Posts by DanTheMan

9

Looking at it through a JW's eyes..

by kelsey007 in

jw
friends

scandels and dissention were prevelant in the early christian congregations.

it was fortold that wickedness would penatrate the brotherhood as the end approached.

(so therefore they have pediphiles) given 9-11 and the threats of war and on and on and on (not to mention the hurricanes) all this only means the end is fastly approaching.

DanTheMan

Also, the WT, in its endless propaganda and mental-conditioning campaign, continually makes use of the words "endure" and "endurance". Many JW's just look at the current situation as tests from Satan, to cause them to give out in the "race to life". Everything that happens, in the world or in the congs, reinforces the mental conditioning. If bad things happen in the cong, well Satan is testing us. If good things happen in the congs? Jah's spirit is with us. The world goes to war? More evidence that we're in the last days. The world achieves peace? Ah, the long awaited cry of peace and security. Religions outside the WT prosper and grow? Satan is misleading them. Religions outside of WT lose membership? Babylon's waters are drying up. The WT prospers and grows in certains areas? Jah is blessing us. The WT stagnates and loses membership in other areas? Satan is hard at work drawing people away. Pedophiles in the congos? I don't know how they answer that one.

15

It`s "FAMILY " Month at the Watchtower

by Beans in

yes brothers and sister the focus over the next few months is how to maintain good family life.

but not only that the watchtower will also tell you why there has been such an increase in single mothers in the last few years!

as you know in the truth this does not exist as the perfect loving families can only be jehovahs witnesses.

DanTheMan

Yep, the boys in writing have been hard at work the past year preparing for this. The painful thing is, is that unless you're a fool, you realize that most if not all of the ideas and admonishments that they put in these cheesy family-values articles are practically plagiarized from the latest pop-psychology books. Then they throw a few scriptural references to give it a religious tone.

But watch out for those worldy psychologists and philosophers, you know they are post-Armageddon birdfeed!

12

my dumb boring JW experience

by DanTheMan in

i gave a very brief version of my wt experience when i was a newbie here, but i thought i'd share the details a little more now that i've gained some distance and feel that i can post more objectively about it.

i was born in november of 1970. i grew up in a dysfunctional family (like everybody).

my mother was particularly controlling, she was extremely insecure and therefore expected perfection from her children, lest they reflect badly on her and cause her to doubt herself.

DanTheMan

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I was in a very contemplative mood today at work, I shared a lot of myself with that post, and it got me thinking about my life.

One thing I forgot to mention was that after the 2001 DC, I couldn't stop thinking about how Jesus said that his yoke was kindly and his load was light. More and more I came to see that the WT religion was a burdensome, man-made system that offers no real spiritual refreshment or enlightenment. I thought about the book 1984 and how in the end the protagonist sees the smile behind the moustache and falls in love with Big Brother. I felt like I was in the same situation, I was being manipulated constantly so as to love a Big Brother that inwardly I couldn't stand any more.

Dia:

Just curious, how old are you now? And what was the age difference at the time between you and Sheila?

I think Sheila was a couple of years younger than me. I'll be 32 in November. I'm going to make up for lost time with this years B-Day!

If you'd really enjoy a self-awareness adventure (that is very positive and not heavy-handed or superficially critical at all), take a look at the "New Personality Self-Portrait; Why You Think, Work, Love and Act the Way You Do" by Oldham.

Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out.

By the way, who's the author you quoted? What did he write?

Eric Hoffer was a self-educated philosopher who wrote some very interesting books, his most famous being The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, it is a book about the psychology of fanatical mass-movements. Here is a link that contains a bio and some quotes:

http://www.freedomsnest.com/hoffer.html

Once again, thank you all for your kind replies.

12

my dumb boring JW experience

by DanTheMan in

i gave a very brief version of my wt experience when i was a newbie here, but i thought i'd share the details a little more now that i've gained some distance and feel that i can post more objectively about it.

i was born in november of 1970. i grew up in a dysfunctional family (like everybody).

my mother was particularly controlling, she was extremely insecure and therefore expected perfection from her children, lest they reflect badly on her and cause her to doubt herself.

DanTheMan

Hi All,

I gave a very brief version of my WT experience when I was a newbie here, but I thought I'd share the details a little more now that I've gained some distance and feel that I can post more objectively about it.

