My wife blames my short-term memory and not being able to remember certain things on my JW years where I had to sit through that auditory crap. In this theory, which makes sense to me, I would have had a cognitive dissonance that caused a resistance to hearing and retention precisely proportional to the stupidity. Now, even though I can attend to and retain things that have an active positive cathexis (I desire to know), things that are not as positive (wife's future plans (which may or may not always change)) but are still good to know - I cannot retain even after hearing it several times. Possibly some practice of deferring the cathexis of wait-and-see upon with Brooklyn is founded. I.e., I now |know| things change, so only a minimum knowledge of an immediate future is relevant. So, this same phenomena of zoning out at the meetings, or mentally screaming for the door, causes a Freudian resistance that activates the imagination. I.e., the imagination is a defence mechanism.
Posts by rmt1
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3Active Imagination? I blame the WTS
by Mysterious ini remember always having one of the best imaginations in my class even when i was in high school.
my secret?
all those meetings to zone out in.
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rmt1
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All right cut the crap.... why are we fighting over the Big News?
by Check_Your_Premises inif the big news is legit, someone will file suit and win.. if it is the big snooze one of the above will not happen.
nothing we do or say here will bear on the outcome of the above.
if you think it is the big news, by all means promote it as such.
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rmt1
Brooklyn used to explain how the bible doesn't contradict science by, among others, saying that when Job said "skin of my teeth," he was actually being given divine spirit - no, not a metaphor of a body part that obviously or apparently doesn't have skin, so that it means "no margin", no - we're talking divine spirit - and that this corroborates with how science has to tell us that the tooth actually has a "skin." Why the fuck a JW thinks that it matters why or whether a tooth has "skin" or whether Job really cared what enamel was is besides the point: Brooklyn works very hard to dream up shit that makes them sound like they have science on their side and not the other way around. If this blood business is hard core and they can document that what *they researched was Fully Available to anyone else researching such matters, and can demonstrate that Brooklyn could not have arrived at some of its more informed correct conclusions without bypassing such data that would undermine things it has obfuscated, then, there's something to care about. I'm sure Brooklyn will give it hell's best shot to simulate that they did not find such data in their findings, or will find a way to discredit or question these other findings as, "Yes, your honor, we did consider these findings but experts X Y and Z have given reason to dismiss them." Experts being in quotes. I don't know, this might be interesting. But it would not be surrpised if Brooklyn told their people that Satan has control of everything and hid the more correct science. And they would believe it. And there would be more tacking back and forth light gets brighter talks. But I smell that this could be another Colin Powel hunt for weapons of mass destruction, i.e., someone standing at a podium trying to explain that Brooklyn has not proven that it did NOT know about controversial findings X Y Z. Proving a negative, difficult. Am I off on any major points?
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Higher Education
by XBEHERE inhello all...just cant stay away from you...hehe .
at our recent co visit, at the elder/ms meeting where co goes over a branch approved outline with us he spent 10 min on the subheading "avoid snares of pursuing higher education"...something like that, my notes are at home but you get the gist.
he essentially spent the time bashing university education citing among other things that a full 30% that go to college dont find employment in the field that they studied in.
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rmt1
Hm. Just for any JWs reading this: a study in how Brooklyn uses adjectives and prepositional phrases.
Case 1: “a full 30% that go to college dont find employment in the field that they studied in”
What the hell is a “full 30%”? It’s a misdirection to tacitly imply a practical, tantamount, analogous, might as well be 100%
Case 2: “30% that go to college dont find employment in the field that they studied in”
Ibid other posters; also Brooklyn is depending on the JWs assuming that a “field” is a unitary investment of time-labor-money that is not exchangeable for any other goods or field. There may also be a subtle kickback on the term “field” as it is applied to “field service,” i.e., being in “field service” is a “field” of professional development, continuing education, and fulfillment, arrived at by “study,” the type and frequency of and place for which you all know…
Case 3: “30% that go to college dont find employment in a [professional] field”
For Brooklyn to say this would be pushing the buttons of the JWs intuition that something is being left out. But maybe not.
Case 4: “30% that go to college dont find employment”
Surely, if this were said, the JW would say to themselves, WoW! That certainly is a waste of time! Or possibly even, Huh! Are they sure of their statistics? Why would so many be doing it? -
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Are The Magazines Written By "Complete Idiots"?
by metatron inyes, "complete idiots" - that's the phrase the latest awake ( jan 2006) uses on page 6, thusly:.
"however, man's vision of the future has often proved to be illusory.
for example, decades ago one expert said that by 1984, farmers.
