I can relate a lot to his thinking when I look back to myself when I was in. Just give him a few years pretending (and maybe the end of an otherwise happy marriage) and he'll probably have a slight change in opinion about some apostates' use of vulgarity when expressing displeasure with the cult....
OneEyedJoe
JoinedPosts by OneEyedJoe
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New Life Story From Active JW On AvoidJW
by AverageJoe1 injust came across this a few minutes ago:.
http://avoidjw.org/en/true-stories/pimo/.
it’s just been posted and is quite lengthy but it makes a change to read something from a reasonable jw!
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Since the Borg is so interested in money why not do the following to keep and gain new members:
by Sour Grapes inmake the taking of blood transfusion a conscience matter since the bible forbids just the eating of blood.. have youth programs for the congregations like basketball teams, baseball teams, etc.. still not allow the celebration of christmas and easter because of the pagan origins, but allow birthdays, mother and father day celebrations.
the cart people currently love baby showers to celebrate the birth of a baby but then they can't celebrate the birth date of the same baby one year later.. only have the best speakers give the talks on sundays.
too many monotone, just read the outline speakers now.. drop the members giving talks during the clam meetings.. allow the jdubs to count time to visit the sick, help the elderly with chores, to visit members in nursing homes.. not have meetings for service on saturday mornings.
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OneEyedJoe
My suggestions would increase membership and donations
Would they? I can see your train of thought, but the reality is that people switch religions more or less at random. If they leave the religion they were raised in, they typically end up in a new one by convenience or based on the community that happens to have formed around that religion in their locality. The only exception to this is those that shed their religion altogether, which makes up a disproportionately large destination for people that are changing religion from how they were raised.
At best these changes would make an impact over a very long term basis, but in the short term they'd lose much of what helps them retain membership, and that could potentially kill them off before they had a chance to reap rewards from the changed policies.
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Since the Borg is so interested in money why not do the following to keep and gain new members:
by Sour Grapes inmake the taking of blood transfusion a conscience matter since the bible forbids just the eating of blood.. have youth programs for the congregations like basketball teams, baseball teams, etc.. still not allow the celebration of christmas and easter because of the pagan origins, but allow birthdays, mother and father day celebrations.
the cart people currently love baby showers to celebrate the birth of a baby but then they can't celebrate the birth date of the same baby one year later.. only have the best speakers give the talks on sundays.
too many monotone, just read the outline speakers now.. drop the members giving talks during the clam meetings.. allow the jdubs to count time to visit the sick, help the elderly with chores, to visit members in nursing homes.. not have meetings for service on saturday mornings.
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OneEyedJoe
The reason why not, IMO, is by and large that it's a cult that relies on control for retention of membership. My thoughts:
Make the taking of blood transfusion a conscience matter since the Bible forbids just the eating of blood.
The blood policy actually has an enormously useful function for the cult. They've ritualized signing away your life in service to the cult. This is a huge hindrance to thinking clearly about the cult - if you have doubts, why would you risk your life in that way? This is the sort of cognitive dissonance that motivates people to quell their doubts and react with strong certainty that the cult is true. In my case this effect was so strong that even after I'd decided beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had been raised in a cult, it still took me a week or two to actually throw away my blood card.
Have youth programs for the congregations like basketball teams, baseball teams, etc.
It seems that they're moving towards in this direction (with the caleb and sofia stuff, etc), but I'd say that there's a couple problems that keep them from fully doing this. If they have programs specific to children, many places require that those administering it go through background checks or become licensed somehow, and that is likely viewed by the leadership as an unwanted intrusion at best, and at works a big risk of revealing to the R/F of certain congregations that they have pedophiles in their midst when someone gets rejected on the basis of a background check or something similar.
Still not allow the celebration of Christmas and Easter because of the pagan origins, but allow birthdays, mother and father day celebrations. The Cart People currently love baby showers to celebrate the birth of a baby but then they can't celebrate the birth date of the same baby one year later.
The forbidding of holidays/birthdays/thanksgiving/etc also functions as a means to isolate members from society at large. It reinforces the us/them dichotomy, which is critical for retention of members because it makes leaving too scary to even consider.
Only have the best speakers give the talks on Sundays. Too many monotone, just read the outline speakers now.
They don't have enough skilled speakers. They've historically tried to improve speaking skills of the R/F and have been increasing video usage lately as a way of addressing this, though.
Drop the members giving talks during the CLAM meetings.
Personal testimonials and forcing people to prepare and participate goes a long way to increasing the investment people feel in the cult. The more invested someone has been in the past, the less likely it is that they'll allow themselves to consider the idea that it may have been a bad investment.
