Ground Sound
The Earth has ears. Inside voices, please.
What weighs more, a pound of feathers? Or a pound of Duckstack?
We are pleased to announce Duckstack Gold Platinum1. Free tier subscribers have automatically been upgraded to Duckstack Gold Platinum Tier Subscriptions, which have automatically been upgraded to Duckstack Platinum Gold Platinum subscriptions. If there’s a level above that nobody’s told me, but I do believe this upgrade chain works indefinitely, if any of you were somehow already on the Duckstack Gold Platinum Tier Subscription, which we hadn’t invented yet. If this is you: Congratulations! You never cease to amaze us.
WHO YOU GONNA BELIEVE?
Me? Or the guy with the gun
Hugh Nibley is widely regarded as one of the greatest “Mormon”2 Latter-Day Saint scholars of all time, and I read a series of his works once which was formative for me. The series was titled “the Way of the Church”, and you can read each of the 11 articles here. The articles are about the corruption that entered the church after the death of Christ’s apostles, and he gives a lengthy exposition of the many vectors such corruptions can take, even just in small modifications of a text. As one apocryphal account of Peter exclaims: “If they take such liberties with our words while we are yet alive, what more will they take when we are dead!” It is no secret among the ~30,000 sects of Christianity that motivated reasoning can blow Christ’s doctrine in the wind, so the standard argument boils down to argumentum ad catholicoca3 or “Catholics or Orthodox are the same church that Christ started so everyone else is de-facto apostates because the priesthood just stayed here”, argumentum ad protestantum which is formulated as “You must interpret the bible correctly or you are de-facto apostates, the priesthood comes randomly as you interpret correctly”, and argumentum ad restorationum which is “There was a break in the apostleship so a new prophet was needed to restore Christ’s church (and the priesthood had to be re-introduced)”. And then there’s microscopic sub-variants of each of these argumentums within each Christian sect, so there are restorationists who believe the restorationists went apostate and it had to be re-restored again4, and there’s baptists of baptists who get mad at the other baptists for not interpreting the verses about music well enough, etc. Schisms within schisms to be sure.
One thing Hugh Nibley points out, is that when translating ancient texts such as the Bible, there is a ton to work with. An astronomical, incredible amount, that no person could even attempt handling. You’re limited to the data sets that you stumble upon. But it gets worse: Those data sets were compiled the same way, by people with even less time. How do they choose what goes in? That’s where human bias starts. So with theology, there is just way too many sects, and way too much data to work with, and you have to select what you are going to invest time into. This is insanely risky. Of course some things (what anime to watch) are a lot less significant than others! (what religions are true, and to what degree)
This is all to say that faith is not only a random chance jump, but in many ways requires you to pick a door and stick to it. Knowing that you don’t have all the data. You can never have all the data. “Adam, why are you offering sacrifices?” “I know not, save the Lord commands me.”5 Is this show going to suck? I don’t know but I am going to watch it to find out. Is this religion going to suck? You will get what you look for. Life altering fetishes start with indulging a fascination. This is why you must be very very selective about what fascinations you are going to indulge, and almost everyone can sense this, about things that they care about. Its in religion, in politics6, and its in the water, and its in the blood, because its one of the primary purposes God sent us here. Adam and Eve could have stayed ignorant in the garden of Eden but they didn’t, now its up to us to nourish their gift7 to the best result God could ask us for.
In my experience, when I come across something in Christianity or the gospel that doesn’t sound right, I follow Brigham Young’s example of “don’t reject it immediately, hold to what I’ve seen and know so far. Lets see if I can come to understand this also.”8 Most people don’t take that step.
But in the end, when you get to the judgement of God, you aren’t going to be able to tell him you were honestly deceived, because you made the choices in what to believe, every step of the way. You chose which data sets to study, you chose what to include in your final compilations. You chose what fascinations and resentments and vulgarity to indulge and every grain of sand you put on the scale will be measured.
Alma in the Book of Mormon writes:
Alma 32:27 But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.
There are dozens of object lessons for faith, but they always seem to resolve down to “try it out”. “let this desire work in you, until you can at least try it.” Plenty can go “wrong” with a growing seed, of no fault of the seed nor gardener. But planting and watering is bare minimum for positive results, always!
