by joelbear 18 Replies latest jw friends
Joel,
While I agree that the WTS has used a form of mind control on it's members, we can't continually blame others. At some point we have to be responsible for our own actions and thinking.
TR
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
—Edmund Burke
Finding our self worth in God is laudable and necessary. Finding our self worth in an organization is sad. It leads to the kinds of feelings you're having now.
YERUSALYIM
"Vanity! It's my favorite sin!"
[Al Pacino as Satan, in "DEVIL'S ADVOCATE"]
Ana!
You just described me to a t!
I feel so relieved to hear that you fell asleep too while fervently praying for forgiveness for not living up to the "standards". It was filling me with constant guilt and I was never happy.
One meeting after dragging the kids out on a snowy night and getting in late, with disapproving looks from Ms. Superior Pioneer I just thought "Why the hell am I here tonight?". Then I swear I heard Jesus say "my load is light" and after that I decided not to return. I felt a "heavy load" lifted off my shoulders. Venturing into sites like these on the web have been a great help breaking free too.
Thanks for sharing that, it helps a lot to hear.
Anne
Joel,
Don't speak for me. You wrote,
They are our brothers and sisters.
Just because my parents freely converted to this religion and dragged me to five meetings a week plus field service does not make the people at those meetings my brothers and sisters. The elders in my congregation judged me and my family and kicked us down in so many ways over the years, and they are not my brothers. The friends I was forced -- yes, literally forced by my parents -- to make at the Kingdom Hall had no problem dropping me when I came out with my doubts about the Organization. They speak cruelly of me and my fiancee and my unborn child. They are not my kin.
If any of the crazy, cruel, braindead Witnesses I once knew stops being braindead, I will be more than ready to forgive and forget. But yeah, to use a figure of speak, they are braindead, and you even expained why they're braindead in your post:
I think a lot of witnesses brains are quite alive but are unreachable because of their dependence on the society for a feeling of worth.
Well, it's precisely because they are dependant on "a feeling of worth" that their brains eventually atrophy. When a brain is, as you put it, "unreachable," the person is effectually braindead. Understanding why the person is braindead doesn't make him or her any less braindead. And yeah, maybe not all Witnesses are braindead, but enough of them that it's reasonable to make that generalization about them.
I don't care if you agree or not, but there's one thing I ask of you, Joel: stop including all of us in your delusional fantasy about Witnesses. Don't say they are "our" brothers and sisters. Maybe "yours," if you want that kind of dysfunctional spiritual family, but not "ours." You are obviously nostalgic for the Organization. Try to remember that most of us are not cursed with that affliction.
Dedalus
I am not nostalgic for the organization. I think if you reread my post that I am specifically making a turnaround from that point of view and stating that the organization is a bad thing. It was a bad thing for us and it is a bad thing for those who are still in it.
I do have deep feelings for many people in the organization and I know them well enough to know that they are not "brain dead". They also aren't bad people. I seek to understand what caused their continued dependence on the borg.
In this thread, I offer the hypothesis that their dependence on the org is caused by their self worth being beaten down by organizational procedure. My hypothesis may be incorrect, I simply presented it for discussion.
And I do consider those I love to be my brothers and sisters, but I respect your position, I shouldn't have presumed that all here felt as I do.
take care
Joel
JoelBear,
I think there is much truth in what you have said. And in the spirit of the words "Who really is my neighbor?", you are showing the spirit of Christianity in speaking of all JWs as your 'brothers and sisters.'
Best wishes,
Rational
Joel says:
I think calling witnesses brain dead is a disservice to them. They are our brothers and sisters. They are undergoing the same conditioning and reinforcement that we underwent for years. I don't believe they are braindead. I do think they are trapped and we are trapped along with them because of our love for them
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i agree with you i find that very few former jw really take the time to read up on why folks can be shown facts after facts and still hold onto a false teaching- so many former jw simply forget just how powerful the indoctrination process is in WT that is why the avg jw entire life is consumed in wt work- from the daily reading of the text to meetings after meeting
the jw are told over and over they HAVE NEVER DONE ENOUGH
jump higher, run faster- DO MORE DO MORE is all a jw knows
and since the carrot is tied to the stick on the jw head they will never reach YOU HAVE DONE ENOUGH form ther org.
i sometimes feel more pity for former jw who lack empathy for current jw- each ones life exp is different and when you consider that all jw were promised something and are constantly being reassured that they will get it,
thanks for your words to me everytime we call a jw braindead it only reaffirms in teh mnds of lurkers once again that the Society was right
too many times we play into the training that JW have been given for years WE MUST BE SMARTER
JAMES
I agree with Joelbear in his analysis of JW's not being brain-dead. What JW's lack is pure UNBIASED INFORMATION. Their thinking faculties work quite well in the context of their world and belief system. What separates a JW (and others in similar belief systems) is their unwillingness to change their world view (unless it's sanctioned by the GB, of course). We are all like that to an extent, e.g. some of us may never eat a snail or worm because of our preconceived notions of how nasty they may taste. This view is probably not based on our own experience and this view would still be held even if we knew that the snail or worm was quite nutritious or that many before us had eaten it and found it to be palatable. The difference between a "good" JW and us is that we finally decided to eat the worm/snail because we knew our distaste for it was based on irrational reasoning. If we disliked it afterward, then at least we knew our reasons were valid (of course most of us on this board greatly enjoyed our "worms"). The human mind is more apt to retaining the status quo than to effect change (hence the dearth of great thinkers in our world's history as compared to the total populous), so a JW refusing to accept what to us is obvious, is to them a perfectly normal (and natural) way of dealing with challenges to their belief system. What separates the age we live in with more archaic times is the fact that more people than ever are thinking "outside the box" and such iconoclastic thinking is encouraged by society. Some find this threatening, others don't (like us for example) and those who do, react by holding tighter to what is established. However, a fully mature person is able to get over an irrational fear and weigh a decision based on solid evidence (at least on big issues, of which ones religion is definitely to be viewed as such. Not wanting to eat the worm will only harm you if you need it to sustain life or win immunity for your tribe :). So basically I think JW's lack maturity, which is a function of their lack of unbiased information on their belief system.
I don't see JW's as evil or 'braindead'. I see them more as being in a "gb' induced coma or trance. What I can't stand is the duplicity of telling worldlies that they need to search their religion and ask questions and yet they won't do the same. Also, there is the smug self-righteousness that is a definite turn-off. When I couldn't reach worldly people I didn't feel sadness, only a sense that I was helping to provide a witness against them at Armageddon. Now when politely and innocently ask a dub about changes in policy as an inactive person out of the loop and I get such extreme negative reactions I shrug and tell myself that at least I got to throw a few seeds their way. I feel that they may repeat the info even in ridicule to some other witness and maybe that person may keep it in the back of his mind.
