It's funny you should mention that scotoma. I was thinking along the same lines. I was thinking that to myself that that passage of scripture so aptly describes being enslaved by the Watchtower organization and when you become mentally free you have to remain because you love your family who are still in.
Major flub in Slavery Watchtower Study Article
by scotoma 28 Replies latest jw friends
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jw07
I live in a country of predominantly dark skinned people, which had a horrible history with slavery. There were sparse responses and some strange looks as the material was being read yesterday.
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Oubliette
adamah: Well close, since 'blackmail' is ...
It's kind of strange you would quote me and include the link I had to the definition of emotional blackmail and then disagree with it.
The phrase "emotional blackmail" has become disconnected from any one particular meaning of the term blackmail. Had you understood this, or read the link you reposted, you would know this:
- Emotional blackmail is a form of psychological manipulation. It is "the use of a system of threats and punishment on a person by someone close to them in an attempt to control their behavior.
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adamah
Oub said-
The phrase "emotional blackmail" has become disconnected from the meaning of the term blackmail. Had you understood this, or read the link you reposted, you would know this:
Nope, try again:
According to psychotherapist Susan Forward, who did much to popularise the term, [4] "emotional blackmail" is a powerful form of manipulation in which blackmailers who are close to the victim threaten, either directly or indirectly, to punish them to get what they want. They may know the victim's vulnerabilities and their deepest secrets. "Many of the people who use emotional blackmail are friends, colleagues and family members with whom we have close ties that we want to strengthen and salvage" [5] - parents, partners, bosses or lovers. No matter how much the blackmailer cares about the victim, they use their intimate knowledge to win compliance.
JWs don't need to resort to 'interpersonal knowledge', since they rely on a completely impersonal implicit policy of "do what WE demand of you, or you risk losing your own family, since WE own them, and can even make them shun you if we declare you a persona non grata".
Granted, someone's JW family members MAY also use 'emotional blackmail' (as described in that link) as a control measure, too, but that's a separate issue, and the term 'emotional blackmail' doesn't apply to the WTBTS' policy of shunning of DFed members: it's an ugly form of extortion, pure and simple (and WORSE, it's completely legal, since shunning has been ruled as protected under 'free exercise of religion' doctrine).
Adam
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adamah
Scotoma said- I used the term blackmail loosely because ordinary (non legalistic) person's understand that it is obtaining something from another person without using physical force. And ordinary people understand that it is bad. Poetic licence if you will.
Actually in a legal sense it is neither extortion or blackmail. The slave knew the rules when he took a wife from his master's household. So, the Master wasn't doing anything wrong legally. Now if the Master gave a woman in his household to the slave and certified it in writing and then decided to change his mind he would have a problem with the men in the gates. The Watchtower also makes the claim that when you got baptized in recognition of the "spirit led organization" that you knew what you were getting into. That's how they can deny any wrongdoing by disfellowshipping someone who leaves.
Yeah, I missed that you used the phrase (my comment was directed at Oubliette), but I was objecting to applying the term "emotional blackmail" to the modern-day JW practice of shunning, and not to the historical slave/master relationship, anyway.
However, your comment raises an interesting point about historical moral relativism, where some wonder if applying our mores to those who lived 3,000 yrs ago in an ancient World with strange practices is appropriate.
However, a MORE IMPORTANT question (and the flip-side of that moral relativist coin) is why do some people seemingly believe that ancient brutal laws have ANY value to us, in this modern day and age? When it comes to legal codes, OLDER ain't better!
If that were the case, then we should just cut to the chase and adopt the Code of Ur-Nammu, which predates ALL the others, including the Mosaic Code found in the Torah (and it also regulates slavery, containing provisions quite similar to those found in the Torah, including the bit about holding the slave's family as possessions of the owner to discourage his leaving: see the part below IN BOLD):
http://realhistoryww.com/world_history/ancient/Misc/Sumer/ur_nammu_law.htm
The Ur-Nammu law code is the oldest known, written about 300 years before Hammurabi's law code. When first found in 1901, the laws of Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC) were heralded as the earliest known laws. Now older collections are known: They are laws of the town Eshnunna (ca. 1800 BC), the laws of King Lipit-Ishtar of Isin (ca. 1930 BC), and Old Babylonian copies (ca. 1900-1700 BC) of the Ur-Nammu law code , with 26 laws of the 57. This cylinder is the first copy found that originally had the whole text of the code, and it is the world's oldest law code. Further it actually mentions the name of Ur-Nammu for the first time.
Prologue
"…After An and Enlil had turned over the Kingship of Ur to Nanna, at that time did Ur-Nammu, son born of Ninsun, for his beloved mother who bore him, in accordance with his principles of equity and truth... Then did Ur-Nammu the mighty warrior, king of Ur, king of Sumer and Akkad, by the might of Nanna, lord of the city, and in accordance with the true word of Utu, establish equity in the land; he banished malediction, violence and strife, and set the monthly Temple expenses at 90 gur of barley, 30 sheep, and 30 sila of butter. He fashioned the bronze sila-measure, standardized the one-mina weight, and standardized the stone weight of a shekel of silver in relation to one mina... The orphan was not delivered up to the rich man; the widow was not delivered up to the mighty man; the man of one shekel was not delivered up to the man of one mina."
(One mina was made equal to 60 shekels).
