Posts by TerryWalstrom

let me tell you about the man--a strange and wonderful guy--one of a kind--but housing two personalities at the same time.here’s a quick list to capture your interest.. .

I know what you mean. I was in high school with Candy Clark. She went to Hollywood and ended up in two iconic movies, The Man Who Fell to Earth (with David Bowie) and George Lucas' breakout hit American Graffiti.

I spoke with her casually about 3 or 4 years ago. She is back living in Ft.Worth again. She's my age. She looks back on that period of her life as more of something she hallucinated than lived. I see my life the same way :)

15

Terry tells his story of Billy Jack (Tom Laughlin)

by TerryWalstrom in

jw
friends

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ox2ypajugq.

sit a spell and listen to my story.. i once met a fella unlike any other.

let me tell you about the man--a strange and wonderful guy--one of a kind--but housing two personalities at the same time.here’s a quick list to capture your interest.. .

TerryWalstrom

When I try to talk to somebody about a point in time in my past I inevitably moor the event to a popular film at the time. This works if the actor or movie was famous enough to carry forward into the present. Often it is not.

Tom Laughlin is not on anybody's radar screen in 2016. I'm finding that out.
People over the age of 55 may still have an after image of Billy Jack.

Sigh. Pretty soon, everything about my life that I don't write down will have blown away with the sands of time.

31

I Just had a CLOSE ENCOUNTER of the Dub kind

by TerryWalstrom in

i just frightened a jehovah’s witness lady half out of her wits!.

i just frightened a sweet jehovah’s witness lady half out of her wits.... .

she took off like a sprinter at the sound of a starter pistol!.

TerryWalstrom

37

The story of a secret Apostate Anointed

by TerryWalstrom in

the remarkable sister pettifog.

this morning i arrived on my bicycle at the local starbucks early, before the intensity of the texas sun boiled to full blaze rendering me a soggy, wrung out mess.. i took up my perch on the outdoor patio in the shade, eager to work on my book of short stories.

this will be my 3rd book and i’ve been enjoying the process daily.. .

TerryWalstrom

PaintedToeNail3 hours ago

Excellent post.

9

THE MIND POLICE

by TerryWalstrom in

the mind police.

____________basic principle: [a man’s decisions end up as either successful or suicidal.].

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/concepts.html.

TerryWalstrom

THE MIND POLICE

____________

Basic Principle: [A man’s decisions end up as either successful or suicidal.]

________

http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/concepts.html

Once upon a time, stupid people didn’t survive long enough to be a burden on the rest of society.

As scores of nitwits and knuckleheads brought about their own doom, the crowds of onlookers took note of an ever-growing list of “Things Not to Do if you wish to Survive.”

Stupid children ignored their wiser parent’s rules and met with disaster. Obedient children survived.

“Honor thy father and thy mother, that your days may prove to be long” means exactly that.

Survival requires practical choices of actions and decisions. Why? Because there is NO automatic knowledge for human beings. Homo Sapien is (acquired) knowledge driven.

Man has to live by his choices. Man first has to hold his life as a value—by choice; he has to learn to sustain his life—by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues—by choice. A working code of values accepted by choice is a Code of Morality.

Morality is choosing to do what preserves life.

_________

“Do not swim with sharks”, if ignored by a swimmer, became an object lesson when the swimmer vanished screaming and splashing in red water.

On the other hand, Religious Laws were not obvious Cause and Effect, however.
“Do not covet your neighbor’s wife,” was invisible; taking place only in the mind of the trespasser.

The only way for Moral Police (Priests) to enforce ritual rules was by using Psychology.

Fear and Guilt produced the “conscience.”

_________________________

What is a Conscience?

Trial and error in childhood rewards or punishes when children try certain things.

Each person, sooner or later, has to decide what rules he or she will live by.
AUTHORITY says:
“You must do as we say OR ELSE.”

Why?

“BECAUSE I SAID SO.”

