Documentaries are like candy to me. I am a truth-a-holic, and information about the real world is what I crave. Several documentaries I have checked out from the library this last month have transformed from a jumble of trivia and facts, and coalesced in my mind into a semi-coherent theme.
One documentary was about house flies. There are more flies born every day than there are humans on the earth. They are parasites, living on the refuse and food of humans and their herd animals. They taste with their feet, and have a mouth located on the end of a straw, called a proboscis. They greedily slurp up any liquid they can get their saliva on. They spread disease by regurgitating what they have eaten, now laden with contagion, sometimes spilling a bit on human food as they suck the vomit back into their bodies. Flies followed human migrations across the earth, and were brought to England by Roman legions. From there, they spread to the Americas and Australia.
Another documentary was about the art and science of design. Originally, the process of design occurred almost at the same time as manufacture. A designer would make one item, a pot or whatever, and it would be based on a standardized template, yet have unique characteristics as well. The industrial revolution happened in England, and as technology advanced, art and uniqueness were lost somewhat to mass production. Giant textile mills churned out square miles of machine-made fabric. The American model was assembly line production, literally called "unskilled" because each worker on the line only knew one part of the item he helped produce. This soul-free, artless, mechanical way of creating things spread globally. "Luxury" now often means simply "unique" or "hand-made." This displeased some designers in recent decades, who sought to combine a unique appearance with the ease and affordability of mass production. This has worked in some cases, but it is detrimental in others. Trying to turn a car into a canvas means that instead of paying a little money to replace an ugly black rubber bumper after it is damaged, I have to pay hundreds of dollars to replace a shiny piece of plastic. One car designer indicated that the car a person chooses to drive shows how the person wants to be perceived, the image they want to project, or whom they want to seem to be.
What do these documentaries have in common? The first exemplifies the first temptation of Christ found in Matt. 4—the flesh. Satan tempted Him to turn rocks into bread. Appetites compete with God for our prime affections, and we must keep them inside the boundaries He sets for our protection. The second documentary corresponds nicely to the second temptation—popularity. Jumping from a pinnacle of the Temple was what Satan tempted Jesus to do, and floating easily to the ground would have impressed onlookers. Obsession with appearances and shallow externalities characterizes crumbling societies, and morally bankrupt individuals. "We heeded them not," Nephi says of those who ignored the well-dressed inhabitants of the great and spacious building who mocked them.
Nephi says that those who seek four things will be destroyed: wealth, power, popularity, and the pleasures of the flesh (1Ne. 22:23). (These pursuits tend toward self-destruction, though the scripture says God will destroy them.)
The final temptation of Christ was two-pronged, the twin temptations of wealth and power. They are co-morbid, and hardly show up without each other. Wealth creates power, and power allows for the theft of wealth. These are, perhaps, the most destructive temptations.
It just so happens that I watched two other documentaries cataloging such destruction. The first was a history of man's obsession with gold. Suddenly, the motivation behind bits and pieces of violence scattered throughout history snapped into focus. It was one horrendous and sad tale after another. Wars figured prominently. Spanish conquistadors saw gold ornaments dangling from American natives, and lusted after them. (Only in recent years have I paid attention to the Book of Mormon's preface to Columbus' arrival in the promised land: "Behold, the wrath of God is upon the seed of thy brethen" (1Ne. 13:11).) They stole the gold and silver, killed and enslaved the natives, and started shipping the gold back to Spain. Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake became lauded brigands, plundering Spanish treasure galleons on the high seas and returning the gold to England. (One such vessel, the Atocha, yielded half a billion dollars worth of gold and silver to one treasure seeker who lost twenty years of his life and one beloved family member searching for it off the Florida Keys.) Phillip II of Spain sought to bring petulant, protestant England to bow the knee before the Catholic Church, and began to build an armada to that end. Drake burned the fledgling armada in the harbor, and Phillip, inflamed with the hubris often engendered by unlimited wealth, simply rebuilt the armada. Weather destroyed the new armada as it was about to invade English soil. Spain declined, and the infusion of gold from the Americas was like the first domino in a chain of economic events that spurred the growth of the British Empire. Lamanite gold is one reason English is the most popular second language on earth.
