Blanket Bomb Or Snipe?

by hillary_step 41 Replies latest jw friends

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  hillary_step

  Hello All,

  I wish to open a thread on a bit of a controversial issue so belt-on the self control! My question? Why do some of us attack JW’s as people and who are our real targets?

  What a strange mixture of personalities we are on this Board! The good, the bad and the Fred Hall (Mi scusi furry man! ) All that we really have in common is that at some stage our lives were/are touched in some way by the WTS. Many carry bitter memories and ache for their decades of wasted years, younger ones seethe at their lost youth, some struggle and fight to maintain an attitude of balance, understandably difficult to do when the shadow of the WTS monster still looms terrifyingly over their lives. Some adopt atheism, others fundamentalism, other mainstream their lives, some succeed in divers ways that had not previously imagined possible. Some resurrect their ‘deadened bodily members’ and dash like sprinters through well worn bedroom doors and make the beast with two backs until the thought of a report form has vanished from their psyche. I have heard the Board described as just a microcosm real life, I find this hard to accept. Nothing about the lives that we have left/are leaving/will leave behind allows a person to sidestep the deep personal issues that can travel with us for years. Most of us in this digital landscape are not acting ‘normally’, why would we? As for myself, I view it more as the Kings Cross Station from where the battered and weary troops return from the front lines and mill around waiting for their rides home, some to re-visit lives and family long since left behind, some to empty rooms, some to an early grave, and some to find true peace and happiness beyond their dreams.

  Mulan, I believe started a thread some while ago that asked us our views of the personalities of CO’s and I was deeply impressed by the fact that the vast majority of comments were positive. I personally have met CO’s that I have liked but not one that I would trust in battle. One person wrote a touching essay about a JW with whom he had dealings with in Mexico and the respect that he felt for this man filled my eyes. I read and receive touching notes from many who express a deep and sincere love for the JW’s they knew as individuals and they truly miss the friends that they have left behind. Max described an individual with whom he broke bread with at Brooklyn for many years as a saintly man and I was moved.

  My own experience is that the vast majority of JW’s are good and decent people who truly and simply are just victims. After all we are talking about the people that we were/are, some of us a very short time ago. Joel, whose surname should be Largeheart often tries to lead our attitudes towards JW’s into gentler territory and I for one thank him for his persistent efforts. Could it be that sometimes we train our weapons on the soft target, setting them on automatic and gunning for anything that is remotely JW shaped because we cannot reach the real target, the few dozen men who maintain a system that molds the thinking of six million. How does this help? Perhaps it does, I really would like to know.

  Ginny Tosken greatly impressed me recently when she noted and I hope that she does not mind me quoting her :

  When I find myself reacting strongly and emotionally to something done by the Society, I ask myself, "Would I react as strongly if this had been done by Catholics, Mormons, or Pentecostals?" This usually helps me gauge how much of reaction comes from old wounds and how much is from moral indignation

  Some of the wisest words that I have read in recent times. Surely this attitude will speed recovery, focus our intent more powerfully at the correct targets and allow us to wing our way home safely. What do you think?

  Warm regards to you all - HS

  'If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enought to disarm all hostility. - Longfellow
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  Francois

  After having been raised in a dysfunctional family I can certainly recognize the truth in much of what you're saying. My father was the most psychologically and emotionally maladjusted human being I've ever known. A drunken tyrant, he delighted in psychological torment. Now, all these decades later, even after all the effort I've made to disconnect the buttons he used to push, there are still times when someone will treat me in just the "right" way, will treat me in a way a little too closely resembling the way my father did, and I'm down their throat and out their nether end before they know what's happening.

  The same is also true with the WTBTS. It is essentially a dysfunctional, emotionally and psychologically abusive organization run by maladjusted little men. And now, even after all these years, someone can come at me with the same crap that the JWs used to use on me and no matter how I try to contain myself, the reaction is powerful.

