In a recent effort to entice me back to meetings, an elder friend gave me the example of his Dad.
He said that his pioneer/elder/ex-missionary Dad went through the anticipation and disappointment of 1975 and yet, he kept going faithfully for decades afterwards. The obvious point was that, if his Dad can deal with disappointment, then, surely a nobody like me could do the same in regards to the scrapping of the 1914 generation doctrine, and all the other changes. His 'encouragement' was to tell me that it was only me that felt like this, everyone else is fine and have no problems with the changes. I wanted to say to my friend that 'perhaps his Dad is a gullible loser' but that would have been extremely unkind.
I realised that by 1975, his dad would have had about 30 or 40 years invested in the org. He was the P.O., an elder with a family and had status in the cong.
When I think about people that stay as a JW, despite all the glaring errors and backflips, it seems to be more pride than loyalty that makes them stay. Its hard to admit you are wrong, especially when you have years invested. Even the notion of facing up to being wrong is hard.
There is a line that seems to blur between pride and loyalty. People have lost fortunes holding shares in companies that go broke. Is it misplaced loyalty to the company, or an unwillingness to cut your losses and admit you were wrong because of pride?
As an example, I remember when snowboarding became popular, there were those that didn't want to try it, mainly because they were very good skiers, with decades of experience. To learn snowboarding meant that they had to start over again as a nobody. Was it loyalty to skiing, or pride that made them unwilling to give something else a try?
To a lot of jw's, it would be a bitter pill to admit you were wrong and go to the effort of leaving the org. According to the bible, pride is supposed to be bad thing but it might be the only thing keeping herds of sheep- that the org can fleece, from leaving. Personally, I think that's why the org will always exist in some form.
"Its easier to fool someone than to convince them they've been fooled."