okay ,, this is a question and a confession.
we have had an issue come to a head in this household of mine.
after getting to the bottom of my parners intentions i have given her an ultimatum knowing all too well she will choose the jws over myself and family.
I suggest -- and have elsewhere suggested under similar circumstances -- that the proper response for you, trailerfitter, is to go apeshit. Be an ass, be impolite, mock, denegrate, fight mean (obviously, nothing physical, as I feel bound to point out). You can't, after all, change what people think, you can only increase the costs for things people do. So, rains the costs.
Mine is clearly a minority viewpoint here. But there it is.
i spent sometime with a fellow ex jw yesterday.
we had grown up in the same congregation and left within a few years ago.
she referred to it as "the truth.
Actually, it took a while to get out of the habit. We'd say, "Back when we were in the Truth..." and so on. It's like changing the name of your dog, or something: requires a real effort to remember.
an earlier thread about pants suits for women led me on this tangent.
women make up the majorty of witnesses.
they cannot be suppressed without their acquiescene.
I think most of you are missing the point of why JW women allow themselves to be treated in these variously described ways. It isn't a lack of backbone or Bronze Age corporate male oppression or St. Paul's misogyny. It's more basic than that.
It's evoloution.
Look, the JWs live in a particular society and, in this society, status is determined in very interesting ways. In particular, wealth/earning is relatively de-valued while commitment to the religion is strongly valued. If JW men earn less than average (on average) it is because status within the group is directed toward religious behaviors, one of which is the devaluation of wealth.
The JW women are just as much a part of the society as anybody else and make sexual choices based on status within the group. Women who have the highest status are married to men who have the highest status and that requires, all else being equal, that both the man and woman show high levels of religious commitment. Religious commitment has a very specific and observable set of attributes within the JW society.
Pretty simple. Women "allow" themselves to be treated in the ways described because the benefits in sexual fitness far outweigh the costs. Same reason men "allow" themselves to be saddled with all the small (but costly, in terms of time) obligations within the JWs: sexual fitness. It would be a mistake to underestimate the degree of status accrued by men who are successful within the JWs at succeeding levels; be seen giving talks at the District Convention and you can hear the status-o-meters clicking like crazy.
This also explains why Intel's wife went sour on him: basically, it was his fault (I say this without intending anything bad). But, obviously, she was deriving significant status from Intel's positions within the JWs. She was quite right to grasp that rejecting those status identifiers would drastically reduce her status within the group. When he does something stupid like follow his conscience, she knows that's bad news for her.
Actually, I feel bad for Intel's wife (within this context). For women JWs, status is almost entirely dependent on the husband's status. Depending on her age and attractiveness, she may be able to make another match; fortunately for her, divorce is common with the JWs. Unfortunately for her, there are more women than men in the JWs, so a Bether Elder of her own age should be able to score a young hottie. Not a good game to have to play.
desperation personal letter to watchtower leader.
today i uploaded a letter to my blog written in 1986 to governing body member albert schroeder.
the author was, at the time, a long-time elder who had done substitute co work and much, much more.
Poor, stupid, sap.
On one hand, who doesn't understand that, in the 80s, those guys drove those cars for an extraordinary number of miles. Yeah, they were getting tapped for a new car every couple years, 'cause the cars were worn out. Duh.
And what kind of cheap bastard wants to get picky about giving money to a guy who really is living in a trailer? Living in a trailer! Somebody has to pay for these expenses, this tool acts like he's never filled out a corporate expense report before.
Sounds like this naif really thinks the CO ought to be some sort of mendicant. Of course, he thinks that because the JWs are so preoccupied with their own supposed purity that they really think they are better than everybody else. So when they see that they have to live in the real world and deal with real people, it hurts their feelings.
