Topics to Consider, Part 2

The following discussion was presented at a conference held at Zion Ponderosa Ranch near Orderville, UT on October 27th, 2024.

Stephanie Snuffer: Okay, while he’s coming up here, we came up with some other subjects we want to talk about. But we didn’t… I didn’t print out the things. So basically, we’re gonna do the same thing we did last time, in a riffing kind of manner, meaning I’m going to present some ideas, and we’re gonna talk about them, and we might, I don’t know… I know audience participation in these kinds of things is really bad for the recording and everything. But you know, somebody gave me the two… Like, we’re here ‘til two o’clock. It’s 11:10, people. I’m not takin’ ‘til two, I can guarantee… 

Denver Snuffer:  You’re on Arizona time; it’s 12.

SS: Is it really? Oh, good Lord Almighty.

DS: Yeah, in the wrong state. Does this microphone work?

SS: Okay. Now hold on. I gotta wait for my computer to come up.

DS: I finally understand Leroy’s talk yesterday, because he left the writing up.

SS: Alright, so… 

DS: We’re gonna talk about gossip, right?

SS: Yeah, so I have three things. Gossip is one of them. We… I think we decided that’s the first one we’re gonna talk about. Then I have… (Oh gosh, okay.) Then I have… These are just things that are rocking my world, so I figured I’d rock your world with them. The other one is the accountability component from Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication. [Audience applause.] I know, thank you. Not, you know… Thank you for clapping. Thank you for reading it. Thank you for thinking it’s important. And then… And thank you for recommending it to me. I… The book was recommended to me—probably, I don’t know, maybe by Q, I don’t know—like, several years ago, but the name really just sort of rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t like the name, so I just left it…‘til I read it. Changed my life! Oh, my gosh!

Okay, so my computer is up. We’re gonna go to gossip. Okay, so I’m going to just throw out something, and you tell me what you think. So, gossip: We talked about the definition of gossip on the way here yesterday. I simplify it by saying gossip is anything that you say about another person that cannot be proved in a court of law. Now that goes to my husband, right? Because gossip as a definition (like, that I Googled) is anything you say about a third person, right? If that person isn’t there, it’s gossip. Gossip doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad, right? I mean, I can talk about something wonderful about one of my kids who’s not here. So I’m not… I mean, gossip, obviously, the word has a negative connotation, but any time you talk about somebody who’s not here, it’s gossiping. So we did go through a lot of the legal aspects of what gossip was and why. And I mean, you could talk about those if you wanted to; they were kind of interesting.

DS: If you’re going to introduce a fact as evidence at court, you have to be the witness of the fact. You can’t say someone told you about this, and therefore, you’re going to testify under oath to the truthfulness of what someone told you. Because whatever it was they told you is not within your own knowledge; it’s you relying upon and relaying what someone else has said. 

One of the really unfortunate things about the Restoration is how very much of what we take as the history of the Restoration is based upon second-hand accounts, repeated stories, or stuff that gets repeated 40 years after the event took place. The reason why I read from my journal is because the journal was kept contemporaneous with what happened. And I don’t have to rely upon my recollection. I can actually state what occurred on the day when the event occurred because it got recorded contemporaneously. 

Almost everything that we think we know that is critical of Joseph Smith is second-hand accounts or reconstructed memories from long after the fact. We have a lot of information that is first-hand account, contemporaneously recorded by things Joseph Smith said in public that got written down that day or within a very short time after that. And we even have contemporaneous writings of his and a talk (he wrote one talk; he didn’t deliver it, but he wrote the talk, and it got read in a conference at Nauvoo). And if you confine yourself to that stuff—instead of the reconstructions, the repetitions, the gossips, the 40-years-later recollections—Joseph Smith emerges as a very different character. I’ve suggested that when the Lord warns us in a revelation that “fools will hold Joseph in derision, but the honest and the virtuous will constantly seek blessings from under his hand,” that imposes, based upon a revelation from God, a burden of proof that I would suggest is comparable to today’s requirement for convicting someone; that is, “proof beyond any reasonable doubt.” If you confine yourself to the materials that we have absolutely no doubt about its authenticity (and that does not include section 132), if you confine yourself to the real proof that we have available, you will find that Joseph Smith was a remarkably virtuous man, devoted husband to Emma Smith, who fathered children with one and only one woman, whom he loved.

It’s historical gossip that has created a new caricature that most of the Latter-day Saints and most of the apostates and most of the fundamentalists rely upon. It’s gossip that turns us against one another. It’s gossip that makes us view people in a very unfavorable light, for the most part, because of what someone repeats to us about what they think, saw, or heard someone else say that got repeated from yet still another earlier source. We’re doing ourselves a disservice when we engage in any of that. And the Prophet Joseph Smith’s reputation is monumentally an example of how gossip turns negative, distorts history, and changes virtue into vice.

SS: Cool. Thanks for that. Because, yeah… Perfect example. 

So gossip erodes trust, okay? So it undermines trust among community members. And when people are worried that they might be gossiped about because they are in the presence of someone who gossips about other people… That’s the interesting thing. I mean, if you are a gossiper… And we all are, so no judgment, alright? We all gossip. That is part of human conversation. It’s part of connection. It makes us feel good. There are some actual positives from gossip, although they’re not long-term positives, right? 

• You feel like you’re the one with the story, right? People come to you. They want to hear what you have to say. That feels pretty good. 
• You gossip… You might spread gossip because you think you’re protecting someone or something. That might be true; it’s hard to tell. 
• You might appreciate gossip because it makes you feel better than someone else, and that is a basic human need: to feel good about ourselves. Not necessarily to feel better, but a basic human need is to feel good about yourself. And if gossip helps you do that, there might be a reason you were participating in gossip. 

I don’t have it… You know, gossip is going to be different for every relationship, every environment, every community. But it undermines and erodes trust because if you are communicating with a gossiper, then you have no guarantee that when you are not there, they are not gossiping about you. It is ubiquitous. It’s not contained to specific people or specific circumstances, right? And so, it’s really important to sort of check yourself, and you can check yourself with your “others,” if you want to: Is this gossip? 

Now, to be clear, I do not have this… Well, I’m not… Gossip is not really my biggest weakness. I don’t really engage in gossip, and when I do, I absolutely 100% keep it contained to my family, within my family. So I… We might do it, but I don’t do it outside of my family. I remember when my kids were younger and they’d get in the car coming home from school, and they would tell me about someone at school or give me some criticism of somebody or whatever. I would take it, I would listen to it, I would, you know, kind of say, “Yeah, that’s fine. But don’t you for one minute think that they’re not in their car, driving home from school with their mom, talking about you,” because they are because that’s just how it goes. So it undermines trust among community members. When people feel that their personal lives are discussed behind their backs, they become wary of engaging openly, leading to a breakdown in relationships, okay? This goes, again, to partly what Q was talking about: If we cannot get ourselves back online through trust and companionship and, you know, reducing these negative traits in ourselves, then we stay traumatized, and we re-traumatize. We re-traumatize ourselves. Because if you have ever been the victim of gossip, that’s really painful, and I’m really sorry—because that’s hard to combat, and it is, in a way, it is traumatizing. Gossip also creates division and polarization. 

Do you want to talk about that—just anything you have to say about polarization and division?

DS: We have a Communist trying to become the President of the United States. And we have a Nazi running against her. Don’t forget to vote!

SS: Okay, good. 

Gossip creates a negative environment. It’s a negative… Gossip is a negative atmosphere. It’s just unpleasant. A community t