Actually my post did make sense. Guy goes camping in woods where large bears may pose a threat to him. He is reasonably (rationally) fearful of them. Therefore he gets a bunch of weapons and traps so that he has the advantage. He has removed their threat not his fear of them (which I think is a reasonable thing to do). I too have gone camping where we had a bear (a black bear, not really a predator upon humans), enter our site and raid our cooler. It made it very difficult to sleep for the remainder of our stay as every noise outside of the tent brought about an increased heart rate and a vivid imagination. It wasn't an irrational fear in my opinion. Would a firearm have made me feel safer? Yeah. Would having the firearm that made me feel safer mean I wasn't nervous about camping in the woods? No. If I wasn't afraid I wouldn't need the firearm. Nothing wrong with a rational fear. Nothing wrong with protecting yourself from the rational fear, either. Does carrying a firearm when I go into the woods mean I have conquered my fear of going into the woods? Hell no. It means I have a rational fear of going into the woods unarmed, therefore I have brought along the means to defend myself from the rational fear. That doesn't earn me a medal. It merely evens out the playing field.
riverofdeceit
JoinedPosts by riverofdeceit
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80
A Night In The Woods...
by Justice-One ini just got back from a trip designed to conquer a fear.
i have always been afraid to camp by myself in the deep woods, and last week i set out to change that.
next night.
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20
World Trade Center, Opinions? Was OK, but great recruitment film.
by Wasanelder Once ini thought the movie was well presented.
the drama of the two men trapped was engaging.
the only problem is that it seemed like they were the center of the whole event.
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riverofdeceit
Either Dubya is a complete moron, or he is a mastermind. He can't have both orchestrated an event like this, and be a total idiot. I suspect he is somewhere in the middle.
You are an absolute MORON. To even entertain such a thing. Go down to the sewers and join the other brain dead idiots.I'm not sure if you're serious or or just being sarcastic. By the way that is you quoting me and then me quoting you. But just in case you are being serious, I don't believe he is a total moron or a mastermind. I'm just pointing out the problem with the far left conspiracy theorists who claim he is an idiot zealot and at the same time had something to do with flying planes into the WTC and gotten away with it. They can't have it both ways, can they? Maybe it is just me.
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37
Rain before Noah's flood
by monkeyshine indoes anyone know the current thought on what happened before the flood?
i remember being taught that it never rained before the flood but now they are telling me that was never taught.
i thought i remembered a quote somewhere saying something to the effect of "can you imagine how the outsiders must have felt feeling those first drops of rain?
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riverofdeceit
yeah, like I said, I've had a few drinks and I ramble. My thoughts were focused on the many recent posts about the far fetched ideas of the flood and such. Sorry bout that. But yeah, like I said, I do think I remember being told that there had never been rain before then, so it isn't just you. Of course, when you are a JW, just because something isn't an official teaching of the wbts doesn't mean it isn't told to you with that disclaimer.
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80
A Night In The Woods...
by Justice-One ini just got back from a trip designed to conquer a fear.
i have always been afraid to camp by myself in the deep woods, and last week i set out to change that.
next night.
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riverofdeceit
First off, I am not saying that you should not go camping in the woods. I am only addressing the fear part. What you are basically saying is that you conquered your fear. I submit that you have not. Are you still afraid of bears and cougars? It depends on whether or not you have ample protection from them. Is your fear a rational one. Without a weapon, a bear that saw you as a threat or as food would probably win. Does carrying said weaponry with you make you brave? Not in my opinion. You deliberately put yourself in what you claim is harms way just to say you did it. If I were afraid of getting hit by a train but decided that it was a stupid thing to be afraid of because I never walked on tracks that would be irrational. Now imagine I go out of my way to walk on the tracks but I follow certain rules to avoid being hit by a train. Fine. Now imagine that instead of avoiding a front by that train I decide that the train will not stand a chance with me, and so I put something on the tracks (that I had no business being on) that if a train were to come by it would derail. Does that make sense?
This aint got shit to do with your JW father, but explain to me how this sounds like him.
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80
A Night In The Woods...
by Justice-One ini just got back from a trip designed to conquer a fear.
i have always been afraid to camp by myself in the deep woods, and last week i set out to change that.
next night.
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riverofdeceit
I have to say that I do find some issues with your post. Setting up a campsite with all sorts of firearms and trip wires doesn't seem to be conquering any sort of irrational fear. Perhaps derfending yourself from a rational fear, yes, but not an irrational fear. If these said bears and cougars pose a rational threat to your welfare and you are in a situation that requires you to be within their striking distance (although it seems unlikely), then perhaps you could justify setting up traps to protect yourself from them would be acceptable. However, voluntarily putting yourself in harms way for no apparent reason other than to say you did it, in my opinion, does not justify causing harm to innocents. I understand and have no issue with killing an animal for food, but to enter their domain and kill them with a gun just because you can makes no sense to me.
I have an irrational fear of spiders. My wife has to remove them from the house if I see them. If she does not do so in a timely manner I will destroy them. Do they actually pose a threat to me? Probably not. But my fear won't allow me to capture them alive and set them outside. This is my agreement with her. I would not however, walk into the woods and set myself in the midst of a bunch of spiders with the purpose of killing them in their homes. If I see a spiders web I would do all there is to avoid it but if there were a spider that somehow found its way on me than I would freak out and who knows what would happen.
