Was Joseph a con man?

[Corsair]

To be fair, I think most of the pictures we have of Joseph's wives are from decades later. I'm sure it wasn't all about sex, but come on, it was about sex.

This leads me to the wisdom of Frank Underwood from "House of Cards" in a quotation from Oscar Wilde

“A great man once said, everything is about sex. Except sex. Sex is about power.”

This on quote describes Joseph Smith better than the myriad volumes written that desperately spent time a research trying to justify all his scandals.

[wtfluff]

One thing that has always stuck with me is that he went back when he had the chance to escape to Iowa. Maybe he really felt he would be rescued (like you say, he initially thought the mob were his followers) but it seemed unlikely to me a con-artist or sociopath would even take a chance with his life like that. But maybe he just really couldn't stand being viewed as a coward as that would probably fit nicely with a narcissistic personality.

Who knows the story, or has references to the story where Emma (I believe) basically "guilt tripped" Joseph in to returning to "face the music" for destroying the printing press? I know I've read it somewhere. It's a letter if I remember correctly...

[Enoch Witty]

To be fair, I think most of the pictures we have of Joseph's wives are from decades later. I'm sure it wasn't all about sex, but come on, it was about sex.

This leads me to the wisdom of Frank Underwood from "House of Cards" in a quotation from Oscar Wilde

“A great man once said, everything is about sex. Except sex. Sex is about power.”

This on quote describes Joseph Smith better than the myriad volumes written that desperately spent time a research trying to justify all his scandals.

Oh man, such a great quote and so applicable.

[Mormorrisey]

I'm in the religious/pious scoundrel camp. In that he really believed what he was selling, but a prophet along the lines of that famous sage, George Costanza.

george.jpg (49.45 KiB) Viewed 12714 times

[Rob4Hope]

I think he was totally deluded and believed. I have never seen on this site a discussion about the possibility of hallucinogens being used as part of the "religious experience"....but I have read about it elsewhere.

When you are using some of the things I read about, you can see "angels"...and they are as real as if one smacked you in the face, or drew a "flaming sword".

I think he used from some of the earliest days, and then twisted his story as the necessity required. But, I think he believed it was justified and he was deluded.

[LaMachina]

Who knows the story, or has references to the story where Emma (I believe) basically "guilt tripped" Joseph in to returning to "face the music" for destroying the printing press? I know I've read it somewhere. It's a letter if I remember correctly...

And that's exactly why I have trouble with the sociopath diagnosis. Can a sociopath be "guilt-tripped" into doing something they don't want to do? I honestly don't know but it doesn't seem to jive based on my understanding.

People who believe they are right and their cause is correct, don't run. They stay and fight for what they believe.

I don't entirely agree with this as stated. I would put this minor addition to it:
Proverbs 28:1
The wicked flee though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.

Joseph was pursued by plenty.

[Korihor]

I think he was totally deluded and believed. I have never seen on this site a discussion about the possibility of hallucinogens being used as part of the "religious experience"....but I have read about it elsewhere.

Alcohol seemed provide plenty of hallucinations in the Kirkland temple.

[alas]

Who knows the story, or has references to the story where Emma (I believe) basically "guilt tripped" Joseph in to returning to "face the music" for destroying the printing press? I know I've read it somewhere. It's a letter if I remember correctly...

And that's exactly why I have trouble with the sociopath diagnosis. Can a sociopath be "guilt-tripped" into doing something they don't want to do? I honestly don't know but it doesn't seem to jive based on my understanding.

People who believe they are right and their cause is correct, don't run. They stay and fight for what they believe.

I don't entirely agree with this as stated. I would put this minor addition to it:
Proverbs 28:1
The wicked flee though no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.

Joseph was pursued by plenty.

Narcissists can be shamed into things and there are emotional traits that a narcissist has in common with a sociopath. A narcissist also has no conscience in a slightly different way than a sociopath. I'm not a PHD, but have a master's in the mental health field and while I am not qualified to diagnosis, and even if I was, it isn't really an accurate diagnosis when done on someone who has been dead for awhile, still my educated guess is that he was a narcissist rather that a sociopath. Threaten to take away the adoring fans of a narcissist and they will do just about anything. A narcissist has no conscience because they put their own interest way above the needs of everyone else. If you talk to them and explain how what they did will make people dislike them, you can get them to change behavior, because they need to be loved. Very selfish. A sociopath has no counscience because they don't care about the difference between right and wrong. It isn't necessarily that they are selfish, more that they don't give a shit. Joseph Smith cared about right and wrong, but his need for adoration and power was so strong that it often over rode his sense of right and wrong. He knew enough about right and wrong to lie about the poligamy, especially to Emma. But when in a situation where he could prove that X female adored him by getting her to hop in bed, he no longer cared if it was wrong because he wanted to prove the adoration.

So, I think that he returned because he was afraid of losing respect and the love of his followers.