  This is what comes of having unresolved issues revolving around abuse of any kind. Anger. Rage. Emotionally supercharged reactions. It is to be expected from people who were abused when they were helpless. Helpless as little kids; helpless even as adults raised in an organization they believed represented God - until they woke up.

  Best the bastards in Broklynn give us wide berth. I don't know about you, but I would do just about anything to help prove out those ass hole, false prophecying, child molester protecting, money-grubbing, soul destroying, family wrecking, self-righteous, cowardly, selfish bastards for what they are.

  And I'm saying all this at the end of a GOOD day.

  Francois

  NOTE TO GOVERNING BODY: You've been challenged to a debate, boys. Dont you have ANY balls?
• 

  teejay

  I don't care who it is.

  It doesn't matter to me if it's a Catholic priest, a Buddhist monk, a governing body member, or the Great and Powerful Oz... if they tell me that they speak for god, if they say that their interpretation of scripture supercedes mine, if they tell me that common, ordinary things like going to my grandmother's funeral in the local church; or getting an education to better prepare for the future; or saying "bless you" when somebody sneezes is wrong, then my reaction is going to be the same.

  The WTS is unique among the world's religious movements in some of these ways. We have reason to have a special hatred of it. It is evil in ways that members of other religions have a hard time comprehending.

  tj
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  Maximus

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  "Give sorrow words ... the grief that does not speak
  whispers the o'er-fraught heart,
  and bids it break."

  --William Shakespeare
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• 

  hillary_step

  Hello Teejay,

  Thank you for your note in which you said :

  It doesn't matter to me if it's a Catholic priest, a Buddhist monk, a governing body member, or the Great and Powerful Oz... if they tell me that they speak for god, if they say that their interpretation of scripture supercedes mine, if they tell me that common, ordinary things like going to my grandmother's funeral in the local church; or getting an education to better prepare for the future; or saying "bless you" when somebody sneezes is wrong, then my reaction is going to be the same.

  My point is what if they are not the leaders but the led. What if they are a forty year old average man, holding down a thankless job, married to your brothers mother, two children, for the sake of argument your nephews, on your doorstep for Saturday morning service in the dripping rain. Or perhaps arriving on this Board blown by the winds of curiosity and nagging doubts. What then? This represents the vast majority of of JW's. Should our frustration be turned toward them, they are after all the misled?

  Max,

  Thank you for your worthy quotation, a truly beautiful expression that encapuslates so much of what I feel.

  Francois,

  As Walpole once penned 'The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel'. I am sorry that you have seen so much of the dark side, I hope that life will treat you with more kindness in your tommorrows, you sound as if you deserve some brighter days.

  Best regards -- HS
• 

  TMS

  Hillary,

  Two young men in white shirts, with black ties and black pants cut across my lawn to where I was tinkering with a vehicle. I made a mental note of their Mormon "Elder" badges before they were within twenty feet.

  All kinds of thoughts rushed through my head. "A Look At Mormonism", Watchtower 1962 and the expose' on the Book of Mormon that followed. But the only thing I could think of was how much they looked like two Regular Pioneers on the verge of Pioneer Service School.

  I spoke in quiet tones about ancestral baptism and my years of experience with and respect for Mormons. They dropped their normal spiel and chatted naturally about Utah and Idaho and the rigors of door-to-door work. We parted amicably, almost like grandfather and grandsons.

  What reason would I have to treat Jehovah's Witnesses with any less courtesy?

  TMS
• 

  AlanF

  You raise an interesting question, Hillary. I think that the answer is mixed.

  It's true, as you say, that most JWs are good, decent people who have become victims of a rotten system of religious control. The problem is that they are by and large willing victims. Almost all of us who were JWs know very well that we sometimes would submerge our better judgment under that of the Society or of someone we thought "wiser in the truth". Sometimes we would even make a mental choice between doing what we knew was the right or true thing, and sticking to the JW religion because it was the easier or less painful path.

