Posts by rockhound

4

Beware JW Propaganda!!

by rockhound in

worldly.

worldly people .

satan.

rockhound

Sorry about this post, when I posted it, everything moved all over the place. Can anybody direct me how to edit or fix a jumbled up post after it is posted? Help!!

Rockhound

4

Beware JW Propaganda!!

by rockhound in

worldly.

worldly people .

satan.

Learning about how Propaganda is used to control us, has been a real education for me. I had no Idea just how powerful these different techniques are in getting us to do what we are told to do and think the way "They" (People,Organizations, Governments etc.) want us to think. In particular, I have been interested in the methods used by the Organization to achieve the level of control over the minds and actions of those who loyally serve them. "Doing what you are told without question" is almost a badge of honor among witnesses to the point family members will turn on their mothers,fathers, brothers,and sisters on command. The "Organization" has become a god that must be worshipped, protected, and served at all cost. If the Present truth has been in place for 40 or 50 years, in just a stroke of the pen in Brooklyn, the families of the whole organization turn to the new Present Truth like a huge school of fish swimming in the ocean. All obediently say "Which way did he go", "Which way did he go" like the turtle in the cartoon. The problem is though, is that witness families are not fish, or turtles. They have brains, and questions are the brains most powerful tool to learn with. Why do we allow ourselves to go to the hall week after week and regularly get a shot of novocain straight to the brain. The answer, is "Propaganda" Please read the follow carefully.

As generally understood, propaganda is opinion expressed for the purpose of influencing actions of individuals or groups. More formally, the Institute for Propaganda Analysis has defined propaganda as "expression of opinion or action by individuals or groups deliberately designed to influence opinions or actions of other individuals or groups with reference to predetermined ends."

Some of the devices now so subtly and effectively used by good and bad propagandists are as old as language. All have been used in one form or another by all of us in our daily dealings with each other.

Propagandists have seized upon these methods we ordinarily use to convince each other, have analyzed and refined them, and have experimented with them until these homely devices of folk origin have been developed into tremendously powerful weapons for the swaying of popular opinions and actions.

We have all emphasized our disapproval of a person, group, or thing by calling it a bad name. We have all tried to reverse this process in the case of something for which we have had admiration by labeling it with a "virtue word" or "glittering generality." And thus, we have all used two of the propaganda devices.

Once we know that a speaker or writer is using one of these propaganda devices in an attempt to convince us of an idea, we can separate the device from the idea and see what the idea amounts to on its own merits. The idea may be good or bad when judged in the light of available evidence and in terms of our own experience and interests. But a knowledge of these seven devices permits us to investigate the idea. It keeps us from having our thought processes blocked by a trick. It keeps us from being fooled.
In testing each statement of a propagandist, then, we merely have to ask ourselves: When stripped of tricks, what is he trying to sell us? Is it something we want?
NAME CALLING
Name Calling-Giving an idea a bad label is used to make us reject and condemn the idea without examining the evidence.
Bad names have played a tremendously powerful role in the history of the world and in our own individual development. They have ruined reputations, stirred men and women to outstanding accomplishments, sent others to prison cells, and made men mad enough to enter battle and slaughter their fellowmen. They have been and are applied to other people, groups, gangs, tribes, colleges, political parties, neighborhoods, states, sections of the country, nations, and races.

The world has resounded with cries of "Heretic," "Hun," "Red," "Yankee," "Reb," "Democrat," "Republican," "Revolutionary," "Nazi," etc., and their equivalents in all languages. Our personal lives have echoed with such words as "sissy," "moron," "bully," "tramp," "wayward," "unscientific," "unprogressive," "inhuman," "grasping," "easy-going," and "backward."
Buzz Words About JWs who are not in Good Standing

Weak in the Truth

Disfellowshipped
Spiritually Weak
Disassociated
Spiritually not Qualified
Public Reproved
Spiritual Fornication
Privately Reproved
They went to the World
DF'd
Left Jehovah
DA'd
Turned to Satan
Committee Meetings
Apostate
Immoral Conduct
Not putting Spiritual Interests First
Materialistic
They miss Meetings
Turned Worldly
Drifting Away
Bad Association
Stumble
Returned to their own Vomit
Independent Thinking
Spiritually Sick
Inactive
Uncooperative
Not heeding the counsel of the Elders
Marked

Individuals and groups can be found who bear any one of these labels proudly. Other individuals and groups can just as easily be found who regard any one of these labels as the worst epithet to shout at an enemy.