The other documentary was about the ascent of money, which is a symbolic representation of gold supposedly stored in vaults somewhere (this is referred to as a "shell game"). This documentary was also a laundry list of sordid and horrific deeds conducted in the name of power for weath's sake. The French crusaders came begging gold from the Venetian bankers to finance their re-conquering of Jerusalem, and the head banker, a blind man in his eighties, agreed to lend them the money on condition that they would take their military and sack a competing business port in the Mediterranean, Constantinople. The Venetians hated the competition Constantinople presented, and knew where all their best treasures were stored. Instead of crusading to the Holy Land, the French took a detour and looted the Byzantine Empire of its collected relics and treasures. These were brought back to Italy, and even today, a solid gold jewel-encrusted altar graces the Cathedral of St. Mark. (I doubt that Mark would have approved).
Another theme runs through these documentaries—transportation of treasures, the distribution and concentration of various valuables. Greed and lust demand that one dragon sits on all the treasure, jealously guarding it. But how did it get in the cave in the first place?
Unbelievably, I have watched two other documentaries about that very subject. The first was so dull that even I could not watch more than an hour of it. It was a presentation of the history of the Vatican Library, its construction, and how it came to be stocked with great architecture, works of art, and treasures of minerals, gold, silver, semi-precious stones, and even solid gold sculptures. Kings and rulers from around Europe donated items rare and impressive to be housed in the archives of the Vatican. It was a dull documentary, though, because the information about what was being shown was stilted and sparse. The narrator kept referring to the sovereignty of the Written Word, its importance in spreading salvation, yet he said nothing about it. It was as though the creators of the video assumed that the audience already had enough information on that topic, and that they would prefer to move on to other matters, more interesting or diverting. It was like going to the most interesting repository of information on earth without a guide to elaborate on what I was seeing, to elucidate the meaning of the symbols. It was like arriving at an oasis without a straw or cup.
The final documentary was about the Joseph Smith Papers project. Rather than a cave filled with gold, the treasures that experts in the film are concerned with are mere pieces of paper, and the hand-written scrawl of smudged letters on them, or more specifically, the information they impart. They guard and protect these manuscripts as jealously as the dragon sitting on his bed of gold, yet they are trying to distribute and disseminate copies of them to the entire world. I have journals and school assignments tucked away in boxes, and I sometimes imagine in more delusional moments, scholars or descendants dusting them off to try and figure me out. This is exactly what they are trying to do with one man—Joseph Smith. Why are they trying to learn from a semi-literate farmer from the backwoods of 1800s New York? Not because of wealth, that is for certain. The lusts of the flesh? Ridiculous. It's just a pile of old papers. (One researcher mentioned that some scholars on the project have said they would do their work for free.) Popularity? Ridiculous. Joseph Smith is known for good AND evil, and who wants to have their serious scholarship tainted with claims of gold bibles and angelic visions? For power, then? So far the main power they are seeking in the videos is to dispel myths, misunderstandings, and vicious attacks on the character of Joseph Smith.
Why, then, are they obsessed and giddy about the chance to concentrate this prized treasure and distribute it abroad in the world? Faith seems to be the driving force. Not just concern about reputation, but concern for sharing knowledge with the world, proving the validity of claims made by Joseph, and broadening our view of who he was, what he taught, and what he did.
This treasure can be broadcast, disseminated to the whole world, for almost nothing. And it can cross more than continents and oceans. These "hidden treasures" of "great...knowledge" can cross over to the other side of the veil after we die. Information is that portable. And eternal truths are not trivial—they can actually have a significant bearing on our happiness in the next life, as well as this life. "Seek not after riches nor the vain things of this world; for behold, you cannot carry them with you," Alma tells his son (Alma 39:14). We should seek after more portable treasures.
