TJ,
I think it's interesting (and perhaps overlooked) that in Milgram's study—yes, the majority failed the test—a sizable minority didn't, giving evidence of a different mindset that exists in the minds of quite a few of us. Could that exact same ratio be projected onto every set of humans? For example, elders?
This is a interesting point and one which I suspect makes XJW's feel a little uncomfortable.
You see, those of us not raised as JW's allowed ourselves to become JW's, but most people who are preached to do not. My sister and I sat on the same sofa, listened to the same message, she chose to dismiss what she heard, I listened and became a JW.
At the time this was a major ‘marketing ploy’ with the JW who studied with me, who extolled my virtues as an ‘obviously spiritual thinker’ while my sister was not. It appealed to my youthful vanity to accept this view and bathe in the spotlight, and I was reeled in.
Something within us allowed the WTS to grip our hearts and take over our thinking processes and this does not happen to many people. Perhaps if we spent more time understanding why this happened it would help us to understand the culpability issues with more clarity, and indeed honesty.
As to elder culpability, an elder has been a publisher, and this seems to have been forgotten in the culpability merry-go-round. Women have never been elders, neither have MS or congregation publishers. Many speak from a pre-supposed platform, and possibly hope that all elders are evil monsters building power bases, as they then become easier to blame than to analyze. Of course some are monsters, but for as many monsters that I met in my twenty years as an elder, there existed many more decent men, trying hard to make sense of a situation where individual will is meaningless when you have a WTS hand shoved painfully up your nether regions and working you as a glove puppet. It is over these issues, more than doctrine, that I saw many elders resign.
In my experience, elders are soft-target set up by the WTS to unquestioningly carry out its wishes. Once you are en elder and you see the soft underbelly of the WTS your fate is sealed. You either acquiesce or you battle. Having been a ‘battler’ for almost all my years as an elder, while I naively hoped to effect some positive changes in WTS policy by my staying at my station, I can tell you it brings much pain with it. Resign and you are demonized and stamped as a spiritual pariah.
I was removed many years ago for questioning WTS doctrine, ( doctrine which has since changed to the view that I expressed ). The telephone stopped ringing, ‘friends’ switched venue. My wife and I were not invited to eat in the homes of people who once viewed us a friends. It was a lesson worth learning. Milgram’s work had much to say when dealing with this kind of psychology. Even at the time, I did not blame the individuals involved, I recognized that their behavior was due to a carefully manufactured mindset.
Even today, I can honestly say that I harbor no ill-feeling toward any JW, whatever their ‘position’, even the ones that tried to harm me. I view them as ‘systemised’, people with only partial control of their thinking faculties. That is why, on this Board I refuse to become a JW basher. That option is far too easy, makes little difference to the WTS, and actually precludes our having to do the important job of discovering what exists within us that allowed us to fall for WTS cunning and yet others not to fall.
When things go right, the WTS takes the credit, when things fail it is the elders as Brown would say, that have ‘screwed up’.
Thanks TJ - HS