Any reason to Add new GB Members?

by LostGeneration 7 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  LostGeneration

  If you were on the GB, and you wanted to push your own personal agendas and doctrines, wouldn't you want to resist adding any new members.

  When there were 10 members, basically each member has 10% control.

  Now that there are 7 members, each has basically 14% of the vote.

  Adding more members dilutes your power. And if you truly believe the "overlapping" doctrine, there isn't really a valid reason to add anyone else, if the overlapping is applied to GB 1.0 and 2.0 only.

  If another one dies, then basically you only need 4 votes to top the other two votes, that is pretty small power center, only four men.

  Will be interesting to see if they wait a while to add anyone else.
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  pirata

  I would guess that they will only add more members once they realize that their overlapping generation is getting too old. Then they'll need new members and some "new light".
• 

  yknot

  Not really......

  I mean it would look semi symbolic to do as the LDS has and have an Apostle's 12.......but again it ain't needed.

  Probably have at least one Latino and Asian Brother added too......
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  stuckinamovement

  No reason to appoint they aren't the ones controlling the org anyway. Although they might add a couple of boys to the body to maintain appearances as the number of anointed continue to rise. The legal and service Dept's probably are vetting a couple of guys now, but want to make sure they are controllable/ or stupidly gullible, before they are appointed.
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  straightshooter

  They add members when they want less work to do, such as sitting in on various committees.
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  Mad Sweeney

  I doubt they're in a hurry to add members. If you ask any random rank and file JW how many members currently sit on the GB, most of them will guess a number 10 or higher. They don't know and they don't usually care to know.
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  LostGeneration

  SIAM, i see that on the board all the time, that legal and service control things, but I have a hard time believing that. I mean, look at that document posted about martyring your kids over the blood policy. I had to go take a 30 minute shower after reading that thing...its just so disgusting. And legal is ok with something like that? I mean fine enough if you want to kill off your dedicated cult members with the blood policy, but kids?

  I think legal works around the mayhem brought on by the decisions of the GB. Yes they present them with the problems that their decisions may have on the org, but if the GB really wanted to avoid legal issues, they would just stop talking about blood altogether and then in 10 years write a silly "Questions from readers" article making it a personal decision.

  Back on topic, i guess the point of what I was thinking was that if there is either a liberal or conservative block of 4 GB members, they could enforce their views by blocking any new appointments and waiting for one of the others to pass away
• 

  Vidiot

  LostGeneration - I think legal works around the mayhem brought on by the decisions of the GB.

  That makes more sense to me. The GB (1.0-2.0) since 1975 has been stuck in various degrees of seige mode; it's become reactive, not proactive.

  LostGeneration - ...if there is either a liberal or conservative block of 4 GB members, they could enforce their views by blocking any new appointments and waiting for one of the others to pass away.

  That's a big "if", IMO. The WT heirarchy is authoritarian in nature (it's the product of Rutherford, Covington, and Franz, after all), which virtually guarantees that it will be conservative; the membership, by (either intentional or unintentional) design can therefore only be the WT equivalent of "center-right" to "right". Plus the WT subscribes to Biblical literalist innerency, a worldview which inherently steers it in an authoritarian/conservative direction; you arguably can't read the Bible-as-literal-history without coming to that conclusion.

  Barb Anderson's stuff suggests that there might be a liberal wing in the writing dept, though. Not that they ever had much influence if they existed, and by now, they might be nonexistent.