Max Divergent

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Posts by Max Divergent

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  43

  Calling all Aussies and Kiwis

  by SkyGreen in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  if u don't mind saying if u r kiwi or aussie, and basic info like m/f, how long in, how long out, or if fading like me.. im female i live in aussie but born in nz fading the last few months.

  know it ain't the truth, but am married with little kids and closest family and friends all in.

  trying the slow fade and hoping my husband will do the same... being very gentle with him... .

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  Max Divergent

  Currently in SA, stopped attending meetings more than 10 years ago.
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  339

  Patterson on the line: Watchtower claims that paying cash bond would cause “immediate irreparable harm and hardship”

  by cedars in

  1. watchtower
  2. child-abuse

  a new article for those who are interested.... http://jwsurvey.org/cedars-blog/patterson-on-the-line-watchtower-claims-that-paying-cash-bond-would-cause-immediate-irreparable-harm-and-hardship.

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  cedars.

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  Max Divergent

  Season you words with salt. Draw the brothers toward a right conclusion. Do not browbeat the brothers. Offer commendation, offer suggestions, then end with commendation and encouragement. Always protect the brother's dignity when offering correction.

  These were things I was taught when I was being trained to take the lead in the congregation. They would be well applied here.

  Some have the academic training, professional experience, wide reading or general acumen to identify flaws in the author's words including issues of accuracy. But they have failed to engage the author to draw him toward the professional standard of analysis and writing they critique him against.

  These ones might have enjoyed the support and guidance of professors, supervisors and peers to attain their high skills. They have the privilege of choosing whether to engage those beginning their post-JW life with the patience, kindness and dignity they might have liked to receive when they were starting off. Or calling them liars and Watchtower stooges and challenging them to some kind of face off.

  The record shows choices made.

  Max

  Of the just say I haven’t been around long enough or have posted too much class.
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  125

  Do You Think Bag Searching Violates Your Rights?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  in view of the transit bombings, do you feel that police should be able to search you or your bags at anytime?

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  Max Divergent

  Approval of slavery is a good example of why a Bill of Rights can't be relied upon to protect our lives and freedoms.

  More thought than looking up the 4th, 13th, 9th, 1st, 5th or whichever Amendments, or turning up on a Tuesday every four years, is needed to keep us free either from an enemy who: 1) hates the Western system, and 2) understands us better than we understand them; OR from a rampent government that's quickly getting frighteningly efficient.

  Cheers, Max - who hasn't the slightest idea of how to make the subway a less attractive target, but is sure the answer isn't found in the constitution!
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  69

  NO LONGER SATISFIED AS I WAS, WITH JWD FORUM

  by outoftheorg in

  1. jw
  2. experiences

  no this is not another { i am leaving this forum }.

  it is just that i no longer am so hungry for the many posts as i once was.

  i could not wait to get home and sign on to read all the posts from newbies and the heavy hitters.

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  Max Divergent

  While I accept the point made originally by E/man essentially to the effect that posting and participating is a community service in an area where there's a need and few who can help... at the same time I can accept that 'moving on' can be an appropriate response to the experience of getting a real life too.

  I'm ignoring a crying hungry baby to write this... and over the years (since 1998 on H2O) I've preferred to do this over various other personal pursuits/obligations - many more hours than my meagre 400 posts at JWD would suggest or warrant.

  Amongst all the positives, and maybe even a tiny contribution of some sort to the community, I've also experienced the personal negative end of the spectrum - feelings of obsessiveness, compulsion, or a chain of connection to my JW past, knowledge that my personal affairs aren't all in order, but I read & write here instead of working on that stuff.... I think if someone wants to put some distance (at least for a while) between themselves and JW-ism (X or otherwise), then good for them... maybe that's part of growing apart from our pasts.

  If they're generous enough to tell us how they're feeling and what they intend, well that tells us something about the process of leaving the JW's with a DB community as a support. Not many of us have done that before.