But all this gets us back to the original sin of the JWs: pride. They all really think they are better than everybody else in the world. Discovering that they are not really hurts.
a regular caller to our six screens of the watchtower conference call david w. contacted the six screens tele-network on sept. 1, 2011 and reported that allegedly some laid off bethelites were living in tents behind a giant food store in virginia.. david stated their were two well dressed men and a young women around 30 years old temporally living behind the supermarket.. the woman according to david said she was trying to get to florida but did not have the money for the trip.. david said the police arrived and questioned the homeless people and they told the police that they were recently released from the watchtower org in ny.
the police made no charges.. has anyone else heard of this happening?.
david w. will give more details on the dialogue program sat.
Giant? Giant sucks. There aren't any good grocery stores in the DC area. None.
it appears that she has taken ill with an auto-immune disease.
it is called sjogren syndrome.
i hope that she can make a recovery.
Sure, it's possible. I just thought for sure they really were. Then that stupid monkey got all pissy. But whatevs.
it appears that she has taken ill with an auto-immune disease.
it is called sjogren syndrome.
i hope that she can make a recovery.
Whadda you mean, she's not a JW? Serena sure was. Remember when she won Wimbledon one time and thanked Jehovah? Wow.
i am faced with a dilema right now and need some advice on what i should do with my future, i realize that eventually i'll grow old and will need to somehow work my way up so i have something to fall back on, like someone told me once i don't really have a support structure to fall back on, if something happened where i could not work i would probably wind up homeless, moving back in with my parents house would be out of the question because i would never go back to the borg.. this is my situation right now, everything is going good, i love my job, i am single no kids, i work at a hosptal making $10/hour doing janitorial work, also my rent is very cheap about $350 a month for rent on a duplex, i live less then a mile from work, right now i have the most ideal situation to save alot of money even on $10/hr job, but also i realize that everything can go all at once, if i ever lost my job since i don't have no support structure and could not find work i would be sol.. now to some of the things i like doing, i like to drive, one of the things i have always wanted to do is learn truck driving, since i don't have no extra responsibilites, i am still having a hard time though making a decision, on one hand i like my current job, but on the other hand i realize that i do have to plan for the future, if anyone can give me some advice i am at a loss of what to do, also because of the way the econommy is here in the us right now sometimes i think its best to stick with the job that i have but still don't know whats best..
College really isn't for everybody: plenty of people don't care to do the study and I understand that. That said, the key to the American economy is acquiring skills; low-skill jobs are going to continue to be exported overseas and low-skill immigration should continue to erode the wage rates for service jobs. That means the American worker must have skills to do work with greater value-added.
There is considerable demand for workers like machinists, technicians, and other so-called blue collar occupations. If I were considering a career now, I would certainly think about those sorts of occupations and consider getting the training for them. These will require some sort of vocational education, probably some of it technical. If you make the investment, though, it is likely to pay off the rest of your life. The federal government still will subsidize educational loans, so a combination of loans and your job should allow you to make ends meet.
here is a (transcribed) letter that all elders received regarding the elder school of 2012. the emphasis is not mine.. this letter is your invitation to attend the school for congregation elders at the location and dates shown below:.
please acknowledge receipt and acceptance of this invitation by completing and returning the enclosed confirmation form to the school for congregation elders desk using the enclosed pre-addressed envelope.
this should be returned no more than two weeks after receipt of this letter.
Geez, guys. Classes from 8-5? How about we lighten up and go business casual, given the bizarre length of this whole thing? Seriously, everybody looks like ass in those suits, anyhow.
i remember that in my old hall there was a single pioneer sister who lived in the kh basement.
she did not drive, (22 years old) and she was.
such a "spiritual example" .. but now i remember going out in service with the group on a saturday morning, and she would be part of the group that was in my car.. we would do about an hour of service door to door, and then return visits for an hour or two.
Well, there's no reason to be rude to other folks by having them drive you all over town. That said, the stories about guys who never actually went in service or who always set the group up and then split for an hour or two sorta make me happy. The whole exercise is a pointless waste of time, so spending some quality time with a doughnut and coffee seems to be an act of sanity.
Pioneer brother in my hall used to set everybody up in the territory, hit a couple doors, then go check up on the people on the other side of the neighborhood. At the time I thought, "Lazy bastard." Now I think, "Clever boy."
