There were about 3 months there where I got almost no work done. Luckily I'd already really proven myself and was able to bullshit my way through without it getting noticed. Actually got a promotion not too long after that, well before my productivity had recovered completely. I got really lucky.
OneEyedJoe
JoinedPosts by OneEyedJoe
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15
Did your ability to work get affected by waking up to TTATT?
by stuckinarut2 injust curious.. when you started to wake up to the truth about the truth, did the shock and the whole experience distract you from your usual activities such as performing at your place of work?.
did you become so consumed by researching, and the subsequent factual discoveries, that it affected your ability to carry out daily tasks?.
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25
Why the term "waking up?"
by Sour Grapes inis the term "waking up" the best way to describe when a jdub starts to have doubts?
to me, it is rather that a jdub realizes that what they have believed for years was a pack of lies and then they have to make a conscious decision if they want to continue to believe in lies or stop being a jdub or just go along for the ride.. it just amazes me how many die-hard jdubs there are despite every failed prophecy about the end coming, the borg being a part of the dreaded wild best united nations, the put down of women in the borg, the massive cover-up of the child abuse in the borg, the willingness to let a child die because they need blood, and the eagerness to shun a child who at the age of 10 got dunked to make mommy and daddy happy only to not want to be a jdub later and have the parents treat them like they are dead because 8 overweight, balding, goofy looking, incoherent men in upper state new york say that are the rules for being a christain.. jehovah's witnesses are a very sad cult that attracts people with emotional, psychological, or medical issues, have very large egos, can't make simple decisions, and believe in the tooth fairy..
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OneEyedJoe
When you're asleep and dreaming, you don't know you're dreaming (for most people, most of the time) but when you wake up it becomes immediately obvious what the dream was and you're certain that you're awake. I think this is a pretty solid analogy.
Also, once you leave the cult you get a whole new perspective on the real world - you're no longer looking at it through the filter of the cult and can see everything in full color. Just like dreams (at least for me) often have diluted/washed out/greyscale color to them and hazy details, then you wake up and the world snaps into full vivid detail.
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27
Corporate Virtue Signalling At Your Expense
by Simon inthe latest trend seems to be that you can't go to any store without being asked for money.. no, not the money for the things you went in there to purchase, extra money for the store to donate to charity.. yes, that's right, the big-name stores, often making $millions in profits, ask you to give them extra money so that they can give it to charity and get some publicity about how awesome they are so that they'll look good to their customers, like, erm, you.. it seems to have ramped up more in the last year or so and frankly, it pisses me off.
if i want to donate to some cause, i'll give the money straight to them.
i hate that it puts people on the spot to guilt them into donating and imagine some people on a tight budget may give even when they can't really afford it.. often you don't know what the charities really are (it's vague like "to help children") or how the money will be spent or even how much will go on the people it's supposedly to help (charity is a multi $billion industry, some just exist to pay themselves).. so what to do?
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OneEyedJoe
This really doesn't bother me at all. I've never gotten anything that resembled negative judgement for opting not to donate to a charity, and I'm secure enough in myself that I don't feel the slightest tinge of guilt for neglecting to donate money in the checkout line. Given what I know about human nature, though, it strikes me as probably a pretty good thing in a lot of ways - I suspect that a lot of people approach charitable giving as if you're expected to give a large sum of money or else it feels like it doesn't make a difference and then where do you start? How do you select a charity? Many will think "it's all too much trouble and I can't spare enough money to make a difference, so I might as well not bother." If given the choice of giving a few dollars at the grocery store, though, it takes all that out - they know that this is offered to every customer so it makes them feel that they may be able to be a part of a larger effort that does make a difference. The charity is already selected, for better or for worse, but it takes that part of the effort out of it.
Could it be done better? Absolutely. I suspect the stores are getting something of a tax break by doing this, so if they'd really like to show some altruism, they should match the donations received (or even just match 30 cents on the dollar) - this would likely motivate even more giving and they'd not be in it for a profit motive. Something tells me, though I've done no research on this, that the charities selected probably aren't the best either. But hopefully they're vetted at least a little, as the companies would probably not want a PR disaster of being revealed to support a corrupt charity. Also, I definitely think that the implementations of this where it just shows up on the keypad (vs being asked by the cashier) are somewhat nicer as they remove most of the feeling of being publicly shamed if you opt not to donate.
