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.
OneEyedJoe
JoinedPosts by OneEyedJoe
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18
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
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17
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.
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12
Did you become more antisocial after waking up?
by paradiseseeker ini've been shy my whole life, but during my teenage years and early 20s i managed to be more comfortable socializing and made many friends in different parts of my country (jws of course).
that was before i woke up, because i saw myself being a jw for the rest of my life and thus i made an effort to meet new jw friends.
however, after i woke up, i lost interest in meeting new people because knowing that when i leave they will be gone... feels like a total waste of time and energy.
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OneEyedJoe
Yeah, I think it's inevitable that, in your situation, you're going to be much less inclined to be social with JWs. Not just the fact that most of the acquaintances you make will quickly abandon you when you make an exit, but also the mental and emotional stress of having to hold part of yourself inside to do it. There's always an undercurrent of JW nonsense in any group of JWs (at least in my experience) and having to repress yourself in order to not rock the boat or out yourself as an apostate before you're ready can take an enormous amount of effort. What's more - that habit of repressing yourself is very unhealthy and (I'm finding) can really come back to haunt you in future relationships even after you've left the cult entirely.
As someone who's very introverted myself, I empathize with your plight. I'd suggest that you really try to make an effort to make friends with non-JWs. You might even try being open with non-JWs about your current situation. I wouldn't open with it, but once you've both opened up about your personal life a little, it could be appropriate. I've found that I've consistently been surprised by the empathy and compassion I've received when doing that, and it can help you to train yourself to be more open and authentic, which will only help you make more friends. You're in a difficult situation, and you're likely to need some support system at some point - better to start building it now.
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21
Watchtower May 2018
by Listener inthe may 2018 watchtower is now out and thought i would make a few observations.in this article we get a story about gb sam herd.
the recurring theme throughout is the struggles he has had as a black man.he was born in 1935 in a one roomed log cabin in liberty indiana.
his mother raised him in the baptist church.
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OneEyedJoe
One thing that stood out to me from the beginning of this story, that I don't think anyone has mentioned:
One day, two JW girls [...] waved him over as he was driving his red convertible through town. He promised the girls that he would think about attending a book study.
[...] In 1958 [...] he married one of those young ladies that invited him to the book study, Gloria.Were his eyes opened by learning that Jehovah was god's name, or was that just a detail that he picked up in the study in order to impress Gloria with how much he'd payed attention because he was hoping to hook up with her? This is one of the most common methods of cult recruitment out there - pull people in with attractive members of the opposite sex. Granted, JWs don't seem to do this on a coordinated basis, but the proportion of members that originally joined this way (along with those that originally joined after some traumatic experience - death, breakup, illness, etc - or after moving somewhere that they know no one) is quite telling. If it really were the truth, you'd think that people (especially ones that eventually find their way to the very top) would be joining out of sheer love of truth, not to hook up with a pretty girl or to make friends after they've relocated, etc.
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35
The Constant Mindchatter After You Leave
by pale.emperor ini've been out almost 2 years now and consider myself wide awake to watchtower propaganda and well on my way to recovery from the mental abuse we've all experienced.. one thing that just will not go is that i constantly think of jwism and watchtower and get myself all annoyed at their lies and blatant twisting of facts in their broadcasts and magazines.
it's so bad that it's the first thing i think of when i wake up, then i have these mental arguments in my head proving the jw teachings false and then getting annoyed because no jw will listen even if you tried to tell them.
i call this constant thinking and mental reasoning and mental arguing "mindchatter".
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OneEyedJoe
I tend to take a practical approach combined with a bit of the idea behind the alcoholic's prayer - change the things you can, accept the things you can't change. So if you can't change something (i.e. that your family is in the cult, that the cult exists, etc) you just have to accept it and move on and force yourself not to dwell on it. If it doesn't have any tangible effect on anything, then why worry about it at all?
If you find yourself dwelling on some aspect of the cult, just ask "does thinking about this affect anything?" or "If I figure this out, how would it change my behavior?" and if it doesn't matter (i.e. dwelling on the flaws in the cult's argument about the 144k being literal or not, if you see the bible as a whole as having no divine value) then you just move on. Try something akin to mindfulness meditation - allow the thoughts to pop up, but don't entertain them. With practice you'll dismiss things quickly and not dwell on worthless cult stuff that has no bearing on your day-to-day life anymore.
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Jehovah's witnesses in bible prophecy
by godbless ingood day to all on this discussion board.
i am "godbless" and i am new to this discussion board.
i live in westmoreland, jamaica.
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OneEyedJoe
Before you go jumping headlong into a cult, you should probably check out jwfacts.com and freedomofmind.com. There's plenty of information out there on how cults use social pressure to gain undue influence over their adherents to control and take advantage of them.
