(I am sending this to Freeminds as my latest blog, but it isn't up yet. Read my stuff here , but by all means, go to www.freeminds.org It has saved me and a ton of other people from JW hell)
Sometimes, its hard to know what to write about when it comes to Jehovah’s Witnesses. (JW) When you think about it, it’s a rather boring group on many levels. Until last year, you had 3 meetings a week. (now 2) You have to go out and knock on doors at least once a week. You don’t party, you don’t get to do much of anything. Everything is designed to keep you where you are, at the mercy of the Governing Body’s (GB) agenda for each of its members.
I will write about it as that’s all I’ve got right now.
When you get down to it, this religion is designed to keep you in a repetitive manner of behavior, just like the proverbial “hamster in a daisy wheel”.
It is the real genius of the GB that they discovered at some point, the more they gave their flock to do, the more dependent on them they would become. Repetitive teachings and dogma, supported by repetitive regular meetings, entrenched with regular, unrelenting preaching and door knocking, unrelenting pressure (I’m sorry, they call this pressure “reminders”) to study study study. Read the Watchtower all the time, study for all the meetings…..
How does one drown out doubts? By drowning out the individual. By drowning out his thoughts. By filling their flocks heads with nothing but JW speak, one has no time to properly entertain the real questions and legitimate doubts that are bound to try to make their way to one’s conscious thought patterns.
I think most reasonable people would get the fact that JW’s are hardly balanced or reasonable in their activities. And the GB wouldn’t have it any other way. How do they get away with it? By continuing to pound the drum that “these are the last days of Satans system.”
As more time passes though, it puts increasing pressure on the GB of Jehovah’s Witnesses to deal with failed expectations, false prophecies, and a general sense that continues to creep into the group that “if it happens, great.” That kind of malaise and apathy is super deadly to the activities of the cult. But it can’t be helped, because every passing day and year removes Jehovah’s Witnesses that much further from 1914 and all the ridiculous predictions and expectations they attached to this date.
After a while, they can only say “these are the last days” so many times before it catches up to them. Whether or not the GB “gets it” when it comes to this remains to be seen. Suffice to say, they haven’t as of yet taken on their failed prophecies, or their “last days“ rhetoric. If the past is any indication, they won’t. If anything, they will claim another brilliant flash of light and change, and then drown out the thoughts of many who will be thinking “What?”
But one thing will absolutely not change. Whether the GB changes a key teaching or not, they will surely use intense repetition (or as most normal people like to call it, indoctrination) to make their followers the soulless, thoughtless, uncomfortable cult followers that they continue to be. Keep ‘em busy, and they keep ‘em
Its amazing the power a group can gain by simply getting their members to not think, or critically analyze what their beliefs.
