The "Preaching" Work As A Dead Parrot

by metatron 41 Replies latest jw friends

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  metatron

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Parrot_sketch

  Inspired by a car salesman.

  As with John Cleese's apoplectic performance, there is never any admission that the "preaching" work, door to door in particular, is dead and has been for some time. No matter how awful the statistics get, it gets praised as the most important work to do, so that organized charity can be conscientiously ignored by Witnesses.

  The JW.Org literature carts/displays might just as well be a deceased Polly nailed to a perch.

  metatron
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  BucketShopBill

  Right before one of my kids headed out, they called the WTs new style "Human Spamming" and asked "Will they start using Nigerian Prince Scams to collect more money?". Met, the preaching work has been dead with our generation, nobody was as Gung Ho as the following generations.

  Generation preaching 1914 was the end, World War 1 breaks out, high end people like the Eisenhowers and rich members of Society join until the false prophecies fail.

  1919-1926 is the end of that generation, tired of false prophets the Watchtower loses over 80% of their membership!

  Generation 2 and 3, they are the ones who preached 1975 was going to be the End or "Time is ticking away for people, the Generation is up in 1984 and 1994, those people are leaving or walking ghouls!"
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  Crazyguy

  Had an elder at my jc meeting say the preaching work is for the jws just to keep their up. Many know its a joke.
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  Magnum

  I think a lot of the doctine is a dead parrot, too, but they won't admit that, either - just like the shopkeeper and the car salesman wouldn't admit any fault. JWs aren't ever wrong; they just get "new light".

  Speaking of the carts/displays... I just saw my first yesterday. Was in a big city working. Two sisters sitting at a table completely ignored... sign: "What Does the Bible Really Teach?"... one talking on her phone. It looked so cultish.
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  breakfast of champions

  Pining for the fjords?!?
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  Heaven

  I work from home. They ain't knockin' on my door.
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  SAHS

  “BucketShopBill”: “Will they start using Nigerian Prince Scams to collect more money?”

  Actually, in a manner of speaking, they have already done that: Brother Federick W Franz, at a convention in New York, in 1950, referring to the “great multitude,” the “sheep” of Matthew chapter 25, and the “Jonadab class” of 2 Kings chapter 10, asked the audience: “Would this international assembly be interested to know that HERE, TONIGHT, in our midst, there are a number of prospective PRINCES OF THE NEW EARTH?”

  And so, the scam continues – good-boy, butt-kissing elders apparently have the prospect of becoming, not just elders, but princes in the panda-petting new world™.
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  metatron

  An additional point I wanted to make about this subject involves the question....

  What is the motivational power of a realization?

  You might consider this as a sort of subset of the "tipping point" concept. Suppose a situation goes on far too long, to the point of becoming an absurdity, an object of disgust or ridicule..... but does not collapse immediately because of suppression?

  It could be that a sort of "enlightenment" or "awakening" suddenly appears among many - that the folly of the situation "goes viral" without warning.

  What happens after that point?

  I would think that it could quickly become a negative obsession, a repellent object that screams to be euthanized in the minds of the newly wise!

  I wonder if this is happening behind the Kremlin-like walls of the Watchtower now. "WTF !!?? What were we thinking? OMG! this is so stupid!

  Could we witness sudden radical change quite soon? Maybe so. What power does a sudden realization have?

  metatron
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  BucketShopBill

  Last time I checked the laws of Economics apply to rational players, not irrational or mentally ill players. There is no way to apply Gladwell's ideas out of his book "The Tipping Point" or John Nashes "Game Theory" with a Cult. You need to rethink your question because you are trying to put a square peg in a triangle shape or? What happened in 1914, 1917-1919, 1922-1925 and 1975 and 1984, 1994 when the End did not come? You think losing Seventy Plus percent of their group was the first wave of "Sudden Realization"?
  
  

  Your using the wrong field of science and arts to attempt to figure out how High Group Mind Control works, try Psychology because as I said, Economics is used to see how rational players will react, not mentally ill or irrational people!
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  metatron

  To the contrary, cult members are still people. Tipping point ideas consider and embrace human irrationality as with social trends and politics. If economics relies only on "laws" to predict mass behavior, they risk being a pseudoscience.

  However fanatical and deluded Witnesses are, they cannot reach the level of horror that was the Cultural Revolution in China. Yet, it all ended and radically changed direction suddenly when the ideology utterly failed in practice - and the leaders knew it.

  The current leadership of China - and Xi Jinping in particular - speak as men painfully branded by this event. They are deeply committed to pragmatism thereby.

  So, I see the Watchtower as similar - and wonder what sort of thoughts and emotions emerge when a deeply held idea fails?

  metatron