Posts by tergiversator

8

Using the Watchtower to Ruin Your Children

by metatron in

jw
friends

the circuit overseer spoke from the platform sternly,.

"we seem to have a problem in this circuit with young brothers.

not having any ambition, either in the truth or even in the world".

tergiversator

Good post, metatron.

Kids are supposed to look up and see the stars and try to reach them. Instead, their sky is made black and void

It's one of the ways people who weren't raised in the organization don't realize quite the advantage they have over people who took all of those things seriously from an early age. (Plenty of people leave because they never did take it seriously; but I, alas, was a true believer since age 4 or 5.)

I was lucky, I guess; for me, school activities and worldly friends were largely forbidden, careers denigrated, volunteering shunned - but I had my books. I devoured enormous quantities of science fiction and other literature throughout my childhood (and why, if I were going to live forever in paradise right here, was I so interested in going far, far away?), and they gave me a back-up dream to fall back on when the future I knew was coming disintegrated into rubble.

It's funny. You think that once you're out of the religion, once you realize that the world can be a beautiful place full of hope and potential, that you can instantly become the involved, interested, and ambitious (what a bad word that's made to be...) person you always secretly wanted to be... but it's not that easy. Even after the external reasons for disengagement from society are gone, there still remain subtle attitudes and chains of thought and familiar patterns of behavior that tend toward an antisocial apathy. I have a feeling it will be a while before I've rooted them all out.

But it's nice to see the stars as stars again.

-T.

113

Please Respond To Survey! 25 more needed please.

by Big Jim in

jw
friends

it seems like to me the majority of people who are in the truth, are were in the truth was a result of either a family member are a friend witnessing to them and not many seem to have been found in the door to door work.. from my years of associating with the borg i cannot recall many coming in the truth from the door to door work.. how were you sucked in?

for me it was my aunt who has now even though i am not disfellowshipped decided to write me out of her will to the tune of about $150,000.00 (maybe i should hang around a couple more years)dont think i will.. please respond .

thanks.

tergiversator

My mom met an old friend from elementary school (Catholic school) who had become a witness, around the time my older brother was a baby. She moved and was found several years later at the door when I was a baby, and finally got baptized when I was five. She brought in my dad, who quickly da'd, then my brother (inactive) and I (da'd at 17).

51

When did you think Armageddon would come?

by comment in

jw
friends

i was just thinking about this.

having been raised "in the truth" post-1975, i didn't grow up with any specific year in mind.

yes, there was the notion of "this generation will by no means pass away," but by the time i was old enough to think about that concept, the people who were born in 1914 (to stretch it out as far as possible, as the society ultimately did) were still only in their 60's.

tergiversator

Fifth grade. There was no way I was going to junior high, that was such an impossibly long time in the future for a five year old (the age I was when my mom got baptized).

Funny how I didn't really notice when I did get to junior high, though; I just thought it was just a small unspecified numbers of years off and never thought of it more specifically than that. The generation change, incidentally, was a bit of a relief for me, and I remember wondering why people had been so silly as to think they could pin a date or time period on the end.

That being said... It still came as quite a big shock to me last year, in my first year of college, when I actually let it sink in that, barring bad luck, I actually had 60, 70, 80 or more years to live in "this system" - my whole life. Sort of terrifying at first, because at some level I just never considered the possibility that I would be this old.

'course, I never thought I was going to become a 'postate, either

-T.

5

New Cult Tactic?

by Big Jim in

jw
friends

my daughter was babtised at the houston disrtict assembly over the weekend so i was more or less forced to make that one day attendace.. there was a pioneer sister who was explaining how she was getting so many japanese and phillopino bible studys.. she said that her and her husband took some foreign language classes so they could at least communicate with these people a little.. here is what they do; they find these ones that speak very little english and they tell them they are going to help them to speak english by studying the bible with them.. that really blew me away when i heard that.. should it have?

tergiversator

It sounds like something I remember hearing about, so it doesn't surprise me, but...

I wonder about the motivation on the flip side of the deal, with the sister who is learning the foreign languages in the first place. It seems to be rather popular to learn foreign languages to "help out" other language congregations, which has several nice results:

People think you're reaching out, and you gain some sort of status.

Learning a new language and meeting people from a different culture is certainly more exciting than field service as usual. Especially since non-English speakers in the US (probably similar elsewhere) are much more likely to agree to studies. (Probably because they want to learn English, or be American, or what have you.)

