Is it morally wrong to put on your own oxygen mask first before helping others with theirs during an airplane depressurization emergency?
Is it morally wrong to keep get your loved ones and yourself on a lifeboat on a sinking ship, especially when everyone else is ignoring the ship taking on water?
Is it morally wrong to sweet talk a rabid dog by offering it a treat so it doesn't bite you, so you can get away from it, and then maybe call animal control later?
Take care of yourself and your own first. Worry about everyone else once your head is clear.
Brock Talon
JoinedPosts by Brock Talon
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30
Is it morally wrong to put Watchtower behind?
by Darkknight757 inwith our latest and final run in with the elders, the wife and i had a very long talk about what's next in our life.
do we try to help others see the light as it were concerning watchtower or do we just let it go and move on with our life?
we have made it perfectly clear that we will never go back to watchtower and we are finally happy.
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Brock Talon
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Disassociation revealed what type of man my father really is.
by Paul Mooney ini began my exit from the jehovah’s witness organization about 5 years.
i was a 4th generation born-in, with all the baggage that comes with having the “spiritual heritage” attached to the group.
i was an elder/bethelite/pioneer/whatever other useless privilege there was, i had no family or friends outside of the organization… my entire life was that org.
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Brock Talon
Loved this post Paul. Good for you brother. I believe more people are out there like your father, only they don't have the guts to say it. Glad you got some sort of closure and/or relief. I'm going to live vicariously through you for the next few minutes now, wishing one of my parents said something like that to me.
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I don't think I will be able to escape the JWs ...
by nevaagain ini know i will get a lot of backslash on this forum for saying this, but as it looks like, i won't ever be able to escape the jws.
i have been a born in, third generation jw and awoken in one way or another (i joined this forum 15 years ago) for a very long time.
but i have adapted to the jw lifestyle to a point where it does not bother me anymore.
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Brock Talon
This is the saddest post I have read in a very long time. I won't give you "backlash" about it because it's your life and you should live it how you want to.
Still, maybe you should think of renaming your avatar to something like "foreva again"... -
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Brock Talon
My favorite JR Brown story happened while I was at Bethel in the early 1980's. He was giving a talk that was railing against "Music that debases" and told how "vulgar today's music is" and used a song by Donna Summer as an example. It was a relatively older song by that time called "Love to Love you Baby", but he used it anyway as an example.
He went on to say about it: "With all that oohing and aahing, moaning and groaning, brothers and sisters that song is actually simulated orgasm!"
When the crowd erupted from his statement, he added to a bigger eruption: "Children, if you don't know what that means, ask your parents!"
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Man - I wish I had remembered that story when I wrote my book on Bethel... I would have put it in there somewhere.
-Brock Talon
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25
Did Crisis of Conscience find a market or did it lumber along until the copies ran out?
by TerryWalstrom incuriosity.i would think c of c was the grand-daddy of all the ex-jw books.is there any way to know for sure how many copies sold?
over what span of time before the 1st edition ended?
why did it peter out of print if it was a perennial seller?today, every tom, dick, and jasper has self-published the bleeding wound, 1st person singular, true confessional version of their own fall from grace.
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Brock Talon
Nathan Natas,
For paperbacks, the royalties vary by country, but in the U.S. it's a little over $3. For Kindle, it's about $3.50.
And by the way, the numbers I gave you earlier are for both books together, not just one.
I use the Amazon tool that estimates what price is best for selling a book. Pricing is an interesting thing: if you are too low or too high, your sales are affected. Too high and of course you discourage people, but too low and the perception can be it has little value and thus ignored. For Kindle unlimited, since people can read unlimited books for one price, they often skip cheap or free books because they want to get a "value" for their monthly subscription. So, you have to find the right prices for both printed and digital book formats in order to get the most sales.
For me, sales means eyes, ears and ultimately, hearts.
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Mouthy has Passed Away
by Simon inupdate on mouthy (grace gough)this is graces granddaughter.
i wanted to send an update that today my beautiful grandmother passed away - surrounded by friends and family.
- may 22 1927 - sept 2nd 2016. mouthys_granddaughter.
