Please consider that this ostensible stupidity is not actual, medical, clinical, cognitive incapacity "stupidity".
Consider that it might be pernicious, deliberate, fully conscious, fully self-aware, fully sanctimonious, fully pretentious, fully willful costly signaling or conspicuous consumption of a costly (stupid) belief to other members of the tribe as a form of banner, heraldry, sigil. People cannot be this stupid. People are not actually this stupid. People can be pretentious sanctimonious pricks who impose their superiority on others by displaying how costly their belief is. People >are< pretentious sanctimonious pricks who impose their superiority on others by displaying how costly their belief is. They don't have to believe anything. They have to demonstrate what the belief requires, if they believed it, and the conspicuous display of that stupidity is the key to answering a challenge/authentication protocol, among the tribe, that basically says, "Are you still with me? Are you still against them?" Consider. Clinical stupidity cannot explain what JWs do. Stockholm syndrome alone does not either. Letting JW rank and file get away with being stupid is letting them off the hook. They are not stupid. They are weak. They have failed themselves and they have failed their children to act on their well-founded doubts. They are weak because they have chosen, and continue actively to choose, to not find the strength to do what they know is right. If they are chained in bondage to family members, yeah, fine, I lost my entire family. All of it.
Posts by rmt1
-
29"It's Demonic" - What's the stupidest thing you've ever heard a JW say?
by schnare ini was at a amusement park here in calgary today.
my jw mother and my young brother came to visit for a week,so me and my sister thought it would a nice idea to take them to do something fun.
i guess they had a part of it called hallo street and my mom was getting all sketched out from all the halloween decorations around.
-
-
rmt1
-
29
"It's Demonic" - What's the stupidest thing you've ever heard a JW say?
by schnare ini was at a amusement park here in calgary today.
my jw mother and my young brother came to visit for a week,so me and my sister thought it would a nice idea to take them to do something fun.
i guess they had a part of it called hallo street and my mom was getting all sketched out from all the halloween decorations around.
-
-
rmt1
Late 70's, early 80's: My dad lectured me at 10 years old about how a cereal box stand-up cutout of the Lucky Charms elf would be looking at me as I slept. My mom made me throw away the Kenner Yoda figure because her friend counselled her that she heard Yoda was a wizard. Still haven't checked that Sparlock video...
-
25
Which is more weird ? Nov 15, 2013 page 20
by jwstudy inwhich is more weird ?.
english standard edition or simplified edition?.
instructions we may receive, whether.
-
-
rmt1
Tagging another thread, can this difference be explained by the TWS needing to transition from a centralized English-speaking fleece to a broader ESL fleece, who (striving not to make a racist statement here), due to various compounding effects of marginalization, particularly socioeconomic and educational, may be more easily persuaded by this wording?
It's hard for me to see all the calculated movements of the money-changers, and the painstaking attention to the absolute lack of detail by the sales floor, culminating in >anything< that unnecessarily trims their stock of potential fleece / customers. To argue so is to argue that the remaining fleece can be squeezed much further. Is that the case? Would preemptorally excommunicating people that haven't done a wrong by their own rules really bring in new converts?
-
24
I had NO idea about the letter to Hitler......
by Flg8ter inthis was brand new to me........did some research, like we're not supposed to do ;) and dug up crazy stuff that i had no idea about.
my whole life we were taught have bad and evil "christendom" was for trying to pacify hiter during his rise to power, and how different we were for standing up to him!.
then i found about the letter dated june 25,1933 from rutherford and his writting team to hiter.
-
-
rmt1
I could have added that TWS appropriates to itself the cathexis or shock value of Hitler. It claims a power of righteousness, and a magnitude of Godly favor, that is linearly proportional to the unrighteousness of the sum of Nazi atrocities. Discount, leverageable, street credit or war story. Good for building a mythology proportional in height to the length of the shadow of Nazism.
