thanks for the suggestions, Terry. I have only the most basic knowledge of Ayn Rand's writings and philosophy, and don't know anything at all about Mortimer J. Adler. From the passages that you quoted, however, my interest is definitely piqued. Thanks again!
Cognitive_Dissident
JoinedPosts by Cognitive_Dissident
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48
RUSSEL MEETS RUTHERFORD: a fantasy conversation
by Terry inthe impossible can be fun.
let's have some fun!!
there is a knock at the bedroom door.
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48
RUSSEL MEETS RUTHERFORD: a fantasy conversation
by Terry inthe impossible can be fun.
let's have some fun!!
there is a knock at the bedroom door.
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Cognitive_Dissident
I completely agree. About six or seven months ago, after finally realizing that I was willingly trying to hang on to something that was slowly killing me - mentally, physically and spiritually, I made the conscious decision to reject all that I had been taught by the WTBTS. But making the conscious decision didn't just automatically reset everything to zero. I was able to examine and reject many things right off the bat, most of which I'd never been able to swallow to begin with, but I'm fully aware that after so many years of being under the influence of the dub "teachings", there are a lot of connections and synapses that are still firing on faulty instructions. What I'm trying to do now is force myself to be radically open-minded, taking a second look at things that a person wouldn't usually think twice about. Since being a JW wasn't ever just a religion, but more a way of living, breathing and interacting, they really had their tendrils in to much more than just my thought process. It affected every part of my being, so I'm trying to honestly, for the first time, be open-minded to all of the different sides of an issue without automatically discounting or devaluing certain arguments based on the "absolute sanctity" of "my" belief. I'm slowly adding to the list of things that I can actually say that "I" agree with, and I don't feel guilty admitting that I don't know enough about something to give my honest opinion. And that feels good. It's been a pretty painful process at times, but I can honestly say that the way I feel today versus how I felt six months ago are like night and day. Even at what used to be my happiest I didn't feel half as good as I do on a mediocre day today. Do you have any suggested reading or other resources you think might help, or perhaps just thoughts on what you found to be helpful during these early stages?
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48
RUSSEL MEETS RUTHERFORD: a fantasy conversation
by Terry inthe impossible can be fun.
let's have some fun!!
there is a knock at the bedroom door.
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Cognitive_Dissident
:"I'm no conspiracy theorist, but, the correspondency is so exact as to be dictated by a careful shadowing of the Thoughtspeak policies and Doublethink.
Chilling."
yeah, I actually reread it last year when most of the cognitive dissonance in my brain was starting to come to a head and I was absolutely floored at all of the parallels. It was chilling. It really freaked me out and made me reexamine a lot of what I had been taking for granted for so many years. I've joked before that the governing body use that book as a how-to manual, but it's one of those jokes that you kind of uneasily chuckle at because it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility. As you said, the correspondences are disturbingly exact. To write the articles with the language that they use belies a very deep understanding of psychological and group-mind principles. And that's what angers me most, there is a very willful, deliberate use of mind control tactics. It's not as if they just stumble along, writing articles that happen to keep people in check, they're very carefully crafted. -
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Alan F's flaming arguments and insults
by Rex inhi alan, .
have you ever looked at the carved up mountains, hills and valleys?????
have examined the remarkable similarity to the mount st. helen's canyon that was carved our very quickly?
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Cognitive_Dissident
:anyways, for an intellectual individual to accept an invitation to a debate from a fundy YEC, is to give the impression that there is anything worthwhile to actually debate about. --exactly right
if tetrapod gets props for praising jesus online, do I get props for praising jesus on my belt buckle? -
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RUSSEL MEETS RUTHERFORD: a fantasy conversation
by Terry inthe impossible can be fun.
let's have some fun!!
there is a knock at the bedroom door.
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Cognitive_Dissident
Great post, Terry. I can easily see that dialogue performed as a one-act. Excellent piece of writing. Keep 'em coming if you've got 'em!
:Russell, it seems, was like most of the really effective salemen I've known in my life. They are the biggest marks when it comes to being sold themselves.
that comment reminds me of the concept of doublethink in 1984, the higher up in the Party a person was, the more skilled they had to be in using doublethink. Knowing that the doctrines they were selling were not at all what they purported to be in order to function on a pragmatic level, but also being able to actually believe 100% in their own lies when it came to defending the party line. It seems like that's the case with many witnesses in "middle management", although at the highest levels I don't see it as being anything more than the desire to protect their own future existence by whipping the masses with fear just to keep them from running away. -
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Alan F's flaming arguments and insults
by Rex inhi alan, .
have you ever looked at the carved up mountains, hills and valleys?????
have examined the remarkable similarity to the mount st. helen's canyon that was carved our very quickly?