  What ex-JW doesn't know a number of current JWs who, in especially private settings, make scathing comments about the Society's practices, but in the company of JW loyalists, or even of anyone not a JW, will deny that anything is wrong? Such people may be victims, but they have still made their own choices, choices that we ex-JWs have had the courage (or perhaps the opposite) to make. It's hard to have sympathy for such people. I often wish that someone had come along 30 years ago and beat me over the head to get me to listen to criticisms. I'm certain that I would have listened, as long as they didn't try to convert me to something equally bad.

  Of course, I realize that not everyone is as open to criticism of our former religion as many of us proved to be. But they should be! And that's a good deal of the source of frustration and anger that so often appears on discussion boards that cater to ex-JWs.

  I think that there is a strong parallel between what happened in Germany around WWII and the JW organization. In both cases there is a strong central government that brooks no dissent. There is a set of middle managers who often disagree with government policy but who have to obey in order to retain their jobs -- and their heads. The rank & file citizens generally know that something is wrong, but either are too passive to care enough, or are too stupid to care enough, or are too afraid, to rise up and do something about the government.

  It has been said that a people deserves the government it has. I suppose that's true in some cases, but I don't think so in other cases. An old H2O poster who I haven't seen around for awhile argued that the Society's policy on disfellowshipping for blood transfusions came about in the 1950s largely because many JWs wrote to the Society and argued that it should be so. I strongly disagreed with him, but he seems to have had an inside track on Bethel doings back then, so I had to defer to his opinions. The problem with that claim is that the Society first set up the conditions where such a hard mindset could flourish, then a good number of people took on that mindset, then they came full circle and asked JW leaders to become even harder. So here we have a case of runaway positive feedback, where the harder the leadership gets, the harder the followers get, and then back to the leadership, until we have a monster. Who is responsible for the monster? Is it not everyone who encouraged its growth, either by giving overt support, or by giving tacit support by failing to object?

  All in all, I feel somewhat sorry for JWs, but not all that sorry. Too many would take up that 'sword of God' and kill you if their leaders told them to. I think I've illustrated, with a recent parody, just how easy this would be to do. I have no doubt whatsoever that certain of my relatives, given the right encouragement by the Society, would not hesitate to kill all of their non-JW relatives. Yet on the surface they're as loving towards other JWs as the murderous King David was towards his favorites. This attitude is shown in a minor way by the way JWs all accept the Society's gross misuse of shunning.

  AlanF
• 

  hillary_step

  Hello Alan,

  Thank you for your customarily precise comments which I must say put me in the strange position of agreeing with much of what you argue though disagreeing with some basic premises of your argument, an uncomfortable place to sit mentally which I will try to explain.

  You note :

  It's true, as you say, that most JWs are good, decent people who have become victims of a rotten system of religious control. The problem is that they are by and large willing victims……..Sometimes we would even make a mental choice between doing what we knew was the right or true thing, and sticking to the JW religion because it was the easier or less painful path.

  The issue to me is at what point is someone a ‘willing victim’ or an 'unwilling victim'. Judging this, given the complex issues is beyond me. I will accept without question that some of the GB are not victims but victimizers, often intentional and cynical in intent and here I would part company with RF who described even some of these men as 'victims of victims'. My difficulty is identifying at what stage in this very complex psychological maelstrom can we truly say that a person was an willing or unwilling victim of the WTS honed and sophisticated techniques of mind control. Nuremberg set definitions at what was the ‘jumping off point’ for this issue by introducing the individual conscience and its own ability to say ‘no’ to genocide, as some did. But you well know Alan, that even the conscience of JW’s are controlled, sometimes so totally that even grown men quiver at the idea of clinking glasses to wish good health to another.

  The average JW from my own experience only stops being a victim when their own core belief is shattered. That belief, that Jah and Christ are in total control of the Universe and especially the expression of Gods worship on earth the WTS, overrides common sense and logic, even to the point of subduing the power to reason effectively, unless that reasoning takes place through the established WTS parameters. When the JW sees things going wrong within the WTS, he is conditioned to respond with ‘everybody is imperfect', when things run smoothly it is ‘the spiritual paradise’, when glaring faults within the WTS become public, either evidence of Armageddon around the corner, or a more interesting one, Jah. refining his people. Intellectual laziness and an element of cowardice is involved and that is part of the human condition, but the conditioning seems to run much deeper than that.

