How does abdicating my critical thinking and examination to an "enlightened" clergy class disempower, emasculate and endanger me?

Fernando

If I don't think for myself, to what extent am I culpable in going along with and supporting the agenda of an evil and insane propagandist (someone who manipulates and distorts information so as to manipulate people and distort society)?

Disillusioned Lost-Lamb

No answer is still an answer, so when you don't think for yourself and/or speak up you're supporting them in your silence and giving away your right to power, masculinity and safety.

LostGeneration

I've tried to plead this with my the few JWs in my life still.

The hard part is the "critical thinking" you referenced. They either don't want to do it (intellectually lazy), or they fear what it means to them (realization they have wasted so many years). For my Father, particularly, it means loss of all of his prestige in the organization, and he wouldn't really know what to do with himself (sadly he has no hobbies or interests).

Much easier to let the WT keep doing the thinking...

sd-7

There is that whole thing about "I was just following orders". The thing that gets me is, they taught us about community bloodguilt--that's supposed to be the whole point of 'getting out of Babylon the Great'. Yet when clear evidence of the same thing, situations that incur bloodguilt, exist in the organization, it just doesn't compute for most folks. Because they don't want it to compute. They see the 2+2, but they don't want to put the = sign and solve the equation. Because seeing the 4 is just too frightening.

But if everybody in Christendom is sharing in "her sins", then the same standard applies to JWs. I mean, looking around me, growing up, I figured that at least 75% of JWs would not survive Armageddon anyway. Because nobody was really living up to the standards, everybody was compromising or failing in some critical way. And since Jesus wasn't enough, we were all freaking doomed.

So in short, you're fully culpable for your own actions. That didn't change. It doesn't matter whose orders you were following, your actions are your actions.

--sd-7

LongHairGal

Fernando:

Once you give up your own brain and let somebody else do the thinking, you are at their mercy no matter what they decide.

Remember how the JWs always told you "not to trust in your own understanding"? Well, why should you trust somebody else's? Why is somebody else's presumed to be better than yours? I am not saying you can't listen to somebody else's opinion on things, but why should their belief or interpretation be superior to yours?

Analyze why if you think theirs is.

nugget

you always have a choice. The choice to abdicate critical thinking does not then absolve you of responsibility since if you are giving others the right to think on your behalf it is beholden on you to check that they are worthy of such trust.