At the risk of turning this into something of a circle jerk, you have a good point that I hadn't considered, Vidiot. If they shed everyone all at once, the chance of a splinter group capturing a large portion of those shed goes up substantially. They don't want competition with another group that's similar, since it would fly in the face of their claims to be special and unique. It's definitely better to loose people slowly and just let them disperse amongst the existing religions or become atheist, since they would then pose no great threat of attracting away loyalists. If there's a splinter group of sufficient size, the loyalists might get curious.
What Would It Take To Prove......
by metatron 33 Replies latest jw friends
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Apognophos
If we take the position that the Society is like an organism naturally going in whatever direction it needs to in order to survive, then I think the points you guys are making demonstrate that the Society's goals are conflicted and therefore we shouldn't expect to see any clear direction from the org.
Think about it this way: this happens all the time in nature. Women are the result of thousands of years of an evolutionary pressure on humans to be efficiently bipedal, which prefers narrower hips, as well as a pressure to have wider hips in order to have babies with the large heads that benefit our species. So the advantages of narrow hips and wide hips collide. If their hips were any narrower on average our species probably would not exist, so high were our historical childbirth mortality rates.
Similarly the Society benefits from growth and it benefits from shrinking. It benefits from forcing people to stay in and it benefits from encouraging people to leave. So, absent any one leader or unified leadership that consciously decides, "This is our direction, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead", then we should expect them to behave in a conflicted way as they try out little things that may hurt or help them, then move on to different tactics after seeing the results of their previous actions.
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OneEyedJoe
Yeah, when it comes down to it, leadership by comittee is an odd beast and that may just be the only thing that's in play here. It may just be that the combination of wishful thinking and the human brain's aptitude for finding patterns (even if they don't exist) might be the driving force behind the idea of an intentional shedding of fence-sitters.
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Vidiot
oneyedjoe - "If they shed everyone all at once, the chance of a splinter group capturing a large portion of those shed goes up substantially. They don't want competition with another group that's similar, since it would fly in the face of their claims to be special and unique."
Very perceptive; I'm sure you're right.
In fact, it may even be as simple as "If we can't have 'em, no one can! And since it looks like we're gonna lose 'em before too long, anyway, let's make sure no one else gets 'em either!" (a lower-octane variant of the rule-or-ruin/scorched-earth mentality)
sir82 - "How can you tell the difference between organizational incompetence vs. a well-planned strategy to merely appear to be stupid, to cull the weak?"
Historically, authoritarian regimes have actually been pretty consistently incompetent across the board; the desire to cull the weak or "shoot their wounded" is usually more of a natural inclination than a calculated one.
In addition, natural selection strongly suggests that behavior that - at first glance - seems like conscious, well-planned strategy can, and often does, evolve naturally as an undirected response to external stimuli.
I would argue that these conditions are what are primarily driving the WTS's actions at the moment.
However...
...it wouldn't surprise me if a significant measure of genuine "I-hate-the-goddamned-fence-sitters-let's-finally-get-rid-of-'em-once-and-for-all" sentiment on the part of the WT heirarchy was helping it along.
So, maybe a bit of column A, a bit of column B.
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warehouse
It's a runaway train guys, with no conductor. Vidiot hit the nail on the head. While it's entertaining to analyze and weigh potential conspiracies, the bottom line is, there is no bottom line. There's no one cohesive vision or direction or plan, other than pure survival. What we see is usually reactive behavior of groups of people who live sequestered lives.
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Vidiot
I don't entirely agree with you.
In all honesty, I suspect that at least some loyalist movers-and-shakers in the WT heirarchy had enough practical common sense to see the way the wind was starting to blow (stagnation, decline, etc.), and instead of burying their collective heads in the sand, enough of them decided that they "wanted it that way, anyway" (shades of Aesop's fox and grapes), and began directing policy accordingly, ostensibly to save face and keep the WTS afloat.
It's not some grand, overarching "master scheme", yet it's not completely undirected, either.
IMO, the real bottom line is, they saw the 67% retention rate, the young people "leaving in droves", the so-called death of printed media, the impending pedo lawsuit payouts and bad PR, and numerous other harbingers of death, and, like a body that draws resources away from the extremities to preserve the internal organs, implemented the corporate equivalent, convincing themselves (consciously or otherwise) that it was actually all their decision to do so, and thusly proceeding to help the process along in a way that might hopefully salvage the situation.
Why do I think so?
Two main reasons; a) they're authoritarian leaders, and that's how authoritarian leaders behave, and b) frankly, if I were on the GB, it's what I would do.
(note: I am not an authoritarian leader)
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Mum
Most recent converts are coming from the Third World. Europe is a wash. The U.S. may be a wash as well, except for immigrants from poor countries. I don't know where these facts fit into the speculation that they're trying to reduce numbers, but it must have some relevance.
If they really wanted to reduce the number of publishers, it seems like they might just pull out of the poorest nations.
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Vidiot
Mum - "If they really wanted to reduce the number of publishers, it seems like they might just pull out of the poorest nations."
Maybe...
... but I would suggest that they want to downsize the overall membership without looking like they want to downsize the overall membership.
Plus, you gotta admit; turning the WTS into a weird-ass, fundy-hip e-religion is a pretty effective way to alienate the more grounded rank-and-filers who are nevertheless having doubts.
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warehouse
Vidiot wrote:
I don't entirely agree with you.
Lol, yes you do
Vidiot wrote:
the real bottom line is, they saw the 67% retention rate, the young people "leaving in droves", the so-called death of printed media, the impending pedo lawsuit payouts and bad PR, and numerous other harbingers of death . . . implemented the corporate equivalent . . . and thusly proceeding to help the process along
Exactly my point. This describes, as you mentioned, a strategy that is purely reactive to external forces. It's also evolving, which is why they redact things, update and destroy BOE letters, and have eldubs editing their KS books.
I suspect that at least some loyalist movers-and-shakers in the WT heirarchy had enough practical common sense to see the way the wind was starting to blow . . . and began directing policy accordingly, ostensibly to save face and to (hopefully) keep the WTS afloat.
This also describes a situation where there isn't any real vision or direction. You have a group of people within the organization who are acting independantly of the visible leadership. They think they know better (and granted, they might actually have better actionable data) and they've proceeded to manipulate individuals/circumstances because they don't believe the GB has the appropriate viewpoint.
There's no bottom line, except survival. I would even hazard to say that the pedantics we see on the ground are a result of an attempt to not only muddy the waters in terms of visiblity by the R&F, but as an obscurification tool to prevent these splinter groups within the top layers of the organization from running around doing whatever they feel is necessary.
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Vidiot
Warehouse - "You have a group of people within the organization who are acting independantly of the visible leadership. They think they know better (and granted, they might actually have better actionable data) and they've proceeded to manipulate individuals/circumstances because they don't believe the GB has the appropriate viewpoint...I would even hazard to say that the pedantics we see on the ground are a result of an attempt to not only muddy the waters in terms of visiblity by the R&F, but as an obscurification tool to prevent these splinter groups within the top layers of the organization from running around doing whatever they feel is necessary."
Are you suggesting that there's some kind of actual "fifth column" at work?
And that higher-up loyalists are doing what they do - in part - to try and counter them?