One of the most treacherous things about Name Calling is that bad names, like Glittering Generalities, are omnibus words. They are words that mean different things and have different emotional overtones for different people. When we spot an example of Name Calling, we must ask ourselves these questions:
What does the name mean?
Does the idea in question-the proposal of the propagandist-have a legitimate connection with the real meaning of the name?
Is an idea that serves my best interests and the best interests of society, as I see them, being dismissed through giving it a name I don't like?
In other words, leaving the name out of consideration, what are the merits of the idea itself?
We must constantly remind ourselves of the danger of omnibus-word reactions. Such reactions, rather than detailed appraisals of a philosophy and its ideals, are what we commonly encounter.

GLITTERING GENERALITY
Glittering Generality-associating something with a "virtue word"-is used to make us accept and approve the thing without examining the evidence.
We believe in, fight for, live by "virtue words" about which we have deep-set ideas. Such words are "civilization," "Christianity," "good," "proper," "right," "democracy," "patriotism," "motherhood," "fatherhood," "science," "medicine," "health," and "love."

For our purposes in propaganda analysis, we call these "virtue words" Glittering Generalities in order to focus attention upon this dangerous characteristic that they have: They mean different things to different people; they can be used in different ways.

This is not a criticism of these words as we understand them. Quite the contrary. It is a criticism of the uses to which propagandists put the cherished words end beliefs of unsuspecting people.

When someone talks to us about "democracy," we immediately think of our own definite ideas about democracy, the ideas we learned at home, at school, and in church. Our first and natural reaction is to assume that the speaker is using the word in our sense, that he believes as we do on this important subject. This lowers our "sales resistance" and makes us far less suspicious than we ought to be when the speaker begins telling us the things "the United States must do to preserve democracy." If we have permitted our "sales resistance" to be lowered by the use of "democracy" as a Glittering Generality rather than as a carefully defined term, we may soon find ourselves being "sold" such an anti-democratic notion as a "Corporate State" under a "democratic" disguise, one of Father Coughlin's tricks.

The Glittering Generality is, in short, Name Calling in reverse. While Name Calling seeks to make us form a judgment to reject and condemn without examining the evidence, the Glittering Generality device seeks to make us approve and accept without examining the evidence. In acquainting ourselves with the Glittering Generality Device, therefore, all that has been said regarding Name Calling must be kept in mind, and especially should we remember what has been said about omnibus words.

Propagandists are most effective in the use of both of these devices when their words can make us create devils to fight or gods to adore. By their use of "bad words," we may be led to personify as a "devil" some nation, race; group, individual, policy, practice, or ideal; we may be made fighting mad to destroy it. By their use of "good words," we may be led to personify as a godlike idol some nation, race, group, or the like. Before we are led to any such position, we should know what the propagandist is trying to do with us. If we are to be led, we should be led with our eyes open, not blindly.
Buzz Words About The Worldly System

At Armageddon

That's the World for you
The Great Tribulation
World
This System of Things
Worldly
Worldly System
Worldly People
The Last Days
Worldly Associations
Satan's System
Opposers of Jehovah
Satan
Christendom
God?s Adversary, Satan the Devil
United Nations
Devil
Babylon the Great
Demons
World Empire of False Religion
Demonized
Harlot
Demonistic
666
Satan and his Demons
The Last Days
Table of the Demons
Bablonish
Goatlike ones
Pagan
Unbeliever
Gehenna
Bad association spoils useful habits
Like the Original Satan
Haughty Ones
Wicked system of things

In analyzing a Glittering Generality, we must ask ourselves such questions as these and suspend judgment until we have answered them:
What does the "virtue word" really mean?
Does the idea in question-the proposal of the propagandist-have a legitimate connection with the real meaning of the name ?
Is an idea that does not serve my best interests and the best interests of society, as I see them, being "sold" to me merely through its being given a name that I like?
In other words, leaving the "virtue word" out of consideration, what are the merits of the idea itself?

THE FINE ART OF PROPAGANDA
contains exerpts from "The Fine Art Of Propaganda; A Study of Father Coughlin's Speeches" by The Institute for Propaganda Analysis, Edited by Alfred McClung Lee & Elizabeth Briant Lee, and published in 1939 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York.

