Maybe this topic belonged more appropriately in "Adult and Heated Debate"? Allow me to establish something, please. I don't identify any one individual in here with my observation about dogmatism. If anything, I recognise the deficiency in myself. I think each of us has different agendas and each of us is spending time in JWN because it benefits us in different ways. Lots and lots of people are in here to heal. Some are in here to help. I am in here to learn. And what I have learned from you folks over the past 11 months has been beneficial. More than beneficial. I also think that the people in here have different objectives. Mine is to free my wife from the Watchtower, which will contribute to its downfall. I would like to live long enough to see the Watchtower come down, realising that I have a greater chance of winning the lottery (and I don't buy tickets). For others the objective is the same as the reason, and that is to heal. But please don't misunderstand me when I say to those people that it is because you have suffered you are so effective at teaching me what I want to know. I have known some Jehovah's Witnesses who are best described as rabid. It could be that the Watchtower attracts a certain pychosis and there are proportionally more wack-jobs in its ranks than in the general population, but broad brushing the entire group seems a bit much, at least from my current perspective. If I'm off base, please, please enlighten me. And relax a little.
Nickolas
JoinedPosts by Nickolas
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86
Sleeping with the enemy
by Nickolas ini have been wondering of late about the extent to which jwn's minions (one of whom i am beginning to see myself to some extent) differentiate the machine from its parts.
what i mean is, what degree of separation is discerned between the watchtower bible and tract society and its individual members?.
henry milner, who is a polical scientist at the university of montreal, posits that those who rely heavily on the internet for their information ultimately become dogmatic.
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86
Sleeping with the enemy
by Nickolas ini have been wondering of late about the extent to which jwn's minions (one of whom i am beginning to see myself to some extent) differentiate the machine from its parts.
what i mean is, what degree of separation is discerned between the watchtower bible and tract society and its individual members?.
henry milner, who is a polical scientist at the university of montreal, posits that those who rely heavily on the internet for their information ultimately become dogmatic.
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Nickolas
Same page, Donny.
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67
We recognize when posters are drinking....but I have a delicate query...
by Glander init is pretty obvious when some posters get most....animated?
it is always later in the day, cocktail hour, especially weekends.
but my question is this:.
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Nickolas
Here's the distinction I see, glander. Your question taken generally is fine, because it doesn't have a specific target. The context is that those who post whilst in their cups say stupid things. Not everyone on this board is in the habit of drinking to excess and then spouting off and those who do on a regular basis are soon recognised. Not all people are drinkers, but about half the people in here are pre-menopausal females, so it then becomes a question about whether what they post while premenstrual is stupid, too. If I was a woman (and I am thankful that I am not, because I would be an extremely ugly one) I might be inclined to respond defensively.
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86
Sleeping with the enemy
by Nickolas ini have been wondering of late about the extent to which jwn's minions (one of whom i am beginning to see myself to some extent) differentiate the machine from its parts.
what i mean is, what degree of separation is discerned between the watchtower bible and tract society and its individual members?.
henry milner, who is a polical scientist at the university of montreal, posits that those who rely heavily on the internet for their information ultimately become dogmatic.
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Nickolas
I seem to have hit a nerve, Donny. I have seen you assist admirably in here. I am sure you agree that militancy goes both ways, OUTLAW, but the Watchtower has it down to a fine art. (and I thank you sincerely for the compliment.) There are several Jehovah's Witnesses who I dislike intensely, Lady Lee, out of proportion to the number of people who rankle generally. I recognise those people in the posts I read in here about abuses of influence and power, but there are many more in my circle of importance who are indeed good people. My wife is a genuinely good person. She contributes to charities, buys and offers hot meals to homeless people she happens to meet in cities and treats everyone, Witness or otherwise, with respect, kindness and enthusiasm. She seems also capable of attracting like minded people in her cong, because those are the kinds of people she has befriended as we moved around the country. I fully acknowledge that she is rare, not only perhaps amongst Jehovah's Witnesses but generally. Mankkeli, I do not agree with you. While this latest post of yours is the most effectively articulated so far, your logic is off. The buck has to stop somewhere, and this is where it stops. That is not to say that the advisers to the GB who run the 7 committees don't have an influence on them, of course they do, but it is they and the men who they succeeded who call the shots. They are no more victims than all the men and women who were hanged at Nuremburg.
