Is that true...that since the '70s the questions are asked before the paragraph is read? I've only known it the other way around. Is that what is generally done now?
Have you ever wondered. . . How the Question and Answer format got started?
by Lady Lee 20 Replies latest watchtower bible
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TD
Leo --Other way around
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Lady Lee
VM44 Thanks for the link
BB
this method of teaching is what Sigmund Freud taught in the early nineteen hundreds as "Conscious Hypnosis". (I assure you, this is not just simple brainwashing, it is advanced clinical hypnosis which, in time, has the ability to completely take over a person's free-will and mental judgment and reasoning skills and turn that person into a totally non-thinking zombie-like robot who will do anything they are told to do, even if they are told to commit suicide.
wow advanced clinical hypnosis.
As I read through some of the really absurd things I believed and supported as a JW I often wonder how I could have ever swallowed this stuff without thinking. But now I know that a closed mind only allows what is termed "acceptable" and ignores everything else. Tunnel vision, blinders, whatever it is called the purpose is to control a person's normal thought process.
And yup it is very effective.
Can you imagine anyone at a hall putting up their hand to ask a question that isn't part of the script?
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Narkissos
Very interesting. I have long thought that this constant Q&A pattern, childish and schoolish as it looks to the outside observer, was a very efficient way to control people's minds. People make the answers their own. And even when they come to question the answers they hardly question the questions -- which are designed to fit the WT answer. So we find xJWs haunted with WT questions, as if those were their own questions, long after they have left.
To be fair, though, Q&A has been the classic format of many catechisms for centuries, for similar reasons imo. But JWs may be the only denomination that spends so much time in catechetic mode.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catechism
Edit: I very vaguely remember having read years ago (perhaps in Crisis of Conscience?) a quote from one of the early (Zion?) Watchtower issues where (Russell?) suggested that it would be quite sad if "companies" would content themselves with repeating the material in the WT literature instead of really discussing it on a Scriptural basis. Does anybody recall that?
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yaddayadda
That article trying to establish a connection between meetings and clinical hypnosis is the biggest load of pathetic hogwash I've read in ages. The writer doesn't even describe accurately how meetings are conducted. Honestly, One may as well argue that the process of reading any printed matter from left to right with the eyes is advanced hypnosis.
JW's are guilty of a lot of things, but this article is really getting desperate.
The practice of asking questions and answering in church settings can be traced back to traditional liturgical protestant practice. -
Lady Lee
yadda
Yes the author had the sequence wrong but I don't think that negates the effect of the question and answer format that the WTS uses.
I remember how mind numbing it was to sit through those meetings. I also how little real thinking went into the preparation for those meetings. Read the canned question and underline the written response and later spew it back during a meeting. This does not require that a person have their critical thinking engaged. It is a farce as a real learning process.
As a clinician who has worked with many people that live in varying states of autohypnosis, I know it when I see it. And not only do I see it in others, I now know I was subject to it myself
Don't kill the messenger just because he got the sequence wrong.
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hamsterbait
Actually the leaders of all cults, even those that become religions use the Q & A method.
Buddha asking his disciples' opinions, Confucious, Jesus Christ. The reward of being told "you answered well" of course gave kudos in the eyes of the others. Disapproval by the master would be dreaded. Confucious stopped all after death speculation by mocking a minion: "We hardly know of this life, and you expect to know of the next?" (eg What a fool you are to try and show my ignorance!)
In Zen the goan, or wierd question, "what is the sound of one hand clapping?", for instance would make the follower feel inadequate and stupid. Maybe some could see the point of it, but most probably pretended understanding to rise in the heirarchy. pretty much what you see in Bethels all over the world now.
After all, when a "new truth " comes out, how is it that if they were all convinced of the old truth and fully understood it, they all just switch on a new lightbulb in the head and extinguish the old one???
I have often asked Witless Dorks to explain a concept in their own words. Usually they cannot. They respond with the catch phrases. When I ask "what does that mean, really?" the answer is almost always a repeat of the exactly worded mantra they memorized.
HB
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Narkissos
Don't forget "Socrates'" dialectical method in Plato's dialogues, which are also in Q&A mode.
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yaddayadda
Lady Lee, that article is unscientific hogwash. It's not only almost entirely inaccurate about how the Watchtower is actually conducted, thus losing all credibility from the start as to the author's claim of attending numerous meetings, but the comparisons to Freud's '4 rules' are all tenuous at best:
1 Watchtower puts out a song book with over one hundred songs that have words and music which create a slow subliminal tone to relax the congregation. Not one song in this Watchtower song book, has an up-tempo beat like the songs sung in the Orthodox Church. Every song they play induces relaxation.
NONSENSE. ONE COULD SAY THE SAME ABOUT ANY CHURCH IN THE LAST TWO THOUSAND YEARS. AND THERE ARE INDEED SOME 'UP-BEAT' SONGS FOUND AMONGST THE KINGDOM MELODIES. THE AUTHORS JUDGMENT HERE IS ABOUT AS UNTRUSTWORTHY AS HIS DESCRIPTION OF HOW THE WATCHTOWER STUDY IS ACTUALLY CONDUCTED.