This is the end of part 1 Rockhound

26

Am I a bad person to ask Why?

by rockhound in

in the light of thinking that i am a person of reason, having a measure of good sense, and not wanting to go against the flow of the main stream, i now look back and wonder "why did it take me 40 years to wake up and smell the roses" about the organization?

when the big fiasco, and i mean big fiasco, of 1975 came and went, didn't i know down deep that i had been chasing "parked cars" spiritually?

with my spiritual nose bleeding i just hung in there with the rest and didn't make a fuss.

rockhound

FDS

If a shark takes bite out of my leg, I could take a passive view about it and say "Hey!!! whats the big deal?, that wasn't so bad, nothing to make a fuss about, but when that same shark tears my whole leg off, and never even says "I'm sorry, thats when I have cause to get upset. A man once said " What luck for the rulers that men do not think". The point of my post was that I like so many others had just jumped on the band wagon with everyone else, and the rest is history. If doing so was the wise thing to do, each of us will have to say for themselves. I personally feel like Judge Judy when she said "Don't pee on my leg and tell me its raining". Some, on the other hand don't mind getting their leg wet.

Rockhound

26

Am I a bad person to ask Why?

by rockhound in

in the light of thinking that i am a person of reason, having a measure of good sense, and not wanting to go against the flow of the main stream, i now look back and wonder "why did it take me 40 years to wake up and smell the roses" about the organization?

when the big fiasco, and i mean big fiasco, of 1975 came and went, didn't i know down deep that i had been chasing "parked cars" spiritually?

with my spiritual nose bleeding i just hung in there with the rest and didn't make a fuss.

rockhound

In the light of thinking that I am a person of reason, having a measure of good sense, and not wanting to go against the flow of the main stream, I now look back and wonder "Why did it take me 40 years to wake up and smell the roses" about the Organization? When the big fiasco, and I mean Big fiasco, of 1975 came and went, didn't I know down deep that I had been chasing "Parked Cars" spiritually? With my spiritual nose bleeding I just hung in there with the rest and didn't make a fuss. WHY!! How come it took so long for me to say "What the deal'? Sure I knew some who had left the organization, but I reasoned that they had been stumbled by some one, or they must be very immature,so I reasoned. When the organization said this or that, I would shift gears and go this way and that way just like I was told. WHY!! I think that the WHY can be found in the following:

Why Johnny Can't Disobey

Speaking at the Harvard Law School Forum in February on "Winning the Culture War," Charlton Heston delivered a vital lesson on the role of disobedience in American culture:
"I learned the awesome power of disobedience from Dr. King, who learned it from Gandhi, and Thoreau and Jesus and every other great man who led those in the right against those with the might. Disobedience is in our DNA. We feel innate kinship with that Disobedient Spirit that tossed tea into Boston Harbor, that sent Thoreau to jail, that refused to sit in the back of the bus, that protested a war in Vietnam. In that same spirit, I am asking you to disavow cultural correctness with massive disobedience of rogue authority, social directives and onerous law that weaken personal freedom. ...
"Let's be honest. Who here thinks your professors can say what they really believe? It scares me to death, and should scare you too, that the superstition of political correctness rules the halls of reason. ... What does all of this mean? It means that telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can't be far behind. Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: Why did political correctness originate on America's campuses? And why do you continue to tolerate it? Why do you, who're supposed to debate ideas, surrender to their suppression?"
Until recently, few people besides Charlton Heston have expressed concern about whether or not American college students can disobey. Many have discovered that Johnny cannot read, but fewer have seen that he cannot disobey, and neither can his teachers. In matters petty and profound, conformity to cultural norms is increasingly demanded through an insistence on political correctness. "If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist," said Heston. "If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you a sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion. If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe."
A long run of historical experiences with evil authorities should have, by now, underscored the importance of independent thought, free speech, the right to dissent and the necessity of civil disobedience. In our time, there has been no shortage of charismatic, malevolent leaders -- Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson and Jim Jones, to name some of the worst -- who are capable of committing wholesale cruelty to the point of directing mass killings. What remains shocking, however, is that they have been so successful at recruiting followers. Though Heston believes we may have healthy doses of disobedience in our DNA, there appears to be no shortage of individuals, who, after having been trained in a culture of conformity, compliance and obedience to authority, will offer their hearts and minds up on a silver platter to feed the egos of the power-hungry.
Since the Holocaust, we have lived with the realization that a nation of otherwise civilized people was capable of killing millions of their unarmed fellow citizens on command, but events such as the Hale Bopp and Jonestown suicides took us one step further: People will kill themselves on command. Researching the bewildering phenomena of the Nazi experience, Yale social psychologist Stanley Milgram wrote of the dangers of societal conformity in his book Obedience To Authority: "In growing up, the normal individual has learned to check the expression of aggressive impulses. But the culture has failed, almost entirely, in inculcating internal controls on actions that have their origin in authority. For this reason, the latter constitutes a far greater danger to human survival."
Contrary to beliefs that the survival instinct is predominant over all other drives, the mass suicides at Jonestown offer testimony to the power of cultural indoctrination. Significantly, the greatest life force at the People's Temple came from the children. Acting on their survival instincts, they went kicking and screaming to their deaths in an "immature" display of disobedience. The adults, civilized and educated people that they were, lined up and drank their Kool-Aid like the followers they were trained to be -- a training that didn't begin at Jonestown. When something as horrible as mass murders or suicides happen, people draw metaphors about the nearness of the jungle and the beast that lurks within us, but on closer scrutiny the beast within us looks suspiciously more like a sheep.
Despite our rich literature and history of freedom, a pervasive value instilled in society is obedience to authority. Unquestioning obedience is perceived to be in the best interests of the schools, governments, churches, families and political institutions. Nationalism, patriotism, religious ardor and peer pressure are its psychological vehicles. Certainly there must be an optimal level of obedience and compliance in any reasonably civilized society, but we have seen that unthinking obedience can become the most destructive of vices, a threat to our very survival.
In the 1950s, as social psychologists increasingly focused much of their attention on trying to understand the process whereby six million Jews were systematically exterminated in Nazi Germany, social psychologist Solomon Asch conducted a classic experiment on conformity behavior, conduct that is similar to obedience r in that it subverts one's will to that of peers or authority. In Asch's experiment, college students were asked to estimate the length of a line after confederates of the experimenter had given obviously wrong answers. The subjects, placing conformity above accuracy, then also gave wrong answers 35% of the time. Asch had expected people would be rational enough to choose the evidence of their own eyes over the wrong perceptions of others. He was mistaken. "It is important to keep the unambiguousness of the situations in mind," explained Asch. "In many instances, subjects are quite certain of the correct choice and, in the absence of group pressure, would choose correctly 100 percent of the time. In contrast, when they conform, they are conforming despite the fact that they know the correct answer."
If 35 percent of the students conformed to group opinion in unambiguous matters and in direct contradiction of the evidence seen by their own eyes, how much more must we fear blind following in ambiguous circumstances, in situations where the morality is unclear or debatable, or in situations where there exists a legitimate or charismatic authority?
In an effort to understand obedience to malevolent authority that had occurred in Germany, Stanley Milgram devised an experiment to put acts of obedience under his microscope. Milgram attempted to understand why otherwise civilized people had engaged in an extremely immoral act -- the wholesale extermination of Jews. He had subjects of the experiment, placed in the role of teachers, "shock" learners for their mistakes. The "learners" were not real learners, but confederates of the experimenter who were faking their reactions. When a mistake was made by a learner, the experimenter instructed the subject-teacher to administer an ever-increasing voltage from a shock machine which read "Extreme Danger," "Severe Shock," and "XXX." Although the machine was unconnected, the subject-teachers believed they were actually administering shocks. They were, in fact, themselves given a real sample shock before the experiment began.
