by sabastious 14 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Learning the truth about the truth has thought me to check any statement that is stated a fact, and it feels good to be able to say and think…well, I don’t agree with that and this is why…
It's a difficult feat, checking the validity of a presented argument. I would go as far as to say it an art form.
-Sab
(1) I like that there is no introductory music/graphics.
(2) The volume/lighting/video quality are excellent.
(3) You have a very sincere manner, which is free of sarcasm, arrogance, bitterness, etc.
1. Yeah I don't like melodramatic music or logos in video blogs, I feel it's a little distasteful.
2. A testament to my camera :)
3. When I first left the Org I was very sarcasic, arrogant and bitter lol. It has taken much work to dim those feeling down. I still have them, but recognize them as unhelpful emotions.
-Sab
The WT is not alone in the business of deception and coercive persuasion.
Well said onemore.
There many out and about with similar tactics to cull people to their decisive control.
Therefore we all need Anti-virus programs for are minds to give us protection from these kinds of personal attacks.
lol @ thetrueone! Antivirus for the mind! That brings to mind a comment I read some time ago on another forum. This fellow made a comment about the "discourses (long-lived, society-wide conversations) that are operating at any given moment in the network of human conversations."
He went on to say,
"Foucault distinguished various epistemes for humanity, which could loosely be thought of as "proscribed ways of thinking" and these, he said, were governed by discourses. ...
"Discourses have the effect of acting like a paradigm or context inside of which we think. Almost everything thought by most humans will have reference to or live inside of the current prevailing discourses. Some discourses live in just one society, others seem to be shared by most humans (the discourse for war seems to be global, the discourse for women's equality is specific to just a few countries). The few people who recognize the prevailing discourses and step outside of them will trigger the immune system of the prevailing discourse.
"The people who express the discourse defending itself don't say to themselves, "Such and such a person is breaking the discourse." They often reason and gather evidence and make cogent arguments (or not so cogent as it happens) — all inside the discourse — all while they have no idea of the constraints that are operating on them. They don't know that the discourse is, in a very real way, using them to express itself. This doesn't negate the concept of "free will," it just means that an individual must "be woken up" by someone who teaches them that that discourses are running the show most of the time. The Eastern concept of enlightenment is merely the individual distinguishing them-self from the discourses. Just by reading this, some people will have something click that never did before and thus become "enlightened." (Others will resist what I'm saying but perhaps the seed will be planted.)
"In my experience, especially when significant emotion is present, it's almost always a discourse doing the speaking; the individual and any "free will" recedes to the background.
"My wife and I have fun asking ourselves: which conversation is running me right now? When I'm "plugged in" during an argument with her, it's the "I'm right, you're wrong" conversation and it takes effort to interrupt that. When we discuss money, a whole host of conversations want to take over, but the predominant one for me is "conserve in case the future brings something unknown" and I have to watch that or I won't take calculated risks."
So, indeed, you could say that certain thought patterns act like viruses that spread themselves in a population. Really, the discourses (in the sense of the above quote) of the Watchtower Society are nothing new. They come from the broader cultural context of modern Western Civilization, but are shaped and twisted to serve the interests of a publishing corporation. In the Witness teachings there are many conflicting sub-narratives (For example: God of Love destroys 7 billion people at Armageddon) which are probably a hidden source of much cognitive dissonance for most Witnesses. I know it has taken me quite some time to sort things out since I left, identifying the conversations, stories, and cultural narratives that run though my mind. I didn't just question my Witness upbringing. I did (and still do) a lot of thinking about what it means to be alive and who I really am versus the stories I have always been told, not just by Jehovah's Witnesses but also by the rest of American culture.
The psychological mental viruses the WTS. has used with some proficient success is of their own design its call FEAR
a Trojan type virus that once it spreads into the minds of the infected it relinquishes itself and spreads
unseemly to other minds.
To block this virus from entering and taking control, one has to apply rationalized knowledge and understanding of the direct root cause of this virus,
a total understanding and acceptance of past known human ignorance.
