Room 215,
the biggest obstacle to meaningful reform or liberalisation is ``Boss" Jaracz, the hardest ass on the GB
LOFL
The wierdest part is that some of my friends in Writing attribute TJ's power today to Ray Franz and, in a sense, 'blame' RVF for TJ's ascendancy. Almost from the beginning of the present GB, there have been 'liberal' and 'conservative' factions within the body. Before RVF left, TJ was a nobody on the GB. Many in Writing feel that RVF tried pushing his liberalisation too fast, and this made the rest of the GB uneasy. (I'm not sure whether or not that's accurate, but it's how they see things, anyway.)
So, according to them, TJ saw an opportunity and took it, becoming the most conservative of the 'conservatives,' leading the movement to 'undo' all RVF's previous good work and promptly accusing any GB member who tried to display even a shred of humanity of "trying to do another Ray."
fleaman,
I have a few bud,s in the London bethel but they either dont see anything of any import,or are reluctant to spill the beans.
If they've been there a while, they probably know things but are in denial. In other words, they know somethings wrong, but they constantly make excuses that silence their inner nagging doubts.
When I was there, we used expressions like, "It's a perfect organisation run by imperfect humans" (which, when you think about it, is pretty dumb because any organisation is the sum of the humans running it!) and, in a similar vein, "The work gets done in spite of us, not because of us." What these expressions really did, though, is they allowed us to laugh off and joke about things we knew weren't right, but years of indoctrination had prevented us from thinking about seriously, never mind 'spilling the beans.'
Regards,
Ken