Milgram asked his Yale colleagues to make a guess as to what proportion of subjects would proceed to shock all the way to the presumed lethal end of the shockboard. The professors' estimates hovered around one or two percent. No one was prepared for what happened. All were amazed that 26 of 40 subjects obeyed the experimenter's instruction to press levers that supposedly administered severely dangerous levels of shock. After this, Milgram regularly obtained results showing that 62 to 65 percent would shock all the way to the end of the board. He tried several variations of the experiment, one of which was to set it up outside Yale University so the prestige of the university would not be an overriding factor in causing the subjects to obey. He found people were just as likely to administer severe shocks whether the experiments occurred within the hallowed halls of Yale or in a three-room walk-up storefront in which the experimenters spoke of themselves vaguely as only "scientific researchers." Milgram, had, in effect, re-created Nazi Germany in his laboratory!
In another variation of the experiment, Milgram found that aggression was not a factor in causing people to give shocks. When the experimenter was out of the room, thus permitting the subjects to choose the level of shock themselves, almost none administered more than the lowest voltage. Milgram concluded that obedience, not aggression, was the problem. "I must conclude that Hannah Arendt's conception of the banality of evil comes closer to the truth (in explaining the Holocaust) than one might dare imagine," he said.
"The ordinary person who shocked the victim did so out of a sense of obligation -- a conception of his duties as a subject -- and not from any peculiar aggressive tendencies. This is perhaps the most fundamental lesson of our study: ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority. A variety of inhibitions against disobeying authority come into play and successfully keep the person in his place. It is a curious thing that a measure of compassion on the part of the subject, an unwillingness to 'hurt' the experimenter's feelings, are part of those binding forces inhibiting disobedience -- only obedience can preserve the experimenter's status and dignity."
Milgram's subjects showed signs of severe physiological tension and internal conflict when instructed to shock. Presumably, these signs of psychic pain and tortured indecision were a manifestation of an underlying attitude of compassion toward the victim, but it was not sufficient to impel them to openly break with, and therefore embarrass, the experimenter, even though the experimenter had no real authority over them. One of Milgram's subjects expressed the dilemma succinctly: "I'll go through with anything they tell me to do. ... They know more than I do. ... I know when I was in the service if I was told, 'You go over the hill and we're going to attack,' we attacked. So I think it's all based on the way a man was brought up, in his background. Well, I faithfully believed the man (whom he thought he had shocked) was dead until we opened the door. When I saw him, I said, 'Great, this is great!' But it didn't bother me even if we found that he was dead. I did a job."
The Milgram experiments continued with thousands of people -- students and non-students, here and abroad -- often demonstrating obedience behavior in 60 to 65 percent of the subjects. When the experiments were done in Munich, obedience often reached levels of 85 percent. Milgram found no gender differences in obedience behavior, except that women exhibited more signs of internal conflict. Significantly, Milgram said, "There is probably nothing the victim can say that will uniformly generate disobedience," since it is not the victim who is controlling the shocker's behavior. Even when the experimental variations included a victim who cried out that he had a heart condition, this did not lead to significantly greater disobedience. In such situations, the authority figure dominates and the victim's cries are for the most part ignored.
Milgram's findings demonstrated that an authority figure's power had to be somehow diminished before there would be widespread disobedience, such as when an authority was not physically present and his orders came over the telephone, or when his orders were challenged by another authority. Most importantly, subjects became disobedient in large numbers only when others rebelled, dissented or argued with the experimenter. When a subject witnessed another subject defying or arguing with the experimenter, 36 out of 40 also rebelled, demonstrating that peer rebellion was the most effective experimental variation in undercutting authority.
The social orientation in which the authority dominates one's psyche is attributed by Milgram to a state of mind that he calls the "agentic state." A person makes a critical shift from a relatively autonomous state into this agentic state when he enters a situation in which he "defines himself as open to regulation by a person of higher status." An extreme agentic state is a likely explanation for the scenario at Jonestown, where even the cries of their own children were not sufficient to dissuade parents from serving them Kool-Aid laced with cyanide in obedience to the demands of their cult leader and peers.
How many of us have made the critical shift into an agentic state, making the assumption that our leaders know best, even though they repeatedly demonstrate that they do not? Milgram predicts that "For the man who sits in front of the button that will release Armageddon, depressing it will have about the same emotional force as calling for an elevator." Evolution, he maintains, has not had a chance to "build inhibitors against such remote forms of aggression."
What is the solution to this dilemma in which cultural conditioning and human nature have made us all too vulnerable? We need, most importantly, to embrace free thought and free speech and protect those freedoms at almost any cost if we are to prevent ourselves from falling destructively under the influence of charlatans, false prophets, charismatic leaders and demagogic politicians. As a nation and as individuals we are far better off developing thicker skins than enforcing speech codes that stifle free expression. Leaders, both political and spiritual, should be subjected to intense scrutiny and we must insist that their thought processes and proclamations measure up to acceptable levels of rational thought. Above all, we need to become practiced in activating our inner resources toward rebellion and disobedience when we feel the invisible chains of the agentic state pressuring us to say and think what our leaders and peers demand.
Unfortunately, most of us have gotten the message that it's dangerous and costly to be different, and that disobedience requires exceptional courage. With sufficient practice, however, when the need arises, perhaps we may have the strength to force a moment to its crisis.
When met with intolerable demands for political correctness that stifle questions, independent thought, and free speech, Heston had a clear prescription for his Harvard audience: "Simply disobey. Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely. But when told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don't. We disobey social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom."
Sarah J. McCarthy, along with her husband, Ralph Reiland, is the co-author of an upcoming book, "Mom & Pop Vs. The Dreambusters: The Small Business Revolt Against Big Government" - McGraw-Hill. Her e-mail address is: [email protected]

