A key phrase that was left out of the article was "per day." There were actually two $2000 fines (one punitive and the other was something else, I forget) so the total was $4000 per day.
OneEyedJoe
JoinedPosts by OneEyedJoe
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20
$2,000 fine for not releasing files?
by Bad_Wolf inhttps://international.la-croix.com/news/jehovahs-witness-leader-urges-elders-to-destroy-sex-abuse-records/8188#.
a california court fined only $2,000 to the wt for not releasing records of 775 sex abuse cases?
they should have made the fine 20 million +.
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A Fantasy I Have To Protest Cart Witnessing
by Wild_Thing ini am not a protester and i hate confrontation, but i have always thought it would be hilarious to set up a kool-aid stand right next to the jw carts and sell purple kool-aid.
i wonder how many would get the joke?.
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OneEyedJoe
Make it a grape flavor aid booth for that extra bit of authenticity
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Sex before marriage
by Jules Saturn infor ex jws, pimos, pomos, faders, born again christians, agnostics, atheists, etc.
what is your opinion regarding sex before marriage, has your view been influenced since you left?
in western society, you’ll probably find yourself ridiculed to be an 18 year old virgin so i am curious to hear opinions from here.
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OneEyedJoe
It's only premarital sex if you get married after.
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Cart encounters this weekend.
by OneEyedJoe inon weekend mornings i like to take my dog for a long walk at a nearby lake.
recently there's been some cultists and a propaganda cart posted up along my walking path.
until today i've ignored them.
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OneEyedJoe
On weekend mornings I like to take my dog for a long walk at a nearby lake. Recently there's been some cultists and a propaganda cart posted up along my walking path. Until today I've ignored them. Today, for the first time, I saw someone talking to them and they left with some propaganda. I caught up with her after she left the cart and simply encouraged her to do some independent research on the group before getting involved. On my way back, I engaged the cultists in a conversation. There were two women, one probably in her 50s or 60s and the other probably mid 30s stayed silent the whole time.
I started out asking about their shunning policy, and basically asked if they were more like Catholics for whom there's basically no social consequences for officially resigning or if they were more like a cult like scientologists with enforced shunning. From there I spent about 10 minutes just asking pretty simple questions and pointing it out any time she contradicted herself, which happened roughly every other time she spoke. Ended up spending a fair amount of time going back and forth about how it can't be the truth one minute, change, and end up still being the truth.
After a while I guess she got tired of me and said "in the interests of maintaining peace, I think we should end this conversation." To which I replied, "yeah I guess if you're going to start making veiled threats of violence, I'll leave."
Yesterday I encountered a really kind, if typically misguided, JW downtown on a street that's lined with bars and tattoo shops. He was in street clothes, apparently visiting his wife at the cult cart, so I approached him afterwards to warn him that the people he was just talking to were cultists. I think with him at least I may have been able to demonstrate that apostates don't fit the mold he's been offered.
Anyway, I'm kinda annoyed that these cultists are invading my two favorite parts of town. I know a few folks have had some luck getting them to move along... What's the best strategy to accomplish this goal?
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How Would You Prove To A JW That They Are Wrong?
by minimus inwhat could you say to prove to a witness that they simply do not have the truth?.
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OneEyedJoe
What's the point of this thread? I suspect literally everyone on this forum knows good and well that there is no set of words such that when said in the correct order they would convince any JW that it is not a cult. Were that not the case, there would be no cult.
Proving it's not the truth and proving it to the satisfaction of a JW are two wildly different things. The former is trivially easy, the latter is likely impossible for a large number of current JWs.
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Am I being unreasonable with my pimo boyfriend?
by Addison0998 ini was very lucky to have be dating somebody who didn’t run and snitch on me when i started having questions and showing him research i did, instead he listened to me, and after a few arguements, he did wake up as well.
it really didn’t take much to wake him up, and he was more just tired of the crazy witnesses in general.
and now we are planning on getting married and fading together so that our families can at least enjoy our wedding, that special time in life, before we possibly loose them one day.
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OneEyedJoe
I can really imagine what you're feeling - especially thinking about you imagining what your wedding day might look like, and of course it includes your entire family and friends! But now is not the time to be committing yourself to anything that you expect to last your entire life. You are clearly in turmoil. I suspect most people have had thoughts like yours of "I wish I could just die" because life seems too pointless or too fraught with trouble. I hope for you that's all it is, and it doesn't sound like you're suicidal (there's a BIG difference between wishing for death and contemplating doing something about it) but that's definitely an indicator that your life isn't going as you'd hope - when things are bad is not the time to be getting married. Get married when you're happy because you want to stay happy, don't get married when things are rough, thinking that it will somehow fix it. It won't, this I promise you.
Another thing to keep in mind here is that people are really good at seeing how they might lose things unexpectedly (or in the case of family relations while leaving the cult, it may well be expected) but we're not so good at envisioning how we might gain new/better replacements. You can imagine losing your family, but can you imagine meeting new friends that you feel so close to that they feel just like family? Can you imagine having those feelings of love and closeness with people that you currently have not met? It's difficult to imagine for most people, but it's 100% possible and if you find yourself in need of new family and you do a little looking, you will find that. If you wait to have a wedding until things are more settled in your life, you will not have a wedding with no family present - you will have a wedding with your true family present. Would you rather look back at wedding photos full of people that you no longer know because they disowned you when you left the cult, or would you want to look back at photos with people that love you for who you are and not what you profess to believe? People that will stick by you through anything, not drop you at the word of some janitor in a suit?
