My Way or the Highway

by onacruse 20 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  onacruse

  Honestly: I perceive a lot of JW-thinking in this forum, primarily from those of us who are exJW.

  The us/them mentality. Right/wrong, black/white, everything the WTS said and did must be wrong. Also, active JWs that post here are typically characterized as idiots, or just plain ignored.

  I've not come this far, just to fall back into the same judgmental attitudes in which I was raised.

  Don't take me wrong; I certainly believe in calling a spade a spade. But do you think that sometimes we think we have a spade, when in fact all we have is a club?

  Craig
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  SheilaM

  <chanting go Ona...Go Ona Go...>
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  shamus

  Huh?

  It's just personal opinions. We all have the right to them. If some want to be blunt and angry, so be it. They have the right to be so, too. It is the internet after all..... impossible to police at the best of times. Anyone who posts here should be ready to hear anything.
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  onacruse

  shamus, I'm looking deeper than just the expression of personal opinions. I'm thinking primarily about the underlying motivations we have for those opinions.

  For myself, I've caught myself many many times, just about to press that "enter" button, when it dawns on me that what I was about to post was nothing less than the same old JW "I love us, I hate you" attitude.

  I refuse to go back to that. I'd rather die.

  Craig
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  calamityjane

  well, this opens a can of worms for me. Yes, at times I believe its my way or the highway. My parents were and are strict jw's , I was always considered the black sheep because I never conformed. Now that I think of it, my dad accepted me for the free spirit I was as a young girl/woman. He would take me hunting with him over my older brother. I at that time felt the favoured one. My brother never compared with me, he always butted heads with my father. I seemed to be the favoured one. Of course, my brother as far as I was concerned also lived the double life. but because I was a girl it was different.

  It was when I hit my teens that they saw the rebellious side of me.

  I can see their reasoning now, I have three children. ONe is full grown, so she is of no concern. She is doing fine in her adult life adapting well to the first borg like state that we wanted her in. But I find the young 13 and 11 year olds concern. They are trying. I try to do the time out thing when things get difficult. Because I've often said to my younger ones, you should have lived my live, then you would see what I'm trying to tell you. I find now that the society values are more in tune to the children and their rights. But I find that difficult to digest. Kids need to know boundaries. They need to know fear of law and authority. And as far as I could bring those virtues to them, they fight me all the way. It was just this week that I finally said, enough is enough, I need control of my adult life. I am the mom, as matter of fact, this is the way I am bringing you up for your own good.

  So basically, yes it is my way or the highway, they need to learn values, boundaries, respect. endurance, something I fight with them day to day.

  Yes I'm frazzled today, I've had a rough week. work wise, and kid wise. But I love my kids, I want the best for them, but they do have to learn to abide by rules. We are responsible adults for that. Something, I don't hold against the borg. I learned respect for law and authority living in the borg.

  cj

  Its friday and I need to mellow out.
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  Big Tex

  I agree Craig. I think "troll" gets tossed around WAY too much. It's one thing if someone buzzes in here and posts hit and run garbage, but it's quite another if someone takes an unpopular stand.

  There is a difference between disagreeing, and conversing about that disagreement, and slapping a label on someone. When names and lables start getting thrown all ideas and interplay grind to a halt.
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  SixofNine

  None of this behaviour you describe is remotely WT, imo. If anything, it shows just how much witnesses, underneath the brainwashing (yes brainwashing ), are just like everybody else. In fact, that is what these boards remind me of constantly.

  People are people. It is the structure of the WT that is unique, and JW's are only unique to the extent that that structure perverts them.
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  onacruse

  CJ, that "can of worms" is what life is all about, imho. You/I developed valuable personal standards because of being raised as a JW, and are utilizing many of those same honorable standards in raising your own children. But, as your life has changed, I daresay your own implementation of those standards has changed as well, including re-evaluating whether some of those standards were really valid to begin with.

  We face the issue, then: Can we stand back, truly stand back, and re-assess or attitudes? Change our underlying philosophy? Along the lines of some threads that larc has started: change our personality?

  BT:

  "troll" is a word I've never been comfortable with. As HillaryS said just this week, that's one of the good things about a DB...what we post stands here, 'forever', for all to see and measure. A troll is as a troll does.

  Six:

  To take your thought to an extreme, that means that the way JWs are is just the way everybody is. So then, what's wrong with the way JWs are? Why should I change, and even if I wanted to change, how could I possibly be different?

  Craig
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  jst2laws

  Onacruse,

  How dare you be so opinionated. Good point, Craig. Maybe for some it is just a phase they go through before they realize they have some bagage. A side of affect of a lifetime of fundamentalism.

  The us/them mentality. Right/wrong, black/white

  "We are right and you are not only wrong, but you are evil" is the mentality, and all we do is change side.

  Shamus,

  Dude, It appears you missed the point.

  It's just personal opinions. We all have the right to them. If some want to be blunt and angry, so be it. They have the right to be so,

  Ona's comments are not addressed at anyones "right" to their opinion. He is suggesting you ask yourself if your opinions are yet influenced by the JW "Right/wrong, black/white" mentality.

  Jst2laws
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  expatbrit

  None of this behaviour you describe is remotely WT, imo. If anything, it shows just how much witnesses, underneath the brainwashing (yes brainwashing ), are just like everybody else.

  I agree with Six. The way cults work is by taking ordinary moderate aspects of human behaviour and magnifying them to extremes. Take shunning for example. Pretty much every person will tend to avoid others who they don't like or have very little in common with. The JW's take this moderate behaviour, and magnify it into disfellowshipping and dhunning of family members.

  Often the tendency for x-jw's is to react to any behaviour they see that even remotely resembles a Watchtower extreme. They thus end up rejecting average moderate beahviour, and start a pattern of extreme reactions (for instance, claiming that having their account deleted from a discussion board is "disfellowshipping"). "You're still using Watchtower thinking" is a hugely overused phrase, imo, whereas often what is being used is human thinking, quite moderately.

  Expatbrit