In an organization where "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down", I have found that I had to keep my doubts and good solid questions to my self or be called before the elders. WHY?? As a christian, I ask " If Jesus were on earth today, would he slip obediently into the Agentic State like most witnesses do, or would he also be a nail that must be hammered down by the organization . "There are just two kinds of people : One to whom Belief...is more precious than Truth, And the other to whom Truth...is more precious than Belief". Unknown

Rockhound

21

Is there a name for this kind of JW tactic?

by ithinkisee in

is there an actual psychological term or whatever for this kind of jw tactic?.

the tactic is where they head the opposing arguments off at the pass, like when a new person studies and they get to the point where they want to make a stand for "the truth".

the person studying with them will tell them to "expect opposition from your family, this is satan trying to get at you because now you have found the truth and he's mad.".

rockhound

Some time back, I did alot of research on the many Propaganda techniques that Witnesses use in door to door ministry and bible studies. The technique that you mentioned is called "Poisoning the Well", and is very effective in closing the householders mind to any of their friends or loved ones comments about studying with the Witnesses. Note the following: File Folder

Main Menu

poison

Poisoning the Well

Etymology:

The phrase "poisoning the well" ultimately alludes to the medieval European myth that the black plague was caused by Jews poisoning town wells?a myth which was used as an excuse to persecute Jews.

The phrase was first used in its relevant sense by Cardinal John Henry Newman during a controversy with Charles Kingsley:

"?[W]hat I insist upon here?is this unmanly attempt of his, in his concluding pages, to cut the ground from under my feet;?to poison by anticipation the public mind against me, John Henry Newman, and to infuse into the imaginations of my readers, suspicion and mistrust of every thing that I may say in reply to him. This I call poisoning the wells.
"'I am henceforth in doubt and fear,' he says, 'as much as any honest man can be, concerning every word Dr. Newman may write. How can I tell that I shall not be the dupe of some cunning equivocation?' ?
"Well, I can only say, that, if his taunt is to take effect, I am but wasting my time in saying a word in answer to his foul calumnies? We all know how our imagination runs away with us, how suddenly and at what a pace;?the saying, 'Caesar's wife should not be suspected,' is an instance of what I mean. The habitual prejudice, the humour of the moment, is the turning-point which leads us to read a defence in a good sense or a bad. We interpret it by our antecedent impressions. The very same sentiments, according as our jealousy is or is not awake, or our aversion stimulated, are tokens of truth or of dissimulation and pretence. There is a story of a sane person being by mistake shut up in the wards of a Lunatic Asylum, and that, when he pleaded his cause to some strangers visiting the establishment, the only remark he elicited in answer was, 'How naturally he talks! you would think he was in his senses.' Controversies should be decided by the reason; is it legitimate warfare to appeal to the misgivings of the public mind and to its dislikings? Any how, if Mr. Kingsley is able thus to practise upon my readers, the more I succeed, the less will be my success. ? The more triumphant are my statements, the more certain will be my defeat."
(John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua)

Type: Argumentum ad Hominem

Example:

"I wish it were possible for men to get really emotionally involved in this question [abortion]. It is really impossible for the man, for whom it is impossible to be in this situation, to really see it from the woman's point of view. That is why I am concerned that there are not more women in this House available to speak about this from the woman's point of view."
( House of Commons Debates of Canada , Volume 2, November 30, 1979, p. 1920)

Analysis

Exposition:

To poison the well is to commit a pre-emptive ad hominem strike against an argumentative opponent. As with regular ad hominems, the well may be poisoned in either an abusive or circumstantial way. For instance:

"Only an ignoramus would disagree with fluoridating water." (Abusive)
"My opponent is a dentist, so of course he will oppose the fluoridating of water, since he will lose business." (Circumstantial)

Anyone bold enough to enter a debate which begins with a well-poisoning either steps into an insult, or an attack upon one's personal integrity. As with standard ad hominems, the debate is likely to cease to be about its nominal topic and become a debate about the arguer. However, what sets Poisoning the Well apart from the standard Ad Hominem is the fact that the poisoning is done before the opponent has a chance to make a case.