I'll also tell you that once you leave the cult your life will change in the most unimaginably wonderful ways. You will finally begin to figure out who you truly are. I'm sure you've started on that project, but until you've been able to put the cult behind you (i.e. no longer going to meetings, no longer spending all your waking hours researching, no longer boiling over with anger at the mention of the blood policy or child molestation, etc.) you have only begun to crack the surface. Once you get beyond the gates of the cult and start exploring the real, glorious wold beyond - that's when the real work starts. You don't truly know who you are at this point - is this really time to be thinking about marriage?
Ok, hopefully at this point I've got you at least considering that maybe in the long run waiting to get married is best...and that's before I've started talking about the boy to whom you're thinking of becoming married. First, you need to make sure you've made yourself clear to him. It's easy to say something and know what it means so perfectly (having all the context of your internal feelings and emotions) but for its meaning to be completely missed by anyone who's heard it. Focus on facts, not judgments ("When I talk about the cult you just nod along without contributing to the conversation, or change the subject" NOT "You're so cold and unemotional!") and then tell him how it makes you feel, and why ("It makes me feel alone because I need to know that you understand my pain" for example). This is sort of the classic "therapy talk" for couples (and any relationships, really) and it is so for a reason - it can make a huge difference. It might take a little time, so don't get frustrated if he doesn't get it right away - ask him to repeat back in his own words what he heard. Once you think he understands how you feel, try making a request, focus on something he can do RIGHT THEN. Ask him, for example, to share his feelings on the cult - maybe it's not that he has none, maybe the cult's repression has made it difficult to open up. Or you might request that he just listen to you as you tell him how difficult things have been for you, while repeating back what he's hearing you say (so-called reflective listening) this can go a long way towards establishing empathy in him and it will likely help you feel that he has listened and not just coldly nodded along. You are clearly in tremendous pain and the fact that you're on an internet forum looking for compassion from strangers, having felt none from him, tells me that one of two things is true. Either he doesn't truly know how you're feeling (maybe you've explained things in a way that he doesn't understand, or maybe he hasn't listened) or he doesn't care. Do you know which one it is? If you're thinking of marrying him, it seems like a very important question to know the answer to with certainty.
In summary - you need to banish the thought of a wedding until you've got your life on track. Get married when you're unhappy with your life and you'll walk into a marriage that leaves you unhappy with your life. Next, you need to talk to your boyfriend and work on actual communication. It would probably benefit you to do some reading on how to communicate effectively in a relationship - this is not a cult-specific problem you're facing, it's all too typical, and as such there are going to be tons of resources online to help you.
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Healing & Rebuilding Your Life - Feedback Wanted
by jp1692 ini have been invited to speak at an international cultic studies association workshop this fall.
i could use your help in focusing on my presentation subject.. these workshops are for former members of any cult or other high-control, authoritarian group, not just jehovah's witnesses.
last year, i spoke at one of their larger conferences in europe.
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OneEyedJoe
I presume the psychoeducation section will use things like the milgram conformity trials, etc showing how social pressure can influence people? If you're not already planning it, I would suggest that you touch briefly on informal fallacies and how to reason rationally. This could also fall under the examining your beliefs section.
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Realization of something very close to a supernatural force but scientific
by Bad_Wolf inafter finding patterns in lottery numbers and thinking about if random truly exists, i also flipped a coin for awhile.
i was counted how many times i would get heads and tails and if they would equal out in the end.
if heads slowly was getting ahead too much, i would suddenly get a bunch of tails in a row to almost equal it out.
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OneEyedJoe
that's not how casinos work. Sometimes people do win. Even if every gambler left while they were ahead, the casino would still be fine because on average there would be enough people that lost from the get-go and never make it up to balance out those that eventually end up ahead.
If you're really interested in this, take a couple statistics classes and you'll quickly understand why you're wrong.
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Realization of something very close to a supernatural force but scientific
by Bad_Wolf inafter finding patterns in lottery numbers and thinking about if random truly exists, i also flipped a coin for awhile.
i was counted how many times i would get heads and tails and if they would equal out in the end.
if heads slowly was getting ahead too much, i would suddenly get a bunch of tails in a row to almost equal it out.
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Invited to a talk: What to do?
by Fred Franztone inmy sister texted me last night with an invitation to watch our dad give his first ever public talk.
i don't live particularly near to my family, but i'm not too far from them to make the journey, and i am on good terms with them, having never been baptised and so not disfellowshipped; they don't shun me and likely wouldn't even if i were disfellowshipped, it's not in their character.. i haven't been inside a kingdom hall since 2006, and i would like to keep it that way; i only intend to step inside one again in the event of a family wedding or funeral service.
i don't want to be rude to my sister, ignoring the text isn't an option, so i need a diplomatic way of declining her invitation.. i've considered saying that i'm busy, but this leaves things open for her to ask again in the future, and i'd rather she got the message that i'm not interested, without me having to say so in an explicit way.. any suggestions from those who have been in a similar situation?.
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OneEyedJoe
As others have mentioned, I think it's probably best simply to politely decline, especially if this is the first invite in a while. If they keep inviting you, it might become appropriate to be more forceful and indicate that their invitations to JW things are not welcome.
One thing that I have found, though, is that being honest is really doing yourself a favor. I'm not saying you have to divulge every bit of information about yourself and your feelings, etc, but just not lying even in minor things can be freeing. In this case, saying "I wish I could make it." I suspect is a lie. In similar circumstances I've resolved not to tell such lies, and as a result I always feel much better about the interactions. I don't come away feeling like I might've supported their worldview by taking the easy (lying) way out. In the end you don't really gain anything with false niceties like that anyway, but they always make me feel sorta dirty afterwards.
Anyway, good luck, whatever you decide!