Utah! People Working Together!

If you recognize the title of this post as song lyrics from an incredibly cheesy centennial program, you must have grown up in Utah! Yeah! I love Utah. I really do. I lover Mountains and deserts and dinosaur bones. I love her fall evenings and summer nights. I love that no one part of her looks like any other and that there are new mysteries in every corner. I love that there are temples in every third city. I love that people are honest and pay for their water even if they could get away with stealing it. I love that you can go 80 mph on the freeway! I especially love that. I love that Utah was the birth place of fry sauce, Jamba Juice and Costa Vida/Cafe Rio (though I prefer costa, don't kill me). I love it, really. There is one thing I hate about Utah: having to tell people I'm from Utah.

When I first came to college (in glamorous Cedar City Utah) I told my roommate I liked Utah and she said, "Have you ever been outside of Utah?" I thought, "Yes delusional fat lard, I have." And yes, I have. Several times. I've seen California, and it's nice, the whether is much better. I've seen Washington, and its much greener. I've been to Nevada, and.....well, I'm sure there's something pretty okay about Nevada....there has to be right? And yes, I've seen many other states, and I still like Utah. You know why? Because I DON'T JUDGE HER!!!!! There's this weird thing that happens. This thing where if you're a happy person and you like where you live and you like the people there, you'll like wherever you live and you'll like the people there. If you are unhappy and you don't like where you're at, you'll never like anywhere you go. Utah is the same. If you decide that Utah is a prudish little conservative place full of ignorant pygmies it is. If you decided its a nice open country filled with charming westerners, it is. Utah is filled with every kind of people, just like any place you've ever lived. But of course, we humans can't accept that. We need categories, we need our lives to fit into little boxes. So we need to believe that everybody from a certain place is a certain way, because then we don't have to deal with complexity, because complexity is a bitch.

I thought this post would be a perfect way to avoid doing my dishes and blow off some steam about the complaints I've heard lately. See, I follow a really funny thing on facebook called, "SUU Confessions." Its this page SUU students message and their confessions are posted anonymously. It's usually pretty funny but it can get kind of bitter. I've heard a lot of back and forth complaining about Utah Mormons on the confessions list lately. There are non-Mormon guys complaining about how girls won't talk to them when they find out they aren't going on missions. There are non-Mormons complaining about being judged. There are Utah Mormons who are sick of Non-Mormons in Utah complaining about the Mormons in Utah. Today there was a Nevada Mormon complaining about how Utah Mormons think their so picked on. He/She made the point that just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they are persecuting you. I think what that poster failed to understand is that Utah Mormons know they aren't being persecuted by disagreement or by the behavior of others, we're just a little tired of the fact that we will never ever ever win.

Growing up my Non-Mormon friends told me how uptight and judgmental Utah Mormons are, yet, they never really left Utah, those who did have come back. My Mormon friends didn't say much about non-Mormons, though we did criticize other Mormons who were involved in some un-Mormon-like activities. With my Mormon friends I was the edgy won who cursed. With my non-Mormon friends I was the prudish one who judged them. What my non-Mormon friends failed to comprehend was that I never judged them. I worried about them. To my view they were involved in some stuff that could be pretty dangerous. I didn't make any assumptions about their place in the after-life or their identity. I just worried that they might slip into something that would make them unhappy. What my Mormon friends failed to comprehend was that I was far more tame than I let them believe. I was so used to having to prove that I was a "cool Mormon" that I couldn't let that down around my church-going crowd.

When I moved away from home I had several Mormon friends who moved to Utah from out of state tell me differing things about Utah Mormons. Someone told me Utah Mormons were too uptight but California Mormons are much more chill. Someone told me they had never heard of Mormons who don't drink caffeine until they moved to Utah. More than one person told me that Utah Mormons take being in the majority for granted, and that we're too loose with our standards because we don't have to stand up for what we believe all the time. And you know what I think? I think it's all bullshit. How could anyone possibly assume that an entire sector of the population is one way or another? I know Utah Mormons who are mean and self-righteous, and I know Utah atheists who are mean and self-righteous. I know Utah Mormons who are good and kind, and I know Utah atheists who are good and kind. My brother served his mission in Scotland, where there are very few Mormons at all and he said it was the same there: some are nice, some are mean. Some are conservative, some are liberal. It doesn't matter where you go or what faith you belong to, people only behave a certain number of ways, and no matter what they believe about God, they will still only behave a certain number of ways. It is as misguided and arrogant for a Mormon from a different state to generalize about Utah Mormons as it would be for a Utah Mormon to generalize about non-Mormons.

If you ask me, I think Utah Mormons are persecuted. We take the heat from within and without. We get flack from each other when we act like dicks, we get flack from non-Mormons when we act too pure, we get flack from Non-Utah Mormons when we say we're sick of getting flack, and we take most of the hit for a good 70% of all polygamy jokes, even though the biggest gathering of polygamists is in Arizona and the FLDS actually chose Texas as the location for their temple. But hey don't worry about Utah Mormons. I mean, hell, if we can't give ourselves a break why should anybody else?