2 The way that Watchtower has created this left-to-right eye movement, is to have the compere standing in the centre of the stage reading one paragraph of the story from the study book and the narrator sitting off to one side, reading a bible verse after each paragraph. As the congregation watches, not only do their eyes continually move from left to right which stops them from listening and examining the words of the story to reject what they don't agree with, but if they are not watching, their ears will hear the words spoken by the compere on the right and the narrator on the left.
ABSOLUTE PIFFLE. THIS IS SIMPLY NOT HOW THE STUDY IS CONDUCTED WHATSOEVER, SO WHERE IS THIS 'CONTINUALLY MOVING FROM LEFT TO RIGHT' OF THE EYES OF THE AUDIENCE AND EARS HEARING FROM THE RIGHT AND LEFT? THE FACT IS THAT AFTER THE READER HAS FINISHED READING THE PARAGRAPH, HE SITS DOWN TO ONE SIDE OF THE CONDUCTOR FOR THE ENTIRE DISCUSSION OF THAT PARAGRAPH UNLESS HE HIMSELF ANSWERS UP. HE NEVER STANDS IN THE CENTRE OF THE STAGE AS THIS AUTHOR CLAIMS.
3. The leaders of Watchtower have designed their study stories to have the four hypnotic suggestions within the story they want their Jehovah's Witness followers to believe in and have added bible scriptures after one or two paragraphs, in order to give the compere and the narrator their job to do to create left and right eye and hearing movement to produce the hypnotic effect. These study stories are so important to Watchtower to establish a hypnotic effect in all Jehovah's Witnesses worldwide, that they insist to all the leaders of each individual congregation centre in every country, that they must not stray from using the study story in every meeting or change the position of the compere and narrator or leave out the use of the usher for the all-important question time, held at the end of each story. Watchtower head office in New York, supplies every Jehovah's Witness meeting hall in every city of every country, with new study books each month, so that every Jehovah's witness world wide is subjected to this hypnotic process every time they attend a Jehovah's Witness meeting at any meeting hall. Even the Jehovah Witnesses who come to your home in pairs to study with you, are told to study from the Watchtower booklet sitting with you at your table, and one of them will read the story and the other will read the scripture, so that the exact same hypnotic effect is at work on you, in your own home even before you actually decide to commit yourself to attending the local Jehovah's Witness meeting hall as a congregation member. Jehovah's Witness followers are usually beautiful God-loving people who do not have a clue that this is going on, but I assure you, several managers at the very top of the Watchtower organisation in New York, are fully in control of this sinister deception that is killing more than a thousand Jehovah's Witnesses every year.) Reference for this statistic:- "Blood On The Altar" by author, David A Reed.
MORE SHAMELESS PIFFLE. HIS CLAIM THAT BIBLE STUDIES ARE CONDUCTED BY A PROCESS OF ONE PERSON READING THE 'STORY' AND THE OTHER READING THE SCRIPTURE, THUS INDUCING A HYPNOTIC EFFECT, IS AGAIN, NOT HOW A TYPICAL STUDY IS CONDUCTED. I KNOW AS I WAS IN THE ORG FOR OVER 30 YEARS AND CONDUCTED MANY BIBLE STUDIES. THE READING OF PARAGRAPHS AND SCRIPTURES IS ALWAYS SHARED.
4. When the therapist's hypnosis session is completed, at a time immediately after the left-to-right eye movement has been stopped, the therapist must ask a list of at least four questions which cover each of the four versions of the hypnotic suggestion story, so that the person being hypnotised, begins to think consciously about what was done during the hypnosis session, to bring the newly-programmed belief out of the unconscious mind and establish it as a fully accepted conscious belief. This last part of the session is essential as it joins the conscious mind with the unconscious mind to expand the brain's total acceptance of the hypnotic effect.
This task is covered extremely well by Watchtower's use of the questions supplied at the end of each story printed in the Watchtower study magazine and the usher who Watchtower has instructed to walk the isle to extend the michrophone to those who wish to answer the questions.
ITS CALLED REINFORCEMENT OF IDEAS, OR INDOCTRINATION AND BRAINWASHING, NOT HYPNOSIS. AND EVERY CLASSROOM IN THE WORLD USES THIS METHOD FOR TEACHING, WITH VARIATIONS. -
Jringe01
I have to disappoint you Lady Lee but in several congregations I did see exammples of people, and not just newcommers put up their hands and ask questions that were not a part of the script and I have also heard comments that go well beyond spewing back the appropriate answer. I know, I made a few myself yet I was never spoken to about it.
As with all public speaking and Q&A sessions the degree of feedback often depends on the conductor as well as the individual. In the congregations I went to research was encouraged and often times points beyond or in addition to the printed material wee not only presented but welcomed and commented on favourably by the conductor.