Authority based rules require loyalty and obedience.
Children are made subservient to the WILL of OTHERS.
Doing what you are told becomes the only morality necessary to avoid conflict and punishment.

This is Altruism. (Putting others first and yourself last.)

Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. Altruism means “SELF-ishness” is evil but “SELF-sacrifice” is good.

____________________

A Funny thing happened on the way to Selflessness

The only way to survive is to make life valuable enough to do what is necessary to preserve it. Without “life” there can be no values because you must be alive in order to practice values in the first place.
Contrarily, by becoming obedient to “others” and putting the“self” last, you destroy self-preservation and convert survival into self-sacrifice.
Practical choices are pro-survival--but-- Social (altruistic) choices create martyrs at worst and slaves at best.

______

Conscience is the Moral Policeman
a Practical Guide:

There are 2 kinds of “conscience.”

The first is Altruistic and the second is Selfish.

Is “Selfishness” a true evil or has it falsely been defined in order to maintain slavery?

First, we must determine was a VALUE is and what it means.

Life itself is the greatest Value. (Without it, there can be no values.)
If you drown, you cannot save others from drowning. You must know how to swim to save yourself and others. Self comes first. Consequently, your own life is your greatest value.

Knowledge is the highest priority, practical knowledge is the most useful.

Doing what you are told is not practical knowledge once you reach the age of

Consent (Free Choice.)
What if you are instructed to refuse medical treatment based on a Religious Principle? Is this a moral value if it violates LIFE itself?

No!

Life is the highest moral choice because all values begin with life.

A Religious Conscience cannot be a Moral Conscience if your life is secondary.

_______________

FREE WILL (How is it free?)

“Free will” is your mind’s freedom to think or not. It controls all the choices you make. The consequences become your fate.
To think is an act of choice.

Swimming lessons will save a man from drowning ONLY if he takes those lessons in the first place. Ignorance of practical skills is punished by natural consequences.

We are all free to be stupid and to fail.

Selfish choices (such as higher education instead of Pioneering) are condemned by the Altruism of Jehovah’s Witness policies. (Putting the values of the Org ahead of your own knowledge.) Your life is sacrificed to serve the “greater need” of the group. As a practical matter, this is suicidal.

If you are a slave, the life you could have led, might have led, should have led, would have been enabled and ennobled by knowledge and practical values instead of emptied out and tossed away serving your feckless Master.

_________________
The function of your stomach, lungs or heart is automatic; the function of your mind is not. You are free to think or to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival—so that for you, who are a human being, the question “to be or not to be” is the question “to think or not to think.”

_________________

A consciousness which is aware of reality and able to deal with it, is a consciousness able to direct the actions and provide for the survival of a human being—an unfocused mind is not conscious.Thinking is focusing and paying attention so as to make the best of all possible decisions to ACT.

If your conscience works for YOU rather than a slave master, your life is yours.

Freedom from coercion, manipulation, undue influence is the only freedom worth having.

A rational mind does not work under compulsion; it does not subordinate its grasp of reality to anyone’s orders, directives, or controls; it does not sacrifice its knowledge, its view of the truth, to anyone’s opinions, threats, wishes, plans, or “welfare.”

The Watchtower Organization leaders know this. Their values are the opposite of moral for a very good reason.

Historically this has proved to be the MURDER of the INDIVIDUAL’s values, principles, and autonomy of will.

Note: Moral leaders use rational reasoning to gain cooperation rather than threats of Armageddon and shunning to coerce compliance through fear.

_________Conclusion__________

“Things NOT to do if you wish to Survive”

Do not surrender your mind to the Watchtower Mind Police. These Puritanical slave masters are obsessed with purification fetish rituals such as these 141 arbitrary rules:

http://thejehovahswitnesses.org/things-jehovahs-witnesses-cant-do.php

____________________________

31

I Just had a CLOSE ENCOUNTER of the Dub kind

by TerryWalstrom in

i just frightened a jehovah’s witness lady half out of her wits!.

i just frightened a sweet jehovah’s witness lady half out of her wits.... .

she took off like a sprinter at the sound of a starter pistol!.

