The shackles of personal choice.

by Darkknight757 4 Replies latest jw experiences

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  Darkknight757

  One of the things that woke me up was a post on this board about a person who spliced a portion of the song "No God's, No Masters" by Arch Enemy into a kingdom song at their hall. This small bit opened up a world long forgotten from my youth.

  Before becoming a witness I was huge into Death Metal and some heavy metal ( Loved Metalica until they sold out with their Black album) and as we know the wts forbids us to have freedom of choice when it comes to music, movies and many other things.

  So now I full on LOVE me some good old Metal again!! So liberating!!

  So I was wondering, upon the removal of your shackles of personal choice, what things did you start doing? What music do you enjoy or what movies do you like now? What activities do you enjoy now that your conscience has seen that these matters of personal choice make us individually who we are?
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  vivalavida

  I grew up a beard, started reading about anything I just felt like, even if it was related to spiritism, evolution, aliens, science... absolutely no guilty feelings now. Back then, I would not even get close to the books...lol
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  Darkknight757

  Not having the guilt that comes with personal choice makes it all the better!
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  Nicholaus Kopernicus

  I started researching about freedom and liberty. Early writers such as John S. Mills on individualism were of great interest to me. I downloaded some MP3 documentaries from the BBC and listened to them several times while making notes. I looked at the Open University online. On both the BBC and OU I discovered the works of Sir Isaiah Berlin - a philosopher and historian who emigrated from Latvia and settled here in England. His essays about freedom fascinated me. He categorised the subject into positive and negative freedom. He discussed autonomy vs heteronomy - fascinating for a JW who is mentally departing from the Watchtower Banality and Trash Society. Based on the comment of a blogger on this site (another thread) I bought Sir Isaiah's book - "The Proper Study of Mankind". This book is full of deep riches. As a JW, such "independence" of mind is deprecated. Reading the works of a modern philospher is outragious. See if I care!

  I also purchased a book called "Against The Flow - The Inspiration of Daniel In An Age of Relativism" by Professor John Lennox. This is a very interesting book and has many parts which would shame the WTBTS authors. Whether one agrees with Prof Lennox or not is irrelevant - it a genuinely interesting read.

  I've also got Steven Hassan's text - "Combating Cult Mind Control" and the two texts authored by Ray Franz. Hitherto, I would not have dared to consider reading such texts as the above.

  The behaviour of the WTBTS leadership and local elders is such that I cannot contribute money and have not done for some time. So paradoxically, my liberation also involves voluntary restrictions. I am no longer a regular attender of WTBTS meetings.
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  Beth Sarim

  Some people are shackled, stuck by choice sometimes.