by snare&racket 56 Replies latest jw friends
It's only natural that outstanding current events will be discussed on a forum like this. I've posted before that Trump era politics seem to be extremely divisive, and conversations on the subject often ended up being counter - productive, 'I'm right, you're wrong' arguments.
Understandably, that becomes tiring after a while.
Snare my question wasn’t an example of passive aggressive. After 20 years I would find it difficult to believe you still needed healing. You made the comment so I asked if you still felt the need to be here for healing.
Some people, not necessarily you, will always need to feel that they need therapy because of the Witnesses. After 20 years I would hope most people would not feel the need for healing here. We have to move on and learn from our experiences and help others if possible.
This website is logging me off every time I attempt to write a longer reply, and I end up losing everything that I was writing. It’s a very annoying glitch, so I will try again tomorrow with something other than my ipad.
Eden, u r being censored lol
This website is logging me off every time I attempt to write a longer reply, and I end up losing everything that I was writing. It’s a very annoying glitch, so I will try again tomorrow with something other than my ipad.
I have not had a sign out issue. But I will say this, when I am using my iPhone for typing a response, I find it a lot better to just take the quotes over to the Notes app and compose a response there, and then copy it back when completed. I lose a lot less posts that way. On a tablet or phone it’s so easy to close the wrong app or just refer back to a previous page, and the work is lost.
@Eden:
Check out this thread, recent to this forum. Seems like the entire thing went down in a civilized manner.
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/5644189571219456/sound-familiar
Eden, u r being censored lol
Nah, more like it just an annoying glitch with my aging iPad that's all. It seemed to "time out" my login if I took more than a few minutes to type a reply, nixing my comments box and its contents. I'm on my laptop now. Fingers crossed ...
I find it a lot better to just take the quotes over to the Notes app and compose a response there, and then copy it back when completed
That's a good approach, but I was already in bed and it was getting late, so ...zzz zzz zzz
Check out this thread, recent to this forum. Seems like the entire thing went down in a civilized manner.
I'm all for political debate, and I quite like it WHEN it's possible to do that in a civilized way, even when people strongly disagree on something. I can't watch debates that descend into ad hominem attacks, name calling, shouting, constant interrupting the others so they cannot expose their arguments, de-humanizing adversaries, throwing unfunded accusations up in the air, fake facts etc. It just sickens me, I'm definitely not good at it, and it's beneath me to debase myself to that level. The current sociological environment has become artificially edgy and crisp as a result of social media (and to a certain extent, traditional media) lending its users to deeper levels of ideological entrenchment and thus, intolerance, and that is showing here.
Discussing politics in a positive and meaningful way is not only possible, it's also desirable. However, this forum is (should be) mainly about helping people on their journey out of the Watchtower cult, and not a soapbox for promoting political views. For good or for worse, those who spent most of their lives inside the JW cult were educated to avoid debates and to just walk away when discussion gets heated or their ideas get challenged. Now, add that conditioned response to the "paranoia-of-the-evil-apostates-who-are-out-to-get-the-Witnesses-at-Satan's-bidding", and you'll see why that sort of political bickering here may be scaring people away.
If, by means of discussing Watchtower cult related issues, political ideas come to the fore, then it's open hunting season. But starting threads, even many threads, to merely provoke and taunt, floating innuendos or outright conspiracy theories, attacking political views that you dislike, using this forum as a political megaphone, thus flooding this forum with incendiary titles that have little to do with discussing matters related to the JW cult, it's frankly detrimental to the original purpose of this website.
I suggest that, if that kind of, say, "specialized discussion", is to be kept in this forum, there should be a special section for it, a section that should be open to anyone, but kept out of the forefront of the forum.
I have absolutely no idea what is on e-watchman. Never been there.
