by Nickolas 38 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
In my dealings with JWs, they are not self-aware. It's all about how everyone else is a bad person and that they are the Chosen. I completely agree with LWT. The authentic JW is just another person. The CULT personality, is a whole different ball game.
With each and every JW in my family, I have seen the seething anger beneath the thin veneer and facade of the "we're-the-happiest-people-on-the-face-of-the-Earth". It's quite disturbing.
Enlightening conversation. I think I'm pretty good at reading people (anyone in here into poker?) and can confirm that I have over the past 35 years of association with Jehovah's Witnesses met some genuine assholes, but they have been in the minority. I am beginning to understand, however, that any outsider like me will not be exposed to the true face of an insider group. That is, by the way, why this forum is so valuable to people like me. Thank you all for sharing.
Nick
For the most part I believe that they are nice people. Not anymore so than people from other faiths/non-faiths. Honestly most people want thebest for their family, a better life for their kids. Most don't wish harm on their neighbors.ost get upset when we hear about disasters abd tragidies etc. Most people are glad when we here good news, ie when the Chiliean miners were rescued.
I know there are people who do wish bad things on others, but I believe them to be in the minority, at least I hope they are. Some people are born hateful but most hateful people are taught to be that way. I believe, just my thought, that one reason so many JW, and folks for other high control religion, suffer from depression and mental illness in higher(per capita) numbers is that they are conflicted by their natural desire to love their fellow human and their indoctronation to hate their fellow human beings.
I think they're mostly good people, too. But when you claim to be the one true religion, God's organization on Earth directed by his holy spirit, and the happiest people on earth; it's really unsettling when you see them do some very bad things. Makes you wonder.
As far as the cult personality: I remember being so upset that two kids my age, I was about 14, were marked as bad association. They're father was an unbeliever and they didn't fall in line on some things, mostly dress and music. I watched them go further and further away and wanted so much to help them. I remember asking my dad why I couldn't be friends with them to try and help them. Well bad association spoils useful habits. So they got left out in the cold, I can fully understand why they wanted nothing to do with the truth. Where's the love in that? A couple years ago, the girl died when she wrecked her car, driving under the influence of meth. That's just a horrible way to treat people, especially children.
Hmmm... Good question, Nickolaus...
The impression I've gotten - and I was bullied/dragged into the Watchtower Society by my parents - is that the religion/sect/cult tends to attract people who are a bit 'off'... [Sorry 'bout that, fellow posters!!!]
In other words, the 'susceptibility' to being indoctrinated by a cult varies from person to person, but there are some common points. Some of the 'common points' involve (1) being somewhat unable to manage one's own life... (2) having difficulty surmounting the normal problems and issues, fears and concerns, that so-called "Worldly" people have... (3) being somewhat naíve and easily led... (4) having difficulty facing their own mortality... (5) lacking intellectual curiosity... (6) craving the certainty of religious dogma as opposed to enjoying the somewhat chaotic progress of scientific advancement... (7) thereby fearing higher education, which tends to lead to.... (8) having a deprived lifestyle - deprived financially, deprived of immediate, tangible security, deprived of greater mental and emotional freedoms, deprived of the right to natural, true human curiosity.
All of those characteristics - and that's just a sampling of my perceptions of the "types" usually found within the Jehovah's Witnesses - tend to create a group of people who resist change, lack true discernment [sorry! JW 'buzz' word...], are not really introspective, fear actual scientific advancement, and develop a tight, cramped, stingy internal and emotional climate.
Which means they're NOT a group that I would enjoy associating with - nor did I ever enjoy associating with them, while I was yet 'in' the religion.
As to their financial dishonesty, that is a phenomenon that I observed, too. I'm positive that derives from the cramped, poverty-stricken lifestyle that the Watchtower Society [insanely!!!] requests of its followers...
Zid
Just because the indoctrination does not form a "new personality" in any real transformative sense it doesn't mean there was not a nice one there to start with, although it is certainly possible for that to be distorted. Frankly I don't really believe in the JW identity in the end even if they do, any effort at relating to them as a JW essentially reinforces that identity. Opportunities for real dialogue will be missed if I buy into this self image they try to project, those opportunities are rare enough. Of course, it is possible that what's underneath is also not so "nice" anyway depending on the individual, but that's not the same as associating it with the JWism.
JW social climbers
With polished ladders
@ cantleave - JW social climbers
With polished ladders...... so that they could be Window Cleaners !!!!
Now the JW window cleaner I knew very well, spent much of his pre JW life in prison. He was banged up for GBH & armed robbery. He became a window cleaner because he knew that he would not get a job given his past record. He now lives in and around Bridgewater, Somerset (England)!
The WBTS actually used his life experience in an Awake article in the 90's. (The article had a mans face on it half of the image was clean cut whilst the other side of the face was unshaven and un-kempt so as to give an untidy or disheveled appearance....
Whilst he was a JW he used to beat his step daughter with a bicycle chain, amongst other things. He wouldnt permit her to shave her legs and she suffered a lot of emotional abuse .... Everyone in the congregation knew about it yet the elders brushed it under the carpet.. It was as though they thought his behaviour was normal and was necessary so as to keep the girl a JW !!!
I was too young & niave myself to recognise that this was wrong.....
(If this story rings a bell and your the girl on here PM me - Would LOVE to hear from you ...... )
Yes JW's are NOT nice people !!!!
I would hate for him to wake up to the BS because he would off the rails big time....
The problem with the JWs is that so many of them are in transistion from the faith that it might be similar to someone going through a divorce.
They're not a bad people. It's just that the religion cannot keep sustaining itself. Like someone who builds upon the sand, as the rain comes down and the water comes up, there's not many places they can run. Some become so entrenched in it that when they realize the church has not been commissioned, they many times give up on all religion. They mourn for that which they lost and which, in fact, they never had. Once they've bought in to the doctrines, they look for things that are similar in other faiths when they should start with a fresh sheet of paper and rethink things from the ground up.
No one can judge an entire people by just a few. One of the fellows who came to see me was clearly stressed over something. Over what I have no idea, but he was tense. Whether it was work, his marriage or his religion, I have no clue. In many cases, I think it's best to let people keep their religion rather than risk losing their grasp on things. Still, some people don't let up until they've undermined someone else to a point where it can have a negative effect on their lives.
"I actually found $200 once in the direction folder of an air conditioner I bought from a witless, and the dingbat made me put the whole thing into the Worldwide Pedophile Defense Fund!"
How did you fit the air conditioner into the contribution box?
