Witness urban legends. You know what they are; we have all heard them before. The stories that somehow show the witnesses or their teachings in a good light but always seem to contain elements that would seem preposterous to most people. They include everything from heroism and amazing miracles to satanic power and blue smurfs.
I have developed the following hypnosis about how witnesses are able to believe the unbelievable, see what you think. My hypnosis is that witnesses are so programmed to ignore their own “bullshit detectors” that they can even rationalize or ignore the blatant bullshit inherent in urban legends. In other words, they turn off some of their reasoning powers so that they can believe a story that reinforces their belief system or somehow puts the witnesses in a positive light.
Allow me to relate my own personal experience and the reason for my interest in this subject at this time. Two days ago my wife and I were discussing the pledge of allegiance. There was a news story about the pledge and patriotism and that’s how the subject came up. We both agreed that saying the pledge has little to do with true love of country. We agreed that respect for the laws and principals is much more meaningful then just an outward display such as the pledge. Anyway, during the course of our discussion, she related to me a story in a Watch Tower she had heard about. Supposedly, an American teacher did an experiment and asked two students to spit on the flag. Of course one student was a witness, (they are always singled out you know) and the other student was not. As you can guess, our “hero”, the witness, would in no way spit on the flag because that would be disrespectful and of course the other student did so without hesitation because the teacher told him to. I told my wife, “Well that sounds like an urban legend to me”.
Needles to say, she hit the roof. “You don’t believe anything I say that is positive about the truth”, she said. I told her I would look it up on the WT CD-ROM. Sure enough; the story existed (much to my surprise) and even had many of the elements that she related. However, as it turned out, this story was about Canadian students and their teacher, not American. From what I could find, the Watch Tower was quoting as its source a story in its own 1990 yearbook.
I told her that I did indeed find the article in a Watch Tower but also told her about the minor differences between her story and the printed story and that the WT article was quoting the yearbook. She seemed very pleased and I could tell she thought she had ’won a victory for the truth’. Gag!
Now relaxed and pleased with herself that she had won, she then opened up to me and admitted that if the story had been about an American teacher and her students as she mistakenly said it was, she could see why I could conclude that it could be just an urban legend. She even went as far as to say that now knowing it was about Canadian students and their teacher “it made much more sense because there is no way a teacher in the U. S. A. would do such a controversial thing as this, they would lose their job”. She actually said this!
I just smiled and I let her believe all was well as I could not bring myself to crush her by illustrating her illogic or tell her that a Watch Tower article quoting from a Watch Tower yearbook is hardly proof of anything. This is especially true considering their history of misquoting and just plain making stuff up as they go along.
Although the big picture was lost on her, I believe she was quite correct in her assessment that if an American teacher had done the same thing, that teacher would be out of a job in very short order.
To me this incident was indicative that her “bullshit detector” was going off loud and clear, but the Watch Tower programming was not letting her respond to the alarm.
So there it is folks, and example of mind control up close and personal, sitting on the couch next to me, and she hasn’t a clue. I love my wife, but god I hate this cult!
Any comments?
Freeman