I was born in November of 1970. I grew up in a dysfunctional family (like everybody). My mother was particularly controlling, she was extremely insecure and therefore expected perfection from her children, lest they reflect badly on her and cause her to doubt herself. She adored me as long as I was the exact person that she expected me to be. When I was a teenager, I tried to assert a little of my own independence, tried to establish my own identity some, and she freaked. It was like she wanted me to be her cheery little 10 year old straight A student forever. My teenage years were miserable, constant fighting with my mom, involvement with drugs, and increasing anxiety and depression as the years went on. In a total reversal from my early years, I barely graduated from High School, often scoring C's, D's, and F's. I was completely unmotivated, I never did homework, the only thing that saved me was that I was good at taking tests.

My dad didn't play a big part in my upbringing, he and my mom were married until I was 16 but he never took much interest in me. He had a terrible temper, and although he was not physically abusive often, I took some punishment for sure. Especially when I started smoking when I was 14, it was like World War III in my house, it really got ugly. But I was so determined to defy them that I eventually won out, they allowed the smoking, as long as I did it outside.

I don't diss my parents now (I sure hated them then), as I realize that they too were raised in crazy families and therefore they didn't know how to be good encouraging parents. It is sad that so many of us are the offspring of persons who have no clue how to raise kids.

After High School, I drifted from job to job and had no real direction at all. One result of my f*cked-up teenagerhood was that I developed a very pessimistic and hopeless outlook. My good friend used to joke with me that I hated everything, and it was probably true. I contemplated suicide often, but I never had a good plan or the balls to pull it off. I'm not a big anti-gun person, but I'm sure glad that I didn't have access to a handgun during those difficult years.

I got tired of the drug scene (marijuana had ceased bringing me any sort of pleasure for some time, all it did was make me paranoid and "spaced-out". The "spaced-out" effect brought me much ridicule from my so-called friends at the time, and I increasingly became the target of vicious teasing. Every drug crowd that I've ever known has their whipping boy, and in my crowd, I was it, BIG-TIME.)

I got tired of the abuse so I said "later" to that scene and started attending drug-abuse recovery meetings (Narcotics Anonymous). But, I was just a recovering pot-smoker who looked about 17 years old (even though I was 21) and here I was with these hardcore dopers who had spent many years of their adult lives living the life of a street addict. I didn't relate to them, nor they to me, and soon I became somewhat uncomfortable at the meetings. It was right at this time that JW's came into the picture.

I started talking to a girl (I will henceforth call her Sheila, but that is not her real name) who I was in class with at Community College. I usually was way too insecure to hit on girls, but she seemed weak and vulnerable. I got her phone # and called her one night. She proceeded to tell me her story. Her mom and dad had been JW's in the 1970's, but left due to a falling out with the elders. Then her dad left them and moved to Michigan. Her mom had remarried, and now mom, stepdad, and Sheila were studying with the JW's. At the time Sheila was a ball of fire for the troof. We must have talked for 4 hours that night, and I was absolutely fascinated with this religion she was telling me about. We dated some (though it never blossomed into anything) and she gave me the Paradise, Creation, Greatest Man, and several other books, I devoured them as quickly as she gave them to me. I especially enjoyed the Creation book, I thought that it was the most fascinating book I had ever read, and it convinced me that evolution was completely baseless and false.

I started attending meetings with her and I fell in love, head over heels, completely, with JWism. I gulped down that KoolAid like I was dying of thirst. The teaching that attracted me the most was Armageddon. I had developed a strong nihilistic streak before I started studying JWism, and the idea of God destroying all the modern-day governments sounded like the best idea I had ever heard.

I look back at that time in my life and realize that I was so naive, and so desperate to surrender my will to a better mother than the one who had raised me, so desparate for something to grab on to. I think a few Hoffer quotes are in order, as they apply to me so well:

There is apparently some connection between dissatisfaction with oneself and proneness to credulity. The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They asked to be deceived.

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.

In man's life, the absence of an essential component usually leads to the adoption of a substitute. The substitute is usually embraced with vehemence and extremism, for we have to convince ourselves that what we took as second choice is the best there ever was. Thus blind faith is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves; insatiable desire a substitute for hope; accumulation a substitute for growth; fervent hustling a substitute for purposeful action; and pride a substitute for an unattainable self-respect.

