Hello Again Happy Man,
The problem with the whole issue of brainwashing (actually the term ‘indoctrinated’ is probably a more accurate term ) is that you will never meet a brainwashed person who thinks that they are!
You will however meet people who recognize that they have been brainwashed, but this is only once the unseen emotional umbilical cord that attach them to their indoctrinators has either been broken or damaged. There are many on this board who fit the profile of having been indoctrinated, but who only recognized this after, through one reason or the other, they detached themselves from the WTS.
I remember listening to an interview in the 70’s with a professional torturer for the government of El-Salvador. His specific assignment was to put the eyes of his victims out with a pencil. He admitted that his record was eighty in one day.
When asked how he felt about these people, many of them children and mature women, he shrugged his shoulders and said, ’They (meaning his indoctrinators ) convinced me that they were different, inferior to myself and a danger to me, after that it became easy’.
When arrested he was so thoroughly indoctrinated that he was outraged that he could not make his captors understand his political views and grasp why he had done those awful things. Gradually, as time passed and he remained separated from his source of indoctrination, his views gradually became so reorganized that he became clinically depressed with the knowledge of the terror and mutilation that he had been guilty of.
The impressing of the ‘pattern of healthful words’ as the WTS calls it, is a form indoctrination Happy Man. I have even heard a very senior member of the WTS, call it a ‘healthy indoctrination’, admitting that in principle JW’s are indoctrinated, but that it is a necessary process in order to help them to think and react in a ‘Christian’ manner, rather than ‘wordly’ one.
Only when a person is in a position to make an objective decision, based on true facts, rather than pre-chewed, and manipulated information, can they claim to be acting on their own inclinations.
As such Happy Man, I would suggest that you question everything you read on this Board, written by JW’s and XJW’s very carefuly. Many have us have walked this route before, and be warned it is not comfortable.
A good start might be to take a closer look at the WTS doctrine of the last days and whether 1914 is actually as significant Biblically as you may have previously thought. I am aware of a Board in Swedish that discusses the issue in detail that might help you. If you need the link let me know.
Kindest regards -- HS