Best of all, because you don't know the language very well, you don't notice disturbing phrasing or subtle propagandistic techniques of the magazines that you would probably have picked up on in your native language.

I know about the last one from personal experience, because in my junior and senior years of high school I subscribed to the Watchtower in French (got the cassettes, too). It helped me learn the language, impressed my family, the congregation, and my teacher, made meetings bearable when I took notes at meetings in French... and put off for a little while admitting to myself that I wasn't so keen on the English-language stuff being presented. Towards the end I started annotating my notes with pointed comments and questions, in French, because I knew my mother wouldn't lean over and happen to see what I was writing.

Somewhere in there I figured out that I didn't believe it was the truth, in any language. It just took a little longer.

-T.

7

Tale of a Black Congregation Part III

by TMS in

jw
friends

the contrast between the two genetic brothers who were elders was not unnoticed by the congregation.

one old sister told me: "i would trust ob with my life, but i wouldn't trust roy with my lawnmower.

" yet, roy was easily more likable, more approachable, although defensive.

tergiversator

Er... am I missing something? Where's part II? I'm enjoying the ones you've posted, but I can't find the middle post...

29

Heroin Overdose=Daughter=HELP!

by patio34 in

jw
friends

i'm having a crisis in my family and really need some advice and even (((())))!.

background:.

daughter is 28-yrs-old.

tergiversator

Hey Pat,

I didn't notice this thread until today, but I guess it's never too late to pop in with my sympathy for what you're going through. I don't really have any good advice for you, but I want you to know that I'm thinking about you and hoping everything will work out ok. I'm glad you've got this online community to help you right now, even if it is just to listen.

Good luck, and let us know how things go.

-Elisabeth

12

Justin's Mom saved by blood transfusion

by Esmeralda in

jw
friends

i just wanted you to have an update.

justin's mom is out.

of icu and doing remarkably well.

tergiversator

Hi Es,

That's really good to hear... Keep us posted, ok?

-T.

8

Using Our Kingdom Halls Wisely.

by Englishman in

jw
friends

here's how the kingdom hall in weston super mare looks today.. can you think of any better uses for your kingdom hall?.

.

..... fanaticism masquerading beneath a cloak of reasoned logic.

tergiversator

Hey Englishman,

That brick-work watchtower is very, very, very disturbing... and didn't they know that individual halls are not supposed to use the watchtower symbol? At least my old hall had a blank space on its sign board where they had been planning to put a little tower symbol before headquarters nixed the idea.

22

How far has America come?

by Mulan in

jw
friends

this was sent to me today.

i thought it was an interesting statement on how far america has come.

) sorry it's kind of jumbled.

tergiversator

Caole,

Thanks for the site referral; there are some good deconstructions of popular stories floating around through email. And if I hadn't read their explanation of the much-maligned bonsai kitten site ( http://www.snopes2.com/inboxer/outrage/bonsai.htm) how would I have ever known about Mike the headless chicken? ( http://www.miketheheadlesschicken.org/)

As far as my take on the subject at hand, I seem to recall a moment or two of discomfort as a member of a certain nameless minority religion at school over clashes of religious customs... and this is in southern California, where having official prayers at football games seems incredible to comtemplate. Regardless of what I individually think of each of the points the principle brought up about as signs of a moral "double standard", I find his unthinking assumption that everyone else should think the same way (Earth day is "goddess worship"? Oh please...) to reconfirm my belief in the necessity of a legal separation of church and state.

If I've learned anything from my witness days, it's that freedom of religion does NOT mean freedom for your religion only to do its thing and ignore other religious and internal dissidents.

-T.

30

"Sharing" a piece of myself - part 4

by Tallyman in

jw
friends

if you don't want to read the small text, i've made an identical webpage.

to the print appearing below @.

* http://www.intrex.net/tallyman/sharing4.html.

tergiversator

Hey Tallyman,

I lurked on H20 last year, and I remember when Farkel made his post defending you. I didn't know what the story was, of course, only that he and a lot of other people thought you were a really great guy. I was happy to hear that you had been exonerated, and even happier when you showed up here with your ever-amusing and insightful Kult Krusade.

And now that I've read your story of what really happened... wow. It's tough enough coming out of the organization intact, but to have survived what you did from your own family is incredible. It kinda puts my own piddly problems in the proper perspective. I am incredibly impressed with you, and though I'm not the hugging sort I think I will make an exception. (((((Tallyman))))) You've gone through way more than most of us here have, and I'm proud to know you.

-T.