There is in most passions a shrinking away from ourselves. The passionate pursuer has all the earmarks of a fugitive.

Much of Hoffer's work applies to me, but I think the above quotes are enough to make my point. At 22, I was a miserable, hopeless person who hated everbody and everything, and most of all I hated myself. JW's gave me just what I needed - a fanatical holy cause to totally submerge myself in so as to forget about my hated self.

I started studying with an 18 year old Pioneer from the congregation who's territory I lived in. I made rapid progress and was baptized in less than a year. Sheila also was baptized, but she quickly faded and has not been involved with JW's for many years. I would love to get in contact with her again, but I don't know how to. I hope she comes to this board someday.

This is where things get uninteresting. I don't really have much to say about my years as a JW. I started out at a somewhat wealthy congregation. I soon became uncomfortable there, as I was not wealthy, and I was not comfortable at all with the young "raised in the truth" crowd that I was so often relegated to, since I was not married. I was always being stumbled over something. The attitudes and behavior of many JW's gave me far more cognitive dissonance than I was capable of handling, since during my study and early association I had romanticized JW's as being the most ideal people on the earth (I think this is the way the GB sees JW's too, hence the denial of the pedo situation). But, it was always me that was the problem, I just needed to realize that even though this is God's organization, that it was comprised of imperfect people (tm). That sort of stop-thought only worked some of the time. Most of the time, I just couldn't believe the things I saw and heard. I remember thinking, "God is going to destroy everybody except THESE people???"

It wasn't until after I was baptized that I attended my first memorial. I remember thinking afterwards, "All that buildup for this?" I was embarrassed by it, everybody passing the emblems without taking them. The memorial was always a source of cognitive dissonance for me, I never looked forward to JW's annual rejection of Jesus, even though it was supposed to be the main event in our theocratic calendar. I thought it was the most boring and embarrassing meeting, a bunch of hype over nothing!

I was "Brother Struggling". I was always going to the elders with this or that problem. Several studies were conducted with me over the years, and I also had numerous CO visits to try to encourage me. You see, I was smart, I gave great talks, and they desperately wanted me to get the other aspects of JWism together so that they could give me more "privileges". But I never did get it all together, and felt unending guilt as a result. After every assembly or convention, I would think to myself, "I'm really going to get it together this time. I'm going to study and meditate and go out in service and pray and boy am I gonna be a killer J-Dub." This usually lasted for all of 3 days or so, then it was back to the normal routine. As the years went by, the elders saw that I wasn't "progressing", and they left me alone.

Then I changed congregations, and the cycle repeated itself. I gave a couple of good talks in the TMS, and the elders started paying me all kinds of attention, but they soon realized that wild horses couldn't drag me out into the door-to-door work. I hated it, and generally didn't go out more than once every rour or five months, even less as time went on. They soon left me alone.

Meeting attendance had always been my top priority, it was the only aspect of JWism that I enjoyed. I liked the meetings because they got me out of my lonely life (the life I've largely returned to since leaving). But around August of 2000 I suddenly stopped attending meetings. I had become completely discouraged, as I felt so much guilt for not going out in service, and never witnessing informally to people, the only thing I did was attend meetings. I began to see my JW existence as being futile, I was never going to live up to the standards, and when Armageddon came I surely was going to get it.

However, I was not yet ready to break away. Around January 2001 I decided to give it another try, at another new congregation. Same old thing, the brothers swarmed me at first but soon found out that me and FS weren't friends. But, right away something happened at this congo that hadn't happened before. There was a sister there who was very attractive, but she was a LOT older than me. I had met her once before, at a circuit assembly. We talked a lot at the meetings, and our eye contact became more and more...well, you know. It didn't take long before things became extremely intense between us, and it totally sucked because we were absolutely f*cking crazy about each other but she was way older than me and there was no way it was going to work and we had to sneak around to be together. We had a couple of times alone together. No disfellowshipping offenses occured, but damn those moments alone with her were better than any actual sex that I've ever had. I've never had such a free exchange of affection with someone as I had with her. We were on the phone with each other day and night, talking about how much we liked each other and how terrible it was that we were never going to be together. By March 2001 I was emotionally spent, and I almost checked myself into a mental hospital. I lost my appetite, my hair was falling out, it was the worst time of my life, being in love with someone who I was never going to be able to be with. I wanted to die, but somehow I pulled myself together and we discontinued our relationship (sort of). The attraction never went away for either of us, and I died everytime I saw her at the KH.

