Although the term "brainwashing" has fallen out of favor of late, I think few here would deny that the JW faith exerts a tremendous influence over the adherent at levels far below that of conscious thought.
Certainly no spouse of a believing JW is unfamiliar with this. In clinical terms, I think The True Believer by Eric Hoffer gives one of the best analysis of the resultant behavior, but does not capture the sheer emotional frustration friends, family members and associates of JW?s often experience.
For emotional parallels, we often turn to works of fiction. The Ex-JW community, for example often draws comparisons between the JW mindset and the artificial reality portrayed in The Matrix or the iron control of the Borg, from the television series Star Trek. Both scenarios depicted humans in symbiotic enslavement to machines.
For me, no work of fiction comes closer than Madeline L?Engle?s 1962 Newberry Award winning classic, A Wrinkle In Time. Written loosely as science fiction, and primarily to an adolescent audience, A Wrinkle In Time utilizes liberal Christian theology as a framework to explore the issues of personal responsibility and integrity versus the dangers of mindless conformity.
The story revolves around Meg Murry, a teenaged girl who?s father, a scientist experimenting with the possibility of travel through extra spatial dimensions, has disappeared nearly a year ago.
Meg Murry, her younger brother, Charles Wallace Murry and her friend Calvin O?Keefe are taken by kindly angelic beings to a planet called Camazotz where the elder Murry is imprisoned.
On the surface, Camazotz appears much like Earth, but the three children notice something different almost immediately:
In front of all the houses children were playing. Some were skipping rope, some were bouncing balls. Meg felt vaguely that something was wrong with their play. It seemed exactly like children playing around any housing development at home, and yet there was something different about it. She looked at Calvin and saw that he too, was puzzled.
"Look!" Charles Wallace said suddenly. "They?re skipping and bouncing in rhythm! Everyone?s doing it at exactly the same moment."
This was so. As the skipping rope hit the pavement, so did the ball. As the rope curved over the head of the jumping child, the child with the ball caught the ball. Down come the ropes. Down came the balls. Over and over again. Up. Down. All in rhythm?..
The reason, the children soon discover, is that the entire planet was telepathically controlled by IT, an oversized disembodied brain. Once IT had invaded your mind, not only all of your conscious thoughts, but all of life?s rhythms, from your heartbeat to your footsteps would proceed according to IT?s drumbeat.
Charles Wallace, Meg?s precocious younger brother makes the mistake of thinking he can open his mind to IT and still maintain a shred of his own personal identity. He is mistaken.
Meg and Calvin try to reach Charles in vain:
Charles Wallace?s voice seemed to come from a great distance. "Stop staring at me."
Breathing quickly with excitement, Calvin continued to pin Charles Wallace with his stare. "You?re like Ariel in the cloven pine, Charles. And I can let you out. Look at me, Charles. Come back to us."
Again the shudder went through Charles Wallace.
Calvin?s intense voice hit at him. "Come back, Charles. Come back to us."
Again Charles shuddered. And then it was as though an invisible hand had smacked against his chest and knocked him to the ground, and the stare with which Calvin had held him was broken. Charles sat there on the floor of the corridor whimpering, not a small boy?s sound, but a fearful animal noise.
Calvin shook his head. "Charles almost came out. I almost did it. He almost came back to us."
Like Calvin with Charles, I have often been that close with my wife. All of us who have ever tried to talk and reason with a JW are intimately familiar with the slack-jawed glazed look that greets this endeavor. Many times, I have seen that glazed look leave her eyes and briefly, for a second, sometime even two, I have seen the real Ane, a kind compassionate person who is repulsed by the idea of a loving God hiding from his children for so long that they begin to doubt his existence and then one day, suddenly annihilating them because they failed to join a small esoteric American religion that abuses its members and lies about its own history.
As Charles sinks deeper into IT, Meg eventually discovers that she has a weapon that IT does not --- Love:
Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she was unaware of them.
Now she was even able to look at him, at this animated thing that was not her own Charles Wallace at all. She was able to look and love?.
Slowly his mouth closed, Slowly his eyes stopped their twirling. The tic in his forehead ceased its revolting twitch. Slowly he advanced toward her.
"I love you!" she cried. "I love you, Charles! I love you!"
Then suddenly he was running, pelting, he was in her arms, he was shrieking with sobs. "Meg!"
-----Would that it was this simple??.(sigh)?.