4 ms·
Marijuana (along with multi-lingualism) is a big reason why the Mormon-American community is significantly over-represented in the US intelligence community.
by crmd 3y ago
Marijuana (along with multi-lingualism) is a big reason why the Mormon-American community is significantly over-represented in the US intelligence community.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoThere are Mormons outside America?
- dmoy 3y agoYes, in fact a majority of Mormons are outside the USA
- elmomle 3y agoThey go on missions, very frequently outside of America, as a standard part of their early adult life. Learning the local language is pretty much a requirement.
- bozhark 3y agoIt’s not spreading though.
- sdsd 3y agoI live in a small town in Guatemala and the mormon church here is growing very rapidly. According to Google, they're growing at 1.5% annually, which means 255,036 new Mormons every year. However, a church with even a hundred people can heavily sway a small, remote community. I agree it's not "spreading" per se, but their numbers are respectable among proselytizing religions today. When Islam reached a 1.8% growth rate in the 2000s we were inundated with proclamations that it was the fastest growing religion in the world (eg: https://foreignpolicy.com/2007/05/14/the-list-the-worlds-fastest-growing-religions/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2007/05/14/the-list-the-worlds-fas...).
- bobthepanda 3y agoIn some places it is more effective than others; Mormons are very present in the Pacific islands, for example.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y agoI know that they go on missions. My question was regarding the "Mormon-American" framing which suggests that Mormonism exists in other countries, which I was not aware of.
- astura 3y agoVery much so, in fact, more Mormons live outside of the US than within the US. The church reports a population of 16,663,663 with 6,592,195 of those living within the US. (got those numbers from Wikipedia). This article from 10 years ago reports that 56% of Mormon live outside the US and Canada at that time- https://www.deseret.com/2013/8/30/20524833/the-majority-of-mormons-live-outside-the-us https://www.deseret.com/2013/8/30/20524833/the-majority-of-m...
- tomrod 3y agoYes and no. It's very minor outside of the US except for some island nations in the Pacific. Mormon membership numbers of actual adherents are likely 20% to 40% of membership claimed based on "inactivity" rates (and people leaving).
- RajT88 3y agoI learned about the pacific island nations, after I learned that the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii is owned and operated by the LDS Church. Samoa is a big one I guess.
- myko 3y agoIt was a jarring experience going to see a luau there and seeing white kids playing the main roles in their show. Pretty terrible place, really.
- yardie 3y agoBig church right in the middle of Paris. On prime, riverside real estate. That can't be cheap and last time I passed by it was missionaries and exchange students coming in and out.
- whymauri 3y agoCentral America is their largest growing sector IIRC.
- joker_minmax 3y agoMost of the Mormons at my (US) high school were Mexican immigrants to the US, anecdotally.
- bognition 3y agoMormonism is perfect for raising little worker bees. Mormonism deeply values work ethic and breeds a strong trust of authority. You're taught at an early age questioning authority is a sin and doing what your leaders tell you is the right thing to do. The end result is a group of people who are hard working, don't question leadership, and do what they are told.
- beefok 3y agoThat sounds dangerous as hell. No one should live that way. If you aren't allowed to question leadership and are instead expected to do "what you are told", then all the experiments and horrors studies on group think are a reality at a dangerous level [1][2][3] What if you think an order is dangerous and have good reasons why? Good leadership needs to know what the ground-level knows, they need good input and questioning. Stalin killed anyone who opposed or questioned him, so all of the input and feedback was only positive feedback/intel to avoid being killed. Even when they were setting up one of the worst famines in recorded history [4]. Healthy societies aren't cults, and that is definitely a description of a cult. I hate a Godwin-Law argument, but the damn Nazi's "did what they were told" [5], and those 'hard-working'-don't-question-leadership lemmings had a blind-eye to/assisted and/or murdered millions of people because they didn't have to deal with the burden of questioning and thinking for themselves. Fuck that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment [2] https://www.prisonexp.org/ https://www.prisonexp.org/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown#Deaths_in_Jonestown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown#Deaths_in_Jonestown [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%931933 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%93... [5] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/how-the-nazis-defense-of-just-following-orders-plays-out-in-the-mind https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/how-the-nazis-defense-o...
- lesuorac 3y agoThere's a reason the Stanford Prison Experiment was never published in a peer review paper. It was garbage science with a lot of problems.
- cushychicken 3y agoMissionary work is great training for intelligence operations. Has been throughout history!
- Aaronstotle 3y agoI also heard that one of the side effects of this is that when you're in a foreign country and offer Americans tea/coffee and of them refuses, you can be assured they're a Mormon working for the CIA.
- dirtyid 3y agoAlways stood out to me how Mormon expats in PRC had unusually good mandarin skills. They're mainly there to sell farm equipment, but seems hard for teetotalers to do cover work. Hilariously I think ex CIA mormon got busted for selling secrets to PRC.