After leaving the congregation, I've begun to notice some weird aspects of "JW-ism" that I wouldn't have batted an eyelid about a few years back.
For example, tonight I heard the phrase "fleshly brother" - meaning someone's literal brother, as opposed to some random bloke who simply happens to belong to the same religion.
And I thought about this, and I thought: "This is wrong."
I think two of the biggest problems with the JW religion are that (1) It interferes with a person's ability to think clearly, even distorting the relationship between cause and effect, and (2) it attempts to redefine the meaning of words themselves, appropriating them for its own ends. A "vocabulary hijack", if you will.
A word as fundamental as "brother", meaning someone in your family. Someone sharing a large part of your DNA. And yet this word is redefined, so that a whole load of people who were previously strangers now become "brothers". And anyone who previously used to be a brother, now gets relegated to "fleshly brother" (or "biological relative", which sounds like a kind of laundry detergent).
It's not an original observation, but I thought it was interesting how powerful words are in their subtle influence over a person's viewpoint.