This is a scenario I’m sure we have all thought about, and we keep looking for any signs that this may occur. It would seem like the ultimate victory, and that our only emotion would be joy and relief.
But what if they printed an apology… and it included this:
“We are sorry if some of you were misled, but we had a corporation to run and finance. We inherited it, and felt it was our obligation to keep it running smoothly.
Some of you may have been misled, and taken seriously what we printed- but you had a world of information at your fingertip with the Internet, dozens of books by ‘apostates’ to read, documentaries on TV about the Bible, and all our previous publications to find every mistake we ever made. It’s not our problem if you were misled- you should have done more research before you joined. You have only yourselves to blame. Goodbye.”
So then the anger and frustration would burn for decades… but that IS quite likely the only apology that would be offered.
Sometimes the last enemy is ourselves.
The preaching work can be proven as an unethical means of recruitment. There is no way the Watchtower can defer total responsibility to the rank and file. This would be easily countered especially if they admitted they were just running a company and are not an actual religion. A very good article on how the mind is maniuplated during the "Bible study arrangement" was written on the subject. Basically what it says is that the goal is to keep the student from researching the Society's claims by creating cognitive dissonance in their brain. Their critical thinking is eroded and they are tricked into believing that something is verified when it's not.
So, the people who are brought in from the preaching work are in the first stage of this unethical cult recruitment arrangement. The Watchtower publications have subliminal imagery in them to make you feel certain emotions. They put "faces" into their paintings that go into the publications. If you notice ALL WT publications have art in them. This is because the art is an essential part of the mind control they are using. Notice what Wikipedia has to say on subliminal art using faces:
Fear stimuli are processed differently compared to other negative emotional stimuli. Participants rated the affect of target faces in an affect appraisal session and the genuineness of target faces in a genuineness appraisal session. This study found that when participants were primed with fear stimuli compared to happy stimuli, the target was rated as more unpleasant and when primed with fear and disgust subliminal stimuli, the participants rated the target as being less genuine. This study also suggests that our emotional involvement in this case also matters because the subliminal fear stimuli that participants were primed with in the genuineness condition could have invoked feelings of a potential threat; therefore the participant may have been suspicious of the targets and rated them as less genuine.
Suspicion of a potential of threat affects emotional responses in regards to pain that is perceived in others. Participants were shown neutral and semantic pain expressions that were previously primed with their own or others' faces in one experiment. In a second experiment, pictures with pain and neutral scenarios were used in a categorization task. The pictures were primed with their own or others' faces similar to experiment one. Results indicate that an early and late cortical response between pain and no-pain were modulated only when the participants experienced subliminal stimuli of others' faces. These results further support the claim that when negative subliminal stimuli is experienced, the feeling of potential threat arises.
Subliminally primed negative emotions elicit emotional responses that demonstrate negative and defensive effects. Angry and sad faces were used as primes and were compared based on the effects that each emotion would have on agency appraisals. When exposed to subliminal angry faces participants appraised negative events as caused by others, and those exposed to subliminal sad faces appraised the same events as caused by situational factors. These findings supply evidence for subliminal emotion-specific cognitive effects that are not just valence-based effect.
Priming individuals with images flashed for an instant affects experiences of self. Images of a graduate student's faculty adviser's scowling face or an approving face of another person were presented before the graduate students evaluated their own research ideas. Participants who were Catholic were asked to evaluate themselves after being flashed a disapproving face of the Pope or another unfamiliar face. The self-ratings were lower after the presentation of a disapproving face with personal significance; however there was no effect if the disapproving face was unfamiliar.
So, that's why the "Bible Study" is done in the home before they are invited to the Kingdom Hall. Because the subliminal art needs to be tested on the subject. Some people are immune so they have to make sure the subject is worth attempting to mind control. If the study ends, the subject was unresponsive to the stimuli. Once they get to the Kingdom Hall they have already been subject to a good amount of subliminal imagery and have a developed a relationship with the teacher. Then they start their regular meeting attendence which continues to feed the subliminal imagery into their brains. This makes them fearful of what the Watchtower wants them fearful of, and happy and sublime about what the Watchtower wants. They grow a new person in your mind and eventually that person becomes you. It's called the cult personality. I suspect that the Watchtower uses auditory subliminal stimuli as well. It's probably in the prerecorded dramas that so many kids listened to at night. That's where you would stick some subliminal stimuli if you are evil like that. It's also important to note that a form of hypnosis is used during the sessions which prepares the mind for the subliminal stimuli.
This is just ONE facet for how the Watchtower unethically takes control over the minds of their subjects. Steve Hassan's BITE model goes into further detail on the subject. So, if the Watchtower ever tied to pull what you say, they could be called out on it. They deserve to be put in prison forever, plain and simple.
-Sab
