by logansrun 53 Replies latest jw friends
Logan'srun:
Terry,
I agree with everything you said, but the JWs were really not the point of my post.
B.
********************************************************************************************************* Could have fooled me! I looked at the Subject header and read: The JW's might be right...for all the wrong reasons. Can you imagine how I might have missed the point? T.
The JWs publish 1,536 pages of material every year in their mags alone. Add in the books, KMs, tracts, brochures, and multiply by 125 years, and you get a pretty big mountain of material. Somewhere in there, there is bound to be something that is right.
The one thing that I know for sure, is that whatever happens in the future - good or bad - the JWs will be irrelevant.
By the way, nice synopsis of the 50s, Terry. I think we were all thinking of The Fonz, 56 Chevy's with flames on the sides, and girls with pleated skirts at the soda fountain. Isn't that all there was to the 50s?
Good point, runningman:
A stopped clock is right twice a day! Ha ha ha.
I do the same kind of hazy idealizing of the 20's through the 40's that younger kids do about the 50's since I wasn't alive then.
I spoke to an old gentleman one day and told him how I'd have loved to have been around during the Big Band dance era. He tore me a good one! He explained to me about prohibition and the Great Depression and World War II and I suddenly realized how stupid my comment had been.
Each generation only has a vauge notion of previous eras. We get the highlights from books and magazines. We never have to live in the shoes of those who slogged their way through the dark side of things.
Terry:
We never have to live in the shoes of those who slogged their way through the dark side of things.
And an upcoming generation will ask us what it was like wearing flaired pants in the early 70's...
...aaaah shyte, they brought them out again...
"Daddy, daddy, it must have been so exciting to have lived when the Internet was being formed..."
"Kid, let me tell you about 1200 to 57k baud modems and getting booted by an ISP when she was just about to take off... "
"Grandpa, grandpa, it must have been great eating tasty McDonalds Beefburgers, instead of reconstituted soya food!"
""
Not to be rude, but I think people who believe the world is falling apart simply haven't read enough history. Civilizations have always teetered on the precipice of self-destruction; while it's true that WMD on the scale of nuclear weaponry are a relatively new invention, the use of biological WMD goes back a very long way (from hurling the corpses of plague victims over siege walls to giving smallpox-infested blankets to Native Americans). And what was Greek fire but a weapon of mass destruction? Sure, it killed only a couple of hundred at a time--but when there were fewer people on the planet, a hundred was statistically significant.
The human impulse to conquest, imperialism and ultimate self-destruction is not new, and, relatively speaking, not any worse than it ever was.
Particularly when JWs talk about increases in crime--having spent 9 years in law enforcement--I must point out that, while the NUMBER of crimes increase, as a proportion of population, it's pretty constant. (In actuality, the per capita crime rate in the US has been on a downward trend since the '80s. Simple--or slightly simplistic--explanation: fewer young men. It's all about demographics. Males between the ages of 15-25, if not properly occupied with socially acceptable ways to release their aggressive impulses, will get into trouble.)
One of the things my JW mother goes off on is the increase in immorality and sex crimes--sexual abuse, etc., just "didn't happen like this before" (meaning before the "time of the end")--and all the horrific acts of violence detailed on the nightly news (think Jeffrey Dahmer) are, to her, recent developments. There's even a myth out there that Jack the Ripper was the first "serial killer," and that such murderous pathologies are a recent development. What's recent is: (a) the development of newspapers/other media outlets that can raise circulation/ratings by touting "mad killers" (it's only if you hear about it that it becomes a threat), and (b) the development of policing techniques that make it possible for law enforcement to see the patterns in crimes, particularly in crimes committed in more than one jurisdiction (we've gotten better at detecting criminals, which means we catch more of them, which makes it appear that there are more of them).
The truth is, these things have always happened. There is absolutely nothing new under the sun when it comes to human behavior. We just (a) lacked media determined to spread the tales far and wide, so that instead of "film at eleven," the stories were transformed into scary campfire tales and spread by word of mouth, and (b) we didn't talk about such things (i.e., inter-familial sexual abuse of children). One of the old-timers at the police department told me once that the rate of incest hadn't gone up at all--but in the 50s and 60s, the PD didn't release info about it to the press and didn't talk about it at all, out of respect for the victims (they used to use a red pen when booking an incest perpetrator so that everyone would know NOT to release the information). His explanation? "Before Oprah, we just didn't talk about private stuff like that. Didn't mean it wasn't happening."
