Sinboi you are in creditably young but growing older and more mature each day.
I was Baptized when I was 16 this would be in 1959. Six months later a friend gave me a copy of Eric Hoffer's The True Believer.
Hoffer was a blue collar social philosopher who worked on the docks as a longshoreman.
While waiting for a ship to arrive to be off loaded he began to write his seminal book. He was looking at large religious movements and Communism, the Third Reich etc. He never mentions the WTBTS and their JW's. What he was after was the common traits true believers were exposed to.
After reading some of the following...... I realized the WT was a serious manipulator of it's believers.
After reading his book I never looked at the W corporate entity in the same way again. I, along with my wife, now in our young 20's........ got out of the 'truth'. And made a very good life for ourselves.
The following opened my eyes and my understanding of what I was really dealing with.
All active mass movements strive,
therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the
realities of the world. ...by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is
already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth nor certitude
outside it. ...To rely on the evidence of senses and of reason is heresy and
treason. It is startling to realize how much
unbelief is necessary to make belief possible. What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable
unbelief's.
"[They] pray not only
for [their] daily bread, but also for [their] daily
illusion."
Here,
as elsewhere, the technique of a mass movement aims to infect people with a
malady and then offer the movement as a cure.
Not
only does a mass movement depict the present as mean and miserable - it
deliberately makes it so. It fashions a pattern of individual existence that is
dour, hard, repressive and dull. It decries pleasures and comforts and extols
the rigorous life. It views ordinary enjoyment as trivial or even discreditable,
and represents the pursuit of personal happiness as immoral.
If a
doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither
unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable. One has to get to heaven or
the distant future to determine the truth of an effective doctrine.
All
mass movements rank obedience with the highest virtues and put it on a level
with faith.
There can be no mass
movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of
facts.
When we believe
ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to
common everyday truths.
A MASS MOVEMENT CAN BE RECKLESS WITH THE
HEATH, WELFARE AND EDUCATION OF IT’S FOLLOWERS.
The blood ban, encouragement not to get higher learning, the 11 year ban on Transplants, discouraging Vaccines in the past, discouraging friendships and association with non JW's. And always........ obedience.
Sinboi this is what you have escaped from.
