe is one of the basic tensions of Mormonism. Certainly I see the impulse toward cloistering within Mormon practice and rhetoric. But I also see strong forces propelling us in the opposite direction as well. Mormons who don’t particularly *want* to be exposed to the wickedness of the world nevertheless get called into leadership positions where they can’t avoid it – and are changed as a result. Teenage boys whose greatest interest is in their own affairs get called to spend time serving people who are vastly different from themselves – and get changed as a result. For that matter, the injunction that marriage is supposed to be eternal can – and, I believe from looking at the lives of fellow Church members as well as my own, often does – serve as a call to try to make a marriage work rather than abandoning it when things get tough.

In saying that this is a direction that Mormon literary criticism can take, I’m not saying that Mormon literature necessarily reflects this particular value. That doesn’t prevent it from being a fruitful direction from which to examine Mormon literature (and Mormon literariness in general). After all, much of literature is about ideals we aspire to but don’t necessarily reach. I don’t see any reason why criticism can’t help us do the same thing.

Yes.

Giggling over the Erasure anecdote.

Thanks for both the post and the encore in your comment. There is much to consider.