The Tower ate many Baby Boomers

by Alex Delta 23 Replies latest jw friends

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  Fangorn

  I think you've got it exactly right, and a lot of those boomers have had enough and taken a hike lately.
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  steve2

  Am I off base, do you all agree? Then you've got 1975, 30 years later, by this point there so hooked the Tower keeps most of them and there spawn proceeds.

  Actually, I think the Watchtower's heyday is over. The majority of believers are nowhere near as zealous as the door-knockers of yesteryear. Young ones continue to leave in droves and those who do remain, sleepwalk their way through "theocratic" duties. If that's being "hooked", you're right. However, those of us who've been around a bit longer, remember how the meetings used to buzz with active anticipation...now, there's a droning sound that elicits sleep rather than zealotry.
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  hoser

  This is interesting because a lot of congregations contain a majority of elderly and baby boomers. The young don't stick around and not too many have large families anymore. It will be interesting to watch the demographics over the next few years.
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  hoser

  This is interesting because a lot of congregations contain a majority of elderly and baby boomers. The young don't stick around and not too many have large families anymore. It will be interesting to watch the demographics over the next few years.
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  Band on the Run

  I was an activist during the 1960s. The whole culture questioned authority, esp. the federal government's war in Viet Nam, Thailand, Cambodia, you name it. If ever a generation was raised to NOT be sheep, it was the baby boomers. I saw a Pete Seeger tribute last night. Listen to any Dylan or Beatle lyric. I recall marching after the slaughter at Kent State and being afraid. I marched past the White House numerous times. Sometimes I toured federal buildings if there was time. How do you march past the White House, meet with your Congresspeople, Foreign Affairs committee, and listen to the crap at KH. It does not compute.

  I majored in political science so I studied what I was doing. It turns out only the elite college students were against the War. Accurate public polling indicated that the vast majority of college students in the country favored the Viet Nam War. Our prof. said we needed some access to diversity. It happens around the world in twenty or thiry years cycles. My profs. told me that I had a personal responsibility to resist an invasion or coup d'etat.

  I don't know. Listen to popular song lyrics. The Witnesses should have had a very serious dip in KH attendance and baptism with the baby boomers. I know I would sit in KH, bored out of my mind, and Dylan lyrics ran through my head. My only regret is not standing up and bursting out audibly with "Maggie's Farm." or "We Shall Overcome."

  I recall John Kerry testifying before Fullbright's Foreign Affairs Committee. The Witnesses during these years must never have read a newspaper, watched a TV broadcast, or listened to radio. There must have been no current events discussion in class. Heck, when Sgt. Pepper was released, I heard it played in every single store. (I did not like it at first).
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  Frazzled UBM

  BOTR - to suggest that all baby boomers were long haired anti-establishment hippys strikes me as a bit of generalisation. I get the feeling from being on JWN that a lot of folks on here are in their 50s and 60s, i.e. baby boomers and I think the OP has a point in saying that the same thing that drove the counter culture, namely war and conlfict (the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the war in Vitenam, the rise of Communist China etc.) and the serach for meaning in a chaotic world was grist to the Watchtower mill. Certainly the growth figures for the 70s and 80s would tend to support the hypothesis.
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  Apognophos

  Yes, I agree with the OP, the Baby Boomers were prime material for the Watchtower. My parents were among the ones worried by the cold war and the counterculture chaos, and when the 1975 scare came along, they were total suckers for it.
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  Band on the Run

  I specificially added statistics to show that the media focused on the country's elite. Future leaders, who are now public officials, were active in various movements. It was not only political but social and artistics. If some aberrant creatures who never heard rock music or picked up a book were primed for the WT, I can't help it. The baby boomers were given tools to rebel that their parents could not even imagine. Don't include me in the cookie cutter no minds who fell for the Witnesses. The question should be why, given the times and plentiful resources, people did not run from the WT for their very lives. One would have to be an awkward social isolate. Why when the circumstances were so favorable? Even if you lived in the midwest or the south, there was media saturation.

  Or were these neo conservatives who love rock music but evidently have none of the spirit and hear no lyric.

  If not during the 1960s and 1970s, how can it be accomplsihed now? There was a resistance to the Nazis. Why do people just listen and never question? It is an important question for society and not just JWs. Odd verses are coming into my mind - we even had a readily accessible sound track to leave.

  Perhaps the Internet makes the difference.
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  Ding

  Most baby boomer JWs suppressed all recollection of 1975 by mid-1976.
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  mynameislame

  the Baby Boomers were prime material for the Watchtower

  Begs the question, who is the prime material these days?

  Do the trolley carts fit in with today's generation (not the WT version of course)

  The internet along with the more hip jw.org sure seems to.

  Maybe they know that you can text and browse your ipad while you’re sitting next to the trolleys. The door to door work has to seem like torture to anyone raised on video games. Even more so than for us folks that were raised watching paint dry for fun.

  We will know for sure when we see angry cat on the cover of the Awake.