  After mulling on it for a while, and some minor epiphany (sp?) or other, I finished the weekly shopping this morning knowing that I'd like to thank the board for the goodness and freedom and liberty its given me. I'm sure I've paid back none of that debt, but for some reason (that I can't quite figure and may not be either accepted or understood anyhow) I also felt a need to say {it's time for Max to sign off} and do Max, Anne and little Max stuff for a while.... like feed him for a start!!

  Lotsa, Max.
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  125

  Do You Think Bag Searching Violates Your Rights?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  in view of the transit bombings, do you feel that police should be able to search you or your bags at anytime?

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  Max Divergent

  Max, I have to tell you right now....I enjoyed your comment up until your use of the "N" word!

  Fair enough... an ugly, hateful word with the most awful connotations ... but it got and has retained that history despite the Bill of Rights.

  My point is a simple one - a Bill of Rights or any constitutional guarentee isn't often the best or only way to think about how to protect the most fundamental of human rights - the right to life (as in 'alive' - not bombed) in freedom and safety – because the most abhorrent abuses still happen, like those brought to mind with that racist word.

  Maybe going on the subway with a backpack is either: 1) consent to a 'random' search, or 2) 'probable cause' enough for a quick look in the bag for plastique, an Uzi or other terror weapons if Congress says it is.

  Max - of the eternal vigilance is better than slavery to rules class
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  377

  HAHA TAKE THAT U OZZIES

  by tijkmo in

  1. social
  2. entertainment

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  england 179-8. australia 79 all out in 14 overs.

  bring it on

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  Max Divergent

  Thought this was an interesting perspective... ;-)

  Down under, the playing fields of public schools have no meaning
  Simon Barnes
  July 25, 2005

  THE ASHES. The only sporting trophy in the world that is supposed to be funny. The trophy was invented as a facetious joke, a protozoic form of English sports gallows humour, without which English sport could not survive. But here's the point: Australia never got the joke. They never thought it was even remotely amusing. Thus it was that they shaped the sporting consciousness of the world.

  The Australians never really cottoned on to the idea that sport was a way in which gentlemen amused themselves. They had this crazy idea that it was serious. And they made a series of logical steps from this standpoint and thereby created the world of sport as we know it.

  Because it follows that if sport is serious, then international sport is very serious. It follows that if your team is called Australia, you are not a group of gentlemen getting together for the sake of exercise and amusement. You are not so much representing your country as creating it.

  That was certainly the case when Australia first began to play England for the Ashes.

  England had Shakespeare and Agincourt and the Black Death and Darwin and an empire.

  Australia had something better. Australia had youth. How better to express this truth than in sport? How better to define a nation than by playing sport with a seriousness of purpose that was nothing less than revolutionary?

  The less history a nation has, the more it needs sport to define its national consciousness.

  "Other nations have their history. We have our football," the former manager of the Uruguayan football team, Ondina Viera, once said.

  A Brazilian newspaper expressed the same sentiment more exuberantly: "Our football is like our inflation - 100 per cent."

  During the rugby union World Cup in 2003, The Australian printed a picture of Jonny Wilkinson on the front page of the sports section with the headline: "Is that all you've got?"

  London's Daily Mirror responded with the same caption and a picture of Kylie Minogue's bum. But it isn't all Australia has got. It's got Kylie's bum and sport.

  Well, there's a great deal more to Australia than sport, but all the same, sport has been a significant force in defining the Australian national consciousness.

  Former England cricket captain Ted Dexter said: "They gaily revive every prejudice they know, whether to do with accent, class consciousness or even the convict complex, and sally forth into battle with a dedication which would not disgrace the most committed of the world's political agitators."

  The English traditionally found this hard to come to terms with.

  "In all this Australian team, there are barely one or two who would be accepted as public school men," CB Fry said in 1928.