Similar to how people will contribute significantly more to their retirement fund if their employer requires them to opt-out of savings vs opting-in. Very small changes in how convenient something is can make a significant impact. In effect the grocery store is providing a service for those that would like it, making it easier to give and to feel that you're a part of something worthwhile. If you don't want to donate, then don't. I've never seen someone become the victim of mob violence for failure to donate money at the grocery store. I certainly don't think it's appropriate to make someone who's probably earning minimum wage working a tedious job feel uncomfortable by responding rudely because you don't like the policy of someone 6 levels up in the corporate hierarchy.
What I would suggest is if you have a problem with the policy, instead of making the poor cashier suffer for something that's not their fault, write a letter expressing your objection to the public relations office of the company. Boycott the company and order your groceries on amazon or similar if you have to. Go support a local farmer's market. Unless you live in a tiny city with one grocery store, you likely have options.
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18
People are nice and life is awesome.
by OneEyedJoe ini got invited as a +1 to someone's house yesterday to watch the fireworks.
i'd never met the hosts, and it seemed that most of the people in the group only knew one or two other people there.
yet i felt more genuine friendship from everyone there than i ever felt at any jw gathering.
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OneEyedJoe
Idk it might be on you for still having a blackberry. It was probably stolen by Indiana Jones, because it belongs in a museum.
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18
People are nice and life is awesome.
by OneEyedJoe ini got invited as a +1 to someone's house yesterday to watch the fireworks.
i'd never met the hosts, and it seemed that most of the people in the group only knew one or two other people there.
yet i felt more genuine friendship from everyone there than i ever felt at any jw gathering.
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OneEyedJoe
Yeah, the more I think about it the more examples I can come up with. People that I meet walking the dog, or while sitting in a bar. The feeling really is one of immediate friendship most of the time with most people. I'm not sure how much that's skewed by my past cult experience and never really having a friendship based on true appreciation for another person's unique attributes, or if normal people feel this way too but regardless it's such amazingly strong evidence of how toxic the JW world is and how truly good most people are.
We can get bogged down on this forum getting sucked in to the toxic black cloud of the cult, going over all the lies, deception, and abuse that comes out of it. That's certainly important, all that needs to be exposed, but I started this wanting to get a little more positivity in here, especially for those that might still be struggling. I'm so pleased that so many have had such a similar experience of what it's like to be 'in the world.' Leaving the cult really is worth the costs, a hundred times over.
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18
People are nice and life is awesome.
by OneEyedJoe ini got invited as a +1 to someone's house yesterday to watch the fireworks.
i'd never met the hosts, and it seemed that most of the people in the group only knew one or two other people there.
yet i felt more genuine friendship from everyone there than i ever felt at any jw gathering.
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OneEyedJoe
I got invited as a +1 to someone's house yesterday to watch the fireworks. I'd never met the hosts, and it seemed that most of the people in the group only knew one or two other people there. Yet I felt more genuine friendship from everyone there than I ever felt at any JW gathering. It's not the first time I've experienced something like this since leaving the cult and the true extent to which we were lied to in the cult really struck me. We were told that we could go anywhere and if we found JWs we'd be among friends and that this was something unique to JWs - the rest of the world was out to get us and would take advantage. But it seems, now, that quite the opposite is true. I'm not an especially outgoing person, but literally every single time I've engaged in conversation with a stranger, I've received more genuine interest and friendliness than I ever remember feeling in the cult, even with very close friends. Adding to that the fact that, sure, if you met another JW you could be reasonably sure they'd be nice people (this, I'm learning, is just a rule of people in general - being a JW is orthogonal to friendliness at best, but I now think JWs tend to be at least slightly less friendly than average) but with another JW (even your best friend) you had to be constantly on guard to make sure the cult mask didn't slip off lest their friendliness evaporate in an instant.
So for those out there that are currently struggling with leaving, or those lurkers that are having doubts or anxieties about "where else will I go" - take note. It's been just shy of 2 years since I was able to really fully separate myself from the cult and I'm discovering just how great life can be when you're allowed to be yourself. You can do it, and it's completely worth it. And you're not alone - both in the sense that there are many others like you dealing with the same challenges, but also there's a world full of really friendly, welcoming people that are genuinely interested in what makes you who you are instead of the false interest you get from JWs that only want to hear you follow the approved script. People are nice and life is awesome. Go live!
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Everything Happens For A Reason
by Charles Gillette indoes everything happen for a reason?
i hear this from so many people without any explanation as how this is so.
what do you think about this belief?
