Scaling the principles of zion outside of the church.

[kryoung1983]

I have thought considerably about the issues of extreme poverty, and have realized that part of it is the paradigm of how it is handled. Poverty alleviation is measured in terms of GDP, and how well a country falls on the ladder of industrialization, but I feel this is a very colonial attitude to have. I also feel that the entire notion of solving poverty for the poor and not with the poor is part of the problem. There are 700,000 villages in India but a million community organizations. A million in Brazil. Around ten million NGO's worldwide. I believe that any true impact on poverty alleviation will take the one by one ministering model of Christ and then scale that up.

For instance with ministering we have it narrowed down to a household level in order to focus on the one, but in the world the bottom billion are a faceless number with no deep personal connection. How can you scale impact when there is no organization tailored towards the one? And often the poor have no rights. They become the "passive" participants and are thought of as "beneficiaries." I obviously find this a huge problem. I believe that we need to take the principles of Zion and implement it into business, technology, and community development best practices. Have a a voluntary registry of the poor, have them involved in community asset mapping, and co participants of participatory planning, and also we should be having social mobility that is raised through the principles of consecration and sacrifice in which people share in the burdens of the poor. (no donations, participatory planning instead, resource allocation is based on a case by case basis.)

My question is what would you think if someone attempted to adapt the laws of consecration in such a way that those who are not members partake in the life of the poor more fully, or methodologies that take the principles of the United Order and apply them in a way where they can be scaled across multiple organizations according to business needs. This actually wouldn't be very hard. All you would have to do is create something like a CRM package that is cloud based that is more firmly focused on deep relationship building with the poor, instead of beneficiary focused. Such a technology in my mind would be a "celestial principles oriented salesforce," in which there is a drive for using technology to build communities in a deeper way than the way the world currently thinks of these things. In my mind I want to develop systems that get away from governments/institutions as the primary sources of planning, and more towards working directly with the poor. I am thinking of how you would combine the personal vision of say Gandhi/mother teressa/the church, with development best practices into one system that is then scaled up.

Of course once you start designing systems, programs, mobilizing, and even creating councils at the neighborhood, district, province, regional, and state, and national levels in order to have social classes work more firmly together, and to give more power to the poor at what point do you think this is wrong? After all the principles of the gospel are eternal and not just for the church. Of course what I am describing is more firmly patterned after the united order than what is currently practiced in the church, except I am thinking purely in terms of tackling extreme poverty for the poorest of the poor, those that make around a 1.90 a day. This is kind of rambling. I did write a business model, but it doesn't look like anything that the world would recognize as a business model. I am wondering what are your thoughts on scaling the principles of Zion outside of the church or even creating businesses, and technology innovation that is more fully patterned after the United Order. Not claiming any special revelation so I don't think from a doctrinal stand point there is anything wrong with my thinking process. Though I do think the Lord wants me to tackle the issues of extreme poverty. 

Edited May 6, 2021 by kryoung1983

[Calm]

Can you edit to include some breaks in your paragraph above.  It makes it very hard for me to read and retain when it is just a block of print....enough so, I tend to skip posts like yours.

Edited May 6, 2021 by Calm

[kryoung1983]

I edited it. 

[Calm]

Much better, thank you.  

[Calm]

20 minutes ago, kryoung1983 said:

something like a CRM package that is cloud based

For those of us that have no idea what this means...?

So far I am with you...:)

[Metis_LDS]

7 minutes ago, kryoung1983 said:

Though I do think the Lord wants me to tackle the issues of extreme poverty. 

