"There's nothing else out there"

yaddayadda

A friend of mine is returning to the meetings. His reason is "there's nothing else out there" (meaning out in the world). If I had a dollar for every time I've heard a JW say this. Its like a little buzzphrase they use to help convince each other why they should stay. Makes me sick.

My friend is a boomerang JW. Every now and then he decides he has had enough of being a witness and stops attending all meetings for while but before too long he reverts back to JW mode and crawls back. He must have done this about a dozen times. I have lost a lot of respect for him because of his constant vacillating and I know that no one in the congregation respects him.

It really annoys the shit out of me. The JW fantasy world is nothing but a security blanket for many people without the emotional strength or social skills to leave. Unfortunately my friend is definitely of that type. All the years of brainwashing that the end of the world is around the corner has meant he has lived for the moment and failed to plan properly for the future and develop the capabilities needed to make it long term as a normal person living in the world.

I'm convinced he is psychologically incapable of ever leaving the JWs.

Everything else is out there. The whole world is out there with billions of normal people living normal lives who are no different to you or I.

What is there to be found in the JW world?: Just a lot of self-righteous, judgmental people who sit on their bums in a hall 3 times a week and listen to a lot of hot air. The truth is "there is nothing IN there" (the organisation)

Yadda

choosing life

There are many psychological cruthes, so to speak, in the organization. You have your life mapped out for you. Some people don't want to make their own decisions, but rather would leave that up to others. They feel safer that way. There is also instant "friends" and activities to fill your time and stop you from thinking too hard.

Maybe your friend can't hack leaving the Witness nest. It takes a pretty strong person to break free from their shackles. And then it is a pretty rough ride sometimes. Shunning and trying to start over at a late date in life is not for the squeamish. For everyone who actually breaks free and stays out, I wonder how many try and end up back again?

Maybe you can slowly help your friend.

jaguarbass

Sounds like hes got the loosers limp.

yaddayadda

You are right choosing life. There are many JW's who would love to give it up but there is just too much to lose socially and emotionally. All their friends and family are in it and the pressure they exert is tremendous.

My friend is not interested at all in the doctrinal stuff. He goes purely for the social connections. But he knows he is wasting his time trying to find a marriage mate in our area. He often gets left out of social events and marriageable sisters hardly give him the time of day. So deep down he resents it all and would like to be free to find a woman in the world. So he gets depressed and turns to me for sympathy when his social life goes on a downer in the congregation and dumps on me emotionally. But after a few weeks he crawls back to the organisation and gets all 'witnessey' again and even tries to get me to come back to the meetings also. It's quite pathetic.

I've concluded it's almost impossible to maintain old JW friendships after you leave. It's more frustrating than anything else.

darth frosty

To me this is a classic example of self actualization. You are taught by the dubs that there is nothing out in the world or that any happiness you experience is temporary. Than once your out there your subconcious sabotages your true enlightenment.

What-A-Coincidence

that is thought stopping phrase (technique) classic cult 101/144/1914

blondie

So when the temple worship was polluted with pagan practices, was Isaiah able to go down and worship God in a clean way. What must he have done but stayed home with his wife, the prophetess, and his children and worshipped God apart from falsehood. Why not the same for jws who find religious pollution in the WTS...get out of her my people, her sins have amassed to the heavens.

Blondie (something I pondered when going through the Isaiah books)

Nathan Natas

Blondie makes a good point.

As a Dub, your friend participated (via "community responsibility") in the shattering of the religious dreams of Catholics, Baptists, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc., etc., etc... Isn't it likely that at least some of those folk felt like "there was nothing else out there"? Of course, the Dubs were there with a whole new snare and racket to substitute for the old one.

"This just in: there is nothing else out there. Get used to it. Film at eleven."

SPAZnik

My father said something along that line to me not long ago.

I don't recall his precise choice of words, but it amounted to a challenge to "prove there's something better". It almost came across as much a plea as a challenge, to me. I felt mixed emotions. How exactly do I show someone what psychological/emotional/rational/spiritual freedom and personal ethical responsibility/conscientious accountability is like if they've never experienced it? It's like describing freedom to someone incarcerated from birth. It's like describing colour to a blind person. I didn't reply to him at the time. I can honestly say now though that I don't know how to do that for him at this point. The fact that we rarely talk as it is complicates things further.

How does a person compete with daily ingrained promises of endless perfect life in the long run and in the present-day, ease of letting someone else make all your decisions for you, placing accountability for every ethical decision you ever make into the rationalization machine of the tower - a group of men that will eventually give credence to anything you want to do so long as you do them sufficient obeisance and march in time? LOL

I also felt a mild sense of annoyance that he seemed to be trying to outsource personal responsibility for his own search for something better onto my shoulders, in a way. Seemed kinda lazy and unreasonable to put it all into a blanket statement like that. I felt like he was putting it all on me to hand him some replacement morality crutch on a silver platter. Some like it easy?

Then again maybe I'm reading him all wrong. It's not like we really know each other or anything, the JW life and his relationship with the wife he converted into it and her kids he raised in lieu of his own has always taken priority over a healthy relationship between us.

It just seems pathetic to me to have to state the obvious. "Well, *I'm* out here, dad, if you're ever really interested." :) I feel like an inconvenient truth where he's concerned.

Why do I even care? We'll both be stardust within 50 years anyway, so what does it matter. LOL I loved the challenge though. At the very least it spurs me onward to living well on my own. :)

SPAZnik

Blondie - that scripture was my first moment of cognitive dissonance re the JWs.

"There's nothing else out there"

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