Important Reading:
After reading the article, please read the commentary:
Aeon: How tyrants work up crowds. [Interesting reading. Think Rutherford; Think JW Conventions]
by AndersonsInfo 4 Replies latest jw friends
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Spiral
Excellent reading, thank you for posting. So appropriate today given the subject. Commentary is spot on as well.
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SAHS
This dynamic of tyrants plays out a common theme in religion and politics in the “us-versus-them” siege mentality. There is always a demand for purity, or distinctly polarized identity. In the JW flavour of uniquely cultish fundamentalism, there is the ever-present black-and-white dichotomy between their group and “the world.”
In the eyes of the WT (governing body “monarchs”/“popes”), the best – and only – interests to be served by the will of the divine, in their eyes, necessitate the complete annihilation of any and all non-members of their tight-knit high-control group. All enemies, in their interpretation, of God and man are “false religion” (i.e., all other religions) and any non-devout members of their own sect.
All politics, “worldly” commerce, and “worldly” (i.e., other) religions are, in their opinion, the underlying cause of all misery and discord in the world – the world being under the control of “Satan the Devil.”
It’s not hard to see how this environment has readily fostered the line of kooky tyrants representing the man-made JW religion. For them, it’s always been us and them, and our way or the highway. Is it any wonder that out of that has arisen the strictly-enforced, dogmatic policies such as disfellowshipping (shunning) and the blood transfusion ban, which have split families apart and killed untold thousands of men, woman, and children, including little babies, auspiciously on the altar of the bronze-age tribal worrier god Yahweh (“Jehovah,” since around the Middle Ages).
Tyrants come in all shapes and sizes, but the common thread behind their modus operandi remains the same: self-serving aggrandizement and CONTROL.
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Simon
Time for some poetry:
Epitaph on a Tyrant
W. H. Auden, 1907 - 1973Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets. -
nonjwspouse
woah, a former JW elder. How about that.
very good.