by keyser soze 84 Replies latest jw friends
Vivian great minds.........Al Swearengen Of HBO's Deadwood. A mean terrible person delivered the funniest line in the show..... pardon my French.
Al is in his saloon and is watching his crippled cleanup girl attempt to carry a tray of food up the stairs to a guest. The tray is shaking and she is lurching trying not spill anything. Al sums up her predicament by turning to the camera as if he's talking to a friend and says "every step is a fucking adventure".
I myself have used this term. I apologise for any offence I've caused.
I don't have anything against blue-collar workers. I was one for many years. My parents have been blue-collar workers their entire lives. And it's true that the attacks are often personal in nature. There are a lot of talented witnesses who never fully capitalized on their talents due to terrible advice given by WT leadership.
However, the problem is with the Watchtower sending these men to address issues that should be addressed by professionals. You wouldn't call a psychiatrist to unclog your toilet. Why would you send a plumber to counsel the mentally ill?
There was a teenager at our hall who was clearly suffering from severe mental problems. I remember one of the elders talking about how he had gone to counsel the family because the boy was hearing voices telling him to kill his mother. They prayed with the family and encouraged them to throw away any possessions that might be connected to spiritism. The elder was a welder.
This is a real concern and it can't be addressed without making specific reference to the men being completely unqualified.
However, the problem is with the Watchtower sending these men to address issues that should be addressed by professionals
I get that. The problem is that often the term is used in a more general way, to insult JWs as a whole. In other words, they should be marginalized because the majority of them are nothing more than "window washers".
THEY are nothing more than window washers... just as a base minimum. This is a biased generalization and not entirely incorrect.
But as a whole, window washers (generally speaking) in the world are NOT nothing more than window washers. Window washers can be other things as well (family man, artist, writer, toy train collector, etc.). Jehovah's Witness window washers are pretty much JUST Jehovah's Witnesses... and JUST window washers. There's not a lot of depth here, LOL.
There's a different between people who take pride in what they do and therefore do it well (your father and my grandfather was a plumber), and there are people who do it because it means they don't have to think about or interact with the “world.” It is used as a method of muting those who may be good at other things like math, science, engineering, architecture, or the arts.
I agree with your sentiment (I know it doesn't sound like it, sorry). I just don't think there should be TOO much of an offense when discussing people who pigeon-hole themselves into a category on purpose. Just because one makes fun of Witnesses who happen to be part of “Category A” doesn't mean that EVERYONE in “Category A” should be subjected to such arrogance. And in this I find your emotion about the subject justified. We should be more sensitive about expansive categorization that over-simplifies a group of people in sweeping stereotypes just because a minor section of “Category A” happens to be a bunch of crazy cult members with spiritual paranoia and an Armageddon hard on.
I agree. We've engagd in the reverse snobbism that the organization exhibits towards higher status jobs. Window washers are often working under incredibly dangerous conditions that call for very skillful maneuvering and a high degree of safety awareness, to say nothing of being very, very hard laborers. When I left high school one of my jobs to support my then pioneering was a cleaner - a job Americans would call 'a janitor'. It amused me that lots of people treated me as if I were dumb - including, ahem, the JWs who owned the business! Looking back, I'm still astonished at what I "voluntarily" put myself through to obey the organization. Recently, I had the lovely experience of my boss hiring a firm of JWs to clean the premise where I had worked . By coincidence, I had worked with one of the cleaners several decades earlier as a cleaner and I knew from my family he was still an active JW. He had to clean my office. Boy was he super nice to me when I arrived early in the morning. I loved that my name and position were on the door and he politely asked me by name if he could clean the room. From cleaner to registered clinical psychologist. I would never be rude to any cleaner - but I do have my private moments when I relish how I've been able to well and truly leave behind both the organization and work as a cleaner.
My family was New York City blue collar and my wife's West Virginia coal miners and PA steel mill workers. We had one high school diploma between us when we married an then pioneered where the need was great.
I think what I get upset over is that the Society has incorporated it's anti education bias into the dogma of their religion. You have to work hard at developing the 2nd least educated religion in first world countries and they have succeeded.
In the words of Eric Hoffer who wrote The True Believer " An active mass movement rejects the present and centers it's interest on the future. It is from this attitude that it derives it's
strength, for it can proceed recklessly with the present- with the health,
wealth and lives of it's followers. But it must act as if it has already read
the book of the future to the last word.........."
Well, I too was a window washer for a time, had my own cleaning biz, and made money as I needed to. No shame here. But I'm not too sensitive about the "window washer" thing.
Seriously, this site is not all that friendly when it comes to certain subjects.
I remember our teachers would tell us to do good on our test because we did not want to grow up to be ditch diggers. Well those ditch diggers make pretty good money these days. I wish I would have been able to get higher education but the Big A was just a few years away (1975). I wanted to be a meteorologist but of course that would take me away from all those boring meetings and door knocking. So I went into contruction trades. I can now build a house from the ground up blind folded. That and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee. I love any trade that helps or builds things that help people. I feel we are all on the same page when it comes to the Wt. in what they are doing. That is keeping people brain washed from not following their dreams. That is just wrong. Eveyone should have the right to follow their dreams no matter what they choose. Still Totally ADD
In other words, they should be marginalized because the majority of them are nothing more than "window washers".
I don't marginalize anyone because of their job, race, age or gender. I don't refer to JW's as window washers but I do recognize that they have dangerous delusional beliefs that actually can hurt people.
