The CONSCIOUS CLASS what does it mean to you, and do you consider yourself one of them?

by cattails 19 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  cattails

  Dissed, you bring out a good point.

  the "unconscious class" ... do you think that we all go through such a step.

  Being disenchanted, bored to death at meetings, hoping to be able to get

  out of the KH as soon as the prayer is said? I did, I admit it, even if I was

  going through the motions my heart wasn't in it. I hated the fact that there

  were the pretty families who got all the attention, parts on meetings, and

  no matter how hard you tried there was always something wrong with me.

  Something to criticize, something to counsel on, talks on the school, dress

  appropriately, watch what you say to whom. etc. etc.

  Until I woke up. What really helped was reading a few chapters of Crisis of

  Conscience online when these were accessible through Wikipedia as a link

  from Ray Franz's article there. Then I had to read the whole thing. It changed

  my perspective in a big way.
• 

  bigmac

  i read the expression "conscious class" on another thread, hadn't a clue what it meant, but rather than post in & ask ( & risk being pilloried AGAIN)

  so i did a search & found this thread

  the mind boggles

  so, within the JW'dom there is a large "conscious" class ??

  also an "unconscious" class??

  what next---a BRAIN DEAD class?
• 

  yknot

  brain-dead class......no not really

  there is 'asleep', 'captive', 'ladder climbers' and blindfaithers (they are uber trusting and most are on 'autopiolot' just waiting until Armageddon)

  Most of us CCs look to be the last JWs in our family lines.....(parents/spouse die and kids leave faith)
• 

  miseryloveselders

  Most of us CCs look to be the last JWs in our family lines.....(parents/spouse die and kids leave faith)

  I like the way that sounds.
• 

  donuthole

  I guess the designation could be quite broad and ecompass a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses beyond what some might see as closet apostates. There may some that don't believe in general but simply go through the motions for the sake of family. There may be some in authority that don't agree with all of the organizational practices but accept the teachings. Maybe some elderly ones don't fully accept some of the newer teachings or are aware of the lack of love but still believe in the Organization.

  Personally I don't think such a stand is maintanable without sacrificing personal integrity along the way. For instance if I didn't believe in 1914 could I in good conscience teach such from the platform or at the door? Yet to stay in good standing in the congregation it is impossible to "opt out". The Organization is structured in such a way that it is absolutely required that you support all the practices and all of the teachings with little wiggle room so long as you maintain close contact with the congregation. Staying practically requires one to lie and lead a double-life. I don't see how such a stand could work for individuals who value honesty and the truth.
• 

  LongHairGal

  MAD SWEENEY,

  I also consider myself a member of the 'Conscious class' but like you I am a fader who is marked by some there. You are correct in saying that the most inactive person in the religion is still higher up on the totem pole than you and I as 'faders'. And you are correct that the sisters are more judgmental than the brothers. They don't like when I show up well-dressed and look all happy when I say hello to everybody. I saw this and just shrugged it off. These women were never my friends so they can go take a flying leap. I consider too many women in the religion to be jealous, gossiping hags looking for a reason to talk about somebody. (I even suspect that my 'inactive' status puts me low down on the list if I have a business dealing with one of the few responsible JWs).

  It is true that the religion would rather lose people and retain a smaller core of 'believers' rather than have a dissenter (heaven forbid) among them. The problem they will face in the future is that when these hard-core believers pass away (most of them are older people), the religion will be left with a weaker, less committed group, in my opinion.

  DISSED,

  I also believe there is a considerable Un-Conscious class who is disenchanted and certainly do not support the religion financially. Like the proverbial iceberg, most of this class is hidden. This religion has a false sense of its true numbers if they look at a fairly full KH on a Sunday. They can never know how many of those people there are this Un-Conscious class. They are doubting and biding their time waiting for the right moment until they say "Sayonara".
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  GrandmaJones

  I think that a very sizeable number of wittnesses have such doubts that they could be before a JC and no one talks about it. You simply can't. Too dangerous. I have had disagreements with many teachings and I have expressed them to a lot of the brothers and sisters, but I am considered so eccentric that no one seems to pay attention. Or maybe it's because two of my sons are popular elders and who wants to cause trouble for their mother. I really don't know. But a LOT of people agree with me so long as I don't take on more than one point at a time.
• 

  Terry

  What sets humans apart from other animals is not consciousness at all. It is the quality of elective thinking!

  I would fully expect JW's to be conscious. It is, after all, a minimum requirement for not falling out of your folding chair at meetings.

  But, thinking about what you allow into your mind is another matter entirely!

  Selective, scrupulous vetting of information is a survival strategy that got humans to the top of the food chain.

  Learn not to pick up poisonous snakes or eat black and yellow insects or you become the permanently unconscious class.

  Unfortunate as it is, most of us once stood at the Watchtower salad bar and heaped their slop high on our plate in preference to actual facts both testable and true. This isn't because we were not conscious; it was because we had not learned how to identify fallacies and demand non-contradiction. Thinking is, after all, a skill.

  Once we became aware of the contradictions, back-peddling, excuses and double-shuffle of Watchtower policies we were at the crossroads of CRITICAL-THINKING and RUBBER-STAMPING each new book, magazine and pronouncement from the Governing Body.

  We now know a blockade had been erected against private study, investigations, research using outside scholarship, etc. to prevent our conscious mind from become an active thinking and discerning filter against double-talk and lies.

  What critical thinking means for a non-JW is that we aren't likely to swallow the line of bull again that once got us hooked into a cult.

  But, for the regular publisher who plants their sore butt in the Kingdom Hall--the best these passive sponges can expect is mere Consciousness.
• 

  cattails

  I've grown up with two very distinct groups of JW young people.

  One group who was leading a sort of double life, fully into the things of the world,

  and another group of do-gooders who wanted to please parents and KH folks and

  who thrived on positive attention. Unfortunately I had too much negative attention

  forced on me, because I did draw attention and liked the confrontation. I was always

  the dramatic one, the one to blow it all out of proportion and to make a big fuss about

  any real or perceived injustice or unequal application of the rules.

  As I've grown up a lot more and don't desire so much attention, negative that is,

  I've learned to understand the non-conformist youths a lot more and to also

  see through the double-faced do-gooder masks other youths had.

  They were all pretty much leading a double life, they had to, but some were

  more obvious and some knew how to hide it better.

  There are some who grow up to be uber-witnesses but these are the minority.

  Quite a few of the young ones in my home congregation just gave up, disappeared

  and today they're not even spoken of, their memory is forgotten, as if they died.

  It is sad to think that so many still keep in touch through facebook that would

  otherwise never have any other contact with each other because some fell away

  or never got baptized and went on with their lives and some remained in the

  "congregation." Facebook is quite an eye opener, and you get to see that

  most young Witnesses are like any other young kids around, except more

  sheltered and more desperate to find who they really are as people. This is

  a different type of consciousness, isn't it?
• 

  Twitch

  It means nothing to me, like most things dub. I guess 20 yrs away will do that to ya,...