  What ex-JW doesn't know a number of current JWs who, in especially private settings, make scathing comments about the Society's practices, but in the company of JW loyalists, or even of anyone not a JW, will deny that anything is wrong? Such people may be victims, but they have still made their own choices, choices that we ex-JWs have had the courage (or perhaps the opposite) to make.

  Again I agree that this attitude is growing increasingly more common, and also growing in sentiment, but the question still remains that given the powerful spell cast by the WTS over peoples reasoning ability and sense of logic, at what point are the choices they make their own? You mention the courage of XJW’s and indeed I would thank those who have beaten a path through the dangerous jungle of exit for people like myself. It also has to be noted however that many XJW’s who vociferously condemn JW’s and all they stand for are often JW’s who were put out of the WTS for divers sins of the flesh, or those who drifted away after an unhappy childhood’s etc. still believing that they have turned their backs on God, or others who left not for decisions of principle. They did not make reasoned choices to leave. They drift to the Board and then find out what they have been released from.

  I think that there is a strong parallel between what happened in Germany around WWII and the JW organization.

  I agree completely with you here, though the WTS has been much more successful, for far longer that the Nazi’s in developing behavioral control. This also brings me to an interesting point. As Russia entered Berlin, Hitler’s last public appearance was at the time he blessed his ‘secret weapon’ that would bring dramatic victory to the Fatherland. This weapon was 14 year old children with pipe bombs. The Allied Forces were instructed to take the adults prisoner but shoot these boys on sight because of their fanaticism. They were clearly naïve and gullible victims who perhaps fall into the category of those you outlined in your earlier post who if asked to destroy ‘apostates’ would not hesitate. No amount of banging people on the head would work with these victims. If they had lived, perhaps they might have matured to realize the folly of the system but like many JW’s they are so controlled that they will gladly go down with the ship thinking they are doing this for God. They are not children physically, but in many ways have never grown up emotionally and to break out of the eggshell of their theology, to them is untenable. It is these that I pity the most, they fill the Branches and live other peoples lives.

  The problem with that claim is that the Society first set up the conditions where such a hard mindset could flourish, then a good number of people took on that mindset, then they came full circle and asked JW leaders to become even harder. So here we have a case of runaway positive feedback, where the harder the leadership gets, the harder the followers get, and then back to the leadership, until we have a monster. Who is responsible for the monster? Is it not everyone who encouraged its growth, either by giving overt support, or by giving tacit support by failing to object?

  How Alan, can I disagree with this, I cannot. I have seen this scenario develop many times before my own eyes. Again though, understanding the extent of the abusive relationship with the controller and the controlled helps a person to see that this is unnatural and unhealthy behavoir. The desire of the abused wife to make a beautiful meal for the husband that kicks the life from her whenever he is angry is a puzzlement to a reasoning person, but it is classic behavoir, as is the abused becoming the abuser. This is a very complex issue. There are of course people like YK who have convinced themselves on a rather eccentric intellectual level of the validity of the WTS in Gods purposes, but in order to survive within this difficult world he convinces himself of the superiority of his own understanding, but what his motives are for this situation who would know. Though I do think that a wife and three kids would knock the prophecy right out of him! He would quickly transfom from being of the 'annointed' to being of the annoyed.

  One thing I am sure of and I have first hand experience of this with my wife when I tried decades ago to get her to see what the WTS really represented. She would not even countenance a discussion about it. Over the years with much patience and love I was gradually able to help her feel comfortable and secure enough to talk about controversial issues and now it is she who wants to take on the GB single handed! Love is a powerful force and I sincerely believe that if more bridges of love were built to the those still ‘in’, more would cross that bridge. A combative approach to the problem is fraught with difficulties, not the least being the complexity of the motives of those involved in combat.

