“Righteousness and truth result in order, while evil and wickedness lead to confusion and disorder. In describing the depraved state of things at the close of the Nephite narrative, Mormon spoke of his people as ’without civilization,‘ ’without principle,‘ ’past feeling,’ and, interestingly enough, ‘without order and without mercy’ (Moroni 9:11, 18, 20). Whereas faithfulness and adherence to the light of Christ and to moral codes and standards bring forth peace and decency and enhanced organization among the sons and daughters of God, indifference towards or defiance of divine law bring forth chaos and division. Nephi explained that ’the Spirit of the Lord will not always strive with man. And when the Spirit ceaseth to strive with man then cometh speedy destruction.’ (2 Nephi 26:11.) Those who no longer enjoy the influence of the Spirit ’are without Christ and God in the world; and they are driven about as chaff before the wind’ (Mormon 5:16). When the Spirit ceases to strive with men and women, Satan has ‘full power over the hearts of the people’ and they are ’given up unto the hardness of their hearts, and the blindness of their minds’ (Ether 15:19). The Holy Spirit is an organizing principle, and the nearer we approach our Heavenly Father the greater will be our grasp of reality, our ability to see things as they really are and to value our true relationship to man and God.” (Millet and McConkie, Joseph Smith: The Choice Seer, chapter 17)
Hugh Nibley
“Here then is the real calamity that befell the Nephites in all its tragic horror—and there is no mention whatever of enemy action or of anyone belonging to the wrong party: the ultimate catastrophe is not that people are struck down, but that they should be found in any circumstances whatever ’without order and without mercy, … without principle and past feeling.’” (Since Cumorah, p. 400)
Neal A. Maxwell
“President Harold B. Lee has called our attention to the phrase ‘past feeling’ which is used several places in the scriptures. In Ephesians, Paul links it to lasciviousness that apparently so sated its victims that they sought ’uncleanness with greediness.‘ Moroni used the same two words to describe a decaying society which was ’without civilization,‘ ’without order and without mercy,‘ and in which people had ’lost their love, one towards another.’ Insensate, this society saw violence, gross immorality, brutality and all kinds of ‘kamikaze’ behavior. Nephi used the same concept in his earlier lamentation about his brothers‘ inability to heed the urgings of the Spirit because they were ’past feeling.’ The common thread is obvious: the inevitable dulling of our capacity to feel renders us impervious to conscience, to the needs of others, and to insights both intellectual and spiritual. Such imperceptivity, like alcoholism, apparently reaches a stage where the will can no longer enforce itself upon our impulses.” (For the Power Is in Them, p. 22)
Neal A. Maxwell
Ironically, in all their eagerness to experience certain things, hedonists, become desensitized. People who wrongly celebrate their capacity to feel finally reach a point where they lose much of their capacity to feel! In the words of three different prophets, such individuals become ‘past feeling’ (see 1 Ne. 17:45; Eph. 4:19; Moro. 9:20).
“When people proceed ’without principle,‘ erelong they will be ’without civilization,‘ ’without mercy,‘ and ’past feeling’ (see Moro. 9:11-20). Such individuals do not experience real joy.” (Ensign, May 1995, pp. 67-68)