Leaving JWs Has Made Me Intolerant of Stupid Thinking

rmt1

[PG warning: high pressure, some language.] Quarantining your elusive, nebulous, slippery feelings into textual prisons is one way to start to get mastery over the impulse. Face it, if you were a JW and had even 80% reasoning capacity, you were, in an epistomological sense, “abused” and you suffered “trauma.” I was. I’m not talking a pleasant, jejune “traumatic experience” that everyone has when they narrowly avoid dying in a car wreck: I’m talking about the mythic, preliterate (inarticulable), preconscious (un/subconscious), limbic (physiologic lizard brain stem) abomination that cannot actually be articulated, and which triggers a physiologic response of readyness for physical combat, because to the preconsious mind, it IS a fucking physical threat. Although you can remember the play by play bullshit of how the elders did it, the actual trauma (I acknowledge accumulated, not all at one instant) is buried so deep in the psyche that there’s really no way to revisit it under controlled circumstances so as to get mastery. The physiologic response will recur until the preconscious mind has enough other senses of assurance (monetary, status, fame, health, anything you can ‘have’ that makes you more able to resist threats) to effectively overlook, or deprioritize, the re-experience as a physical threat. I believe that the emotional cathexis (outrage, badness, sense of naughtiness) attached to cases of sexual pedophilia cowers before the cathexis resulting from adequately-intelligent, or particularly brilliant people, being brain-raped by authority figures. I.E., what the Lacanian father, with his inscrutibly irrefutable WORD, does to young minds. It demands a taxonomy, say, “Pedoepistophilia.” Nothing less than a class action suit would satisfy, but you can’t articulate the crime, because it exists before/beneath/behind the written records of rational articulation. You can’t get at it, thus can’t prove it, and thus it goes on.

Carmel

seeker, I guess my experiance with the borg was early enough in my tender life that I was not able to separate out too much detail in the contradictions I observed and heard. My questions that went unanswered were pretty sophomoric yet extremely inportant to a twelve year old. I saw first hand the hypocracy and favortism within the congregations my family attended. At that age, more gut issues, intuition, if you will, rather than well thought out doctrinal or exegetical renderings. So I guess, my evolution intellectually and academically came later in life and allowed me to separate emotionally from the cult by the time I acquired higher reasoning tools, hence, I tend to tolerate a lot of illogical stuff. I find it in my profession, in the world of politics, in other facets of life. If I let it ruffle my feathers then life would be a pretty unpleasant experiance.

I don't blame my jw experiance for my shortcomings or my capacity for tolerance. Once you get away from it, can see it clearly in the rear view mirror, it's time to take responsibility for ones emotions as a free agent and not blame past frustrations for present responses to stimuli regardless of their nature..

Nuf of my soap box.

carmel

yaddayadda

I'm the opposite. I've become a lot less arrogant, self-righteous and judgmental, and therefore more tolerant of others stupidity in a religious context.

FreeWilly

On the outside I think I'm still fairly tolerant, albeit slightly less.

But on the inside sometimes it's torture. I just have to keep telling myself "Remember, you used to believe stupid sh*t too"!!

myelaine

"When I hear someone espousing an opinion or viewpoint that I KNOW is stupid, unreasoned and intellectually indefensible - essentialy on any topic that I've thoroughly researched and really, really thought seriously about - I just want to smack them up side the head and tell them what a fucking idiot they are. To say that I am condescending and view that person as intellectually lacking is to put it fairly mildly. For a nice guy, I can really go off on this... "

"funny" you should say this..... I can see someone like Elijah sitting around with his pals....

michelle

LDH

When I hear someone espousing an opinion or viewpoint that I KNOW is stupid, unreasoned and intellectually indefensible - essentialy on any topic that I've thoroughly researched and really, really thought seriously about - I just want to smack them up side the head and tell them what a fucking idiot they are.

Yes, and no.

It really depends on their attitude. If they are humble and truly have tried to understand, then no I don't get pissed off. If the same argument comes from say, a prick, I have been known to morph into a she-tiger.

It's all about the attitude.

RMT1 your thoughts are very interesting, I hope you post more!

LDH

Although you can remember the play by play bullshit of how the elders did it,

RMT, one thing that has helped me is NOT to tell others the play by play. As a minor, I had no choice in the matter. I openly tell others if they are interested that I came from this environment. However if they ask me particulars I preface my remark by telling them that trying to explain the unexplainable only makes *ME* sound crazy.

Finally-Free

I used to be very intolerant with the stupidity of the masses, and it wreaked havoc with my blood pressure. Stupidity is a choice, and I no longer care if people choose to remain stupid. I just stay the hell away from them, and hope that one day they'll forget how to procreate.

W

JeffT

I'm generally more tolerant of other people's positions. I am VERY open to exploring what others believe and why. I'm done dismissing something just because it doesn't fit my current world view.

The person you think is stupid may be able to teach you something.

Golf

Good points JeffT, good points.

Golf

Leaving JWs Has Made Me Intolerant of Stupid Thinking - How About U?