Posts by jasminder

124

Disgusting comment re: education from Tacoma 2007 District Convention

by Justitia Themis in

this is from saturday afternoon program.

the speaker first starts with what he called the "alphabet soup" of degrees....a.a., b.a., m.a., ph.d., etc.

; he said they were nothing more than "sheepskins on the wall.

jasminder

This is just so timely....... To use the towerspeak

I was studying with the dubs for a year... escaped just in the nick of time (seriously, I had only five pages of the Bible Teach book left). I went to last year's convention in Tacoma!! And all the while, my study conductors (and my dub boyfriend) KNEW that I was enrolled in UNIVERSITY... to get my health care degree! The animosity towards anyone with more than a high school diploma is palpable in the halls.

The hilarious part is--as at least one other person noted--they will accept these supposedl damned souls into places like Bethel! In fact one of the elders had the cajones to suggest to me that if I was still single when I graduated, I should go serve in Bethel!!! Yeah right.

I said sayonara to the whole clusterf*** about 8 months ago. My ex spent tons of time trying to convince me that dubs bore educated people and students no ill will. I hope he heard that and realized what a liar and a hypocrite the WT has turned him into. Maybe it will even make him think..... Granted, the content of the talk definitely frowns on thinking.

4

OCD in the Watchtower

by jasminder in

one of the most classic symptoms/forms of obsessive-compulsive disorder is counting--counting windows on a building, counting books on shelves, etc etc.

anyone want to comment on the witness' seeming obsession with numbers, even when they're not really applicable?

numbers of booklets printed in a month, numbers of languages published... even in booklets like the bible teach (for those of you who escaped way back in the day, the latest incarnation of the "truth...everlasting life" book).. how about the fact that elders, esp in my congregation, would so often make some comment about how close a speaker got to his target talk length "i went a minute over, i apologize.

jasminder

One of the most classic symptoms/forms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is counting--counting windows on a building, counting books on shelves, etc etc

Anyone want to comment on the witness' seeming obsession with numbers, even when they're not really applicable? Numbers of booklets printed in a month, numbers of languages published... even in booklets like the Bible Teach (for those of you who escaped way back in the day, the latest incarnation of the "Truth...Everlasting Life" book).

How about the fact that elders, esp in my congregation, would so often make some comment about how close a speaker got to his target talk length "I went a minute over, I apologize." Dude, if you're waiting on Jehovah, and you're going to live forever in a Paradise Earth, what do you care about a minute?

I always thought it was hilarious that fellow congregation members would be packing up in the last 2 minutes of a Sunday meeting. Reminded me of 2:28pm in high school. Really eager to hear Jehovah's word, that group. LOL

Has anyone else noted this general preoccupation with sheer numerical figures? And what do you think it stems from or means about the society in general?

10

Marlan Wayans father is a JW

by Kristofer in

just heard his interview on conan o'brien... .

his father was a jw..mother was a baptist.. .

thought it was hilarious...his dad told him it would explode if he touched it>

jasminder

... Not to be a prat, or anything, but I just wanted to clarify something.

Moonmanchu said Christian Scientists like to hang out in Hollywood. I think he meant scientologists.

Christian Scientists and Scientologists are two very VERY different groups. Scientologists are the ones who hang out in Hollywood and sequester their babies and have no ties to Christianity. Christian Scientists have their mother church in Boston and base a lot of their doctrine on the writings of Mary Baker Eddy.

Only reason I know this is because one of my co-workers is a Christian Scientist and while I don't agree with some of her views, she's a good person and I think values Jesus' teachings of love, peace, nonjudgment and forgiveness. We've all been the brunt of hate so I wanted to prevent it from seeping onto an "innocent bystander" group

20

Correlation between personality types and religio-spiritual leanings?

by daystar in

someone in a completely different segment of associates from you old ex-jws here posed this wish:.

i've often wished someone would do a study to see if there is a real correlation between personality type and religious/spiritual leanings.

i've long noticed that in fantasy subcultures and "new" religions, as well as those that attract many adult converts (and have trouble retaining people born into the faith), the same types keep showing up.

jasminder

Hi, Daystar

Very little actual scholarly research has been done in regards to the psychological trends of Jehovah's Witnesses, primarily because to do so requires a lot of data, especially things like statistics from psychiatric wards, private psychologists practices, suicide reports, etcetera, which are simply not there, mainly because JWs go to such lengths to avoid "worldly" disciplines like psychology. Another problem, along the same lines, is that it would be impossible to convince an adequate number of active Jehovah's Witnesses to participate in an experimental study. One could try to conduct an experiment without obtaining their consent, but this kind of research would be shot down immediately in the scholarly world as unethical.

You also have the option of trying to find enough willing ex-JWs to participate in a study, but again, you will have trouble with the validity of your hypothesis and conclusion because you'll be gathering data from those people who have left, not those who have chosen to stick it out with the WTS. Something about those with the strength to leave is fundamentally different from those who choose to stay, so the only conclusions you could draw would be about what an active JW might NOT be.

So.... that leaves you with case studies, which are fascinating, but since they are simply portraits of individuals or small groups of individuals, and don't involve any sort of hypothesizing end testing of the hypothesis' prediction, isn't scientific and can't be generalized to the larger JW population.

Not all hope is lost, though! Several very good scholarly studies in the field of sociology have been done on Jehovah's Witnesses, which might actually be more informative because anyone who has been around JWs or the WTS knows that they tend to think and act not as individuals, but as a group, and since Sociology is about studying group processes, it works!

Check out "Jehovah's Witnesses: Portait of a Contemporary Religous Movement" by Andrew Holden. It touches lightly on personality trends that the researcher noted in his field studies. It also contains a long bibliography of other great works from the past. This book is the most contemporary that I've been able to find, published I think in 2002.

Sorry to be so long-winded! Hope this helps...

18

Does anyone have experience with SYNESTHESIA?

by Nathan Natas in

jw
friends

.

i had a very interesting discussion with a genius friend of mine not long ago about the subject of synesthesia.

if you have personal or professional experience with synesthesia, drop me a line.synesthesia - a sensation produced in one modality when a stimulus is applied to another modality, as when the hearing of a certain sound induces the visualization of a certain color..

jasminder

Biggest feature of Synesthesia which a lot of people forget is that it isn't merely a intellectual feature, it's an actual wire-crossing of the senses.

A person touching a red object might comment that it felt furry to him, and totally mean it. It's a problem when people don't properly respond to stimuli, esp when it comes to communicating facts and experiences.

A couple of artists, including Scriabin the composer and Kandinsky the painter, have been suspected by medical historians of having synesthesia to some degree. This is a little more doubtful in the case of Kandinsky because he was known to belong to a school of art that concerned itself with the idea of vision/sound crossover.