Exposure:

Poisoning the Well is not, strictly speaking, a logical fallacy since it is not a type of argument. Rather, it is a logical boobytrap set by the poisoner to tempt the unwary audience into committing an ad hominem fallacy. As with all forms of the ad hominem, one should keep in mind that an argument can and must stand or fall on its own, regardless of who makes it.

Analysis of the Example:

This is a common type of circumstantial poisoning of the well, which claims that men should either not make a judgment about abortion, or should keep it to themselves if they do. This illustrates the effect that poisoning the well tends to have, which is to forestall opposition in debate. It also shows the mistake underlying all poisoning of the well, since the sex of the arguer is irrelevant to the merits of the argument. No doubt one could always find a woman to advance the argument, whatever it is.

Sources:

S. Morris Engel, With Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies (Fifth Edition) (St. Martin's, 1994), pp. 206-209.
Douglas N. Walton, Informal Fallacies: Towards a Theory of Argument Criticisms (John Benjamins, 1987), pp. 217-222.

I hope this helps, and please type in Propaganda Techniques in your search engine and then you will be able the recognize the many diffenent kinds used in all the literature of the Society. Have fun!!! Rockhound

5

Tsunamis out ????

by rockhound in

this past week is surely one all will remember.

one day a tropical "paradise", and the next day a death trap for over 150,000 people.

are the huge plates really going to stop pushing on one another so that there would be no danger to "paradise"?

rockhound

This past week is surely one all will remember. One day a tropical "Paradise", and the next day a death trap for over 150,000 people. All the years I was associated with the organization, I alway had it in my mind that the new world would be a place free and safe from the kind of disasters we have all watched unfold over in Asia.

The huge plates that all the different nations of the earth rest upon, are constantly in a state of moving and pushing against one another. When one plate slides past another, the results are the earthquakes , large and small, that are recorded each day by the thousands.

. Our earth has been doing this for millions of years, and will continue to do its natural thing for as long as it exists. As we have been witness to, earthquakes are just one of the results of this plate movement. The earthquake in turn caused the Tsunami (tidal wave) that killed so many. The larger the quake, the larger the wave that races across the ocean at hundreds of miles an hour and then rises up into a huge wall of water that destroys so much . This kind of chain reaction is a process that the nations have come to expect when earthquakes happen under the ocean. Tsunamis have been destroying shorelines of these same asian beaches long before man was created and will go on doing so for countless years in the future.

There are plenty of other kinds of violent events that kill thousands and thousands of people each century . The earth is constantly going through one sort of change or another, and people die as a result. Volcanoes with their pyroclastic clouds and violent outbursts have killed thousands and thousands , yet violent as they are, they are still a natural earth building process, and people that die are simply in harms way. Tornados and hurricanes, the deadly storms the cause so many to lose their homes and lives are also a result of the natural processes of our earth and have been happening for who knows how long, and will continue to happen as long as thunder storms develope in warm moist air.

There are many other natural disasters we could mention, but the point is, they are all just a part of a chain of events that happen as a result of some natural movement of the earth. Remember in sciense class ( for every action,there is an equal and opposite reaction.) These kind of violent and catastrophic events are natural to our planet earth just as huge and violent storms are common to out neighbor planets. Look upward at our moon, and see the large craters that scar the moon's surface. The earth also has such craters, due to being in the way of huge meteorites that have reached the earth from outer space.