Helping the poor is good goal.  It is however complex.  I forget who but I heard a talk from a leader in the Church.  He said the worlds way is to try and lift persons out of poverty,  our way is we teach them the gospel and they lift themselves out of poverty.  This made sound simplified but it is really a way of saying that the poor who have no motivation will always be poor.  I do not blame some for having no motivation Judge not lest you be Judged.   Brigham Young said that there are the poor devils and also the Devils poor.  I was a clerk for a long time in the Church many years ago.  We did not have a Church welfare system organised.  The Church was too small in the area.  The number of cheques I counter signed for rent, food & whatever was needed for low income members was amazing.  Huge dollar amounts for the period.  But we were always trying to get them to help themselves as much as possible.  There were tough cases.  Those who were chronically ill.  Those for whatever reasons could not get a job.  Those with long term mental health problems.  Also the aged that do not have enough pensions.  They had trouble paying for heat etc....

[kryoung1983]

I believe that the worlds poor are not poor for the most part due to lack of motivation. 40 percent of Siem Reap in cambodia make less than 75 cents a day. I think that the issues are complex, but manageable if you break it down. There are 700,000 villages in India but a million community organizations. If you had one person build deep relationships with one village, and share in the burdens of the poor at an emotional, spiritual, and financial level, it would completely change India. I think a big part of the problem is the world doesn't want to share in the emotional life of the poor, they just want to throw money at the problem, which usually means government interventions that don't always care about the rights of the poor. I believe the first step is taking a one on one approach that is then scaled up. I believe that poverty is a breakdown in a community, and that solutions are about getting a community to come together in the spirit of love and cooperation. 

[Metis_LDS]

12 minutes ago, kryoung1983 said:

I believe that the worlds poor are not poor for the most part due to lack of motivation. 

Yes I can agree, just look at all the people that lost income because of covid in the first world alone.  Motivation is only a part of the mix.  

[The Nehor]

Or, as has been said before, famines don’t occur because everyone lacks a “can do” attitude.

[Hamba Tuhan]

1 hour ago, Metis_LDS said:

He said the worlds way is to try and lift persons out of poverty,  our way is we teach them the gospel and they lift themselves out of poverty.  This made sound simplified but it is really a way of saying that the poor who have no motivation will always be poor.

I do not think this is necessarily the case. The Gospel of Jesus Christ has provided enormous assistance to me when it comes to temporal matters far beyond increasing my motivation. A big part of that has been making me a part of a community that is going places together and has supported and encouraged me through that process. It has also taught me many skills, both directly and indirectly. And so many others!

Edited May 6, 2021 by Hamba Tuhan

[kryoung1983]

Well I would say that poverty for instance could be eliminated in Manila if the people were full of the spirit of the lord to the point, where the poor were looked after in true charity. There are 3 million homeless in that city, 70,000k of which are children. 21 percent of the population. It may seem like a lot but really it comes down to breaking down the problem in a systematic way, and then mobilizing via the law of sacrifice and consecration, in the completely unrealistic scenario of every person having an eye single to the glory of God, poverty would cease to exist. I don't think of poverty in monetary terms, but in community terms. A community that is completely united in purpose, in the spirit of love is not poor. You just have to break that down into what needs to  happen. This is probably done by thinking in terms of system thinking, root cause anaylsis, or doing a gap analysis. I don't have a ton of business experience, but these tools that are usually used in business can be applied to understanding how to drive towards the ideal state for a community. Usually though people use such tools though to think of their profit line, not to think about creating Zion like processes. 

[pogi]

3 hours ago, kryoung1983 said:

I think a big part of the problem is the world doesn't want to share in the emotional life of the poor...

I think you just hit the nail on the head as to why the problem of poverty will never be solved in mortality.  Not only will people need to invest in the emotional life of the poor - addressing addictions, mental health issues, and generations of poverty culture and unhealthy perspectives of money and even of the self, but they will also have to compromise their standard of living in order to support a sustainable existence on planet earth.  I don't ever see that happening. The fact is that our standard of living is not environmentally sustainable across the board.  We can't all live as Americans currently live and survive for long.  Until you can address the environmental/resource problem, I don't think we can all live as comfortable as we do in America.  Until you can come up with a sustainable and alternative resource plan, I don't think people are going to be sacrificing their standard of living to meet the poor half way.