The JW religion is not, nor was it ever, "the truth" as they claim. Their being involved with the UN is a mere drop in the bucket of problems with the "religion."
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10
The Preaching Method Has Flip-Flopped Again
by pale.emperor inim currently reading a book called jehovah's witnesses: portrait of a contemporary religious movement (https://www.amazon.co.uk/jehovahs-witnesses-portrait-contemporary-religious/dp/0415266106).the researcher is a social scientist, was never a jw, who studied with the witnesses solely to write this book.
his research has been quite thorough and objective which is commendable.he mentioned in the book how rutherford didn't want his colporters (pioneers) giving their own sermons or bible interpretation, but instead he had them going door to door with his records.
(i have some converted to mp3, they're very boring).
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OneEyedJoe
At the 2014 convention Losche was on stage going on about how the use of videos in the ministry was revolutionary and a big step forward and that it was not a return to the old days of using a victrola to play rutherford's sermons. He made this assertion without anything to distinguish the videos from the old recorded sermons.
It's almost as if they're used to whatever they say being taken as fact without any need for substantiation. Weird.
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11
Relationships after the Big A
by carla inthere was a post recently where the person was df'd (or da'd or fader?
) and had a friend who had already died.
let's call the fader/df'd person joe and the dead friend bob.
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OneEyedJoe
It's whatever's most convenient to manipulate the target audience into (re)joining or staying in the cult.
If it's someone who can't bear the thought of shunning their apostate child and is saddened by the prospect of spending eternity without them, it's the latter - the former things will not be called to mind. If it's someone that you want to guilt into coming back, it's that people will miss them - put the grief of a hundred people on their shoulders to make them feel guilty and return.
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Would You Go To A Memorial Service For A JW )if you were no longer attending the KH)?
by minimus insome of my old jw friends are sickly and getting on in age.
so far, i’ve only gone to my mother’s memorial and have avoided the kingdom hall altogether.... your thoughts please?.
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OneEyedJoe
For anyone other than my parents - no way. My parents are getting older, and my father isn't in fantastic health so I've given this some thought off and on. I'm still not sure what I'd do, but it'll sure be a fight with my living parent and still-in brother for it to not be at a KH. I think I'm simply going to insist that the speaker actually talk about the deceased and completely omit the cult sales pitch, being prepared to walk out should the sales pitch begin.
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33
Manmade rules
by Jrjw ini was talking to someone a few years ago and he said in his congregation they have a rail of white shirts prepared in the cloakroom for if a speaker doesn't have a white shirt on.
it was a rule in their hall that all brothers in the platform must wear white shirts when going talks and if the speaker won't comply when asked to change into the shirt they provide an elder in the congregation will do the talk instead.
i have never known any other halls do it so it must be a rule the elders have made up without gb input.
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OneEyedJoe
I've heard of the exact same thing regarding white shirts playing out elsewhere, I think it was the policy made up by the crotchety old PO at the time.
In some congregations in west texas there were some near-rebellions when a CO insisted that cowboy boots were inappropriate for a speaker. The culture there is such that in many cases a man's boots are, by far, the most expensive shoes (and indeed article of clothing) that he owns and they are thus considered formal wear. In comes a CO from another area and he wants to make up rules to suit his sensibilities...
I had a friend of a friend that got DFed for fornication in his 30s (even though he'd married the girl he had sex with, and she was only privately reproved) because he'd been reproved for fornication a couple times in his late teens/early 20s and the BOE had a 3-strikes rule. Therefore, regardless of his repentance (he absolutely was) he got the boot.
I remember lots of rules about service time and privileges - in various congregations I was in, there were limits of somewhere between 6-10 hours a month required to have any "privileges" including carrying a mic.
I was once told that because I didn't comment often enough at meetings I wouldn't be allowed to read the watchtower because "people might be like 'oh, who is he?' when [I] get up to read." I was told at the same time that my wife would also need to comment more for me to get to read the watchtower at a meeting.
There was once a local needs talk given because an elder got wind of a group (ages ranging from 25 to 33) that went to a twilight movie. Apparently there is no such thing as a "good" vampire, and any fictional depiction of a vampire is to be avoided at all costs.
My mother was once told not to wear a pair of earrings (they were small, hardly noticeable pendants with a sun, crescent moon and a star) because they might stumble someone.
I'm sure there's more. Basically whatever the most pious asshole on the BOE deems to be wrong - that gets banned. Sometimes it becomes a race to the bottom as each elder tries to outdo the others to prove how righteous they are by finding fault and restricting even the most minor things.