Awake! - Gripped By Decline ...and Hysteria?

metatron

Recently, the total printing of the Awake magazine has declined slightly - from

22, 755,000 to 22,530,000 While this may be temporary, it does coincide with a change

in style for this magazine.

The latest issue is entitled "Can This World Be Changed For the Better?" and features

the usual heavy handed dose of negative propaganda. It seems to follow the Watchtower

Society's habit of finding inspiration in accusing the world at large of the very problems

that it suffers internally. Thus, since ethical reform of the Watchtower leadership is

impossible, they are well-served by attributing lack of reform to the world - as if civil

rights don't exist, apartheid is still flourishing, Communism still dominates half the

globe and women are still chattel everywhere.

More than that, the magazine sports a new selection of garish colors that I last

witnessed in the movie "What Dreams May Come"! - and the cover is glossier too!

As to contents, we have this as an example:

"Morals have fallen to an all-time low [ really?] Human governments have tried

every conceivable form of rule. They sign treaties and adopt laws, but the needs

of the common people are still unfufilled. Wars add misery on misery."

Of course, "the needs of the common people" alive today will be filled apparently

by God slaughtering 99.9% of them at Armageddon in the Watchtower's scheme of

things - and somehow, they seem to have forgotten their own testimony about

common society NOW waking up to the horrors of child sexual abuse and wife beating.

Anybody remember the origin of the expression "rule of thumb"? Can I hold a picnic

on the grass while my buddies lynch a Negro in the park? ( Yes, they really did that!)

Can we march thru town holding small body parts taken from dead Indians - oops!

I mean Native Americans? Is a confession legal if we beat a prisoner into saying

it? ( Supreme Court sez no - in the 1930's). Need I go on?

Taken altogether, we may be seeing evidence that the Watchtower leaders are

drifting into hysteria. The last time I saw a magazine that looked like this (March 22)

was years ago as I passed by a stack of "The Plain Truth" in the entrance of a

convenience store. ( Prophecy! The World Tomorrow!).

metatron

Gopher

The generalizations in this Awake article are incredible. "The world's morals have fallen to an all-time low".

They LOVE to play on the fears of uneducated or gullible people. No matter what advances are made in civilization, the Watchtower publications will continue to spew their apocalyptic notions that EVERYTHING is getting worse.

Most of the Awake magazines go largely unread, even by the JW's themselves. The JW's who go door-to-door with this pablum mostly sell the cover and maybe two sentences from the first page of the article. Even they don't know how desperate their magazine is getting.

The WTS mostly is talking to its own followers. I can't see anything interesting or exciting to attract newcomers in articles like the one highlighted in this thread. At least they used to have 1975 or the fear of nuclear war, but now it seems they're running on empty.

Nathan Natas

Is it possible that the WTS' "wise and discreet" policy of ceasing mailed subscriptions is now bearing fruit?

I suppose the really big question is, "do they care about declining production?" They might not. They might see it as a neccessary evil - an albatross around their necks that they would just as soon be without.

All that production costs money - money for raw materials, money for printing plant overhead, money for slave labor overhead. Someone might have calculated the point of diminishing returns for the WTS and discovered that they were beyond it.

The new emphasis on proselytizing the elderly (in the UK, probably soon to come elsewhere if it pans out) is a clever scheme to gather what estates they can from the soon-to-be-deceased, who are less capable of independant thought and less likely to ask embarrasing questions. I would wager that the amount left to the WTS in the average JW will FAR exceeds the amount that average JW put in the contribution box during their lifetime, and it is easier to convince someone to part with their wealth when it can no longer benefit them and woould at the same time "greatly benefit the worldwide preaching work."

Although it might be stretching the definition a bit to say that Russell, Rutherford, the two-headed Knorr/Franz were "charismatic," each certainly did have some leadership qualities. Russell was a theological rebel who caught a societal tidal wave in his day and rode it all the way in to form the neucleus of TWO organizations. Rutherford was the iron fist authoritarian who would tolerate no dissent or discussion, and the Knorr/Franz monstrousity inherited an organization that was conditioned to follow AND BELIEVE. I think that it was unfortunate in the extreme that both men lived as long as they did - if they had any compassion at all for humanity they would have died at a younger age with a far less structured, smaller organization, which might have then collapsed upon itself.

But they fact is that the two-headed Knorr/Franz has now happily gone to it's soddy reward (although it had to die twice to finally be really dead), and there is no one in all of Watchtower land who has the ability to pick up the big cowpie that Knorr/Franz plpped on the lawn of their "spiritual paradise" and run with it. Knorr/Franz' wild imaginings and expectations were proven false years before the Knorr/Franz died. Now it's just backpedal, backpedal, backpedal - get away from the Franzian theology. Trouble is, when you do that you come out pretty flavorless.

Maybe the publishers won't notice.

Phantom Stranger

I suspect they'll find that old, cranky people don't like change much.

metatron

That post about Knorr/Franz is beautiful.

As to nursing homes, good luck!

Most of the people there are likely to be broke - or have vulture relatives monitoring

their remaining possessions.

metatron

drawcad_1

would the two headed beast of Knorr/Franz parallel with Daniel or Revelation?

Cicatrix

And if the rank and file figured this out, they would heave a collective sigh of relief that they have 225,000 fewer mags they have to place:)

Awake! - Gripped By Decline ...and Hysteria?

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