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, Douglas Avans said:

One doesn't have to read between the lines in the passages touching upon the United Order and stewardship to realize that coming "up with a sustainable and alternative resource plan" is exactly one of the very planks the Lord is running on.  

Running on? Who is running against him?

[Metis_LDS]

8 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

I do not think this is necessarily the case. The Gospel of Jesus Christ has provided enormous assistance to me when it comes to temporal matters far beyond increasing my motivation. A big part of that has been making me a part of a community that is going places together and has supported and encouraged me through that process. It has also taught me many skills, both directly and indirectly. And so many others!

Yes I have had a similar experience with a few bumps along the way.

[pogi]

10 hours ago, Douglas Avans said:

One doesn't have to read between the lines in the passages touching upon the United Order and stewardship to realize that coming "up with a sustainable and alternative resource plan" is exactly one of the very planks the Lord is running on.  

Sorry, I thought you were talking about adapting and instigating your own system - not the Lord’s.  I applaud your thoughts and efforts.  Don’t let me discourage you, just trying to address some very real problems you will face.

Edited May 6, 2021 by pogi

[kryoung1983]

Seems you thought the last poster was the OP. I am the starter of the thread, and in a way I am trying to create my own systems and tools that are patterned after the United Order. Well I would say the laws of sacrifice and consecration can be applied to multiple Scenarios. I am going to do my masters in community development, and seek revelation on how to help the poor. The United Order in its fullness comes after the second coming, but there is no reason why we can't apply the principles of the United Order more fully to world problems. After all the church is less than 1 percent of the world. It is not rocket science. It means narrowing the problem down to the one, and then having people voluntarily share in the burdens of poor families. This requires great sacrifice, and I think many more who are not members would be interested, after all America is far more individual centered than many other countries. The beginning step is narrowing the problem down to focus on the ONE, and then scaling up from there. That is what the Lord does in terms of how he organizes the church. So you can look at some of the processes and models the Lord uses and then apply them in different contexts. 

Edited May 6, 2021 by kryoung1983

[Calm]

11 minutes ago, kryoung1983 said:

I am going to do my masters in community development, and seek revelation on how to help the poor

A great way to actually invest in your concerns. I applaud you. 

[mfbukowski]

On 5/5/2021 at 5:16 PM, kryoung1983 said:

All you would have to do is create something like a CRM package that is cloud based that is more firmly focused on deep relationship building with the poor, instead of beneficiary focused

What's a CRM?

I think this all would be difficult to pull off politically given the overall political leanings of church members and the belief that the United Order must be based on testimony,-religious beliefs - and not directly including non members, simply because they do not have the requisite Christ centered beliefs

But perhaps I am misunderstanding the central point.

Edited May 10, 2021 by mfbukowski

[mgy401]

On 5/5/2021 at 6:58 PM, kryoung1983 said:

I believe that poverty is a breakdown in a community, and that solutions are about getting a community to come together in the spirit of love and cooperation. 

I would phrase it slightly differently.  I would say that grinding poverty is the natural state of humankind, except in societies that have been able to establish the social capital that allows for stable functioning of the familial, religious, social, and commercial institutions that ultimately responsible for lifting people out of poverty.

It’s easy to talk about the “United Order” as some kind of panacea, especially when we consider the existence of the modern Church’s multi-billion dollar “rainy day fund”.  But from everything I’ve seen in my (admittedly limited) study of the UO—it was first and foremost a local organization, where communities neither routinely sought nor could reliably expect capital infusions from more prosperous areas dozens or hundreds of miles away.

It seems to me that the true value of the UO was in augmenting the shared ethos and social capital and sense of purpose that local groups of Church members were already developing.  The Church has already proven that (at least within certain limits) it does have the ability to take a diverse group of people in desperate poverty, and bring them into such a harmonious and cohesive state that fabulous prosperity ensued within a single generation.  That’s basically the story of the establishment of Utah.

