The Bubble Factor in Being a Witness
About two days ago after I had the pleasure of listening to my housemate verbally pound a couple of unlucky Witnesses who knocked on our door. I was sitting in my easy chair this evening eating a piece of apple pie and was struck by this overwhelming revelation, almost an epiphany.
Here's what the revelation was: Jehovahs Witnesses are not conscious.
If you do any serious study of human psychology, especially in regard to manipulation of unconscious processes and memory, you will discover that consciousness is sporadic at best whereas most "thinking" and other behaviors are largely unconscious. You will also discover that most methods of behavior change, including successful "sales" persuasion methods rely upon manipulating these unconscious mental processes.
Jehovahs Witnesses walk around in an almost continuous dream state, "narrating" the story of their lives to themselves (in pictures as well as words) with the help of their WTS inspired worldview. I would like to suggest that their mental world is a lot like the cartoon characters that will have a "bubble" drawn above their heads to show what they are thinking. Witnesses live almost entirely "in" that bubble environment, looking at themselves as if they were a character in a movie called Im a Jehovahs Witness.
Think about it this way, when people drive cars their driving behavior is almost entirely unconscious while their mental state is usually one of disassociation. We all know that drivers are often daydreaming while listening to the radio, talking about news, or just "spacing out". When a driver suddenly gets cut off by a passing car or some other negative action happens, the reactions are unconscious and entirely predictable. Depending upon the drivers personality and habitual response, he or she will normally react with anything ranging from frustration to raging anger and is almost always predictable
In the conversation between two dubs and my housemate, they were giving their automatic sermon (economic times are terrible, the end is near) when my housemate springs the Dateline show on them. You could immediately see their frustration and see the switch in tactics to go to automatic discrediting and minimization of the disgrace they are feeling because of their organizations incompetence and crimes. Yet they didnt become conscious, they were still in automatic mode.
We know that sudden shocks, severe pain or strong emotion can cause a person to "wake up" and become conscious momentarily and operate from a position "in" their body rather than from a daydream state. After such events, the individual commonly returns to the daydreaming, dissociated condition. So Im saying that Witnesses have the illusion of being conscious all of the time (when not sleeping) whereas the fact of the matter is that they seldom are conscious at all.
Thus when the Borg absolutely forbids any contact with those who have gotten the ability to be conscious (at least these ex-JWs are conscious more often and stay that way longer) and the average Witness isnt going to be doing any mental activity that will break them out of their cartoon world, it will take extraordinary shocks and emotional issues to enable Witnesses capable of independent and conscious thought that lasts for more than a few seconds.
The only good news is that (1) Unconscious people can be relied upon to act and think along certain "pathways". Thus, we understand what the problem is and know what to expect. (2) Those "pathways" can actually be used to assist Witnesses in eventually waking up long enough to see their bubble world.
When we ex-JWs stand in shock at the seeming blindness of otherwise normal individuals who reject the real world for no sane reasons we can fathom, it is perhaps useful to understand that the Borg programs almost all of what we consider to be "choices" and that preprogrammed robots cannot make choices unavailable to them. And you could get annoyed, depressed, troubled by these things. But there's this one fact, this one overwhelming thing, which mitigates just about anything, which is negative in your life. The fact is: LIFE outside the Borg is GOOD. Being alive, able to feel sunlight on your face, being able to think for yourself, to make choices for yourself, to have freedom - all these things are beautifully magnificent, beyond measure.
Thanks for reading.
Skipper