Oh by all means, humor me and go there waste 10 minutes of your life that you'll never get back. You'll get my point very quickly. If I had stumbled upon that website, with its present outlandish contents, when I began testing the waters to see what was outside of JWdom, I would quickly run back to the perceived "safety" of the Organization because that meets exactly the standard of what the fearmongers on the GB has been writing about "mentally ill apostates".
OK, so you "fear" that this site may be going down a similar path, of everything listed above. So I asked for an example of something on *this* site (see quote above) that is the basis for this fear.
Apparently, there's a bumper sticker going around that says "If you don't think that someone is plotting against you, then you're not paying attention". When one comes out of a cult whose main tenets are based on unproven conspiracy theories ("there's a universal controversy between God and the Devil, and you're implicated in it" ; "the devil is out to get you" ; "science that disproves the Bible is false, bad and does Satan's bidding"; "the entertainment industry is dominated by the devil"; "higher education is a satanic ruse to steer the youth away from God"; "beware of independent thinking, it's Satan puffing your pride"; "political agencies in this world dominated by Satan are plotting to attack organized religion soon, and we will be next"; "we need to preach, or else billions of people will die in Armageddon and their blood will be in our hands" .... do I need to continue?), then any conspiracy theory immediately raises red flags, because one knows too well how those ideas, counter-information, is used to manipulate fear and steer people in a certain direction. People a-critically adopt these ideas that seem to confirm their deepest inner fears as their own ideas, and then repeat them and amplify them in any given platform they have, because they need to spread the good (bad) news. It's brilliant, as it is terrifying. The only way this highway to hell stops is by each one of us develop their critical thinking abilities and stop becoming a resonating box for those who profit from the spreading of these ideas.
Conspiracy theories give people a way to make sense of a world that they struggle to understand. They offer a simple narrative that gives them back some control over the events ("aha! I figured this out. Now I won't be fooled anymore!") that otherwise they are powerless to influence. For example, a diagnosis of a serious illness that comes out of nowhere in you on someone close to you, may seem senseless. Why? Why? In some people, the explanation that pharmaceutical companies are inventing / spreading diseases so that they can profit by selling prescription drugs for them is paradoxically a more comforting explanation than, say, absolute randomness of a cell replication that went wrong. Because, in the first case, the individual has the delusion that it retains some degree of control over the narrative, as opposed to the latter, where the narrative is absolutely out of its control. Fear is one of life's greatest motivators, along with sex, power, and guilt.
And this behavior can be pathological, and here's my connection with the DSM reference that you seemed to take exception with. Are you familiar with the term "psychotism"? If you're not, I'm sure you'll hear about it more and more in the future, because it's beginning to trend among psychology researchers. Psychotism is a maladaptative pattern of thinking that is a core feature of what is usually referred to as "schizo-type personality disorder", that is in part characterized by "odd beliefs and magical thinking" and "paranoid ideation". These also tend to occur in people who suffer from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. It's, if you will, a milder form of full-blown psychosis, where the person loses adherence with reality (that happens in schizophrenia, for example), but it's more severely disjointed thinking than just belief in, say, a superstition. In a world where social media tends to group people of like-minded leanings, while shielding them from countering ideas, this pattern of thinking that stems out of anxiety and some level of immaturity in dealing with needs and emotions can spread like wildfire, feed into itself, and quickly become pathological and yes, some day it will really have its own DSM entry under the neurosis groups, I'm sure.
To be short, yes, I believe that individuals like "e-watchman" do suffer from a personality disorder that is yet to be formally named, but is emerging in scientific studies, They play into the hands of people who craft conspiracy theories, becoming their useful tools in the vital role of spreading and amplifying them. And any one of use is prone to become a victim of this, myself included. I know I was such a person while I was JW. Who can say I won't do that again about something else? Critical thinking skills are your best friend in this situation, but they won't offer full protection, and they can be overpowered by anxiety and fear, under the right exceptional circumstances. And, boy, do we live in exceptional circumstances these days!
How does this relate to this forum, this cherished website, that prompted my comments where I drew a parallel?