The challenge is to do it again; especially when

a) the cultures and value systems in which we are trying to work are unprecedentedly diverse;

b) Church members are a minority in their communities and the Church’s ideas about how to eradicate with poverty don’t always jibe with local or global ideas about how to address the issue; and

c) many of the most poverty-stricken areas are either war-torn or third-rate kleptocracies—in either case the Church is virtually powerless to help.

[kryoung1983]

On 5/10/2021 at 3:21 PM, mfbukowski said:

What's a CRM?

I think this all would be difficult to pull off politically given the overall political leanings of church members and the belief that the United Order must be based on testimony,-religious beliefs - and not directly including non members, simply because they do not have the requisite Christ centered beliefs

But perhaps I am misunderstanding the central point.

I think that the United Order in its fullness will come through the Lords kingdom, but that we can work towards Zion centered processes to help the poor, given that the church makes up less than 1 percent of the world population. I believe that we need a system to focus on the ONE, which means having a database similar to ministering/home teaching for those who are in grinding poverty, and having people share in their burdens via the principles of consecration and sacrifice. Was Gandhi a member of the church? You don't have to be a member to share in others burdens. CRM means customer relationship management, so something like sales force, except it uses frameworks that are built around participatory planning with the poor, and in sharing in their burdens. In India there are 700,000 villages, but a million community organizations. A million organizations in Brazil. Around ten million NGO's worldwide, if we worked towards true relationship building with the poor we would have a great impact. But people do not share in the emotional life of the poor. Perhaps part of the reason the United Order has not been given in its fullness is because we do not truly desire it. 

[Islander]

On 5/5/2021 at 8:50 PM, kryoung1983 said:

Well I would say that poverty for instance could be eliminated in Manila if the people were full of the spirit of the lord to the point, where the poor were looked after in true charity. There are 3 million homeless in that city, 70,000k of which are children. 21 percent of the population. It may seem like a lot but really it comes down to breaking down the problem in a systematic way, and then mobilizing via the law of sacrifice and consecration, in the completely unrealistic scenario of every person having an eye single to the glory of God, poverty would cease to exist. I don't think of poverty in monetary terms, but in community terms. A community that is completely united in purpose, in the spirit of love is not poor. You just have to break that down into what needs to  happen. This is probably done by thinking in terms of system thinking, root cause anaylsis, or doing a gap analysis. I don't have a ton of business experience, but these tools that are usually used in business can be applied to understanding how to drive towards the ideal state for a community. Usually though people use such tools though to think of their profit line, not to think about creating Zion like processes. 

The causal elements of poverty are many, from a secular standpoint. We must recognize, however, that the Lord during His earthly ministry did not say much on the subject. "The poor you will always have with you" is only half of the sentence. The remainder is this: "But you will not always have me." Matt 26:11.  He was pointing to the time factor in His ministry and stay on erth among them. He would depart but His teachings and the values He instilled in them would remain. The existence of the poor gives scope for the exercise of the graces of true charity, benevolence, and self-denial; and such opportunities will never be lacking while the world lasts. He exhorted many to detach themselves from the pursue of material wealth and to use whatever resources they had to alleviate hunger and suffering.

Billions are spent in hunger relief every year around the world by NGO's. No amount seems to be enough, because to impact society in sustainable and meaningful way we have to first do so at the family level. And absolutely nothing will suffice but the Gospel of Christ. That is the foundation of the value-system that undergirds the creation of an orderly, safe, humane and productive society. Although the trend to move away from the Judeo-Christian values that formed the foundation of the United States continues, today, we are all the beneficiaries of such founding principles. 

So, we will continue to do, financially, whatever we can for those that suffer under the oppressive weight of poverty. But such interventions are always suboptimal. Industrialization, commerce and a market economy without the Gospel is rather like having a country without a soul. It may function, for a season, and often held together by the repressive hand of governments that enforce a coercive form of "social order". But sooner or later, it descends into the abyss of greed, cruelty and moral decadence.