[Rob4Hope]

I think he was totally deluded and believed. I have never seen on this site a discussion about the possibility of hallucinogens being used as part of the "religious experience"....but I have read about it elsewhere.

Alcohol seemed provide plenty of hallucinations in the Kirkland temple.

Check out this link:

http://www.mormonthink.com/files/restor ... shroom.pdf

[Emower]

I think it started as a con. The Book of Mormon was a continuation of his old tricks: treasure hunting, seer stoning, leading people on, and conning gullible rich old men into financing his operations. The attempt to sell the copyright of the book and then to publish it himself without so much as a mark of punctuation speaks to the BOM not being what he said it was.

It certainly seems that he became more devout and maybe started to believe his own hype over the years. That's what hero-worship will do to a person.

I do believe that at first, the goal was money. I disagree that he put the church before his own needs. I'm sure we could find anecdotes of that, but he also tried to give himself an absurd salary (voted down by the law of common consent) and lived an entirely comfortable life. Yes, he invested wealth that he could have taken for himself into the church, but it was his church. Of course he's going to continue investing in his highly successful business; who wouldn't?

I don't believe his initial goal was sexual pleasure, but I think it's easy to imagine a man who very quickly became revered by a group of people believing him to be a prophet and had a high level of charisma on his own, so of course sexual opportunities would begin presenting themselves. It would take a true (latter-day?) saint to not act on constant sexual opportunities, and it seems that he certainly got carried away pursuing these by the late Nauvoo years... if not sooner.

I don't think political or ecclesiastical power were his aims. From everything I know about Joseph, he was a man who sought after riches and pleasure. As a fellow hedonist, I identify with him in that way. However, I don't con millions of people through generation after generation to pursue these ends.

I don't know that I agree that he had a comfortable life. Certain times were comfortable, but then they turned into hell for everybody including him. If comfort was his goal, shouldn't he have tried to temper his rhetoric and teachings and tried to get along wit the locals more? Shouldn't he have seen the handwriting on the wall in Missouri and Illinois and said "this isn't going to turn out well for me...?"

[Emower]

Count me in the pious fraud camp. I have no doubt he knew some of the things he did were lies but with god all things are justified.

The church paints this picture that Joseph knowingly sacrificed his life for what he believed. But all the evidence points in the opposite direction. Josepsseemed to believe his followers were going to come rescue him. In fact when the mob showed up, he thought to was people come to rescue him. He also had a gun with him and killed one man in the attempt to protect himself. Not exactly the innocent lamb willingly going to slaughter. So, did he die for his ego being stroked? No, because he did not mean to allow himself to be killed.

My opinion is that he was a narcissist and needed his devot followers to love him, adore him, and praise him. This need was so great that he was willing to take some serious risks to gain the adoration he needed.

One thing that has always stuck with me is that he went back when he had the chance to escape to Iowa. Maybe he really felt he would be rescued (like you say, he initially thought the mob were his followers) but it seemed unlikely to me a con-artist or sociopath would even take a chance with his life like that. But maybe he just really couldn't stand being viewed as a coward as that would probably fit nicely with a narcissistic personality.

Sociopaths have no conscience. They can fake remorse, but they never really demonstrate it or change. He never changed. Did he apologize to Emma, Fanny Alger, Helen Mar Kimball, etc. etc? Think about it.

While we have tons of evidence of people turning on Joseph it has always struck me how much women like Emma and Eliza R Snow seemed to love the man. Certainly there are lots of reasons a woman might stand by her man even when he has earned little to none of that kind of loyalty but Emma and Eliza never struck me as shrinking violets. For all his many, many faults he must have really had some pretty great qualities for women like that to still love and respect him...but what do I know?

I agree. On both sides of the issues, tbm or full blown apostate, we try to distill him down into a manageable nugget. He is completely unmanageable and extremely complex. It is probably not possible to understand completely why or how he did what he did. Frankly this might be what attracted people to him and engendered loyalty. Such mysterious charisma might have equaled divine power for those magical oriented folks. Nowadays it says crank and fraud. Different perspectives for different times.
However, there are some eternal truths. You don't need his priesthood to go to heaven and you don't need his underwear.

[Emower]

A narcissist has no conscience because they put their own interest way above the needs of everyone else. If you talk to them and explain how what they did will make people dislike them, you can get them to change behavior, because they need to be loved. Very selfish. A sociopath has no counscience because they don't care about the difference between right and wrong. It isn't necessarily that they are selfish, more that they don't give a Crap. Joseph Smith cared about right and wrong, but his need for adoration and power was so strong that it often over rode his sense of right and wrong. He knew enough about right and wrong to lie about the poligamy, especially to Emma. But when in a situation where he could prove that X female adored him by getting her to hop in bed, he no longer cared if it was wrong because he wanted to prove the adoration.

So, I think that he returned because he was afraid of losing respect and the love of his followers.

