Exhaustion Is The Key To Witness Faithfulness

by metatron 2 Replies latest jw friends

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  metatron

  I had occasion to do some work with some loyal, zealous Witnesses recently and I can tell you that there still are some good people in this organization.

  I can also tell you that I pity the exhausted, blind, and last-ditch fanatical nature of their faithfulness.

  Really, it's that continuing exhaustion that is the very key to the faithfulness of Jehovah's Witnesses.

  Exhaustion? Yes! The average Witness I know is overwrought, broke, physically sick or drained by taking care of someone else who is. They think that financial balance means staying current with your credit card bills. This sort of state IS PERFECT for getting a person to be too tired and pressed for time to do the hard work of thinking for themselves. It is SO MUCH easier to simply let the Watchtower do your thinking for you. That is the critical essence, the very key of Witness loyalty to the Society..... and as their lives get worse, with more pressure, more debt and more trouble, the easy path is to blame everything on Satan as if Jehovah's Witnesses were the very center of the universe.

  It's a kind of collective solipcism, if you will.

  And the mantra intensifies: "The New World is So Soon. It must be so Soon. It can't get any worse".

  It's all such a neat package - and the deception works so very well as long as people are too tired and overextended to think anything different. This is the only sort of mindset that could possibly overlook being dead wrong for 130 years of Watchtower existence since the world is still here!

  I haven't the slightest doubt that most Witnesses would go on unchanged even if a UFO landed on the White House lawn next week and introduced themselves publically. It's really astonishing - and more than a bit frightening.

  metatron
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  serenitynow!

  Yes the good JWs are always tired. The good JWs are always busy. The first thing I did when I stopped going was start getting more sleep; I didn't know how tired I was.

  I really do feel that it is a calculated effort by the WT to keep JWs extra busy and tired. This stops them from having the time to stop and think, but it also keeps them burdened and looking to that Paradise when they will finally have their reward.

  I have also considered that the push of the WT to have JWs in menial jobs has a two-fold purpose, to of course, tire them out, which manual labor does do, but also to keep them financially depressed so that their lives are bleak and they really need the paradise, hence keeps them in the cult. Because we all know, when you are doing ok financially, with a nice house you're said to "already have your paradise" thus those people are not as receptive to the preaching. There is a good reason why JW work flourishes in poor communities. Or it can probably be said that religion in general find more adherents in poorer communities. For alot of those people, hope of going to heaven or a paradise earth gives them something to look forward to, because life is so hard.
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  Bungi Bill

  Excellent point, Metatron!

  Physical exhaustion is a technique used by more than a few cults - both religious and political - as part of the indoctrination process.

  I recall one such religious group, generally referred to as "Cooperites", after its founder, one Neville Cooper.

  They had similarities with the Puritans of 17th Century England, and operated a business that was very much like a Collective Farm in the former Soviet Union.

  All church members worked extended hours on this farm, using mainly manual techniques. (Why invest in a $100 000 machine, when there was a limitless amount of human labour available for nothing?).

  Then, as if that were not enough, a 14 hour working day would be followed by a mind-numbing religious service lasting well into the night. (Does this not sound familiar!)

  Physical exhaustion also used to advantage by some of the Communist regimes, and following the same pattern:

  i.e.

  - firstly a long working day to get everybody utterly exhausted.

  - then after that, many hours of compulsory "political meetings," to complete the numbing of the mind.

  Further to this, when I was in the Truth Lie, so many of the JWs seemed to have what is now identified as "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome." In 1990, it was calculated that five per cent of the publishers in our circuit had this condition.

  Interestingly, in the sixteen years since I broke from the JWs, I have not known even one person who suffers from CFS.

  Talk about "Jehovahs happy people"!

  Bill