Few of your are old enough to have been there, I suspect.
I had been in prison two years as a JW conscientious objector when the exciting news about 1975 spread like wildfire.
I was paroled from prison in 1969 and immediately began Pioneering. The pressures began mounting throughout the organization. You could only conduct a Bible Study for six months. If your study didn't get baptized--you had to cut them loose; time was too precious to waste!
I married and had little kids to worry about feeding on minimum wage from a part time job. It almost gave me a nervous breakdown. So, I moved the family from Fort Worth to California.
I met non-JW's who were much nicer and more caring about me and my family than the Witnesses. Everybody was relaxed and enjoying life.
I suddenly woke up!
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My wife, on the other hand, was a nervous wreck. This was 1974 and she could practically hear the countdown clock ticking inside her head.
When 1975 came, the kettle was boiling.
Every JW on planet Earth had bug eyes.
And then. . . it got very quiet.
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Then. . .It was over.
The word you are looking for is a short and simple one: STUNNED.
Dubs were simply stunned.
Why?
Their religion had suddenly been tested for truth and proved FALSE.
Stop and think about that for a second. It was like your Mom and Dad suddenly telling you that you weren't their kid--you were adopted.
It was like finding out your best friend was a serial killer.
People were heartbroken, shaken, upset and finally depressed.
But, what happened next was truly terrible!
You know what it was?
Of course, you don't--not unless you were there.
Instead of an angry mob of disillusioned JW's demanding a hearing and statement of accountability they just shut up and shrugged and went about their business like good little robots!
Did you ever see a documentary about the Holocaust when Nazi soldiers marched a group of condemned Jews to a pit and had them kneel down next to an empty pit? A soldier with a pistol went one by one and shot them in the back of their head while the others down the line waited and waited. . .
Did you ever wonder why they didn't try to run or all rush the soldier and stop him?
Wel,l folks, it was that sort of resignation.
JW's were defeated, dispirited, and depressed and they just gave up.
Those people have swallowed the whole thing and shit it out and flushed it away like it never happened.
There. That's your answer.
Cognitive dissonance.
My wife became an alcoholic.
She died coming home from a bar, drunk--chased by cops because she had been stopped and her driver's license had already been taken away.
She tried to escape and drove off at top speed and crashed into the back of a parked car.
This was the legacy of the religion she so loved and trusted and believed for so long.
The shadow of 75 still hangs over us all . . .