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Brock Talon
I am very sad to hear about this. Mouthy was a very nice person who was one of the ones that welcomed me and treated me properly when I first started posting. She was a class act all the way.
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Did Crisis of Conscience find a market or did it lumber along until the copies ran out?
by TerryWalstrom incuriosity.i would think c of c was the grand-daddy of all the ex-jw books.is there any way to know for sure how many copies sold?
over what span of time before the 1st edition ended?
why did it peter out of print if it was a perennial seller?today, every tom, dick, and jasper has self-published the bleeding wound, 1st person singular, true confessional version of their own fall from grace.
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Brock Talon
CreateSpace reports I've sold 498 paperbacks since my first book was published, so that's about 180 a year or about 15 a month. Regarding Kindle, that is more difficult to estimate because of the sales and the unlimited being separate, but I'd say I sold about 50 books a month this last quarter. My books actually sell less over time however, they sold more when they were new and #1 in the JW genre.
For those not acquainted, these are my two books:
Journey to God's House: www.amazon.com/Journey-Gods-House-Headquarters-Witnesses-ebook/dp/B00EEIWUFW
Escape from Paradise: www.amazon.com/Escape-Paradise-Jehovahs-Witnesses-thirty-five-ebook/dp/B00S292JS2/
That said, those reading this should know I wrote my books to help people, not to make money. One woman recently wrote that she quit her free home Bible study because of my book, so that is very satisfying. While I'm no Ray Franz, I've tried to do my part.
Also, it should be said that I could have spent all that time writing, publishing, etc. making money at my job where one good sale would make as much as years worth of selling books. I figured this would be the case up front and wrote as a labor of love. Finally, I have given all of the money I've made so far on those books to charity.
However, I am now writing my first novel (fiction) tentatively entitled "The Redemption Sect". If I ever can finish it, and if it every makes any money, I'm keeping it!
Brock Talon
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Moral indignation against "faders" shows JW apologists are morally bankrupt
by slimboyfat ini came across this weird blog that castigates fading jws for their "cowardice" and "hypocrisy" for not making themselves vulnerable to shunning.
apparently in the view of this blogger jws who discover it's not the truth are morally obliged to play by the watchtower rules and face the consequences of shunning.. http://jwresearchblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/fading-faking-and-lying-as-unbelieving.html#comment-form.
what is absent from the blog post is any discussion of the statement in the july 2009 awake!, that no one should be made to choose between their beliefs and their family.
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Brock Talon
This is an interesting subject to me. I can totally understand why current JWs hate faders: it takes away their power because faders don't play into the Watchtower rules.
But what I never understood was why some EX JWs are so hard-nosed against faders. Let me tell you my run-in with one:
A woman who goes by the name Sue Taylor on Facebook (AKA littlegirlietaylor) read my first book Journey to God's House and friended me to talk about my book She went on and on about how brilliant the writing was, how I had a "gift" and so on. She gave the book 5 stars on Amazon.com with a wonderful review added and took to championing my book on social media as an ex-JW who thought my book should be read by everyone. Of course, that was all very flattering, so I engaged her in small talk using Facebook messaging thanking her. All was good.
Fast forward about 6 months and I released my second book, Escape from Paradise. One chapter in it explains how I faded from the JWs. Well, this woman went beserk about that. She Facebook messaged me a long rambling message of how I was a fake, that I needed therapy, that I wasn't "true to self" and bunches of other insults about me and my family. She Facebook unfriended me and then wrote a 1 star review on the book. She even changed the previous 5 star review for the first book to a 1 star review and changed the review itself slamming the book she had previously praised.
To top it all off, she went on a rampage of down-voting every good review both of my books had, adding in snide comments on other reviews and so on. She even wrote "The Society" about me and then called the Police on me when I responded to her abuse telling her she was out of line. She was so nuts I had to report her to Amazon and they eventually took down everything she did because they could see she was abusing the review policy.
But what set her off was the one paragraph in my second book where I simply stated I chose to fade rather than disassociate myself, explaining why I did it. That simply infuriated her.
Since then, I've watched out for other ex-JWs who resent faders. It's not a lot, but there are some.
