Watching TV, JW wife can see a problem with a fictional cult

by OnTheWayOut 16 Replies latest jw friends

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  OnTheWayOut

  OTWO- Wow. Isn't it amazing how JW's can see the injustices in outside scenarios in other groups or organizations, but not their own ?

  Flipper, I could imagine they could justify the very action of the fictional cop destroying evidence if it were for "the truth" but not the lies of some other group.

  Serenitynow, I doubt she will give it more thought. These things come and go through the mind. IMHO, it would take an actual situation within the JW's to trigger her memory of our conversation about the same thing happening.

  wha happened, that "futile" feeling is what I get. If she would just stop and really think for 5 minutes, her whole world could change. But no, dismiss the silly notion and move on. "Nothing to think about."

  JRK, I hope to one day find the one thing that does hit home. I will keep looking for an opportunity.

  Mrs.Jones, thanks. I will keep planting.

  00Dad, that's really all I can hope. That one day, she will remember that all these things were covered and only fit together if WTS is a lie.

  Stillstuckcruz, thanks for that positive story.

  Found Sheep, that's where I am still at with this.
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  NVR2L8

  OTWO,

  I had a similar experience. I was watching Intervention on A&E with my wife and it was about a gay man who was abusing drugs. It caught our attention because he was from our general area. When they showed pictures of him as a young boy it looked like him and his family were wearing "meeting" clothes and I almost told my wife that they were a JW family...Later in the program the gay man said he was repeatedly sexually abused by a member of his "extended" family. The mother said that her husband brought the matter to the congregation elders and as a JW that how you deal with such issues. When the whole family was brought together for the pre-intervention you could see the JW traits in the older brother. He had disdain for his brother gay lifestyle and he was unable to show unconditional love...all he could do was blame and condemn and the interventionist had to repeatedly explain what was needed to convince his brother to go to treatment...My wife made no comments even when I said that I felt sad that the boy's childhood was so messed up eventhough his parents were in the "truth"...

  Like you said I doubt she will give it more thought...she wouldn't want to give up her social life because one poor child's sexual abuse was mishandled by "imperfect" elders who did their best to help.
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  outsmartthesystem

  I know exactly what you mean. I've watched two shows with my wife....hoping she'll make a connection. One was a 60 minutes special about cults. It was years ago. I forget which cult it was....but whatever the head honcho said was taken to be gospel. Beliefs changed on a whim based on his revelations. My wife could not believe that anyone would "be controlled like that".

  Same thing with a documentary on N Korea. It focused on information control. And that since information is so tightly controlled.....many N Koreans live their lives under the belief that things are much BETTER there than they are in the western world. My wife even commented about how sad it is that these people live their entire lives believing something simply because they don't know any better. I chimed in...."and they don't know any better because they have been told never to trust outside sources". She agreed.....and proceeded to make no connection to her own religion
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  outsmartthesystem

  "It's like the WT society is protected by fictitious Teflon and there's always an alibi or an excuse for what causes the WT society to do what they do."

  Flipper - They will rationalize anything. But even if you pin them down on a specific egregious problem (such as showing a witness an Awake that points out how quoting people out of context is one way that propagandists succeed in controlling the minds of others.....and then showing that person multiple examples of the Society engaging in the very same behavior they condemn)......they will say "if you're looking for perfection....you won't find it." And then when you point out that there is a difference between imperfection and willful misconduct, they will tell you that they're done talking about it and engage in an ad hominem attack on your motives for bringing up the subject
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  MrMonroe

  Even when my wife and I were still going to meetings, she'd watch Big Love (about polygamist Mormons) at night while I was at work .... and then tell me the striking similarities between their weird cult and our religion: we had "the truth" and they had "the principle." We had a judicial committee and they had ... a judicial committee. They prayed before meals like we did, feared what their Mormon "friends" would think about every move they made, kept distant from their neighbours, believed the holy spirit guided everything they did ... and believed they had God's ear. Watching that show was a pretty big step towards my wife accepting our religion was a load of bollocks.

  Soon after we left, we watched a doco on Jonestown, Guyana, and the similarity in the cult control tactics were again too strong to ignore. Groupthink. Punishment for dissent. Others in the group would report any discontent or "murmuring". Shunning tactics. Demands for absolute obedience. People realising it was a dangerous control cult, and yet being too scared to do anything about it.

  Watching John Hurt in The Village after we left kind of sealed it all.

  It's all about control, deception and delusion.
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  baltar447

  MrMonroe, I think you meant William Hurt, at least according to the wiki

  Sorry, that's my someone was wrong on the internet and I need to correct it for today
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  OnTheWayOut

  NVR2L8, thanks for another story of how they can look out at things that are wrong, but they can't look in to their own world. Most JW's would say the family member was not really a JW or deserved to be kicked out, but the gay drug-user didn't handle it right or was stumbled by Satan's world. They would hate to actually say that the elders/JW's screwed something up.

  outsmartthesystem, that's an excellent example of how they don't click with these "other" stories.

  MrMonroe, you and yours were already on the brink of coming out, so you both saw it. The Village is excellent for a JW on the fence.

  baltar447, you probably need quotes around "someone was wrong on the internet" or some other way to distinguish the phrase as a single phrase if you are going to use it as a single phrase. But that was just my someone-needed-correcting-on-the-internet moment of the day. Just kidding. Thanks for correcting the Hurt confusion.