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We recognize when posters are drinking....but I have a delicate query...
by Glander init is pretty obvious when some posters get most....animated?
it is always later in the day, cocktail hour, especially weekends.
but my question is this:.
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Nickolas
Will a gif do instead?
PMS exists, as much as mood swings in men exist. Show me one man who claims never to have been influenced by his own testosterone and I will show you a eunuch. Estrogen is a bit of a dilly, too. I have found, through decades of experience, that the antidote to PMS is acknowledgement that it is real and just moving on. Intelligent women know this too and do not as a consquence demonstrate some of the behaviours associated with PMS. They, for all intents and purposes, don't have it, even when they could have it.
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86
Sleeping with the enemy
by Nickolas ini have been wondering of late about the extent to which jwn's minions (one of whom i am beginning to see myself to some extent) differentiate the machine from its parts.
what i mean is, what degree of separation is discerned between the watchtower bible and tract society and its individual members?.
henry milner, who is a polical scientist at the university of montreal, posits that those who rely heavily on the internet for their information ultimately become dogmatic.
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Nickolas
I have been wondering of late about the extent to which JWN's minions (one of whom I am beginning to see myself to some extent) differentiate the machine from its parts. What I mean is, what degree of separation is discerned between the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society and its individual members?
Henry Milner, who is a polical scientist at the University of Montreal, posits that those who rely heavily on the internet for their information ultimately become dogmatic. He states specifically that such users "are interested in fewer subjects and have more extreme views on those subjects." There is a flavour of that in here. As a context to the question above, I wonder how many of us who post in here belong to and contribute to other, unrelated forums and how many spend a lot of their waking time in just this one.
But I'm wandering off topic. My feelings and perspectives towards the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society are decidedly negative. If I am to personalise those negatives it would be in the names of Samuel Herd, Geoffrey Jackson, M. Stephen Lett, Gerrit Lösch, Anthony Morris, Guy H. Pierce and David H. Splane. My antipathy toward these men is real, though I have never met them, though I have read very little of what they have to say. But I know them through their works because their works are those of the Watchtower. I accuse them and their predecessors of hypocrisy, hubris and capriciousness. I accuse these men of causing the deaths of innocents through their nonsensical policies on vaccination, organ transplant and blood transfusion. I accuse them and their predecessors of causing the rape and murder in Malawi for want of an official piece of paper while simulaneously winking at parallel practices in Mexico. I accuse them of causing millions to squander their lives waiting for an Armageddon that will never come. I accuse them of tearing apart families through their disfellowshipping and shunning policies and I accuse them of fostering and encouraging such outcomes through their practice of child baptism. On down the line of the power structure of the Society, I accuse Don Adams, the Committee heads and members, the branch office committee members, the travelling overseers, the elders and the ministerial servants of decreasing degrees of complicity in the crimes committed by the Governing Body.
But here I draw the line. I have had unsatisfactory secular experiences with a small number of Jehovah's Witnesses. Against the frequency of similar experiences generally, the ratio seems about right. I have had a great many unsatisfactory experiences of a non-secular nature with Jehovah's Witnesses as well, but that is a function of the frequencey of exposure as well as my own flawed approach to these interacations. Substitute the Jehovah's Witness flavour with some other fundamentalist religious group and it would be the same. But I have had a great many satisfactory secular experiences with individual Jehovah's Witnesses too, many of whom are well aware that I am atheist and who, outwardly at least, seem to respect it. They will not talk to me about matters of faith, so they have drawn lines in the sand too, but neither do they prosthelytise. They are, in other words, just people to me. But it is apparent to me that there are some of us in here who see them as the enemy. I have been guilty of that too, but no longer. I do not see the rank and file as the enemy. I, in fact, sleep with one.
