I have noticed, as many of us on this board have, that the Watchtower's tone is getting harsher.
My friend and I have a love of the part of psychology that studies group think. We noticed something peculiar about how the Watchtower seems to approach control of the members.
They seem to subliminally build a villain. A person that the group is not to be like.
What is happening is not an adjustment of the acceptable part of the group but a refining of the qualities of this villain.
What then naturally happens in the group is an aversion from whatever activities or persons that may be similar to the villain.
In other words, the accepted members' activities will be diametrically apposed to what ever this imaginary villain does. The unaccepted are those who fall too close to the perceived villainous activities.
Even more so, a member's actions don't even have to be diametrically apposed to villainous activities, but if he professes his aversion to such a villainous character, he will still remain acceptable although not doing the things "acceptable".
I have yet to find this sort of displacement theory in the psych books but it is rather simple to institute.
Basically you get the group to decide on a type of person that isn't acceptable and make sure that one chosen person or clique maintains the qualities of this unacceptable person. If you want a highly controlled group, turn up the negative descriptions of the unacceptable person. If you want a more loosley controlled group, keep what is unacceptable toned down.
Some examples are Baptist churches. Depending on the church, you may not be able to make out a clear picture of a particular type of person that is not acceptable. Extreme's in their minds might be murderers or pedophiles. Their unaceptable behaviors fall closer in line with general secular reasoning.
Compare Jehovah's Witnesses. The picture of the unacceptable person could include a member who has had a blood transfusion, or reads the old WT literature, has opinions that don't vibe with the WT, is married to an unbeliever, who works too much to turn in enuff field service time, and many other things. All the WT has to do is turn up the dial on the negative behavior to bring the members under stricter pressure.
For instance, one of the recent magazines suggest that maybe we should give up using the internet altogether because of the ugliness that exists on it. The unconscious suggestion in that is that an unacceptable person (villain) allows casual mundain views of the internet. The natural outworking of that secondary thought is to avoid that technology all together, possibly canceling services and that technology out of daily life to stay in line. Where as before it may have been acceptable.
This is not to say all members will be successful at doing it perfectly, but at least they can all profess that it is their goal. The members truly thinking the rule is stupid would thus show qualities too close to what the members as a whole should avoid and they take the chance on becoming a "bad association", which is the first step toward the door.
So the next time you read an article, think about this negative villain that is being created when they are describing something we should avoid. They are simply attempting to control the larger crowd by adjusting the image of the unacceptable villain.
If this made any sense please comment. Im wondering if Im onto something here!