Joseph Smith wrote a very theologically dense series of lectures titled “Lectures on Faith”, in which he or Sidney Rigdon (one of the other first apostles in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) expounds on how faith is an action word.
Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
So how can you have evidence of things not seen? Who would plant, if they did not have evidence of things not seen (the process of seed growth)? Christ had a parable about this, how seeds can fall on different kinds of ground, and you have to choose to give God’s word place within you. If you want to find God, you have to put in the work yourself, because if you don’t, your will won’t get enough exercise in life, and you’ll enter God’s premise wilted and weak, unable to be exalted, and unable to experience joy.
Year in Review
Its a new year, and a new you! Who are you? How did you get here?
The Duckstack was started in August, 2021, with a short post about going camping with my kid. There weren’t even two of them back then, I think. The Duckstack didn’t have sections, and only like two artists had said I could use their art for noncommercial purposes9. Since then I have learned how to speak and write English fluently, in theory, due to rigorous weekly practice. I have always had three bucket-list type goals in life, which were to be a writer, an artist (of music), and an orator10. Giving you guys The Duckstack has helped me start a lot of these, and I feel confident enough to announce the beginning of a second, brand-new substack, where I will be publishing an episodic fantasy novel. I haven’t perfected an elevator pitch for this yet, but it will be an urban fantasy set a few hundred years in the future, after humanity has taken the next step in evolution. There will be a lot of magic, and a lot of action.
And don’t worry, The Duckstack isn’t going anywhere. I will continue delivering free dreams and ether to your inbox, every Tuesday.
You can subscribe to the new substack below, and you can always wait and see. I don’t expect my writing to be for everyone, but like everything, I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy creating it.
Sound Off
I personally listen to The Duckstack with sound on, but nobody’s perfect
Last week we had a bit of a studio mishap with some crazed lunatic calling himself a “musician” but only playing noise music and we apologize if that moved any of the tectonic plates your houses rest upon, unless it moved your houses closer to each other in a way that you like, in which case we regret nothing. The curious might be interested to know, however: If instruments were horoscopes, what would yours be?
Percussion: Percussion instruments are characterized by sharp, abrupt noises, and are almost universally used as rhythm. If you’re a percussion instrument, you should expect thankless but necessary jobs in the future, and you should prepare some drum-solos so that you can get your necessary appreciation intake.
Strings: String instruments and, by extension, string theory, involve vibrations of multiple parallel lines. You might expect to have a lot on your plate, and a lot of multitasking will be required of you to keep up in life soon. Duckstack recommends getting help, or a tool such as a pick or wand, to alleviate the stresses such chaos might inflict on you.
Wind: Wind instruments function by air going out holes, and you need to consider if you’re the type that has to provide your own wind. If so, your lung capacity could easily tire out from exertion, so you should hold your breath as much as possible before anything might be required of you, to save energy.
Brass: Probably the most weaponizable instruments, these also require on personal power, but you know that. You’ve been trecking it on your own for so long, and honestly you prefer it that way. Imagine playing a brass instrument with drumsticks or some other aid! You would feel ridiculous, like a pathetic cripple. Which you would be. So keep it up, just understand that not everyone has your capacity and if you get too loud you are really annoying.
Keyboard: Something of a hybrid musical instrument, you might be part string, part wind, part brass, or some other Frankenstein abomination which I tremble to even think about. As such, you should work to conceal your off-putting nature. With the right social camouflage, I truly believe you could be the talk of the town, but in a positive way this time.
Electronic instruments: Being wholly fake and made up, you may find yourself questioning a lot of what you would like to believe is true. You might find yourself adapting to every possible situation, and feel adrift with no sense of self. But don’t worry, nobody else experiences this, it is unique to you! Everybody is pitying you. So you don’t need to worry about anyone else empathizing or sharing your wretched pains. You are truly alone. Play to your strengths! Abuse people’s trust in a MLM pyramid scheme.