TerryWalstrom

If a man is dying of thirst in a desert and he sees the mirage of water just up ahead, it does no good trying to convince him it is a mirage because THAT'S ALL THE HOPE HE'S GOT!

After all, he sees it!

Nothing we can say works, only REAL WATER will suffice.

So, here's the thing.

A Jehovah's Witness has been brainwashed into believing he is in that desert when he really is not.
This is a big, bright beautiful world with a million opportunities IF ONLY he were allowed to see it.
But the Watchtower has filtered everything through a dark, dark mirage of Satan, Armageddon, and Apostates, instilling fear and creating the optical illusion of a wasteland everywhere EXCEPT for the safety inside the Borg.

The effective activist is the person who is living a better life since leaving the Organization.
"Look at me" the successful activist can say, "I did it and you can too."

Instead, so many ex-JW's become the horrible thing the trapped Dub inside expects to see, an angry, resentful, rude, self-degrading time bomb of recriminations on a downward spiral.

And that, my friends, is why they continue to crawl toward their mirage. It is the only hope they can see.

7

How Human was Charles Taze Russell?

by TerryWalstrom in

jw
friends

pastor russell's life fascinates me.

because he seems like a person who never had any fun.

such a serious face without a smile to be found!

TerryWalstrom

Pastor Russell's life fascinates me. Why?
Because he seems like a person who never had any fun.
Such a serious face without a smile to be found! I'd guess it was the loss of his doting mother when he was so young. I don't have a feeling for his dad's personality at all.

Was he all business? Was he a fun companion? Did he just go along with anything his son wanted to do? It is all fuzzy how a young man ended up convincing his father to sell the business and invest in End of the World speculation!

Here's another puzzle.

Who was C.T. Russell's best friend? I don't know--do you?

Did he and his friend play jokes on each other? Did they ever get drunk?

Was he always a Nerd? How did he manage to talk a beautiful woman such as Maria into a loveless marriage?

Was it really only a business venture with security for her and a platform for her writing? Did they ever cross the line into passion?

I think--I mean, I guess perhaps these two were really uptight and closed off to carnal expressions. Either that or the marriage was a false pretense on the part of Charlie.

Perhaps he will always remain an enigma. Was he someplace on the Autism scale?

There are still people alive today who will defend him to the bitter end and who maintain a website in his honor. There are persons who believe and teach what Russell believed and taught still walking the Earth and that has to mean something. What--I don't know.

Check out this website for more details than you could possibly imagine.
https://pastorrussell.blogspot.com/

37

The story of a secret Apostate Anointed

by TerryWalstrom in

the remarkable sister pettifog.

this morning i arrived on my bicycle at the local starbucks early, before the intensity of the texas sun boiled to full blaze rendering me a soggy, wrung out mess.. i took up my perch on the outdoor patio in the shade, eager to work on my book of short stories.

this will be my 3rd book and i’ve been enjoying the process daily.. .

TerryWalstrom

fiddler9 hours ago

Terry, I loved that! It did make me think some of my grandfather Elijah. Yes, his name was Elijah. He was born in 1885 and was a follower of CT Russell. All I ever knew about him was that he was considered an apostate and that he was somehow into 'spiritism' He died of TB in 1966 and it was the only time I saw my grandmother cry. Mind you, I loved my grandma dearly. My JW aunts used to tell me how they would cross the street when they saw him and later, my only non JW aunt blamed him for bringing the scourge of the JW religion into our family. I mostly just wish I could have known him and talked to him.

_____________________

There are a great many tragedies in most JW families and mountains of heartbreak. If all these stories were known and told properly (which they seldom are) the legacy of the destruction of the social fabric would amount to a holocaust.