OCR Text |
Show The Ogden Valley News Page 10 Volume XXX Issue IV May 1, 2023 EDITOR’S VIEW cont. from page 3 “past” through these shared stories. Shared memory is perpetuated through state institutions such as national educational systems that ensure information is uniformly propagated. It is also maintained and disseminated through museums, monuments, and national anthems and folksongs. Symbols help build and strengthen the explanation behind the history of a nation and a patriotic contingent of defenders to uphold and protect it. They provide a historical cognitive map, which is important for perpetuating social and national identity. They focus on origin, and an objective versus a subjective perspective, and explain codes of conduct. Symbolic constructions also help perpetuate what history has found to be most beneficial and stabilizing for a community, society, family, nation, church, etc. What works is adopted and further perpetuated, again, by symbols and customs. The most lasting cultural constructs linger because of their effectiveness. For instance, the myriad of customs that demonstrate respect for authority figures—such as officers hired to enforce laws and ordinances, parents and grandparents, and teachers, etc.— were adopted to ensure respect and compliance to the laws that were adopted as part of the social contract to protect private property, the safety of all, and to keep chaos at bay and order at the forefront to ensure the stability necessary to build a highly complex civilization and civil society. They’re extremely important; thus, the need to teach children and youth to be respectful, even to take a hat off when entering a sacred institution or when within the presence of elders and civic leaders. In and of itself, it’s a seemingly small, insignificant gesture; however, in the larger scheme of things, it’s critical to maintaining social order, which allows civilizations to prosper and flourish versus decay. In order to invest in the future, an investor has to have a reasonable expectation that law and order will be maintained. A heavy reliance on customs and social constructs help provide and ensure this stability at minimal cost and that the commitment to order is adhered to. Jordan B. Peterson, writing in his book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, helps us understand the value of customs. He notes that they are representative of common humanity. “Now the crowd is by no means always right, but it’s commonly right. It’s typically right…. Something new and radical is still almost always wrong. You need good, even great, reasons to ignore or defy general, public opinion. That’s your culture. It’s a mighty oak…. If you’re reading this book [or this commentary], there’s a strong probability that you’re a privileged person. You can read. You have time to read. You’re perched high in the clouds. It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order. If you’re going to insist on bending the world to your way, you better have your reasons. If you’re going to stand your ground, you better have your reasons. You better have thought them through. You might otherwise be in for a very hard landing. You should do what other people do, unless you have a very good reason not to…. So speaks wisdom.” William Ophuls adds, from his book Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail, “Another source of division within the polity arises from an influx of foreigners drawn irresistibly to the panoply of imperial wealth and glory. The result is an increasingly polyglot population that no longer shares the same values. In fact, thanks to the demolition job performed by the intellectuals, the society is increasingly ‘value free’—that is, it no longer believes in much of anything or takes anything seriously. The original élan, the moral core, and the guiding ideal of the civilization are now a distant memory.” While symbols, through those previously mentioned and other vast avenues of distribution, can be implemented to unite and strengthen a nation and her people, both social constructionists and deconstructionists are well aware of the power to both unify and divide a nation through the same symbols and avenues of distributing their meaning. The internet and social media have heightened the ability to convey meaning in both positive and negative ways. Today, as never seen before in the history of this nation, there is an effort to destruct versus construct American ideals and our cohesiveness as a nation—to take down, only to rebuild a new social order upon the soil of the freest and greatest nation that ever was. Marxist humanists, influenced by Marx himself and Max Horkheimer and his Frankfurt School and French philosopher Jacques Derrida, leader of the postmodernists who made a strong showing beginning in the late 1970s, further radicalized Marxist philosophy. This peddled narrative is running rampant today. It considers culture and all its contributors (its many symbols, i.e., flags, statues, institutions, etc.) as oppressors of the poor and disenfranchised. Utopian in nature, in implementation it is anything but utopian. These collective ideas have resulted in the massacre, literally, of millions upon millions, and the mass destruction of civilizations and all its positive components—home, family, stability, and prosperity, etc. Numerous examples of the chaos it has created can be found in the recent history of the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and North Korea, etc. There are many more examples. How can a rising generation come to learn, understand, and incorporate the essential and vital components of a healthy civil society. It begins with teaching them about a healthy respect for history, institutions, law, order, culture, symbols, and tradition that have all evolved and been finetuned through preceding generations for specific reasons—the survival of family, community, and country. While it may seem like a small matter to ask a young person to remove or doff their hat when they walk into a church or any other institution, or to do so when they present themselves before a civil servant, in the larger scheme of things, it can make all the difference. UTVs l Motorcycles Boats l Personal Watercraft Kayaks l Canoes l SUPs Snowmobiles On Site Rentals & Tours Eden (801) Pineview Reservoir/Marina Monte Cristo Trailhead l 745-3038 www.ClubRecUtah.com PEACE PRIZE cont. from page 1 President Nelson said. “God does not love one race more than another. His feelings of inclusion are very clear. As recorded in the Book of Mormon, which I esteem as companion scripture to the Holy Bible, the Savior ‘invite[s] all to come unto Him and partake of his