History
History in Review
Our toddler is becoming more articulate, with a rich vocabulary such as “poop” and “playdough”. He sometimes says “bye” and waves his hand around, and sometimes we’ll ask him “can you say ____” and if he says it he’ll start clapping for himself
“Mama why are you wiggly?” "my back is itchy”. “mine too! Maybe, a mosquito sneaked in and poked me, on the back, with its long nose, and that’s why I’m itchy!” where did he learn about mosquitos
The kid has a lot of nightmares and sneaks in to our bed all the time. “mama I like sleeping with you. That’s why I sneaked in here.” “uh huh”. “I have an idea.” “uh uh” “maybe, when papa comes in, I will sleep with him too! because he loves me.”
“mama do you know potties don’t go bad?” “uh, what?” “because they’re not food!” brilliant deduction child, please stop deducting
We got a ton of snow and we’re starting to live the quintessential family snow dreams. We took both kids sledding. The older kid laughed like a maniac when the sled went off course and we hit the jump the older kids’ had built. My wife fell off the sled and the toddler went for a bunnyslope solo. The kid built a snowman, with a hat and scarf and a smile. “okay, now its time to wrestle!” *starts punching the snowman11*
Trade Imports
Does Bennett even know the Duckstack considers him a trading partner? Probably not. It is a secret, we have embezzled thousands from his substack by just sending it random invoices. Don’t tell.
Bennet’s Demilich recently wrote a sobering piece about the fertility crisis. I’ve written about it before, but he goes far away from the more existential questions of parenthood I tried to talk about, and instead goes into the raw data:
“The Black Death killed one-third of Europe, but by the time this memetic contagion has run its course, we’ll be lucky if a third of the population is left standing.”
This is only a decade or two out. The black death killed equally but people not having kids is not going to do so with us- our population is going to be topheavy, with dozens of highly dependent senior citizens to every one healthy/energetic young person who can take care of them. And that’s assuming the young people will even have the inclination or competence to do so, through all the drugs and timewasters being shoved into everyone’s faces.
Hopefully you have saved up for the seven years of famine. It doesn’t matter how much manufacturing we have if there’s nobody around to operate it. You can already see this starting in fast food, which is the entry level highschooler summer job industry- there just aren’t kids around to fill these jobs anymore. I asked an old mechanic while getting my car smogged about his work, and the first thing he said was “its hard to find help.”
Read Bennett’s Phylactery:
Though convenient, we prefer this nickname be avoided. It is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
I just made up this name it isn’t real
usually they skip the “angels came and ordained me” part because 1) angels didn’t and 2) its a lot easier to just say you’re a prophet and you’re getting it right now without having to do any messy proofs
Moses 5:6 And after many days an angel of the Lord appeared unto Adam, saying: Why dost thou offer sacrifices unto the Lord? And Adam said unto him: I know not, save the Lord commanded me.
Offhand example because I’m homophobic: choosing not to look too closely at a lot of the gay goings on, for example. Showed a gay guy a picture of the drag queen in my town flashing its underwear at a kid (picture taken two months ago at a park in walking distance from me) the other day and he was like “well its not all like that”. Well maybe it isn’t, BUT I know with certainty he is going to find what he’s looking for, because when confronted with “someone calling themselves anal leakage flashed their underwear at a child at a drag event” the first and unquestionable assumption is “that must be an outlier”. Why must it be? Because he WILLS it. You will be able to accomplish much more in life if you develop a metacognition, an awareness of just what you Will. Reasoning evolved not to find correct conclusions, but to justify current conclusions. Is finding truth hopeless then? Not if you have God.
D&C 88:32 And they who remain shall also be quickened; nevertheless, they shall return again to their own place, to enjoy that which they are willing to receive, because they were not willing to enjoy that which they might have received.
33For what doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him, and he receive not the gift? Behold, he rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the giver of the gift.
God has almost always sent a scripture or something within 48 hours that explains it to me, I appreciate him taking the time out of his day for this, and I rate his service 5/5 stars
such as self aggrandizement
I also want to make a hit mobile phone game that I’ve been designing for years but I am a little broke right now lol
Wrestling is our term for roughhousing. Generally speaking roughhousing means he is allowed to throw punches and anything else as the other person says “yes, we can wrestle”.