  Again Alan, thanks for your thoughts about which I will further ponder!

  HS
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  AlanF

  This topic is a general one that is presently the subject of a long-running debate among professional psychologists and sociologists who concentrate on religion.

  On one side are people like Gordon Melton and Massimo Introvine, whose colleagues have come up with the term "New Religious Movements" to describe religions that most people consider cults, or at least out in left field. They uncritically accept disgusting cults like Scientology, the Japanese Aum cult, the Solar Temple cult and so forth. In my opinion these so-called sociologists are entirely lacking in sense. Some of them, like Melton and Introvine, have accepted money or other considerations from these cults to do research on some of the cults, and naturally have produced "studies" indicating that they're harmless. These guys claim that things like "mind control" and "brainwashing" are figments of the imagination of "disgruntled" ex-members. They refuse to accept that anyone caught up in these cults is a victim. There was a court case about 10 years ago where the court decided that certain studies produced by the opposite camp of sociologists were flawed and cannot be used to show that cults produce victims. Watchtower Legal people have used this case to argue that JWs are not victims of "mind control" because "mind control" does not exist, and so, of their own free will, JWs accept abominations like the WTS blood policy.

  On the other side are professionals who accept that "mind control" of cult members exists in some fashion. They are hard put to define this objectively, and are especially hamstrung in the U.S. because of laws and court precedents on separation of church and state. I think they're in a position similar to trying to define "pornography".

  Most everyone will agree that a picture of an adult man having sex with a five-year-old is pornographic, just as they will agree that a cult member who commits suicide in order to join up with invisible space aliens is a victim of mind control. The difficulty of definition is at the borders. Is a picture of a naked 21-year-old woman pornographic? How about of an 18-year-old woman? How about a 15-year-old? How about a 5-year-old? The answer is not clear and depends on many factors that are impossible to define objectively. A picture of naked 5-year-old in a magazine designed for adult male consumption will be deemed pornographic by most people. A similar picture in a family photo album might be called "cute".

  It's similar with religions. Just when does everyday acceptance of convincing arguments become mind control? I can't say, but I'll go along with a U.S. judge who many years ago said about pornography, "I know it when I see it." That kind of judgment is inherently subjective and is the reason that the above-mentioned court decided that certain studies on mind control were not admissible as evidence.

  But I know that many of Jim Jones' followers were victims. I know that a lot of JWs are victims. I also know that plenty of these people are not just innocent victims, but willing victims, and they know on some level what they've gotten into, but stay anyway because of some large benefit they get. Such benefits span the range of human desires, from desire for power to desire for group acceptance to fear of being kicked out of a family group. The nasty thing about the camp of braindead religious sociologists is that they have made it next to impossible for reasonable people to do much about people who are such victims, because they claim that victims don't exist, that people almost always make fully reasoned choices about being in a cult.

  With respect to JWs, many have posted their experiences of almost becoming a JW, but holding back after figuring out that hard questions about JW belief and practice were not being answered and were not ever going to be answered. They managed to avoid becoming victims. Others don't see the subtle mental manipulation that is occurring and so they do become victims.

  Some years ago I got a personal taste of how this victimization occurs. I was on the phone with my JW mom (a sweet, sincere lady who is thoroughly caught up in JW La-La-Land) talking about my frustration about not getting my 'difficult' questions answered by her and my stepdad, by elders, or by the Society. I complained that they were all stonewalling. She objected strongly and so I said, "Well, why then, are my questions not being answered?" Dead silence. I said, "Alright mom, think of it this way: How would you handle it if one of your bible students asked you the same questions I'm asking? Would you put them off? Or would you try your darnedest to get answers?" Without a trace of embarrassment she said, "Well, I'd try to get them to put their questions off for awhile, and concentrate on more important things and help them to get baptized." "What about answering their difficult questions at that point," I asked? She said, "Well, I'd hope that by that time the person would have enough sense not to ask them anymore!" I said, "Mom, do you realize what you've just told me? You've just told me that you'd do exactly what all of you have done with me -- you'd stonewall your student and, in effect, lie to them by telling them you'd eventually answer their questions when you had no intent of ever doing so." She got very upset and handed the phone to my stepdad.

