Quendi, these are really interesting posts. Thanks for sharing them.
Let me clarify my position a little: I don't think that the sort of action we are talking about is entirely free from coercion. I think what I am saying is that it is only very slightly the result of coercion, brainwashing, cult mind-control, whatever.
So, I agree that the pressure of JWs to act as they are instructed is substantially higher than the pressure put on most people for most things. The folks who make my car are attempting like hell to make me do what they say, but my choice was (mostly) free. I think that when it comes to actions of central importance, deciding to withhold blood from a wounded child or deciding never to speak to your son again, that these actions are un-coercible in any meaningful way. You would literally have to hold a gun to my head in order to get me to disown a family member; you would have to pull the trigger to get me to withhold blood from a child.
So, yeah, I can see saying were are coerced to go door-to-door or attending all those meetings because my family expects it. These are acts that can plausibly be chalked up to coercion: I would be choosing from a very poor set of alternatives that may have more-or-less equal levels of badness. But even here, I would be choosing the least bad option.
So, I agree that there are pressures to act in certain ways within the JWs. But these pressures all exist within a framework of free agents acting freely. This is a case where the JWs are actually right: you really are free to leave them at any time you decide it is the best choice. Yeah, things about that choice will be unpleasant, but the same is true for somebody who decides to leave his job. There is no lack of free choice in the only context that matters: nobody is threatening your life or livelihood.
And I think that some of your own experiences seem to re-inforce my point. You observe that some people who shunned you were " highly intelligent" and whose "judgment on other matters I could always rely upon and trust." Well, yeah. I guess I simply can't agree with you that the only possible explanation for their actions is some other "mental or emotional pathogen." They have a profound disagreement with you about the state of the universe, they don't have a disease: if it were a disease, wouldn't you expect they would be prone to all sorts of strange thoughts and actions, based on many potential influencing factors? But you don't see that.
Thats why I think what you are seeing is an informed choice. No, not entirely made in a vacuum, free from other viewpoints. But certainly not ascribable to mind control or other pathogen.
Believe me, I don't like the conclusion any more than you do. It means that, for example, my parents would genuinely have preferred to see me dead withoud blood transfusion rather than alive with one. And it means they would have formed this preference either in full awareness of the absurdity of the teaching or else without bothering to understand the absurdity of the teaching. And it means that I can't give them some reduction in the responsibility for this wicked choice: they made an informed choice, they're not weak-willed, brainwashed victims.
Not only that, it means I am also responsible for similar things I thought. There was a time when I would have applauded another teenager who fought against a blood transfusion. Some on this board have advised sick people not to take blood. I would have thought this letter was the most courageous and correct choice in the world.
So, if that's what I thought, how do you ever trust another thing I think? I believe that is why XJWs tend to like the idea that JWs are a cult or otherwise not in complete control of their will: it removes responsibility, lessens the blow to self-esteem. I understand wanting to do that, hell, I did it myself. But I don't think it is true.