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rmt1
Here’s me avoiding another paper: I think someone’s reading textual espionage into it. Obviously someone who is intelligent enough to figure this shit out does not require some triple agent in Brooklyn to give them the tip with John Nash style patterns or data encryption. The people who can figure shit out are obviously who Brooklyn is Not attempting to speak to. In fact, awareness preceeds carefully constructed cowardice and social entrapment – most of the people wanting to leave don’t need help figuring out Why they want to leave, but rather how to do so with least financial and sociologic trauma. I submit that what Brooklyn is doing here can be illustrated by the following scenario. A guy runs over about 10-20,000 people in a series of unfortunately fatal accidents, sometimes two at a time, with snow chains on, playing Niel Diamond, while pouring rice down his enemy’s radiator and singing Kingdom Melody #16. When his car is compelled to stop because of the sheer number of people on the road who are now looking natively restless askance at him, and he gets out and begins to back away with hands up, he says, “Hey! You’ve all run over an animal once in your life! Haven’t you?” This is camoflage by misdirection and they are appealing to their consumers for the same degree of clemency, mercy, forgiveness for murdering thousands of people, as that consumer would give to the noisy hoke who breathlessly voiced a harmless optimism in a context where no one really cared whether or not it came about or not, i.e., we say, "Where's my flying car!" but we're not about to do anything about it. What they need to do is take Kennedy's moon promise and explain how his achieving precisely what the fuck he was after is clear proof that worldly wisdom is Satanic. http://vesuvius.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/ricetalk.htm
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Leaving JWs Has Made Me Intolerant of Stupid Thinking - How About U?
by Seeker4 inlori (my girlfriend - a non-jw).
and i had quite a discussion last night.
i am almost always a very tolerant, easygoing person, but there is this one aspect of my personality that has caused us a certain amount of tension.
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rmt1
Heyseeker 4 ! He mayhave abad space bar .
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Why do so many people NEED to believe in a greater purpose?
by gringojj ini am an atheist.
i believe that this is the only life we have, there is nothing more.
i have no greater purpose.
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rmt1
lol jgnat. I would say my wife is not too different from you. She pursues the Good (at all costs), and I pursue the Unknown (at all cost). I think we work well, and I don't always understand how.
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Why do so many people NEED to believe in a greater purpose?
by gringojj ini am an atheist.
i believe that this is the only life we have, there is nothing more.
i have no greater purpose.
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rmt1
AuldSoul, this is additionally irrelevant, centrifugal, and possibly inconsiderate. “a long-range plan whereby the entire world could be controlled by one nation.” If this is not a metaphor for cultural de-centralization of the individual, such a fear if actual is probably transferrence of adolescent anxiety, probably never dealt with, over paternal hegemony. The odds of any one nation getting political, economic, cultural, military control over “the entire world” is (adding…) Zero. For instance, Rome, however great its power has become in our historical lens of looking back upon some great Republican heritage (not those Xi-oxide emperors), had its ass handed to it several times. Unity is inversely proportional to minimum threat distance, and distance only. Even if we discovered a Klingon empire with laser vision in the next solar system, 4 light years away, even this threat would not be enough to caused every last political earth unit to recall their prerogatives and yield for the greater good to one supreme crisis manager. To get this planet to the point where “the entire world could be controlled by one nation” would require an imminent extraterrestrial threat that would foreground the likeness of our species vis-à-vis that of the Other, so that our self-preservation instincts and leopard brain socialization skills would slap everyone (way down) into the mode of being acutely sensitive to the subtle minutiae that ultimately distinguishes poser-Alpha male from asskicking-Alpha male. Until that point, the resistance power of any one individual to such a Marvel/DC/Star Wars/GIJoe/X-Filean monolithism (all mythic, observe ) is inversely proportional to his or her investment in the enterprise. Yes, a great portion of the planet does not resist imperialism because they do not have the resources. Yes, a small portion of the world does have the investment to perpetuate imperialism. But at the minimum-size political unit of “one planet,” in the absense of a context of other planets, the Other-ness of other peoples under other political units, upon which elite investment in “not causing a palace coup” is predicated, evaporates. At a planetary scale (in the absense of peers) you cannot sustain the investment of enough elites to counteract the erosive forces of the unenfranchised, because you’ve gone and broken open the Freudian closet of where it is we abject our worst feelings about ourselves; i.e., upon “other peoples”. I am really convinced now that I am resisting finishing this damn archaeology paper on “seismic agency, access and architectural change at Knossos.”
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Why do so many people NEED to believe in a greater purpose?
by gringojj ini am an atheist.
i believe that this is the only life we have, there is nothing more.
i have no greater purpose.
