 Our next speaker will be Don Bradley. Don will be speaking on the grand fundamental principle, friendship as partaking of the divine nature. Don is a writer, editor, and researcher specializing in Mormon origins. He didn't put this in his own bio, but he's extraordinarily good at it. He completed an internship with the Joseph Smith papers project as finalizing his history MA thesis at Utah State University and plans to pursue a doctorate in religious studies. Don has published several papers, including the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism, Joseph Smith's unfinished Reformation, and will soon publish his first book, The Lost 116 Pages Rediscovering the Book of Lehi. Beyond academia, Don is a single dad and a happy victim of the Flynn effect. Enjoying the struggle to keep up intellectually with two precocious sons. Please welcome Don Bradley. Thank you, Lincoln. I'll make the appropriate correction to my bio. I, for those of you who don't know what the Flynn effect is, it's the sort of progressive increase in IQs each generation. And if you want proof of that, my son Donny is here in the back. I didn't have time to prepare slides, so I'm going to be one of the honorary Mormon transhumanist Luddites for the day. In 1843, Joseph Smith formulated three grand fundamental principles of Mormonism, receiving truth from all sources, friendship, and relief to those in need. And there's a paper by me in the April 2006 Sunstone. That's paper on the subject. It's also the only paper on the subject. Joseph privileged friendship, reportedly singling it out as preeminently the grand fundamental principle of Mormonism. Why? To answer this, let's explore the LDS scriptures beginning in the beginning at the creation. Creation stories provide models for human action. We'll see this with a glance at Judaism and Taoism. In Genesis, God creates the world by his word, rests on the seventh day, and declares his creation very good. Jews build their lives on God's word, rests on the seventh day, and believe the created world to be very good. Now take Taoists. The Tao de Jing says the universe wasn't planned, but emerged spontaneously from the Tao. So the Taoist ideal for behavior is Wu Wei, actionless action. Living in harmony with the Tao, allowing the right action to emerge on its own. In the most developed LDS creation account, in the book of Abraham, a community referred to as the gods, plans and executes the creation, as Leonard talked about. This has implications for our behavior. If you've ever wondered why the book most likely to be found in a Mormon's hand, isn't the book of Mormon, but a Franklin planner, here's your answer. Mormons plan their day by day actions because the gods plan theirs, since they began with the end in mind, so should we. And here's another less recognized implication of the Abraham account. Creation is communal. Collective action is the divine way. Acting in harmony with others is this part of the divine nature. To partake of that nature, we must go and do likewise. The role of harmony in the divine life is developed in the book of Mormon. One of Christ's first teachings, the Nephites, is this. He that has the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention. And he stirs up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one against another. Behold, this is not my doctrine to stir up the hearts of men with anger, one against another. But this is my doctrine, that such thing should be done away. Christ's choice of words here is telling. He identifies Satan with the spirit of conflict, one against another. Satan, as described here, has antagonism, being against as his very nature. A characterization which calls to mind what the term Satan means in Hebrew, adversary. But Christ not only describes Satan's nature, he also describes God's. In tandem with identifying Satan as the author of antagonism, Christ discusses in detail the mutually supportive relationships that exist between the members of the Godhead. Each is described as directing supportive action toward the others. The father and the son testify of each other, the Holy Ghost testifies of them both, and the father and the son authorize and send forth the Holy Ghost. It's in Christ juxtaposition of Satan and God here that we can distinguish their respective natures. Satan is an individual, God is a community. Satan is discord, God is harmony. Satan is against others, God is for them. Satan tears others down, God builds them up. Christ's sermon reveals relationships of mutual support, bonds of friendship, to be an essential part of the divine nature of what makes God God. It portrays enmity as the essence of the demonic, what makes Satan Satan. Satan opens rifts, Christ closes them, bringing at one minute between people and God and between people and other people. Such at one minute occurs in the Book of Moses where Enoch's people create Zion, an ideal community in which they live with one heart and shared love. Their harmony makes them fit companions for the gods who lift them up to join their society. Joseph's revelations prophesied that when we achieve such harmony, we too will join their society. As our earthly Zion ascends, the heavenly Zion will descend, meeting us halfway. To aid the