If you don't think graphic murders and child abuse happened "in the olden days," just read Chaucer. Or for that matter, the Old Testament.
It's simple logic--there's more of us (people) living in close proximity to each other, so the numbers of crimes have gotten larger. In certain situations (i.e., when economically depressed urban areas are flooded with guns and drugs, usually for the profit of people who don't live there), the rate does actually rise, but that's not inconsistent with historical norms--check out the history of New York City, especially the period immediately before and during the Civil War. When substances that a large number of people want to use are banned, crime follows (see Prohibition and the rise of organized crime).
As for the nuclear threat--well, technology has advanced. We've found more and better ways to kill more and more people. It puts a lot of responsibility on us to behave better, doesn't it? But does it really matter if, in a planet with only a few hundred people, one of them kills another with a rock, or on a planet with a few billion people, one group kills another with a bomb? Dead is dead.
BTW, the pollution of the early industrial age was far worse than it is currently (though we could certainly do more to improve the environment, IMHO). In the mid-19th century, London's air was worse than L.A.'s in the mid-1960s. Mill girls in 19th-century Massachusetts routinely coughed up bits of cotton lint that they'd aspirated. And remember that the Chicago River was so polluted, it actually caught fire and burned. Cholera outbreaks from polluted water supplies were common in the developed western countries.
Things just aren't that bad--unless you watch Fox News!
Jankyn
In the movie "The Truman Show" one of the characters wears a button that says "How is it going to end?" I often think about that sometimes. We live with a notion of hope in our country that is impossible to expunge. It's what keeps our natural resources from ever "running out", its what got the stock market over 10,000, ... its what also motivates us to continue about our daily lives with a refusal to let anyone take away our freedoms (well, most of them anyway) from us. In Israel, every time a sucide bomber wreaks havoc in a commercial district, they take away the dead, or the wounded, they clean the area up, they hold a vigil of public mourning, and then the next day they go about their daily business. I think a lot of people mistake the mass abundance of terror warnings, material abundance, and natural destructive elements as an identifier that things are going downhill and there's no way we can stop it because things are so uncertain. I disagree. Our country is going through uncertain times, however I have confidence that we and the world take care of ourselves. People survived thousands of years without many of the resources that have become increasingly more sparse in our day and age, and eventually we'll get through it. Eventually our country will deal with a disaster in the future that will mirror 9-11 or surpass that, and we'll get through that. As for the sun....well, I can't forsee it going out anytime soon, but in any event, I think its the least of our current worries. As for our political parties...well, you can do what I do, flip a coin, pick a party and try to create change within one of them... there's no point complaining if you aren't doing anything to improve things....
In this vein there is one good purpose the Witnesses serve.
If you're ever feeling depressed about the time you live in and you're looking back at some period in the past (e.g. The fifties) with a little nostalgia, just browse through Witness literature from that decade.
It'll lay your nostalgia to rest real quick!
"yeah, i started smoking.""isn't that dangerous?"
"only if i plan on living a long time..."
we all die. the only uncertainty is when and how. (braveheart rocks! hell yeah, scots!)
The "world" has "ended" several times already! What's the big deal?
carmel
A couple of last JW cult indoctrination holdouts: ( 1 ) Rev. 17:17.." and God will put it into their hearts..." This is a WT key scripture that they interpret/attribute to the world's secular leaders viz. the united nations finally getting sick and tired of all the strife caused by 'false religion'.When this Wt prophecy is fulfilled the UN will 'outlaw' all religion with 'extreme violence'. To quote the WT$, they will 'burn her with fire'.Yes, the WT$ Say's "that every nun, priest and all of "Babylon the great's" clergy class will be executed and every non Jw house of worship will be 'burned to the ground'".Leaving Jehovah's Witnesses standing alone against the 'Godless hordes of Gog of Magog'.....
Well, folks this dire apocalyptic scenario sounds plausible when you stop and think,that indeed a lot of the world's problems i.e. global terror , is linked to religion.Didn't Karl Marx say," religion is the opium of the people?Guess what?? The Wt just joined the United Nations, and it ain't divine province to attribute world distress to religion.Just look at all the family destruction and turmoil instigated by your's truly Jw's.
Besides the demons who are the authors of WT$ 'profitcy$' would know this......
Holdout # 2 The WT$ predicted the the advent of the UN viz.'the disgusting thing that causes desolation'.That it would rise up as a sequel to the defunct WW1 League of nations.You know what?The demons could tell this one too......