Anyhow, (orgive me as I ramble), I don't see the need to conquer a rational fear, and conquering an irrational fear is not done by setting up booby traps for it.
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12
Why is it we can't let go and get on?
by restrangled indear all,.
why can we not get on with our lives and let go of what we have all been through?
why are we all still so angry and frustrated?
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riverofdeceit
As long as the wbts is still alive there will be people around to fight against it. I see nothing wrong with that. While it may not still have control over most of us we know what it is doing to those with whom are still inside. It is like... shit, lets us an "illustration". I haven't had to use one in a while. Think of women who have gotten out of an abusive relationship with a husband. Sometimes they decide to put forth the effort to help other women in the same circumstances. Does this mean that they are still being abused by there previous husbands (boyfriends, etc.)? Of course not. But they recognize that many people don't know they still have a choice to leave the abusive relationship. (Crap, I am preaching to myself here. I always get pissed at women who stay in abusive relationships and wonder why they don't just leave). Anyhow, I am rambling and it might be because I have had a few drinks with some friends, so please excuse my lack of an "outline" and other proper writing stuff that I am ignoring.
Think of slaves who have been released or escaped who have decided to try to help other slaves become free. Maybe in order to do that they have to point out the flaws of the master. Maybe they just have to tell there stories. Whatever it is, sometimes letting go and moving on would be ignoring who and why we are. How else to explain to others (and maybe encourage ourselves) other than pointing out what we have been through and what others are still going through? This is something we have escaped. Imagine a concentration camp. Now imagine you have escaped from one. Now imagine that said concentration camp is still in operation. Should you just let it go? What about those still imprisoned? What about those who may soon become victims of it? While that is indeed an extreme illustration and I don't want to sound unfair to those that have indeed decided to forget the past and just "move on" with their lives, some of us have decided that we need to do more, even it just means taking pot shots at the JW religion.
Did that make any sense?
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37
Rain before Noah's flood
by monkeyshine indoes anyone know the current thought on what happened before the flood?
i remember being taught that it never rained before the flood but now they are telling me that was never taught.
i thought i remembered a quote somewhere saying something to the effect of "can you imagine how the outsiders must have felt feeling those first drops of rain?
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riverofdeceit
I would like to add, however, that I too seem to remember being told at some point, that it had never rained before the flood. ( I don't remember that it was an official teaching or not)
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37
Rain before Noah's flood
by monkeyshine indoes anyone know the current thought on what happened before the flood?
i remember being taught that it never rained before the flood but now they are telling me that was never taught.
i thought i remembered a quote somewhere saying something to the effect of "can you imagine how the outsiders must have felt feeling those first drops of rain?
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riverofdeceit
I appreciate the question. I have to point out the problem with it. You are either preaching to the choir or it is falling upon deaf ears. This is not a question that would help a JW anymore than it would help any other bible based belief system. You are forgetting the one important factor. With God (the f*cking supermagician), anything is possible. Vemomous animals being gathered up, fish(all sea creatures) needing a certain type of water- freshwater, saltwater, etc...even certain percentages of salt in the water, 50 billion different species of animals (or however many there are) being gathered up and put on a boat.), plants needing sunlight even thought the sun was created after plants... they are all explained away by the
magicpowers of God and accepted byillogical beliefsfaith. Logic is explained away bymagicGod and his superpowers. Anything is possible. -
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World Trade Center, Opinions? Was OK, but great recruitment film.
by Wasanelder Once ini thought the movie was well presented.
the drama of the two men trapped was engaging.
the only problem is that it seemed like they were the center of the whole event.
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riverofdeceit
Haven't seen the movie(I wait until dvd for all movies as I have a two year old), but as for the commentary, you can't have it both ways. Either Dubya is a complete moron, or he is a mastermind. He can't have both orchestrated an event like this, and be a total idiot. I suspect he is somewhere in the middle.While I haven't seen the film, the terrorist actions on 9/11 have indeed inspired people to join the armed forces. I personally know JWs who have told me that if they weren't disallowed from being political, they would certainly have wished to join the forces to seek revenge against the perpetrator, so I can understand why seeing said film might bring those feelings about.
Regardless, it seemed to fall into a semi-patriotic "revenge" inspiring tale. That was a turn off for me. Only because at the end there was a statement that the guy who found them went back into the marines and did two tours of Iraq as if that were the way to get revenge for 9/11. A little disengenuous to me.
edited to add that I don't see that as being disengenous. For anyone to see what happened to these innocent people, and to want to seek revenge against said perpetrators does not seem at all to be something that is "disengenous", unless they are total pacifists.
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63
What Kinds of Weird Things were you banned from or not allowed as a child?
by mama1119 ini could not have a big new kids on the block pin, or wear any new kids on the block pins in puplic becuase it was considered idolatry.
i also could not wear my shoes without laces (it was cool back then) because it looked wordly.
what other strange theings besides the usual holiday/birthday stuff weren't you allowed to do?
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riverofdeceit
squirt guns. Candy cigarettes.(pixie sticks were ok though)