Try scrolling back to the last 100 topics that got discussed over this last two weeks. I counted at least 11 that were 100% political and not related to JW. And these past two weeks, once US elections were over and Biden was sworn in, there were much less engaging political topics. It's almost "quiet" in that front. That's 11% of content - again, in a "moderately quiet" time in the US politics alone. Now, those numbers have easily escalated to 30% to 40% during the controversial Trump presidency, where there was an abundance of extreme political topics for debate.
No political extremes (left or right) are exempt of fake facts and conspiracy theories, and a brief look at history will educate us on that, but in this day and time, it is definitely a right-wing feature the creation of fake facts and crafting of conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, the conservative political territory has become fertile soil for right-wing conspiracy theories because the world is changing at such a fast pace, that conservatives are scared at the pace of the change, they fear losing control over it, and thus are prone to see liberals (who tend to embrace change more easily) as enemies. The world needs both, that's my belief, to counterbalance each other. Right-wing conspiracy crafters are a case of the tail waging the dog. They steer the fears of the much broader conservative-minded group of people, so that they behave in a way that suits their agenda for power grab. And yes, liberals aren't immune to conspiracy theories either, just not in the same degree.
This website shouldn't be a soap box megaphone stall for political ideas of this sort, be it right-wing or left-wing or centrist or whatnot. Keep those political ideas for some other platform (go build your own website, participate in a specialized forum, use your FB, IG or Twitter account, get involved in like-minded instant messaging groups account if you must) but please refrain from doing that in here. This website is about HELPING people getting away from the Jehovah's Witnesses cult, and provide support for those who already left, helping them to grow up and grow out of it. To scare people away by overtly carrying into here the political tensions of "the world" is counter-productive. Those who are taking their early, frightful, baby steps outside the grasp of the Watchtower cult are likely to land here at that stage. And this website needs to provide a safe and friendly environment where people can learn, ask questions, rather than being intimidated.
I came here in a time where the discussions this forum were "dominated" (there should be a better word, but indulge me on that) by atheists. I took a helluva beating (thanks, Cofty ). I survived and in the end learned a lot from it. But that is because I have a personality trait (INTP - rational, logical thinker) that is only shared by 4% of the population at large. I am sure that other people at the same time retracted from their early exit endeavors because they got scared of the harsh treatment dispensed to believers at that time. That was detrimental for them. Most people coming out of the WT will not withstand the intimidation of political catfight on this forum, and that is a terrible missed opportunity.
Yes, I FEAR (I also have fears, see) that, if left unchecked, and nothing gets done to curb it, the use of this forum for political bickering and conspiracy theory spreading (unfortunately they seem to go together these days), the toxic environment may take over this forum, and that would be a terrible loss for everyone.
(Ugh, sorry for the lengthy post. I'll go back to my studio making music again)
Eden One,
''But starting threads, even many threads, to merely provoke and taunt, floating innuendos or outright conspiracy theories, attacking political views that you dislike, using this forum as a political megaphone, thus flooding this forum with incendiary titles that have little to do with discussing matters related to the JW cult, it's frankly detrimental to the original purpose of this website.'' (my bold)
I think the original purpose of the forum is long gone. Unfortunately.
Thanks for posting.
Eden, I think your iPad was telling you it couldn’t handle the longest post in memory. Good points but after 3 minutes, enough. Learn to condense your posts so all that valuable information that you want to share is easily readable. Just a suggestion.
Eden,
To be short, yes, I believe that individuals like "e-watchman" do suffer from a personality disorder that is yet to be formally named, but is emerging in scientific studies, They play into the hands of people who craft conspiracy theories, becoming their useful tools in the vital role of spreading and amplifying them.
That individual is more purveyor than consumer.
The weaving of current events into his wild, allegorical scriptural interpretations and the promotion of those ideas to the gullible goes back more than twenty years.
For those curious:
https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/users/6903/You%20Know/topics