building of Zion, Joseph established the school of the prophets. This school fostered truth and friendship. The school's charter declared that it was for the mutual benefit of its members that all might be out of fight of all. The students made this covenant with one another and this to me is one of the most beautiful passages in LDS scripture. Art thou a brother or a brethren? I salute you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ in token of remembrance of the everlasting covenant in which covenant I receive you to fellowship in a determination that is fixed, immovable, and unchangeable to be your friend and brother through the grace of God and the bonds of love, to walk in all the command of God blameless in thanksgiving forever and ever. Amen. Mormonism is a religion of covenant in the deifying everlasting covenant. Mormon's enter is one of mutual support of lifting one another's burdens, comforting those who need comfort and being fundamentally for others. It is a covenant of friendship. But why is friendship essential to the divine nature? Science may shed light on this. In non-zero, the logic of human destiny, science writer Robert Wright examines evolution using the idea of a zero sum game. This is a game in which there's no fixed pie so one player's gain is another's loss. Biological and cultural evolution are processes by which organisms enter into increasingly non-zero sum games, non-zero sum games. Those in which the pie can be either expanded by cooperation or diminished by conflict. More and more our fates are linked. We can play a positive sum game with our collective security, prosperity, and environment, a game in which we all gain or a negative sum game in which we all lose but we can no longer play a zero sum game. To act against others to our supposed benefit is increasingly to act against ourselves. Charting a satanic course of antagonism leads to our all sinking together. To progress as a civilization and even survive, we must be for one another. Joseph recognized this. In a sermon where he expounded the grand fundamental principle of friendship, he declared, quote, Mormonism is intended to revolutionize and civilize the world and cause men to become friends and brothers. These goals of promoting friendship and civilizing the world are not distinct. The survival and growth of civilization ultimately depend more on friendship and its attendant virtue civility than on science and technology. Our civilization will endure and progress only as we progressively embrace the grand fundamental principle on which it is based. Another scientific concept that illuminates the importance of friendship is complexity. Complexity as defined by the pioneering psychologist, Mihai Csikszentmihi, which if you just look at the name is almost impossible to pronounce. He's the originator of the idea of flow. His definition is that complexity is integrated diversity. The working of varied functions or parts toward coordinated ends. A system whose members are uniform is simple. One whose members are varied but lack common purpose is chaotic. Complexity like musical harmony requires the orchestration of diverse elements into an integrated pattern. This holds true for complex technologies, organisms and communities. Our transformation into a complex divine community in the image of the Godhead requires us to approach one another as friends and find or develop common goals. May we, as bearers of Mormonism's grand fundamental principles, go forward with the determination that is fixed, immovable and unchangeable to be each other's friends and sisters or brothers. Relentlessly seeking to be for others, even those with whom we may now disagree, each doing our part to build the goodwill and synergy to transform the world into the divine. Thus will we become fit to join the community whose very nature is friendship, the community that is God. Guess there's time for one question. Kathy. What would you think is the most important aspect of helping people think along the same lines and become more in harmony with each other? What would you recommend as the most important factor? Is this talking about people within Mormonism or just people in general? Just don't say anything. Okay. I think that, it's an excellent question. It's one that I have not given enough thought to, but just off the top of my head, couple of things that come to mind are one, I think if people recognize that we're not as separate as we like to think that would be very useful. There's a great deal of research right now on social networks, not just like Facebook, but in real life networks. There's a book called Connected that discusses it at length and we are so influenced by each other and by our networks that it's almost scary and consequently we have a huge impact on others. So I think realizing that the myth of the rugged individualist is a myth. There's no such thing. We are part of each other. And then also, I'm reading a book right now on positive psychology called Positivity. It talks about when people are happy, they actually see more overlap between themselves and others, between their interests and others' interests. And so even just promoting happiness itself has a great impact on people's connection to others.