The Society paints a pretty picture of a Paradise free from all such violent events that throughout history have killed so many. Is it using a sound mind to reason that plate movements,volcanoes, tornadoes, hurricanes, warm air and cold air collisions, earthquakes, tsunamies, and a host of other natural events that are all part of what we know as" Nature", will all be put on hold just for man? Where would our farmers be if it weren't for lightning. The high energy in lightning mixes the oxygen and nitrogen in the air to form nitrates. These dissolve in rain which is then used by plants to make protein and enzymes. This great benefit to man also has danger. More people are killed by lightning than by any other kind of storm, including hurricanes and tornadoes. In the whole world, lightning kills more than 1,000 people in a year, and maybe many more. Lightning hits the earth 8.6 million times a day. Weather officials estimate that the United States alone receives up to 20 million cloud-to-ground lightning strikes per year from as many as 100,000 thunderstorms. Would this great danger be in "Paradise" ?
Are the huge plates really going to stop pushing on one another so that there would be no danger to "Paradise"? Will the huge waves stop rushing toward land at hundreds of miles an hour ? All these volient events in doing what they do, are actually following the natural laws of science and physics that our Creator put in place so very long ago. Can you imagine what would happen it all the tremendous pressures down in the earth that are the forces that moves the huge plates had no way of getting rid of all that energy? If all that pressure had no release, the result would certainly not be "Paradise" but rather a giagantic explosion. Just like a plugged pressure cooker in the kitchen. As long as mankind gets to close, or gets in the path of these natural events, he stands the chance of getting hurt or killed. If a Paradise earth was really the goal which Christians were to work for, why didn't Jesus or his disciples make mention of it? The goal was heavenly, not earthly.

ROCKHOUND

28

In "The Truth"?

by rockhound in

while at assemblies we would often see friends" in the truth", and one of the questions they would almost always ask is, are your kids still "in the truth"?

it seemed the thing to ask, with so many falling away from" the truth".

reflecting on that expression "in the truth" i think that most witneses feel as i did, that the watchtower had pretty much cornered the market on "truth" from god's word, hence the feeling that if we stayed close the the watchtower organization, we without doubt had,or were in, or were closely associated with "the truth" .

rockhound

To CodeBlue

Sounds like you and yours have become somebody's Project.

Dale Carnegie said "One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon- instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.

You do a fine job of encourageing others with your posts ---Thank you Rockhound

11

In "The

by rockhound in

rockhound

Ummm!!! Some how I got egg on my face with this post. I still haven't figured out how I managed to create the shortest post in JWD history. Sorry about that!!

Gumby, I think you might have hit the nail on the head. It was late and I started to type in the subject, and some where just after the letter "e" I must have dozed, and the next thing I knew, it was posting. Rockhound

28

In "The Truth"?

by rockhound in

while at assemblies we would often see friends" in the truth", and one of the questions they would almost always ask is, are your kids still "in the truth"?

it seemed the thing to ask, with so many falling away from" the truth".

reflecting on that expression "in the truth" i think that most witneses feel as i did, that the watchtower had pretty much cornered the market on "truth" from god's word, hence the feeling that if we stayed close the the watchtower organization, we without doubt had,or were in, or were closely associated with "the truth" .

rockhound

While at assemblies we would often see friends" IN THE TRUTH", and one of the questions they would almost always ask is, are your kids still "IN THE TRUTH"? It seemed the thing to ask, with so many falling away from" THE TRUTH".

Reflecting on that expression "IN THE TRUTH" I think that most Witneses feel as I did, that the Watchtower had pretty much cornered the market on "TRUTH" from God's word, hence the feeling that if we stayed close the the Watchtower Organization, we without doubt had,or were in, or were closely associated with "THE TRUTH"

How had I come to that concluesion? I had been assured by the Watchtower Organization that they THEY were the only true source of life giving TRUTHS. Had I asked for any proof of any kind that this was true? No, but I could always check it out, right? How?, The answer was simple, go to Watchtower publications to get confirmation, and how would they prove that this is true?,by refering you to articles where the "Faithful Slave" says its so. Its true,because they say its true. How simple, all I had to do was follow the counsel from the Watchtower, June 1, 1967 p.338

" Heavy research is not necessary, the watchtower has done it all for you. The most beneficial study you can make is to read the Watchtower and Awake magazines or any new book by the organization"

Are statements from the Organization made through the Watchtower magazine to be considered pure" TRUTH" from Jehovah God? Most Witnesses truly believe it is. For years, I did to, but did that make it so? NOT!!! Abraham Lincoln asked the question: How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four ;calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. I believe that calling the Watchtower Organization " THE TRUTH" is like calling a dogs tail one of his legs. It just isn't so, no matter who says so. To be fair, I do believe that the Watchtower along with all the other religions have many things right, but calling the Watchtower "THE TRUTH" after examining their history, is to say "THE TRUTH" is a coat of many colors, and the society puts it on and off at will.

Rockhound

11

In "The

by rockhound in