-
23
Okage Takes Issue with: November 1st 2013 Watchtower Magazine
by okage injust a few issues i had from looking at this potential new york-printed toilet paper:.
pg 4: the lie that made god nameless.
this sub-article talks about how god's name is jehovah and quotes isaiah 42:8 "i am jehovah.
-
-
rmt1
Thank you for the citation of source material. I can figure that this is at least a remotely intriguing point of contention in the JW menagerie, being as you do have some archeological facts to work with.
-
23
Okage Takes Issue with: November 1st 2013 Watchtower Magazine
by okage injust a few issues i had from looking at this potential new york-printed toilet paper:.
pg 4: the lie that made god nameless.
this sub-article talks about how god's name is jehovah and quotes isaiah 42:8 "i am jehovah.
-
-
rmt1
"accuse clergymen of the 3rd century Catholic Church of intentionally destroying those manuscripts."
I don't recall this claim from my time in the 1990s. Is there a reference?
-
24
I had NO idea about the letter to Hitler......
by Flg8ter inthis was brand new to me........did some research, like we're not supposed to do ;) and dug up crazy stuff that i had no idea about.
my whole life we were taught have bad and evil "christendom" was for trying to pacify hiter during his rise to power, and how different we were for standing up to him!.
then i found about the letter dated june 25,1933 from rutherford and his writting team to hiter.
-
-
rmt1
When I was in in the 1990s, the doctrine was the there was a special, explicit, specific, causative context of Hitler vs Jehovah, due to Hitler's persecution of JWs. This is to be distinct from an un-special, unspecific, correllated context of Hitler vs Jehovah. This tiny difference in rhetoric has a huge effect. Or in brief, JWs get to name drop Hitler as a level boss they had to face alone, in a way no other group on the planet had to face. Under some circumstances, that can be found persuasive by variously marginal or marginalized persons.
-
23
Okage Takes Issue with: November 1st 2013 Watchtower Magazine
by okage injust a few issues i had from looking at this potential new york-printed toilet paper:.
pg 4: the lie that made god nameless.
this sub-article talks about how god's name is jehovah and quotes isaiah 42:8 "i am jehovah.
-
-
rmt1
So... ... ... The Simplified version is for the inevitable and necessary transition from a central distribution of English speaking fleece to a broader distribution of non-English speaking fleece. Plus lower levels of classical/historical/scientific literacy, or Pre-Internet adult literacy, in general, among English speaking fleece, partially a result of the phenomenon of decreasing proportion of print versus online readership. (Although I heard that print continues to grow in total, keeping pace with population growth, but online sources grow much faster.)
??
-
24
I had NO idea about the letter to Hitler......
by Flg8ter inthis was brand new to me........did some research, like we're not supposed to do ;) and dug up crazy stuff that i had no idea about.
my whole life we were taught have bad and evil "christendom" was for trying to pacify hiter during his rise to power, and how different we were for standing up to him!.
then i found about the letter dated june 25,1933 from rutherford and his writting team to hiter.
-
-
rmt1
"The JW's suffering under the Nazi regime was only exacerbated by Rutherford's arrogance and needless confrontation with the world's most evil man."
My day goes from better to better. This, and this thread, explain sooooo much. Scales from the eyes... -
32
How Many Enjoy Celebrating Holidays? Birthdays?
by minimus ini admit that i do enjoy it, especially with my grandkids.
birthdays, too.. i believe we missed out on a lot of fun and normal activities because we were witnesses..
-
-
rmt1
I completed a task to obtain sub-second timing accuracy in my code to reduce Hubble spectra of Hot Jupiters, and that spells Christmas. So I got my little fake plastic Christmas tree here on my desk, with three strings of AA powered LED lights. One string is rainbow, one is white, one is purple, the wife's favorite color, and certainly a color of Christmas I do not recall from childhood in late 70s / early 80s. Also has a lapel pin of that angry ice cream sandwhich meme guy. Used to have Lego keychain guys. Cats love to eat it. As I speak, it clearly needs new batteries. But I like the feeling of slow-burning embers...