  The Australian cricket team - and by extension, Australia itself - worked on the principle of antithesis. They worked extremely hard at not being acceptable as public school men.

  They put themselves out to be hard, rough and ready, easy-mannered, with no tolerance of snobbery.

  From the start, Australia was ferociously egalitarian in everything except sport.

  Dennis Lillee, we must never forget, greeted the Queen with "G'day, how ya goin'?"

  In sport alone, Australia always has been unabashedly elitist and that was because sport mattered.

  It set the pattern for international sport across the world. Before long, England took sport so seriously that it invented bodyline.

  This was essentially a matter of contradictions. England, who invented sport as an aspect of gentlemanliness, took sport to a new and frightening level of seriousness.

  Australia, who invented the notion of sport as a form of seriousness, took refuge in outraged gentlemanliness.

  It was a defining moment in the emergence of Australia as a nation and sport has continued to play a huge part in the creation of national consciousness. And here comes another contradiction: there has been a seismic shift in arrogance.

  In a way, Australia had invented sport as a serious business to combat English arrogance. Or perhaps the mot juste is smugness.

  Australia used sport as a means of expressing one central truth. We are not English; we are not even trying to be English. In fact, we go to a great deal of trouble to demonstrate that we are the exact opposite.

  And so the years have brought us a parade of flamboyantly un-English cricketers. Lillee remains perhaps the archetype, but a glance at the present team shows a raft of people at pains to emphasise their un-Englishness.

  And the opposition? For years, England cricketers have tried to be as Australian as possible.

  Australian cricket has been seen as the template for England's future and every player has striven to be as Australian as humanly possible; Australian, that is, in the sense of playing - living - with total commitment to the notion of victory.

  English sport is the domain of wannabe Australians, all seeking fulfillment in serious sport. And as this astonishing reversal takes place, so another is happening alongside. It is no longer the Poms who are arrogant. Or do I mean smug?

  The Times
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  377

  HAHA TAKE THAT U OZZIES

  by tijkmo in

  1. social
  2. entertainment

  .

  england 179-8. australia 79 all out in 14 overs.

  bring it on

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  Max Divergent

  420 in over 7 sessions at under 60 a session...piece of cake

  For a competant cricket side, sure... so, England... 7 sessions of batting?? Mmmm... that's 2 & 1/3 days.... last time they batted for a bit over 2 & 1/3 hours....

  Mmmm... so far so good for a fine contest.... nothing like two evenly matched teams... yeaah....

  What's the world record for the 4th innings for a win? 407? England need... what 420??? Ok... well.... they've gotten to 27 now... very good...

  Well... let us hope they get to bat for that two and a bit days... let's have a cliffhanger...

  Cheers, Max
• 
  125

  Do You Think Bag Searching Violates Your Rights?

  by minimus in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  in view of the transit bombings, do you feel that police should be able to search you or your bags at anytime?

  1. 
  2. 
  3. 
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  Max Divergent

  I think it's a rather quaint idea that 'the constitution' can uphold our freedom... someone wise said that eternal vigilance is what we need to stay free, not faith in a document... I think German Jews had guarenteed rights in the 1930's, as did niggers in the Mississippi of the 1950's and 60's.
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  377

  HAHA TAKE THAT U OZZIES

  by tijkmo in

  1. social
  2. entertainment

  .

  england 179-8. australia 79 all out in 14 overs.

  bring it on

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  Max Divergent

  Well.... big advances in English cricket.... looks like they've advanced from the equivilent of an Australian suburban club side up to a level where they might just challenge one of the poorer performing state teams...

  This is a good thing for cricket...

  LOL!

  Max
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  33

  I AM SO HOT

  by tijkmo in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  see thats an expression you dont here very often in scotland..heatwave here..the last place on earth to feel the effects of global warming

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  Max Divergent

  Being in another hemisphere I had ICE on my windscreen this morning!!!

  Can't remember ever having that before, ever...