Black Sheep, I was old enough to remember the incident in my childhood. You are correct that there was a lot more to it than that, of course. The person was quite familiar with JWs in the first place, and odds are she would've been recruited anyway. It just happened that she encountered me and started studying with my mom. It wasn't just something people told me. "It has happened! I saw it happen! I watched it happen! Don't tell me it didn't happen!"--Nero, "Star Trek", 2009.
Perhaps you are right, that it's not justifiable, what mind control groups do. But can we stop them? Can anyone? At a certain point, one has to realize that one is indeed fighting against killer gods and demons in a very real way. Nobody comes back if they climb Mount Olympus to fight the gods. Even so, I think it is only right that good people fight those gods regardless.
And it's true--many people do indeed turn to drugs, sex, etc. in spite of the 'positive influence' of cults. So I suppose my statements were motivated largely by depression and a sense of hopelessness, a grasping for straws when there are none to grasp for.
Even despite Dr. Manhattan's statement, even he realized there was value in human life, eventually. It's still overrated in terms of the larger universe, one planet in one solar system in one galaxy out of billions of galaxies. But for us here, who live here, yeah, human life is valuable. And cults do have that whole "dispensation of existence" problem. I don't agree that any group should have the right to decide who lives and who dies. That seems to be beyond the scope of man, with some extremely rare exceptions. Life should be given, not taken, and its value should not be legislated by men. I don't think humans are worthless. I think we are capable of extraordinary things and we should be allowed to pursue those things.
I don't consider myself a humanitarian. I give to Save the Children and Greenpeace because I think innocent people who are suffering should be helped, and I think protecting the environment is a vital part of making a difference. But I don't ordinarily help people otherwise, to be quite honest, simply because I--in harmony with the doublethink I was raised with--also believe humans are inherently evil and retreat to their primal roots (destroy, kill, hoard everything to myself and even take from the innocent) at the first opportunity. As a result, too many of us are not even worth saving, myself included. But since that's not any man's decision, I just keep that as a personal observation.
I don't claim to have any good values or ideas about the world. I'm just trying to run the clock out and get this life over with. I can't ask for anything beyond that.
SD-7