To me they seem to resent it that they disassociated themselves or got disfellowshipped and suffered over it and they feel that faders "cheat" the system and don't have to pay the price they paid.
Well, I want to say to any potential fader-haters out there who might be reading this that EVERYONE pays a price for leaving the JWs. Some pull the band aid off quickly, others slowly, but it hurts either way. Faders have many reasons for fading, but don't think they don't suffer. It's just done in a different way. It may be that some faders may suffer even worse than many non-faders.
So if this is you (an ex-JW fader-hater) please, ease up. Just be happy you're out and stop resenting others who may have got out differently than you.
Brock Talon -
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Brock Talon
I dunno. When I gaze at my wife's fine badonkadonk, I be thinkin He put a LOT of work into that spectacular feat of engineering...
Looks like preferential treatment to me...
Just sayin...
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Dan Sydlik
by done4good inmorning warship - he was the only restraint and i'm not saying that lightly.
i know there are a dozen others here who were in bethel back in the early 2000's who know what i'm talking about.
he actually kept me thinking this was jehovah's org because of his sincerity as if the holy spirit was operating in him.
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Brock Talon
Excerpt from my book "Journey to God's House" - Chapter "My GB can lick your GB"
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Back in those days, two other Governing Body members George Gangas and Dan Sydlik were still alive and walked the Bethel halls as well. These two Governing Body members could not have been more different from each other. Now, keep in mind when reading the following stories that Governing Body members were practically worshiped among Jehovah's Witnesses, as there was no one higher on the JW food chain than they were. Besides, it was thought that they had a direct line of communication with God Himself. How could you be bigger than that? It was like hobnobbing with Moses or Abraham.
Dan Sydlik at the time usually played the voice of God in most of the convention dramas. (As mentioned before, conventions were large annual gatherings of Jehovah's Witnesses.) The JWs who ran these conventions often re-enacted various Bible stories through mini plays (called dramas) and everybody in these dramas dressed up like ancient Israelites to make the stories more realistic. Those dramatic stories were retold through realistic sets, acting, music, and so on. It turns out that Brother Sydlik used to be the favorite voice of God in these dramas since he was a large man with a big booming voice, not unlike what it might sound like if you took the actor James Earl Jones and plugged him into an amplifier.
I can practically hear Sydlik now in the drama about Moses and the burning bush: "Moeeeses, Moeeeeses! Do not coooome neeeear heeeere. Remoooove the saaandals from your feeeet."
Dan Sydlik had a very self confident, outgoing personality. He walked powerfully and spoke with authority, even more so than most of the other GB. He also had a wife about half his age, which always tickled us young Bethelites. At least one GB was probably having hot sex in their room, we thought.
One day he gave a special invitation-only "New Boys" talk to us first year Bethelites. In this talk, he mentioned that we all needed to "roooound out our personaaaalities because Jehoooovah doesn't like squaaaare things." He said, "Look at naaaature, nothing is square in naaaature, this shows God loves smoooothness." Interesting I thought. I went up to him after that talk and making my way through the crowd surrounding him, I said:
Me: Loved the talk Brother Sydlik. But, regarding the square things in nature issue, I can think of something square in nature.
Sydlik: [eyeballs me for a second] Ohhhhhhh? Whaaaat?
Me: [confidently] Sodium Chloride. Table salt. It's a perfect cube. [I smile]
Sydlik: [grabs my tie and pulls me closer to his face] Whaaat's your naame boooy? If you're wronnng, there's a job chaaange in it for you! [playing at being mad]
Crowd: HaHaHaHa.
Me: [smiling, knowing he is playing] My name is Brock, sir. And it's Sodium Chloride. [now tickled pink with this]
Sydlik: [letting go of me seeing as I am getting the joke that he's pretending to be mad at me] Har, har, har! Gooood one boy! [walks off]
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I liked both Sydlik and Gangas, as they were real people and did and acted pretty much as they pleased, but in a good way. They seemed completely oblivious to the stodgy, careful, and calculated way many "Bethel Heavies" handled themselves. ("Heavies" meant important people like the GB or the many Bethel "committee" members.) They also seemed to have a genuine love of people that I didn't see in many of the other prominent Bethelites at that time.
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Brock