  Now picture how this works with someone who actually falls for the JW ruse. They like the sincere, kind people who seem so honest in their desire to teach them "God's Word", and they want to be just like their teachers. They don't understand that their hard questions will never be answered. After they reach a certain point, they even forget that they ever asked hard questions. This is precisely the kind of person that JWs are looking for. People who don't fall for the ruse, but demand immediate answers to the hard questions are usually dropped by the JW teacher as someone who is unappreciative.

  The problem of definition lies with the many borderline cases. Suppose a student asks hard questions and is given the usual runaround. He or she actually realizes that he's being somewhat misled, but instead of acting on his gut instinct, he deliberately puts his gut feel aside and continues with his study. He obviously feels that he's getting something out of the relationship even though he continues to feel somewhat cheated by not having his hard questions answered. If such a person continues this way long enough, he shuts his reasoning facilities off in this area, and convinces himself that his questions weren't all that important anyway. When this person gets baptized, can he be called a willing or an unwilling victim? I don't know, because it's in that large gray area where we can't easily decide if someone has been coerced or has made a reasoned choice.

  From personal experience in making such a deliberate choice myself, to suppress my unease about certain JW teachings and to try to forget about them, I know that from time to time after making the choice my conscience would prick me and say, "Hey stupid! Why didn't you listen to me? Now look how tightly you're caught up in this thing!" Yet for years I kept ignoring it until I was forced by other circumstances to admit that the JWs were completely clueless about many important matters in which they declared themselves to be "God's mouthpiece".

  Given the above complexities, I don't know if an objective answer can ever by given to the question of just where a person's real conscience leaves off and a victim's conscience takes over. I just know it when I see it.

  AlanF
• 

  hillary_step

  Alan,

  Yes, I had heard of the cult ‘classification’ scam that is being perpetrated by some individuals, an appalling display of lack of ethics and much to be repudiated. Thank you for bringing to this public forum knowledge of the WTS involvement with this issue. Truly disgraceful.

  "Well, I'd try to get them to put their questions off for awhile, and concentrate on more important things and help them to get baptized." "What about answering their difficult questions at that point," I asked? She said, "Well, I'd hope that by that time the person would have enough sense not to ask them anymore!" I said, "Mom, do you realize what you've just told me? You've just told me that you'd do exactly what all of you have done with me -- you'd stonewall your student and, in effect, lie to them by telling them you'd eventually answer their questions when you had no intent of ever doing so." She got very upset and handed the phone to my stepdad

  Yes, I guess that in these situations to the average JW, questions are for those who are unconvinced, the convinced person, by WTS definition the ‘meek person’ does not need to ask questions but just follow direction. What a pitiable tragedy how easily we handed over our will and lives, beautifully prepared, on a platter for our leaders to devour.

  Given the above complexities, I don't know if an objective answer can ever by given to the question of just where a person's real conscience leaves off and a victim's conscience takes over. I just know it when I see it.

  Yes Alan, I totally agree and I this is what I am trying to say. Sometimes, because of our inability to judge the situation of motive and accountability with individual JW’s, perhaps we should take the gentle route to their hearts. As you know, I am new to these public forum venues, you are an old hand so much of what I say has probably been discussed ad nasuem and judgment pronounced a long time ago but I do admit to feeling uncomfortable thinking of all the ‘lurkers’ who need help walking through escape procedures and who need friends but cannot bring themselves to post. They become soft targets because we cannot get to the real targets. Anyway, shy lurker types, my mail is unlocked and so is Alan’s whom I can assure you is a splendid gentlemen, kind and cuddly and above all imbued with a wonderful taste in music!

  Cheers to all -- HS

  Hardness ever of hardness is the mother. - Shakespeare