The 2001 DC rolled around, but I wasn't looking forward to it. I knew that I was going to see all these young, attractive couples there, and here I was, as alone as ever. I was an absolute nothing in the org. It had gotten to where I was kind of a joke to a lot of JW's, and they didn't make their feelings a big secret. I was becoming, as TR put it, a "Weirdo Single 'Hovah Dude". To top it off, the sister discussed above started dating this guy who, by her own admission, she was not very attracted to. But he was "strong in the truth, and that's what really matters, right?" was how she rationalized it. She ended up marrying him, after dumping him about 10 times while they were dating.

Anyway, the 2001 DC featured the Korah drama, and as I've mentioned in other posts, this was a big turning point for me. The drama made me angry, and for the first time I really started to question whether or not I was in "the truth". The drama was so heavy-handed, and so obviously designed to instill fear, that it had the opposite effect that it was supposed to with me. I remember thinking, this is fucking ridiculous. I had had similar thoughts before, but this time I didn't fight them off and rationalize them away. That drama helped me see the man behind the curtain more clearly than I had before. I attended a few more meetings after that DC, but in the back of my mind I knew it was over. 9/11 scared me a little, but lo and behold, it didn't trigger Armageddon. January 2002 was the last time I attended a meeting. I cried as I drove home from that meeting, mourning my loss. Something that had seemed so wonderful to me at one time now had come to seem so pathetic and contrived. In March 2002, I went online and started learning the real truth. I picked up CofC, and the rest is history.

I don't regret my years as a JW, I think it was such a tremendous learning experience. I learned so much about myself, and the weaknesses that I had that made me such an easy target for the JW's. I value my intellectual freedom SO MUCH now, I can read what I want to, and express my opinions if I want to, and no stupidass religious borganization is telling me what or what not to think. I am slowly healing, from both my childhood and WT wounds, and for the first time in my life I'm starting to feel comfortable in my own skin.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

34

Am I the only 'fruit cake" here?

by Marilyn in

jw
friends

before i confess to my rediculous weakness, i just want to assure everyone that i've been out for over 20 yrs - disfed for apostasy - that's true apostasy, as i stopped believing in god.

i (& hubby) were disfed in 1981. never met another apostate or read anything apostate when we left.

thought our way out unaided.

DanTheMan

Marilyn wrote:

I believe my conversion to dubdom was very emotive. I was influenced by an ideal of what I thought they represented

I couldn't have put it better if I tried. When I was studying Watchtowerism, I totally idealized JW's, I thought I had found a people who had discovered Utopia. It didn't take too long after I was baptized to start noticing that not everything was as hunky-dorey in WT land as I thought at first. But they lay all this stuff on you constantly about how you shouldn't complain, shouldn't question Jerhover's arrangement, shouldn't let your bro stumble you, over and over. The bottom-line of all these "reminders" is, is that if you have any beef with anything in the Org, then you are the problem, you are the one that needs to be readjusted. This guilt tactic was very effective in keeping me in and unthinking long after I saw how flocked-up things were.

I feel the pull, too, the mindless existence of being a JW is comforting, and how nice it would be if it were all true. But once you know the truth about the truth, how can you go back? Everytime my mind starts to go down that road, it doesn't take too long for me to remember what it was really like, and I come back to reality.

Edited by - dantheman on 29 September 2002 9:26:1

23

The future of this site

by DanTheMan in

jw
friends

i just took a look at h2o, which of course was the pioneering internet jw discussion board.

at one time, it was the place.

then this site came along, and nowadays people on h2o are debating whether there is any point in the continued existence of that site:.

DanTheMan

onacruse:

thanks for the link to that thread - Farkel's "A Day for A Year, I Need A Beer" post had me falling out of my chair laughing. Every newbie here should get to see classics like that (which was the point of my post, I never would have found that if you hadn't provided that link).

