a person years ago made a comment to me, about witnesses.
they said that in their opinion, being a witness brought out the extreme in a person.. for example, if they were untrusting, they would trust less.. if they were vindictive by nature, they would become more hateful and vindictive.. if they were kind and loving, they would even be more so.. basically, whatever type of person they were, being a witness would intensify that persona.. have you found that to be true?
maybe you knew someone before they came a witness.
"denigrate emotional spontanaeity...engenders mistrust and even paranoia...downplayng of indivuduality and attainment particularly heathful to the development of emotional maturity."
And yet, I would say that being a JW has brought out the BEST in me, despite the odds.
Perhaps any organization to which we gravitate only brings out of us what we already are inside???
if i had ever been a victim of abuse, and the offence had been perpetrated by a member of the jw religion, then silent lambs would be the best thing ever to appear, both on tv and in person.. if i had a close friend or relative who had gone through the same trauma, then i would feel almost the same emotion.. now i do not know, obviously, what percentage of persons on this site have been victims of abuse by jw's, but my guess is that this percentage is relatively small.
so whilst most of us feel very empathetic to abuse victims, not that great a proportion of us have experienced it personally.. however, i do know that many of us have suffered trauma because of other forms of abuse by this organisation, including disfellowshipping which has caused many to be rejected by their loved ones.
whilst it is not possible to measure this form of abuse against that of child abuse, it is nonetheless a type of abuse that most of us are familiar with on a personal level, it's also a type of abuse that is still going on for many who post here.
I have deliberately avoided the vast majority of threads and posts on the BB/RF/SL/JWD/etcetcetc issue...and therefore may well be missing some nuances here.
IMHO, as the saying goes: A man is as a man does...
Getting all settled in here...sort of Katie's been here for 3 weeks now, and she says that most of the boxes are unpacked (why won't she let me look into the closets?).
DON'T WOMEN EVER THROW ANYTHING AWAY???!!! roflmao
Life is good, good, very good indeed.
Better than I ever thought it would be.
And thanks to you all for being here with us, to share these wonderful times.
You KNOW what it means to us to have you as friends.
Just this week, I got my first string of Christmas lights, and hung them out on the patio. I couldn't care less about the religious connotations...I've just always liked the deep blue lights.
But I did feel a little strange at first. Now I'm used to them.
before, while in the borg, many of us were under intense indoctrination of ideas like; "live for god", "look to the new system were everything will be perfect.." .
--not in those very words but you know what i mean... .
it was a year ago today november 18, 2001 that my husband ,wildturkey , joined this forum.. it has really been a wonderful year for him, and i just wanted to thank him for introducing me and another to this site.
he and i always have such good conversations and debates,,lol, from the many things we read from here.
so here's to you wild turkey on your jwd anniversary of 1 yr.. maybe i should bake a cake,,,,,,,,,i still have some birthday candles left over....
Congrats to you BOTH! It's folks like you that make this a great place!! Well, maybe Dede more than Denny, but we have to take the bad with the good, eh?
hehe...reminds me of the first Hewlett-Packard scientific calculators that came out with the infrared ports. Original range was something like 100 feet, and students used them to transmit info back and forth during tests. Especially useful during calculus finals.
HP soon modified the transmission range to less than 20 cm.