The world the JW's detest...

by TD 23 Replies latest jw friends

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  TD

  How many times have JW depictions of paradise shown cozy little gabled, shingled, lapsided, wood frame houses tastefully situated in front of mountain lakes without a hint of technology? I've lost count.

  I've always thought this picture betrays an unbelievable naivete about how technology works. We all know it takes tools to build almost any kind of house. Even if we make things as simple as possible and only use handtools, (Which is time-consuming but certainly possible) they don't just grow on trees. They have to be made.

  There is no escaping this simple fact. It takes tools to make tools.

  The tools needed even to make simple handtools like hammers, saws, planes, bracebits and axes don't grow on trees either. Lathes, presses, milling machines, hammer forges, blast and smelting furnaces also have to be made. And the components of these tools come from many different industries. --Precision bearings, electrical controls, hydraulics, pneumatics, gauges and instruments of all types.This in turn requires even more specialized tooling.

  The truth is, almost any manufactured product you lay your eyes on is really "sitting" on top of a very large pyramid or other technologies. And it is this huge network of technologies along with the infrastructure to support them (e.g. railroads, mines, power plants etc.) that in large part "makes" the world we live in the very thing that JW's seem to detest ---An industrialized society were the vast majority live in cities and work for others.

  A JW reading this may object that I've overcomplicated things by injecting too much technology into the picture and that's true to an extent. Metallurgy, for example was an established technology long before we had electrical power. However this makes the problem worse not better. You can take technology out of the picture, but the more you remove, the more back-breaking human physical labor it takes to replace it. --Labor to mine iron ore, labor to mine coal, labor to stoke coal fired furnaces, and steam engines, labor to cut trees by hand, etc.

  Any way you look at it, without an industrialized society, you don't have cozy little gabled, shingled, lapsided, wood frame houses. You don't nice brick houses either. You don't even have log cabins. How about a mud hut with a thatched roof?
• 

  IP_SEC

  
  I can honestly say that this was one thing in all my years of dubdumb that did bug me.

  Good post!
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  Goldminer

  Very good points.I also often wondered how we were going to clean the earth without any modern technology.With horses or bulls?Look how long it took to clean the WTC in New York with modern equipment,now imagine a bunch of zealous jw's doing that.I don't know if 1000 years would be enough.

  Goldminer
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  alreadygone

  nuh huh. Didn't you see the PBS series Wilderness man. He made his own house in the wilds of Canada with nothing but his bare hands.

  Ok he had a few tools...
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  jgnat

  I have thought this for a long time, too, but never articulated it as well as you. I am annoyed by depictions of iced tea with straws. Imagine all of the technologies and labour that has to be in place for a single straw.

  On this earth, straws are cheap. We mass-produce them with machines. On that earth, every straw would be an expensive proposition. Not to mention the transportation infrastructure (ships, roads, trucks) required to get the tea together with the straw makers. Oh. I forgot. Tea will be able to grow everywhere.

  Now, I've heard in defence of the paradise-view, that Jehovah will take care of all that by magic, presto, bango. Does a magically-maintained earth, where food, shelter, and clothing is all provided sound like captivity to you? It does to me. I don't think God made us to be kept pets in a zoo.
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  CaptainSchmideo

  
  Economist Milton Friedman had an analogy similar to the drinking straw.

  A pencil is one of the most common tools on the planet, yet YOU could not make one.

  You'd have to have your own forest, cut down the trees, transport them to a mill which makes the trees into pencil shapes.

  Then you'd have to have a graphite mine to get the pencil lead, have a factory to process the graphite into the shape you'd need, then another process to insert the lead into the pencil.

  Then you'd have to have a rubber tree farm, and a factory that processes the rubber tree into usable rubber, then a machine to stamp the rubber into little erasers.

  Then, you'd need a copper mine, plus a factory to smelt the copper into sheets, then a machine to mill the sheets into those little metal sleeves to hold the eraser in place.

  Then, you'd need a paint factory to create the yellow paint to coat the wood of the pencil, plus a rig to spray the wood. Then you'd need another machine to crimp the copper dingus to the pencil and eraser.

  And yet, a pencil costs 10 cents.

  The only difference between Witnesses talking about a Paradise and Marxist college students talking about Paradise is about three hits on the bong....
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  in a new york bethel minute

  you see? this is exactly what satan wants you to think. EVERYTHING is possible with God. He can do whatever he wants. God didn't need your so-called "technology" to create this universe, which is so much more complex than a stupid little 2 story brick house. "Do not put him to the test", is what his son i forget his name said. You guys are all just jealous because you're not gonna be there. goddam goats can all go to gehenna. you're all as bad as the son of destruction, judas. Hope you hang yourselves like he did.

  wow. some dubs would actually respond like that. that's what's scary to me

  bethel

  P.S. hope i didn't offend anyone in the meantime
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  kid-A

  yet given the remarkable number of janitors, window washers and floor cleaners in the WTS, we certainly wont have any problems with building maintenance....
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  jgnat

  Boy, how many places do we need an abundance of janitors, window washers, and floor cleaners? Yet another parallel to prison. EEEEEEE letmeouttahere.
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  aniron

  I'm sure everyone has looked at the pictures of "paradise" earth and wonder similar things.

  Where did those people get such wonderful modern looking clothes. Guys in nice crisp shirts and neatly pressed trousers. Woman in wonderful flowered dresses and skirts. How were these things made?

  Two things I remember looking at such pictures, one was just in the background was a tractor ploughing a field!! Where did it come from, a leftover from the "old" world maybe, so where did the fuel come from.

  The other was that on a table in the usual scene of happy smiling multi-national people, who were some reason in this new world all dressed in national costumes. On the table with its usual ton of fresh fruit on it, was a pitcher of water/juice, but it had ice-cubes in it, did this mean there was refrigeration?