goodness; … he [denies] none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; … all are alike unto God.’” “Every now and again, people should do what you did,” Carter told President Nelson. “And that is: Get out of the box and surprise some folk. Do something very different of what is needed to unite people, to bring harmony.” Georgia U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff was also in attendance. “We… convene here this evening to celebrate those who have made outstanding contributions to interfaith harmony, to peace and to justice. [It] is a powerful thing,” he said. In his five years as leader of the Church, President Nelson has consistently urged us to love and respect everyone. At an event in 2018 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of extending the 1978 revelation on the priesthood to all races, he taught Latter-day Saints to “build bridges of cooperation instead of walls of segregation.” President Nelson began building such bridges with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 2018 with a joint call for greater civility and racial harmony in society. At the 2019 NAACP convention in Detroit, the prophet said, “We have a God-given responsibility to help make life better for those around us.” And he expressed his hope that “we may increasingly call each other dear friends” and “go forward doing our best to exemplify the two great commandments—to love God and love each of His children.” The next year, in response to riots and violence throughout the United States, President Nelson condemned racism and pleaded for peace. “We are brothers and sisters, each of us the child of a loving Father in Heaven,” President Nelson said. “His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, invites all to come unto Him—‘black and white, bond and free, male and female’ (2 Nephi 26:33). It behooves each of us to do whatever we can in our spheres of influence to preserve the dignity and respect every son and daughter of God deserves.” The partnership with the NAACP continued. In June 2021, President Nelson pledged US$1 million per year over three years to fund scholarships for Black students. He also pledged significant funding for the Rev. Amos C. Brown fellowship to Ghana (which took place in August 2022) and joint humanitarian projects in the United States (two of which began in San Francisco and Memphis last year). The Rev. Dr. Brown, pastor of the Third LETTER cont. from page 3 Baptist Church of San Francisco, who spoke at the laying of the cornerstone of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel in 1978, was also present at the event to honor President Nelson. He said, “God calls it to be so that President Russell Nelson would be the champion today for social justice, racial reckoning, and reconciliation, and is a doing a marvelous job around the world to bring people together and not divide them and push them asunder.” “I think that if every spiritual community patterned its labor, its tenants after what The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is doing now, we will indeed become closer to that day where we will truly be one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” the Rev. Brown said. Elder Gerard and President Leavitt Inducted into the Morehouse College of Ministers and Laity - On the morning of Thursday, April 13, 2023, Elder Jack N. Gerard of the Seventy and Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square President Michael Leavitt were also inducted as scholars into the school’s College of Ministers and Laity. The college acknowledges “those who have assisted in the effort to continue to move forward the vision of Martin Luther King Jr. to bring about true equity and equality in our society and our culture,” Elder Gerard said. “I am humbled and honored to be a part of it.” Regarding the award given to President Nelson Elder, Gerard said, “President Nelson truly walks the walk. One of the first things he reminds us of is that we need to root out racism. We need to rise above the polarization of this world. And most recently he’s called on us all to become peacemakers, to truly live as Jesus Christ lives.” Morehouse College Presents Gandhi-KingMandela Peace Prize to President Russel M. Nelson. from elsewhere in order to continue to grow. If this is the case then their 7% from the Valley is capped. “There is a lower limit to the dam’s discharge; Ogden City taps some of it, and the river needs some to keep a healthy flow. Otherwise, assuming current conditions and water policies persist, there appears to be more than enough for the Valley’s full buildout. “For more information and details on the water infrastructure study, you can find it all here: bowencollins.com/public-involvement/ ogden-valley/ Here is a statement from the website that comes directly from Weber Basin Water: “It is Weber Basin’s position that there is water available for development in the Valley, and that the County should carefully consider how and where new development takes place.” “There is enough water, at least for the foreseeable future. Getting to it will be challenging ($). It makes the most sense to me to work with Ogden City to tap their wells for a Valley-wide system. They could offset the loss with their surface water rights and already existing treatment facility at the dam. City administration is reluctant to allow it at this time, but perhaps future discussions/negotiations will change this.” Ogden City’s total water demand. In total, Ogden City’s population of 86,000 people use about 22,500- acre-feet of culinary water per year. If the Valley’s total buildout is around 20-30k people, which is the estimated buildout based on existing zoning and the existing general plan, and if Valley residents consume water like the residents of Ogden City do, then there will need to be about 5,200- to 8,000-acre-feet devoted to the Valley’s future culinary water demands. “From where will it come? Scott Paxman from Weber Basin Water told me that they could simply turn down the amount of water that is discharged from the dam and replace that lost water downstream using water from Willard Bay. Assuming a future Valley population of 30,000, this would change the above percentages to: • 88% would be discharged at the dam to users downstream • 7% is used by Ogden City • 5% would be used by future Valley residents “I don’t know whether Ogden City is using all of their groundwater rights from the Valley. If they are not, their percentage can go up and the dam discharge percentage can go down as they grow. If they Laura Warburton, are, then they will need to lean more heavily on their Huntsville contract with Weber Basin Water to obtain water |