This is an explanation that makes a lot of sense to me. This explains to me why Joseph wouldn't go 100% all his way. Why would he keep polygamy a secret? Why not just come out and say God wants this from the start? Why would he even try the book of Abraham stuff? Why not just let the opportunity pass by? Just let the kinder hook plates go, he already had a successful manuscript! Why mess up a successful con? The first rule of a con is to keep it simple. Maybe it wasn't about the con, maybe it was about the attention. In that time period, what better way to get attention than to tell people you have seen God? The ball got rolling and every time he needed a fix he could trot out some more spiritual stuff. As has been stated, sexual opportunities presented themselves and the rest is history.

[deacon blues]

I think Joseph Smith conned himself. In the Book of Moses he changed Abraham's fib about Sarah being his sister and NOT his wife into God's fib. I think Joseph made have changed his own fibs into "well, God told me to'".

[AllieOop]

I would like to hear opinions about whether people think Joseph was running a con.

I agree with most all of the comments I've read here, so I won't add too much other than I believe it started out as a con and to make money just as everything else he'd tried in the past. Joseph had been taught to believe (by his parents) that he had a special gift and IMO, he believed them. But, he used that gift to con people.

I think he definitely believed he was a Prophet of God by the end of his life. He'd drunk his own kool-aid.

I also believe that Joseph was brilliant and extremely charismatic. He did love the members and he loved his family. He interacted with the members and played games with the children, etc. He loved being with his people.

And, compared to Brigham Young? I'd take Joseph as my leaders any day over Brigham. How the members felt about each one of them tells me a lot about the type of person they were.

The members loved Joseph.....but, the members feared Brigham.

[Hagoth]

I agree with Allie's assessment. Joseph thought he was special and he spent his life doing everything he could to prove it.

I think if you take that and add it to a narcissistic personality, a pious self-image, an intelligent,creative mind, and a tendency for self-delusion you have all of the essential ingredients for Joseph Smith.

I believe he drank his own kool-aid do a degree but that he also intentionally upped the anti at every opportunity by enhancing the truth when he needed a better story. I think there are General Authorities like this today. They know certain things aren't true and they know they don't have any special powers but they feed the fire because they believe it makes peoples' lives better to believe and participate. And they believe themselves to be special and therefore justified in perpetuating the myth.

As for Joseph's sexual practices, he was doing what almost any other power-seeking man does when he has ultimate power over a group of people. We have seen it over and over again with cult religious leaders. Even James Strang, who created a church specifically to be the anti-polygamous option ended up being a polygamist. I can only assume it is a natural product of behavioral ecology.

[Red Ryder]

As for Joseph's sexual practices, he was doing what almost any other power-seeking man does when he has ultimate power over a group of people. We have seen it over and over again with cult religious leaders. Even James Strang, who created a church specifically to be the anti-polygamous option ended up being a polygamist. I can only assume it is a natural product of behavioral ecology.

I believe one day we will see this pattern among the Snufferites and Dehlinites.

[Corsair]

As for Joseph's sexual practices, he was doing what almost any other power-seeking man does when he has ultimate power over a group of people. We have seen it over and over again with cult religious leaders. Even James Strang, who created a church specifically to be the anti-polygamous option ended up being a polygamist. I can only assume it is a natural product of behavioral ecology.

I believe one day we will see this pattern among the Snufferites and Dehlinites.

That will be the real test of Snuffer and Dehlin: will they be able to transcend the usual practices of religious and political innovators? I'm confident that both of them mean well and are sincere in their beliefs. John Dehlin has admitted that he and his wife went through a rough patch a few years ago when this might have occurred but luckily it did not. Denver Snuffer has been explicit that he has no interest in bringing back polygamy. He has preached his own apologetics that Joseph was strictly monogamous in the area of marital relations and that Brigham cause plural marriage to go off the rails. We will see how these things proceed.

[Hagoth]

As for Joseph's sexual practices, he was doing what almost any other power-seeking man does when he has ultimate power over a group of people. We have seen it over and over again with cult religious leaders. Even James Strang, who created a church specifically to be the anti-polygamous option ended up being a polygamist. I can only assume it is a natural product of behavioral ecology.

I believe one day we will see this pattern among the Snufferites and Dehlinites.

But unlikely for the Redryderites

[20/20hind]

As for Joseph's sexual practices, he was doing what almost any other power-seeking man does when he has ultimate power over a group of people. We have seen it over and over again with cult religious leaders. Even James Strang, who created a church specifically to be the anti-polygamous option ended up being a polygamist. I can only assume it is a natural product of behavioral ecology.

I believe one day we will see this pattern among the Snufferites and Dehlinites.

But unlikely for the Redryderites

I suspect that one of these off shoot wicked groups.snufferites, dehlinites skin will start to darken so they will be less likely to breed with the righteous white mormons from the brighamites tribe. Those dark and loathsome apostates..

[moksha]

"They said Restoration is not a valid school of magic! They all laughed at me... but I'll show them! I'll show them all!"
-- Joseph Smith, College of Winterhold, Sometime in the 4th Era