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rmt1
tetrapod, this may be irrelevant, inconsiderate, etc. Probably every day I affirm to myself the absolute, sovereign, inalienable, unquestionable right that I as a human being have, to drive myself off a cliff. I know where there is one, and when things are hot, I remind myself where a snappy, adequately irreversible solution lies. (None of this is my imputing that you are suicidal; I know you're not.) What I'm getting at is this: Every time I hear that an ex-JW has lost their center, lost it, whatever 'it' is, I think of nothing other than Orwell's 1984, where the system got in so deep that it took the person's center. The JWs spout that God rejoices more over one lamb being saved than 99 being good: I think this disguises the reality that JWs rejoice more over a single disfellowshipped/disassociated apostate who self-destructs, particularly by actual suicide, than they do over the disfellowshipped/disassociated persons who merely find a 'worldly' kind of selfish self-satisfaction that is only moderately self-destructive and will only kill them (sigh) at Armageddon. It may seem naive and symptomatic of the same entrapment I ostensibly attempt refute, but I think there is some sense in not giving the JWs more grist for their grind by "succumbing to" self-destruction. (Not that I'm saying you are planning it: this is me making free with your online personal as a Socratic apodosis.) "Choose" self-destruction, yes; "Succumb to" self-destruction, no. There's a fine line and one's mileage may vary. The main point, difficult to get at, is that if there was any purpose in leaving the JWs, there may be some good planetary-scale purpose in not giving them EXACTLY what they are WAITING for. I believe this idea can be held even without calling it a 'purpose'. Again, this is addressed to the words your persona spoke, not to the 'you' behind the screen. I don't know 'you' from Angelina Jolie's mitochondria.
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Are Liberal Arts Degree worth it?
by truthseeker inan excellent article, which also refutes the idea that people only go to college to get rich and make money.. http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/elearning/?article=liberalartsare liberal arts degrees worth anything?by jim pollock.
for everyone who says that a liberal arts degree doesn't prepare you for anything, you'll find someone else who claims that it prepares you for everything.
well, both, to some extent.the one thing that's pretty much certain is that right out of the gate, a liberal arts grad will tend to pull a smaller starting salary than his or her friends who majored in business or a technical field.
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rmt1
Truthseeker, the ‘growth stock’ is a fantastic analysis. I'm done with my English and Classics BA as of May 06, and I have zero expectation that life thereafter will be anything but an impossible slog through a sun's heart. But, I have reason to believe that I am chemically addicted to learning and epistemologic struggle. The dopamine hit I receive on a daily basis from confronting the stultifyingly stupifying stupidity and brilliance of the cosmos has been, so far, worth more than the money I have thrown into my liberal education. I expect absolutely no one to understand this sensation, and do not yet have the monetary incentive to explain it. Since the need for liberal degrees in this consumerist, technologically enslaved era has been reduced to a low percentage, the continued admissions of a high number of liberal arts majors will ensure the punctual production of a slave class perfectly fit for jobs one increment above minimum wage. I am operating under the current paradigm that to survive and then succeed with a liberal education, you have to die trying. I.e., don't even waste a damn second thinking that your liberal B.A. actually represents a living wage: it doesn't; adjusted for technological-consumerist inflation, it represents the diploma you got in high school, is worth only as much, and is unfortunately the burning ring you must jump through to get on to your Real degree, the masters. Your mileage may vary.
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Why do so many people NEED to believe in a greater purpose?
by gringojj ini am an atheist.
i believe that this is the only life we have, there is nothing more.
i have no greater purpose.
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rmt1
I don’t know about “higher meaning” or “purpose”, but there is something to be looked at in Newton, Thermodynamics and the Heisenberg Principle, which are about as much “text” or BIOS as we’re going to get. We’re the product of mass and energy and so is much of our cognitive and emotional processes. Newton’s I: Momentum keeps me going, inertia gets me down. Newton’s II: It’s going to take a life-time of hauling ass to pull myself out of the nosedive the JW years put me into. Accelerate and reduce mass: Get thee to college and forget Paradise. Newton’s III: Unless you’re much smarter, you generally reap what you sow. Pick your battles wisely, for you know not who it is that not only speaks softly but also carries a big stick. Thermodynamics I: Time and money are inversely proportional. Thermodynamics II: The center falls, all the time. Global warming is human nature. Find a place to make your stand. Heisenberg: Not only do we forget where we are if we stick our nose in too far, there are also some things that cannot be penetrated or illuminated under infinite investigation. An ethical, emotional, guilt-cathected best-performance of these phsyical laws is not what I have in mind. I believe that dopamine is the real purpose, however it is you can get it at minimum cost in human and material capital.