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Cognitive_Dissident
Shining One, I checked out the YEC homepage. There are some pretty compelling arguments. You should check out this page, I think you'd find it pretty interesting also.
CD
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The Unwritten JW Law
by Fe2O3Girl init is clear that there is no scriptural basis for disapproving of facial hair, coloured shirts or women wearing trousers at meetings or while preaching.
some of these rules seem to be regionally variable, but i think the rules on women's clothing are the same everywhere.. my question is - has there ever been any specific comments on any of these type of rules in any watchtower publication, ever?
and if not, how do we all know the rules?.
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Cognitive_Dissident
This turns PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY on its head and makes the victim the criminal. The person who misperceives and misinterprets the clothing of another is made NOT responsible and the innocent party harming nobody is made to blame!!
Right on, Terry!
That's the exact issue that I've ALWAYS had with the whole "stumbling" thing. It puts you on perpetual high alert and forces you to live in fear of what the suspicious, eyebrow raising, sideways glancing, fake smile giving PIONEER next to you is going to think.
And when they talk about reproach upon the Christian Congregation they're making the assumption that the rest of the world has the same backwards view of personal responsibility. It was always held over your head that you might bring reproach upon the congregation by drawing negative attention from some worldly source when the only ones who were ever "stumbled" were the so-called pillars of the congregation, and that only because they themselves feared some mysterious backlash that would threaten their perceived "shepherding" capabilities.
It's kind of like saying, "if you have a beard you're going to make the Boogie Man mad, and he's going to tear down the kingdom hall. You don't want that to happen, do you?" And everyone is ACTUALLY deathly afraid of the Boogie Man, so you get this constant barrage of harassment to follow the rules that aren't actually rules because nobody wants the big faceless, unnamed evil of reproach that is the Boogie Man to tear apart the Kingdom Hall. As if any one of us actually had that much power. It's kind of a shame actually. If we did, then I could stop wishing that the WTBTS would crumble in a flurry of exposed hypocrisy, and just go out in service dressed in drag and the unfathomable reproach of it would make the whole thing go belly up. Ahh, if it were only that easy. -
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Cognitive_Dissident
Being a JW is fun if you: are really into sadomasochism.
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In 70 words or less - Tell one person the 'truth about the Truth'...
by AK - Jeff inwithout use of profanity, vulgarity, or sarcasm.
tell this hypothetical person who is still a dyed in the wool witness clearly why he/she should leave.
do it in such a way that he/she will not bolt for the door screaming "get behind me satan" - in other words, use tact to anti-witness.. jeff
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Cognitive_Dissident
It would be almost completely impossible to broach this subject uninivitedly in one way or another. In my own experience, when I was still very much in my "true believer" phase, if someone asked me a question or made a statement that had the slightest smell of "apostasy" to it, anything that person said fell on completely deaf ears. Even if I did listen long enough to physically hear what they were saying, my mind had already shifted gears, and I would be processing everything throught the filter of "I'll pretend to be open-minded so this person will keep talking to me, but he's obviously just trying to get me to question my faith because he doesn't have the conviction to stick with his". I just started posting as I'm sure you can tell. I've got a lot of pent up psychic ranting that's been waiting to come out for years and years and years. Back to topic - I guess first I would wait for someone to let on that they were having, as Blondie said, some sort of cognitive dissonance, and then just tell them what my personal experience with that particular topic has been. One that happened just recently had to do with the elders(shocking, I know), and I said that "in my own experience, the elders are simply not qualified to deal with issues like major depression and suicidal and parasuicidal behavior, and in every case said they said the most damaging things possible. So out of self-preservation, I will never talk to them about anything psychological again, because it has proven itself to be infinitely more damaging than anything I could ever do to harm myself." It feels really good to talk about this stuff with people who have been there themselves and can understand it. Glad to be here. CD
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Is there a scandal here?
by NeonMadman ini've noticed the following ad popping up on some of the topic threads.
are they selling them now?
if so, does the wts get the money, and what do they do with it?
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Cognitive_Dissident
Hey, so this is my first post here. Feels good to take another definitive step away from it all. I don't know if it's a scandal, but has anyone noticed the crazy push in the last few years for Witnesses to get rid of all their old books? Usually worded in the KM something like "this month's literature offer is Blah Blah, and ANY 192 PAGE BOOK PUBLISHED PRIOR TO 1995" or whatever year. Destroy the Past and you can make up any Present you want and claim that it's always been.