1. If a man commits a murder, that man must be killed.
2. If a man commits a robbery, he will be killed.
3. If a man commits a kidnapping, he is to be imprisoned and pay 15 shekels of silver.
4. If a slave marries a slave, and that slave is set free, he does not leave the household.
5. If a slave marries a native (i.e. free) person, he/she is to hand the firstborn son over to his owner.
6. If a man violates the right of another and deflowers the virgin wife of a young man, they shall kill that male.
7. If the wife of a man followed after another man and he slept with her, they shall slay that woman, but that male shall be set free.
8. If a man proceeded by force, and deflowered the virgin slavewoman of another man, that man must pay five shekels of silver.
9. If a man divorces his first-time wife, he shall pay her one mina of silver.
10. If it is a (former) widow whom he divorces, he shall pay her half a mina of silver.
11. If the man had slept with the widow without there having been any marriage contract, he need not pay any silver.
13. If a man is accused of sorcery he must undergo ordeal by water; if he is proven innocent, his accuser must pay 3 shekels.
14. If a man accused the wife of a man of adultery, and the river ordeal proved her innocent, then the man who had accused her must pay one-third of a mina of silver.
15. If a prospective son-in-law enters the house of his prospective father-in-law, but his father-in-law later gives his daughter to another man, the father-in-law shall return to the rejected son-in-law twofold the amount of bridal presents he had brought.
17. If a slave escapes from the city limits, and someone returns him, the owner shall pay two shekels to the one who returned him.
18. If a man knocks out the eye of another man, he shall weigh out ½ a mina of silver.
19. If a man has cut off another man’s foot, he is to pay ten shekels.
20. If a man, in the course of a scuffle, smashed the limb of another man with a club, he shall pay one mina of silver.
21. If someone severed the nose of another man with a copper knife, he must pay two-thirds of a mina of silver.
22. If a man knocks out a tooth of another man, he shall pay two shekels of silver.
24. [...] If he does not have a slave, he is to pay 10 shekels of silver. If he does not have silver, he is to give another thing that belongs to him.
25. If a man’s slave-woman, comparing herself to her mistress, speaks insolently to her, her mouth shall be scoured with 1 quart of salt.
28. If a man appeared as a witness, and was shown to be a perjurer, he must pay fifteen shekels of silver.
29. If a man appears as a witness, but withdraws his oath, he must make payment, to the extent of the value in litigation of the case.
30. If a man stealthily cultivates the field of another man and he raises a complaint, this is however to be rejected, and this man will lose his expenses.
31. If a man flooded the field of a man with water, he shall measure out three kur of barley per iku of field.
32. If a man had let an arable field to a(nother) man for cultivation, but he did not cultivate it, turning it into wasteland, he shall measure out three kur of barley per iku of field.Adam
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Oubliette
adamah, Ok, so you're doing that weird thing that some people do where you SEEM to disagree with me, but everything you say is actually in agreement with what I just said.
Frankly, who the fuck cares what "psychotherapist Susan Forward" says? Did God die and she get appointed as his replacement when I wasn't looking? I'm thinking, "No!"
You're attempt at being "technically correct" at defining a term that has more meanings than you're willing to allow is only obfuscating the very point you are trying to make.
Please try to focus. Maybe you should try annoying our mutual enemies instead of pissing off your potential allies.
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adamah
Oub said-Ok, so you're doing that weird thing that some people do where you SEEM to disagree with me, but everything you say is actually in agreement with what I just said.
Was I too subtle for you? Then try this on for size: I disagree with you, and I explained why in my post above. Calling it "emotional blackmail" is as deepity as any religiosity that can be can imagined, when it's really just.... a hyperbolic mischaracterization. It's as inaccurate as saying the WTBTS uses bomb threats: WTF does THAT even mean?
Oub said- Frankly, who the fuck cares what "psychotherapist Susan Forward" says? Did God die and she get appointed as his replacement when I wasn't looking? I'm thinking, "No!"
Way to shoot down the credibility of the person who coined the term, and who you cited! Most people let others do that kind of thing, but are you beating the Xmas rush?
Anyway, it's a junk term from 'pop psychology', but is useful when confined to it's specific meaning: the situation is not helped by applying it to other situations where it doesn't even fit (eg to describe the ORGANIZATION POLICIES used by the WTBTS to control it's members, based on Bible scriptures, which are hardly personal).
Oub said- You're attempt at being "technically correct" at defining a term that has more meanings than you're willing to allow is only obfuscating the very point you are trying to make. Please try to focus.
Thanks for your concern over my ability to make my point.
And there's no "technically correct" about it: even as defined by the originator of the term (who you shot down, BTW), the term doesn't fit, so your use is incorrect... Use it at your own risk, since it's on your head if you abuse it with people who actually know what it refers to.
Oub said- Maybe you should try annoying our mutual enemies instead of pissing off your potential allies.
LOL! Is that some kind of thinly-veiled threat, as if it's:
EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL?
Look, Oubliette, it's not about you, me, your ego or mine, but about sharing knowledge; if you don't understand that, then good luck! Homey don't play the 'mine's bigger than yours' ego-driven game, since life's too short for that nonsense.
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sd-7
It's just run-of-the-mill doublethink. There is and is not an understanding of how all this is connected to the way the organization operates. But it makes no difference to the writers of this article. I mean, heck, some of this stuff may well be cut-and-pasted from a previous article about the subject.
Just watch 'Roots' again and you'll figure it out:
--sd-7
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Oubliette
adamah: Is that some kind of thinly-veiled threat
You have a PM