Allow the JDubs to count time to visit the sick, help the elderly with chores, to visit members in nursing homes.
I can somewhat see this. However, I think the ministry is pushed because it reinforces the us/them dichotomy. There's never a time when a JW feels more separate from society than when they're walking up and down a street on saturday in formal clothes. As with birthdays, etc, this helps to make the act of leaving and going into an unfriendly/unfamiliar world unthinkable.
Not have meetings for service on Saturday mornings. We all need some time on the weekend to chill or just sleep in with no FOG (fear, obligation, guilt)
All cults keep people as busy as possible. Idle time allows people to think things over. See also previous comments about investment. There's also a need for social pressure to get people to go out on saturday - see above about ministry reinforcing the us/them dichotomy.
Only shun those who are disfellowshipped if they are known to be immoral or if they openly engage in opposition to the Borg.
This would cede a huge power that the cult has - by maintaining the mystery around why someone is DFed and announcing it the same way every time (and openly saying that most of the time it's unrepentant sexual immorality) they make it possible to boot anyone for any reason if they threaten the cult's interests. Also, if they stop shunning apostates, the cult would practically evaporate in the span of a few years.
Allow those who just want to stop being a JDub to just walk away and be treated as if they never were a Trolley Guard.
See above.
Drop the 1914 doctrine as nulite and stop talking about the end being just around the corner.
It seems like they're working on it, they just don't want to do it too suddenly.
Encourage going college since in the future the graduates will have higher paying jobs for more contributions.
A smaller number (because college increases the odds of people leaving, and one person leaving increases the odds of other people leaving) of more prosperous members doesn't seem to interest them. They also make a fair amount of money off people donating their time and efforts, which would likely dry up if JWs start valuing their time more (which they would if they get paid more). This is also a long-term strategy and it seems that the cult plans more for the short-term (as is the natural result of believing armageddon is imminent) and it also seems that they're in a bit of a short-term crunch for money. Encouraging kids to go to college would almost certainly result in a short-term drop in contributions due to the cost of schooling.
Stop the nonsense of 99.9% of the world's population being destroyed and only the Cart People walking thru the smoke and rubble into a paradise.
Fear is a powerful motivator. Without the fear of being murdered by the isralite god of war, many would be less wary about exploring any doubts about the doctrine that they might have. -
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What’s the most effective way to wake the largest amount of JW’s up?
by Farmer Jim1 inwhat can one person do to save as many people as possible from this organisation?.
youtube videos?.
mail shots?.
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OneEyedJoe
What each person's breaking point turns out to be is highly personal. I think this is because the system is so intrinsically built up such that public questioning and exploration of doubts is completely forbidden, it results in everyone's doubts being isolated from each other, and since they develop in isolation there can be a enormous amount of variation. What works for one person won't even phase another. That's why it's important to have lots of people doing lots of different things to try to wake people up.
That said, I do think that there are methods that are almost certainly not helpful to anyone, or at the very least they reinforce the cult beliefs in more JWs than they actually have a chance of waking up. Aggressive protesting of conventions or extremely confrontational encounters at carts or at the door are likely among these, in my opinion.
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Please Switch Off Your Critical Thinking
by pale.emperor ini have an uneasy feeling inside that something is coming this year or the next.
perhaps a new big announcement that turns jwdom on it's head.. we've seen the statement in the watchtower november 15th, 2013 which said:.
watchtower november 15th, 2013 - page 20, paragraph 17.. .
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OneEyedJoe
I don't expect that there will be any huge changes (though I guess we could argue over what constitutes a huge change....we've seen big changes in the last several years, but I don't think anything has been on the order of what the OP is talking about) To me their pattern seems to be big talk and then small actions - they prep people with sweeping statements like that and then the changes are relatively small. The reaction they seem to aim for is something like "Oh they don't want us to kill ourselves ala jonestown, they just want us to sell a kingdom hall and merge a few congregations, I was silly to have even worried about it."
The no-blood policy is even like this in a lot of ways - granted tens of thousands have died from it, but for most JWs it's a big ask that never actually comes to fruition. Then they're more likely to yield on smaller things since they've already implicitly yielded on something big (even if they never actually have to act in most cases).
The "adjust your thinking" type phrases have been around forever in the cult...that's standard cult fare - putting on the new personality, training your conscience, model yourself after Jesus (and the GB/CO/pioneers) etc etc.
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Gun Nuts...
by silentbuddha inanyone here into guns.
i know alot of the euros here hate the idea but i wonder if there are any other members who are collectors or who are into hunting, target shooti g etc.. no shame zone?.