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OneEyedJoe
Everything happens for a reason. Physics is the study of those reasons.
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19
On leaving JW's and hating religion...
by Jehalapeno init's been nearly 4 years now since i completely woke up to the watchtower lies.. thinking back on my jw life, during the time i believed, the organization truly did teach us to hate all beliefs that were contrary to the watchtower's.. i hated "false" religion.. so, when i finally woke up and applied critical thinking to my beliefs, i just went on hating religion in general...only this time i added jw's to that list.. a few months of waking up, i decided to base my beliefs on evidence.
i didn't want to have a set of beliefs unless there was some logic or evidence behind it.
so, now i consider myself an atheist.. and i kept on hating religion.. within the last six months or so, something has changed.
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OneEyedJoe
JWs (probably accidentally) really managed to instill in me a love of truth. I took that part really literally when I was younger, and it may have something to do with my love for science and learning that has persisted down to this day. So it's primarily on that basis that I object to religion. It generates in me no small measure of disgust when I encounter someone purporting to dispense truth to followers, when they really have no way of substantiating their claims.
The usefulness of the ethical (or, perhaps, less unethical) versions of religion out there is something that I often find difficult to pin down. I'm tentatively settling on the comparison to the many heuristics that humans use in thinking, for example, the availability heuristic - estimating the likelihood of an event based on how easily you can call to mind an example. This was once probably very efficient ways to get really close to the truth, but due to the many layers of selection bias in our modern society (i.e. what gets reported in the news, what gets talked about in the office, etc) this heuristic now leads people to greatly over-estimate their likelihood to get murdered or die in a terrorist attack vs dying from heart disease or a car accident.
I now mostly view religion in this way - in the past it was a powerful force for bringing together a tribe and focusing people on the collective good of said tribe, especially in times when scarcity and violent conflicts with neighboring tribes were common. But in modern society we've gone a long ways of figuring out things like efficient land use and diplomacy that have driven religion to obsolescence in these areas, and worse it can often be a hindrance. In some places, maybe in driving local community involvement, it can perhaps still be an effective tool that has fewer drawbacks if its tendency to drive tribalism is kept in check - in much the same way that the availability heuristic can be very useful if we are careful not to apply it to things that have undergone the filters of selection bias. All that said, though, it is also true that there is absolutely no occasion where, given the choice, the availability heuristic would never be the best approach to estimating probability if you had the time or mental resources to fully take into account all the data at hand and rigorously analyze it with properly developed (Bayesian) statistical tools. I see a strong parallel here for religion as well.
Religion is often used as a shortcut to meaning - do these things and you will have lived a good life. In my view, constantly examining your life, motivations, intentions, and your actions and their outcomes, is a far more effective and generally applicable way of leading a good life. In just the same way that heuristics have zones where their not applicable, but the full theorems of statistics don't, so too does religion have holes - rules listed as a path to a good life often include things that are unnecessarily troubling (e.g. excessive control on sex, excessive reliance on gender roles and male authority, etc) that the generally applicable principle does not (I make no claim that I've discovered such a principle, just that it likely exists). But at the same time it's easier to say "don't have sex unless you're married" than it is to teach someone the risks of having sex, how to mitigate them, and how to respect your partners and your own emotional health in the process.
So, all this said, I'll admit that (non-cult, friendly, less unethical) religion is likely useful in some cases. The biggest problem with it, in my mind, is that it doesn't encourage the religious to recognize when their religion isn't useful. If people could simply realize that their religious rules might have exception, or might lead to erroneous scientific beliefs, unnecessary tribalism, or rules that might be injurious to some, it would go a long way to eliminating most of the problems that I attribute to religion. But, I suppose, if people realized that their religious dogma could, even in principle, fail them, then it would cease to be religion.
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I Ain't Got No Religion No More ... (But I Like to Get Myself Some Gospel Music)
by Simon ini love gospel music.
i don't feel like i need to believe in "jebus" to appreciate the music.
i can't go into a gospel church because i might just get religion again - that or i'll be grabbing the mic on be on the stage waving my hands and praising the lord.. i particularly like dylan's gospel period.
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Antiwitnessing: cowards
by john.prestor inso i'm downtown and i see two jws hanging out on a bench by a cart.
i approached them and said, i saw you guys on the news, there was a child abuse cover-up in philadelphia.
they don't respond and just look at me.
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OneEyedJoe
This approach seems unlikely to accomplish anything other than giving you a feeling of superiority.