I think there are secular mystics. Those in love with a business corporation like the Watch Tower Publishing Corporation. A mystic adores the God they have had their personal experience with. A secular mystic adores the corporation that printed the philosophy she feels comfortable with. The important thing to the mystic is the relationship, not the philosophy. The philosophy may change but the important thing never was the philosophy, it was always the relationship.
That's what we miss. We mistakenly think the important thing is the information and we work to document it's fallibility, while we lose rapport and trust. The connection between a Witness and the corporations is a relationship. Relationships are based on loyalty and commitment. Most Witnesses leave over social setbacks, not over changes in philosophy or explanations.
The Witnesses group is more of a family than a religion. It's a family with a clear leader, a definite set of rules, a clear system of rewards and punishments. Don't we notice that the punishments like shunning are "social" punishments? The reason there are no corporation punishments, is that the corporation knows it can not touch us in any way and it can not hurt us in any way to punish us. The punishment has to come from those we used to care about. People we don't know or who we don't care about can't hurt us. They know this.
I am a firm believer that no one quits the Witnesses from being exposed to conflicting information. The daily life of a Witness is spent dealing with conflicting information. That's the main purpose of the literature and of the meetings and conventions. That is, to explain away and rationalize all the disconfirming evidence and information. The main conflict is the ever delaying reward. MUCH effort is spent explaining the reasons for the delay and appealing for believers to continue believing in the face of good reason to quit believing.
The second huge weakness in the Witness group is the authority of the group's leaders to lead, to make demands of the followers, and the credibility to provide new and acceptable philosophy in light of the fact that ALL of the past philosophy has been shown to be weak and to contain error.
As a religion, the Witness group has proved to be everything the group itself has criticized in the past. Their group has taught error, members have been abused, compromises in politics and medical treatment have been made, and promised rewards have not been delivered. Those facts are very visible to members and has not phased most of them. They notice error, mistreatment of fellow members, and unkept promises and they stay.
They stay because of their will to stay and they stay out of loyalty. There needs to be an actual breaking of the bond on a social level for many to leave. That's the role of the disfellowship practice. The disfellowship practice destroys trust and breaks the loyalty bond. Other social setbacks inside the group have the same effect. The group has done such a good job of training it's members to defend against any frontal attack with denials and explanations, that it is rare for a confrontation to work.
Most of us left because of internal forces. We were guarded against external challenges, but were not trained to stand the internal forces. It was a force from within that drove me out, not someone armed with a raft of photo copies.
My contact with my brother was not well received. It's something I would not repeat. My contact with my parents was not well received by them and it is something I would not repeat. My discussion of Witnessism with my son was not well received and it is also added to the list of things I would not do over. Basically, I have accepted that I have nothing for them that they can accept from me.
Witnessism some days seems to me to be like a disease without a cure. There are spontaneous recoveries and remissions but no treatment that is known to cause a cure. Actually the usual treatments seem to make it worse.
Now there are no people I would like to see leave the Witnesses. I have seen too many years of rejection by them to be at all interested in them. They are people I used to know, gone. I actually don't have time now for all the nice people who accept me. At first my study of Witnessism was about the people I knew there. Now it's just a hobby. I do enjoy the ex-Witness community and I like to read the stories of the young people leaving now and I am entertained by all the wit and humor. Thanks for the fun. GaryB