The Watchtower is the enemy. Without the rank and file the Watchtower crumbles. If you loathe the Watchtower and long to see it dismantled then it is counterintuitive to treat its individual members as the enemy, because that succeeds only in entrenching them and it will not, under any circumstances, influence them toward a more balanced perspective of reality.
The next time a Jehovah's Witness knocks at your door will be an opportunity to cause damage to the Watchtower and your most effective weapon will be reasonableness and courtesy. Rather than debate, which you already know you will lose to cognitive dissonance, aim to plant a small seed of doubt. In your everyday associations with Jehovah's Witnesses who are within your personal circle of concern do the same, then patiently and lovingly nurture it in hopes that it will sprout. It may not, but it is a better strategy than most, if not all, alternatives.
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67
We recognize when posters are drinking....but I have a delicate query...
by Glander init is pretty obvious when some posters get most....animated?
it is always later in the day, cocktail hour, especially weekends.
but my question is this:.
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Nickolas
That was an interesting conversation you had in this thread, ziddina and sizemik. Kind of stalled the dialogue a little, though. You both make very good points but zid's argument struck me as the more emotional while sizemik's the more cerebral. And I would not have expected anything different. Both are legitimate avenues one could take to prevail in an argument or debate and both have their place. The extent to which ziddina's posts touched a nerve with me vs sizemik's eloquent affirmation of what I already know or believe compels me to give the nod to zid. I hadn't thought of things in quite the way you expressed them and for me that was a bit of a positive paradigm shift, and if there is one thing I thoroughy enjoy in life it is a positive paradigm shift. Thank you. Be assured there are gentle men as well as gentlemen out there. I cannot even imagine what life was like for you with both parents bipolar and brainwashed by the Watchtower. It is quite apparent that it didn't crush you, so it has to have made you stronger.
Men really are stupid.
Some of us are. Some of us aren't. Those of us who aren't look askance at being generalised, just as we regard the negative generalisation of women as inappropriate - vis the subject of this thread.
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Finding peace
by Nickolas inthis is for those of you who are familiar with my periodic rants about being married to a jehovah's witness.
you won't be seeing any more of them.. my wife and i were up before dawn on friday and spent the entire day on our boat, trolling 10 miles from shore and talking.
we talked about our lives together, the ground we've covered in the 40 years since we met as university freshmen.
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Nickolas
Moving on.
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31
Finding peace
by Nickolas inthis is for those of you who are familiar with my periodic rants about being married to a jehovah's witness.
you won't be seeing any more of them.. my wife and i were up before dawn on friday and spent the entire day on our boat, trolling 10 miles from shore and talking.
we talked about our lives together, the ground we've covered in the 40 years since we met as university freshmen.
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Nickolas
Now a week since that boat ride. We're going out again at dawn and it just doesn't matter if we catch any fish or not because we're going to be together. Nothing else matters. It has been a wonderful week for both of us. I almost feel as if I am, we are, waking up after a few decades of perceiving reality separately and in abstraction. I suppose it's all an abstraction, anyway. My perception is this: we are all of us in a slip stream heading into eternity and our time together is infinitesimally small. Before we know it, it will be gone. All these people who love us and who are riding along with us are precious beyond understanding, no matter what we or they believe to be reality. We're all wrong, anyway, so what does it matter?
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Awake! November 2011 - correct cover
by processor inthere was an error on the latest awake!
cover.
here is the correct version.. .
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Nickolas
Very cool, unshackled.
How are you liking that?
Odd, but I thought I had already answered your question, simon17, but I see it is not here. Hmmm. Anyway, I'm just into the book and will reserve final comment on it for later.