@ flipper
No one is minimising the impact and harm that has been caused by the Jehovah’s Witnesses or attempting to diminish the negative attributes that individual members have as a result of their indoctrination. Ex members such as ourselves have been there and we all know how toxic the religion is.
However, what is of concern is the fact that the self same negative mechanisms that we ex-JWs hold against the Watchtower are overtly apparent in our own ex-JW community.
If a believing Jehovah’s Witness, or even the Watchtower itself, made a discriminatory and presumptuous conclusion about a group of people based on nothing more than an emotive photograph, the members of this forum would be all over those Jehovah’s Witnesses like a rash. We would be quick to point out how biased and prejudiced the Jehovah’s Witnesses were acting. We would accuse them of being quick to judge and we would be correct to do so. It would be wrong.
It’s a very unfortunate fact that the attitudes of some of the ex-JW community are displaying a similar blanket discrimination as the Watchtower. This is understandable under the circumstances, considering how poorly many ex-members have been treated. People need a place where they can vent. However, to maintain this disposition in the long term is unhealthy.
The attitude of this thread is almost a microcosm of the mindset of the Watchtower. The Jehovah’s Witnesses in that emotively designed photograph are being judged using nothing more than INDUCTIVE REASONING, as opposed to what should be the yard stick, which is DEDUCTIVE REASONING. It amounts to nothing more than CONFIRMATION BIAS and is exactly what we all hate about the Watchtower.
The unsavoury traits that are common amongst the members of the Watchtower are bred because of the fact that they don’t look or question beyond the confines of their own ECHO CHAMBER. The self same workings of an echo chamber can easily take root in communities like the ex-JWs on forums like these. The constant (mostly justifiable) negativity against an organisation like the Watchtower can easily lead a person to get embroiled in a biased narrative that is as equally discriminating as the one being fought against.
This only plays into the hands of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who can rightly state that ex-JWs are biased. We become the cliché that they paint us as being, which can only work against the overall objective of someone like you who desires to open the minds of the people caught up in the organisation.
As I have pointed out before, the poster called Kramer affirmed that…
“The homeless people here do get talked to regularly and get brought food and drinks by the people on the trolleys”
…yet what he said wasn’t acknowledged in the least, presumably because it didn’t fit in with the narrative of the ‘anti-Watchtower’ ex-JW echo chamber. Admittedly Kramer’s comment is anecdotal, but what is disappointing is that it wasn’t even considered.
If what Kramer claims is correct then we would all owe the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the photograph a huge apology.
If we are going to conduct ourselves in a similar vein to the organisation, have we truly left it behind and are we any better than they are?