Dutchie:

yes, these are exciting times. "Friends, could those of us who are alive today live to see the end of this wicked Watchtower system of things?" lol

LB:

I don't miss some of the "legend-in-their-own-mind" posters who no longer post here either. See ya, bye, don't let the door hit ya on your way out.

Simon:

I agree with you totally, everybody should feel comfortable posting here. Not everybody is going to post a Doctoral Thesis everyday on how the WT is wrong about this, that, and the other. This place is like a party, if you go over to one corner, you might find some people talking about more serious things, but another crowd might be discussing something trivial and silly. Yes, it is all about people, not a few petty egos.

BluesBrother:

I don't think this site is failing, but I do think that a certain degree of vigilance and creativity needs to be maintained in order for this site to stay fresh and relevant.

23

The future of this site

by DanTheMan in

jw
friends

i just took a look at h2o, which of course was the pioneering internet jw discussion board.

at one time, it was the place.

then this site came along, and nowadays people on h2o are debating whether there is any point in the continued existence of that site:.

DanTheMan

I never rate threads (maybe I should) and it seems to me like that "Top Rated" thread section isn't all that it could be. If you go just a few pages back, you get into some very uninteresting threads that don't seem to belong in a "best thread" section.

Maybe Simon could use his own discretion in going back through the archives and compiling a "Greatest Threads" section. And we could bug him (nicely) to add threads that we think belong, or take threads off that we don't feel belong there.

23

The future of this site

by DanTheMan in

jw
friends

i just took a look at h2o, which of course was the pioneering internet jw discussion board.

at one time, it was the place.

then this site came along, and nowadays people on h2o are debating whether there is any point in the continued existence of that site:.

DanTheMan

I never clicked on the "rated" link before - I didn't know what it was. I guess my post looks pretty dumb now!

23

The future of this site

by DanTheMan in

jw
friends

i just took a look at h2o, which of course was the pioneering internet jw discussion board.

at one time, it was the place.

then this site came along, and nowadays people on h2o are debating whether there is any point in the continued existence of that site:.

DanTheMan

I just took a look at H2O, which of course was the pioneering internet JW discussion board. At one time, it was THE place. Then this site came along, and nowadays people on H2O are debating whether there is any point in the continued existence of that site:

I was thinking what is happening over there could happen to this site. It seems to me that there isn't a whole lot new under the JWD sun these days. Most posts are either fluff, personal experiences, or they're about the Pedo situation. Even YouKnow has disappeared (though I'm sure he'll be hitting us with a BIG one sometime soon), and an appearance by AlanF or a person of similar high intellect is a rarity. This is still the premier site, but for how much longer?

Maybe it would be Simon's place to ask questions such as these, but I was wondering, what sort of things could be done to keep this site fresh? There are SOO many threads to dig through that a newbie to this site would have a tough time finding some of the more meaty threads from the past.

One suggestion I was thinking of is to create a greatest hits section, a section of threads with a minimum of 750 views (or however many is deemed appropriate), displayed in descending order by number of views. This would bring some of the older interesting threads that are buried DEEP in the archives up to where they would be more accessible, and possibly open up to further discussion. Any other ideas? I just don't want this site to suffer the same fate as H2O.

22

What's with the new Luxurious K.H's?!

by Lin in

jw
friends

i spent the better part of yesterday afternoon driving from one k.h.

to the next here in the dallas area (hey you current jw's in dallas, those lambs and flyers were from me!

) and was shocked to find the congregation i attended with my family, central/white rock, is now some oriental temple!

DanTheMan

I have seen a subtle trend towards more "posh" KHs here in Ohio, too. I think it is a silent signal that the WT is becoming more conventional. The current leadership situation is the last gasp of the Jaraczians, I think JW's will be a different breed 10 or 20 years from now than they are today. Fancier KH's, less emphasis on field service, more dubs getting college degrees, things are changing, slowly but surely.

Edited to add:

Assembly Halls especially seem to be at the fore of this trend. If you've ever been to the Stanley Theater - it is very nice. A couple of years ago the London Ohio Assembly Hall that I used to attend was revamped, I only attended one function there after the renovations, it was pretty awesome.

Edited by - dantheman on 28 September 2002 19:46:50