How do we define a "Victim of the Watchtower" ?

by kid-A 20 Replies latest jw friends

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  kid-A

  Many of us ex-JWs feel like victims, regardless of our personal background with the watchtower.

  However, how do we define a "victim" of the JWs? I have often felt that the only true victims were the "born-in" children of the JWs who through an accident of birth, have been forced to endure watchtower brainwashing from infancy onwards. In addition, we had to endure the barren existence and public humiliations of a typical JW child as our parents forced us "to be no part of the world"......

  Should we consider adult converts to the Watchtower in the same light? Is it even possible for an adult, who willingly "chose" the WTS and their teachings to be a "victim" of the organization?

  The argument may be made that many adult converts were particularly vulnerable to the JWs due to personal tragedy, stress, hardship, etc. But, is there a "statute of limitations" on allowing oneself to be victimized by a cult? At what point in one's life should we be expected to have the moral and intellectual fortitude to fend off the advances of a bizarre belief system offered by a cult like the JWs?

  Do adult converts to the JWs have a certain moral culpability, especially if they essentially forced the cult life onto their children or via conversion of other adults?
• 

  Scully

  Perhaps this is something that we have to leave to the individual's perception. As long as someone is In Good Standing™ in the Organization™, and has decent social relationships within the congregation, they aren't going to perceive themselves, their children, or the people they convert to the JWs as "victims".

  It's only when circumstances change such that they become a liability to the Organization™ do people begin to perceive any form of victimization. If you're doing what the WTS tells you to do, everything is hunky-dory. When you can't, for reasons beyond your control, and people start gossiping about you, or speculating on your Spirituality™, or treating you like you're a pariah, that's when you start to see the unfairness, the lack of love, and the caste system that exists within the Organization™.
• 

  Scully

  Also, since we're talking about the Watchtower Society as a cult group, I think it's fair to say that nobody who has ever converted to the JWs made a conscious decision one day out of the blue and woke up one morning thinking "Hey, I think I'll royally screw up my life for the next couple of decades by joining a cult. I think I'll join the JWs." The WTS recruitment process uses mind control techniques to orchestrate a conversion, which allow the person to believe that they are making choices willingly, but it is all part of an insidious program that ensnares people without them even being able to recognize it for what it is.

  To an outsider who understands this method of cult recruitment, the process may be perfectly obvious, but the general public are seriously lacking in the knowledge of how cult groups operate and do not have the ability to recognize what is taking place. The process is gradual, but each step requires them to relinquish a facet of their normal self in favor of the New Personality™.
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  serendipity

  I don't think it's healthy to dwell on a 'victim' label. For me, I just have to accept it, repair what damage there is and try to move on.
• 

  Perry

  Do adult converts to the JWs have a certain moral culpability,

  That's a good question. Most JW's, if they talk to a truth seeker long enough will admit that the WT is wrong on many points. But, they many times will immediately misquote Peter and say, "Where else could we go"? Of course the actual quote is whom....referring to Jesus.

  In effect they say, "we may be wrong, but at least we're not like all the other people who believe in God.

  11 The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.' 13 "But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' 14 "I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.
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  Nathan Natas

  I think that anyone who has discovered that the WTB&TS has delivered something other than what it promised is a victim.

  The Watchtower is a "bait & switch" scam. They bait you with promises of eternal life in paradise rendering pure worship to a Creator who cares about you, and they deliver a life sentence to an asylum filled with religious lunatics.

  Certainly the "born-ins" didn't ask for what they were given, but neither did many of the adult converts. Some, maybe, not not most.
• 

  DanTheMan

  Is it even possible for an adult, who willingly "chose" the WTS and their teachings to be a "victim" of the organization?

  I notice that you put the word "chose" in quotes. Do you believe in free will?
• 

  kid-A

  "I notice that you put the word "chose" in quotes. Do you believe in free will?"

  I believe in "choices" within environmental constraints, not free-will. It is entirely possible adult converts would have chosen some other cult besides the JWs, had the opportunity arose. There is no way to know ex post facto.

  Having said that, and on the issue of culpability, what of the adult convert who becomes a JW with the foreknowledge that he/she may be required to sacrifice their child for the watchtower blood policy? Lets say the child is indeed sacrificed on the watchtower altar. Now, who is morally culpable here, the "adults" who imposed this cult on their unsuspecting, dependent child, or the "watchtower society" who, although the ultimate architects of this insane doctrine, nevertheless, did not hold a gun to the heads of this childs parents while leading to the baptism pool ???
• 

  Scully

  did not hold a gun to the heads of this childs parents while leading to the baptism pool

  Perhaps not a "gun" per se, but the thought of being destroyed and your children being destroyed at Armageddon™ is surely just as real a threat to the mind of a cultist as a loaded 9mm.
• 

  kid-A

  Perhaps not a "gun" per se, but the thought of being destroyed and your children being destroyed at Armageddon™ is surely just as real a threat to the mind of a cultist as a loaded 9mm.

  Perhaps Scully, but the implications of the blood ban are tangible and real. No confusing what the implications are when they sign the blood card for that child. The concept of armageddon is also a "reality" to a JW, but I would argue that at some psychological level, it simply does not carry the same weight. Even my devoted JW family think of armageddon as a real yet somehow 'distant' horizon.

  I think we often give the WTS far too much credit in terms of their brainwashing abilities. I have been present at many many bible studies, often being held by standard, uneducated JW drones. I would say the interdependence between the indoctrinator and the inductee are at least 50-50. It takes a JW drone to conduct a "bible study", but it takes either a rube or complete knave to actually believe the watchtower shit. Perhaps we need to distinguish between victims and "willing victims", since oftentimes, it takes 2 to tango in the borg assimilation process.