Oscar Wilde Quote

by freeme 4 Replies latest jw friends

  • freeme
    freeme
    Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
    Oscar Wilde

    As i read this i felt like this is a perfect description not only of "most people" but JW's in special:
    Everything they (and me) do is based on opinions of someone else. Their life is a mimicry of a life described in some magazines. Their passion is a quotation of passions of other people who say they have the truth. No own thinking, no own search and study. For the price of unity even on the costs of truth.

    i dont fit in that scheme very well. even as a JW i always felt questioning and fresh thinking is a good thing. i never understood ppl who really DONT CARE what they're told by others. Example: so many ppl think homeopathy is a nice way to cure without hard medicine because someone says so without any proof. They buy it and use it without any idea HOW it works. Some ppl even think its just "herbal medicine". I dont want to judge anyone who uses it. Its their own decision. But i just dont get it why cant explain why they use it. When i use something i normally know why i use it. I can tell someone why i personally think it works and why i like it. Many ppl just dont care.

    But i have to confess that i made a lot of years in my life a exception to that for a bunch of guys in NYC. Weired. I dont understand myself.

    freeme

  • Tara
    Tara

    I love that quote. Your analogy fits.

  • Terry
    Terry
    Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
    Oscar Wilde

    As i read this i felt like this is a perfect description not only of "most people" but JW's in special:
    Everything they (and me) do is based on opinions of someone else. Their life is a mimicry of a life described in some magazines. Their passion is a quotation of passions of other people who say they have the truth. No own thinking, no own search and study. For the price of unity even on the costs of truth.

    A man is the essence of the things he loves.

    For us to have identity we must filter what we love through our own experience and consciousness. When it passes through our life, our view, our opinion, our uniqueness and comes out the other side it must change.

    If what we take into ourselves emerges the same as it went it, then; we don't really exist.

    I worked in the Art world for over 20 years. I had my own atelier and worked in galleries and represented artists and their work. One thing I came to know and realize about Art. Art changes us if it is great Art. Otherwise it is mere decorative utility.

    Now let me draw on this statement to make a point. What is true about Art is true about people. Great people change what they encounter. Great people see things differently and allow us to see things differently having met them. Great people have the odd angle. Great people bring something extra to a discussion. Great people stop us in our tracks and make us blink and say, "Wow! I never thought of it that way."

    That is what your quotation from Oscar Wilde does for us. It stops us and changes us and reshapes our world view.

    Jehovah's Witnesses seek to change others as they themselves have been changed. But, the change wrought by propaganda is destructive change like erosion or slow poison.

    When you encounter JW theology it paralyzes your mind and takes it over like a virus replicating insidiously like a background hum.

    You'll never hear a fresh point of view at a Watchtower Study. Why? Thinking isn't allowed. Jehovah's Witnesses are the religion of thought crimes.

  • freeme
    freeme
    Great people have the odd angle. Great people bring something extra to a discussion. Great people stop us in our tracks and make us blink and say, "Wow! I never thought of it that way."

    That is what your quotation from Oscar Wilde does for us. It stops us and changes us and reshapes our world view.

    So true. i was reading a quotations page with like 90 oscar wilde quotations. he was genius in my opinion. i love his views.

    another i really liked:

    Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
    Oscar Wilde

    you can use it on jws again. thats what we do here. jws get a mask and actually can tell what they really think. in their normal life (im included) this isnt possible.

    i think it would be a shocking experience to know the inner feelings and opinions even of jws who are afraid of forums. i believe theres a lot acting going on.

    edit:

    for everyone who may wanna know which quotation site i was reading:

    http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Oscar_Wilde/1

  • compound complex
    compound complex

    Thank you, freeme, for this quotation.

    In reference to your thoughts and those of Terry, I am grateful for my parent's surrounding me with art, literature, music and other academic and aesthetic stimuli when I was a child. To this day, my immersion in things outside the stagnation of the WT "educational" system has saved my sanity.

    Several years ago my PO spoke disapprovingly of my abandoning the Watch Tower publications [a family member snitched].

    CoCo

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