i found this to be a thought-provoking film on the trend in higher education.. oubliette drew my attention to a brilliant article recently called "the coddling of the american mind".
please have a look at the film, click the link and check out the links in the article.
i would love to hear your thoughts.. ...
I have not watched this yet, however in my experience, extreme leftists are rare. Those with left leaning views tend to avoid herd mentality inherently. There are always exceptions though.
The MO of the right is all about ideology, and they tend to look for these one-offs and exploit them as a diversion tactic.
d4g
despite claims to the contrary, there's no guarantee the watchtower will be around in a few decades time.
and it seems to me there's ever mounting evidence that the opposite may well be true.
but it's not just that recruitment is down and their defectors are up.
If you look around the world, all religion is becoming very polarized. Society is evolving, and some religions, (like the RC church), are slowly beginning to evolve with society progressively, (I am an atheist, so not defending the RC, although the modern version of the RC is quite docile), while the more fundamentalist ones, (radical Islam, Evangelical Protestant, JW, Orthodox Judaism, etc.), are becoming more extreme and out of touch with the rest of society.
A positive feedback loop is what we are seeing. As society evolves, (and this is happening much faster with the aid of modern technology), more people are becoming less religious. The fundamentalist type religions are responding to this with varying levels of extremism, pushing the moderates either away from religion entirely, or they become extreme themselves. What is left religiously is even more extreme, and this further pushes existing moderates out, etc. This is not a stable situation and will become unhinged for many religious groups in the coming years, not just JW.
d4g
congregations get an annual letter that tells what can be ordered for literature (it's mainly a list of audio cds/dvds for the deaf), but this time it included publications that will be discontinued, and this included the isaiah's prophecy book and the reasoning book, and i think i saw the draw close to jehovah book.
i meant to take a picture of the letter but forgot.
the branch is only going to give what they have on stock, when that stock depletes that's it, you won't be able to order those publications anymore.. this is in canada so i don't know if this is worldwide..
kramer-its hardly trying to rewrite or destroy the past. They are just stopping printing some books.If they were really trying to destroy the past they would do things like tell congregation libraries to destroy all books past a certain age, or encourage publishers only to keep stuff x years old.
How is stopping printing some things trying to erase a history??
Naive.
It's called revisionist history, and the WT, as well as all authoritarian regimes are masters at it.
d4g
speaking for my self, no way in hell.. this question to see if you really have been deprogramed,.
do you 100% believe it is not the truth.. a fourth of the world hit by a nuclear attack..
In a word, no, however this is probably not a good example scenario.
9/11 for example, certainly forced some people back, (my cousin who was DF for 8 years and a coke head at the time was one of them). An event of great significance, but not catastrophic to humanity, one such as 9/11 or worse, would probably force those who are not convinced 100% JW is not the "truth", to go back. If you look at some older threads here from 2001, there were some here who did exactly that.
I am not one of those people.
d4g
i have attended only one meeting in the past 3 weeks.
i know there is no way to leave this cult fast enough, but is my fade too fast?
Cold turkey works most of the time. Contrary to popular belief, even with family in it can be done. You just need to keep low key overall in that case.
d4g
i don't know whether to laugh or weep.
us town rejects solar panels amid fears they 'suck up all the energy from the sun'...... jane mann, a retired science teacher, said she was concerned the panels would prevent plants in the area from photosynthesizing, stopping them from growing.
ms mann said she had seen areas near solar panels where plants are brown and dead because they did not get enough sunlight.
lrkr-Be careful not to judge one state by one moron living there.
I agree with you lrkr, however there exists a real oxymoronic position that states like NC take with being both very scientific and progressive in nature, (i.e. home of Duke University and Research Triangle), and yet at the same time have very regressive policies towards public education, alternative energy, and a plethora of other social and fiscal issues.
d4g
don't know if anyone else caught this subtle but malicious photo from the 12/13/15 wt study article.. not sure how to post pictures here, but the photo is on the website's copy of the article, just below paragraph 12:.
http://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/w20151015/give-us-more-faith/.
note the 3 pictures in sequence tell a "story":.
WT does not place anything in their photos, (worthy of notice), without a reason. The dog being shown in the first picture, and absent in the latter ones tells the story indeed, as does the sad look of anticipated loss in the child's body language.
Manipulative, cold, uncaring, bastards.
d4g (It took me a day to cool off and comment on this one...)
i don't know whether to laugh or weep.
us town rejects solar panels amid fears they 'suck up all the energy from the sun'...... jane mann, a retired science teacher, said she was concerned the panels would prevent plants in the area from photosynthesizing, stopping them from growing.
ms mann said she had seen areas near solar panels where plants are brown and dead because they did not get enough sunlight.
Not unless you attend an expensive, private research university...
d4g
been catching up on some jw reading and found a gem in the november study wt in the first article, paragraph #11:.
yet, you might look beyond the obvious and ask yourself, does my child enjoy the ministry or only the breaks?
if you discern that the ministry could be more interesting or more rewarding for your children, set goals with them.
On in WT land would a fake smile like that be considered a good thing. I have seen a more believable smile on a used car salesman.
d4g
in this age of violence with the san bernardino and france massacres sometimes it's good to reflect on the wise words of the peace advocates among us who proposed a better solution in bringing a more civil society to our universe.
john lennon, martin luther king jr. - people who stood up for equal rights and world peace and denounced violence and war - no matter how that violence occurs.
please feel free to comment on stories of john lennon on this thread and feel free to post any you tubes of his music that you may have enjoyed through the years.
Great thread...not much to add.
Yes, the man made personal mistakes, and that is the point. We all do/did. What he believed in was greater than what most humans are capable of doing by themselves as individuals, but in aggregate is the very thing that allows humanity to advance.
R.I.P. John
Jason