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OneEyedJoe
I saw the topic title and was terrified that this was going to be a new product from the makers of truck nuts. Finding out that it was not gave me a great sense of relief about where the human species is headed.
That's all I have to add. Carry on.
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Eldub that get stuck on a word or phrase!
by DwainBowman ineldub that get stuck on a word!.
over the years i have been around a few, that if a "big" or "unusual" word or phrase is used at the assembly or by a co/do, to stress a point.
then eldub "somebody" will use it at every meeting, if they can find a way to squeeze it into a part or commit.. most of them get over it after a few meetings.
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OneEyedJoe
I can't think of a place in which I have suffered through more egregious errors in grammar (or just generally thinking through what you're saying) than a kingdom hall.
Some of the more memorable:
In the context of god bringing on armageddon "The question you should be asking yourself is not 'Will he?' it's 'When he?'"
Another speaker used the phrase "in the world" waaaay too much, which lead to the rather unfortunate "There are over 100 billion stars in the world."
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2018 Convention videos leaked by brave insiders
by Room 215 inanopther coup for cedars: http://jwsurvey.org/cedars-blog/leaked-2018-convention-videos-celebrate-anti-lgbtq-bigotry-unquestioning-obedience-doomsday-fear-mongering
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OneEyedJoe
You know the answer to that already NY44m! Conventions are a $$$$$$$ maker! Plus the gathering motivates the people just by riling them up.
Not just the money - conventions are great for applying social pressure to get people to accept some of the more extreme indoctrination. A lot of these videos are things that an average, unthinking JW would object to were they to view it privately. They then might seek out someone else that they know who is of like mind to discuss their objections. Having JWs all view these together prevents this - they're sitting there with tons of other JWs around, all nodding along (or, at least, failing to make a fuss about it) so they do the same. They see other people listening (even their friend that they might otherwise assume would have similar objections to theirs) and outwardly going along with it so they have to silence their concerns. The fact that they then don't speak up triggers cognitive dissonance (it's wrong but I didn't do anything about it) that influences them to adjust their opinions (well I didn't do/say anything about it...so maybe it's not wrong).
Even if they managed to make up for the direct financial losses of doing without conventions, I suspect they'd end up with a greater rate of attrition of members as they move to viewing these in small groups or alone and discussing with people that might be more open in their thinking. If they're smart, they'll never get rid of conventions. At most they might go to 2-day conventions, but I suspect that's a bad move on their part (they'd lose all those great experiences about people being fired for taking friday off and then getting a higher-paying job with less hours on the same day!). The one-day assemblies made sense because many assemblies are held in their own buildings and doing one-day assemblies would probably allow them to consolidate/sell many buildings. But they wouldn't get the same benefit from reducing the length of a convention until they, too, went to a one day, and most conventions are held in rented facilities anyway. Anyway...bit of a tangent there.
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Is it ethical to have children?
by joey jojo inthis was a news article recently in an australian newspaper that caught my eye.. the premise was that to have a child is to inflict an extra human being onto the world and also, to inflict the world (with all its problems) onto the child.. there is a lot to say about this but from jw point of view, i have always believed it to be incredibly hypocritical that jw's have children in 'this system'.
all my life at the meeting i heard how little time we have left, how sick the world is, how i was probably going to be persecuted and end up in a jail cell for being a jw.
why would anyone want to become parents in this situation, particularly if they are confident there is only 'a short time left'?.
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OneEyedJoe
Sam Harris did a podcast with David Benatar not too long ago where they talked a good bit on the topic of anti-natalism. I'm not particularly sure which way I swing, but I don't plan to have kids anyhow so I guess it doesn't matter much in my case.
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Tattoos?
by Wild_Thing inif seems to be quite fashionable nowadays for ex-jws to get a tattoo or a series of tattoos to symbolize either their time spent in the watchtower or their escape, and i kind of don't get it.
i don't understand why someone would want a constant reminder on their body of such a horrible period in their life.
on another forum, one woman shared that she was getting 25 bees tattooed all over her body to represent the 25 years she spent in the org.
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OneEyedJoe
Eh. Everyone has their own way of recoiling from their time in the cult. Getting a tattoo releases a lot of endorphins (for some, for others it's just painful) and getting one to commemorate a bad experience is a way of making that bad experience good in a way. It can also help one to see that even the bad things are a part of who they are, which can help someone accept the past.
Personally I got a tattoo shortly after my exit. It wasn't related to the cult in any way except that it was a bit of an F you to the rules under which I used to live. Sometimes I get out of the shower and see it having forgot it's there. It's a nice reminder that I can now too whatever the F I want. It's not for everyone, but I also think too much is made of the permanence of a tattoo. It's not that big of a deal.