by logansrun 55 Replies latest jw friends
>>said in a real smug tone>>>
"oh yeah I'm brainwashed alright, brainwashed clean from all the >insert crimes of your choice< and of the worldly desires of this system of things, my brain is now bible trained"
Brummie
BTW Brad, go and study the meaning of being "mentally regulated" by the WT and how we need Gods organisation to "direct our mind" and then get back to me about using the term brainwashing loosely. Didnt ya know that Independant thinking is of the debil?
Here's an interesting definition.
http://www.rickross.com/reference/about/about8.html
As a JW, you often hear "look it up in the Watchtower Publications Index", or "direct people to the organization" (as opposed directing them to God or to Jesus). The leaders can decide the most minute details of a person's life. Anyone who questions the WT Society's leadership in even a minor detail is often viewed as unspiritual and can be "marked" as a "bad associate".When most people use the term "cult," they mean a destructive cult. A destructive cult first and foremost can be defined as a group that has an absolute totalitarian leader and that is essentially personality-driven. Regardless of what they quote, whether it's the Bible, Freud, or Marx, what they really are about is the leader. Their leader is the focus of power within the group and defines it. He or she dictates virtually anything and everything, without any meaningful boundaries.
Second, you have an ongoing dynamic or process in the group that could be referred to as " thought reform ," commonly called " brainwashing ." People systematically are robbed of their ability to critically think or make independent choices. Ultimately, they essentially become dependent upon the leader to make value judgements and do their thinking for them, or through the leader's delegated counterparts. Members no longer are really thinking for themselves.
Interesting Elsewhere !!! ...
Logan,
BF Skinner and John B Watson were both behaviorists who felt that humans are essentiallly like rats and can be made to do anything, given proper reinforcement (punishmment/reward). Humans, according to behaviorism, are nothing more than stimulus-response machines no different from a lower animal. Pavlovs dogs revisited. (Isn't it interesting that the idea of "brainwashing" became popular around the same time -- the 40's and 50's -- that behaviorism was all the rage?)
To me brainwashing is the art to get there faster (with a reward - or no punishment) so that you can even being harder (punishment) with human beings with specific strategies. It's works more on some people than others ... and it also depends on when (the circumptances they were, environement, and espectations they had) they have been introduced to it (the context).
I don't agree regarding the WTS and brainwashing.. they do indeed use methods to make things appear to be something they are not in your mind. You are told over and over again things to the point you honestly believe they are set in stone.. Children are raised in such a way to think only one direction.. They are not allowed to think outside the box..
Now that I am "out" when I think about the ridiculous stuff I feel for, I have a hard time explaining how I could be so stupid as to have believed, but the only reason I did believe, is because we were so forced into one brain wave pattern thinking, we no longer thought for ourselves but for that the WTS fed us to think. Thank God I am out and can use my brain now!
I would agree with you Bradley when it comes to adults who have just come into being JW's by choice but strongly disagree when it comes to young children and those of us brought up as JW's. We were forced to go to the meetings, study, out in service and we were brainwashed. We had no choice at all and our minds and thinking have been altered from what they would have been had we not been brainwashed by our parents and the borg.
Some of us have need psychological help to survive out of the Organisation, and have found for ourselves how our brainwashed we were. JW children are vulnerable and forced to think in the JW pattern. If that's not what brainwashing is then I don't know what could be.
The process of brainwashing is indeed a difficult one. I am given to understand that it can be done, but drugs make it easier; without them, the human mind and instinct for self-preservation is well nigh incontrovertible.
From what I recall, most people placed under certain conditions can be forced into repeating or believing anything. Usually control over their diet, their sleep patterns, and activity is required. Witness the willing confessions of Stalin's purge victims. Very weird stuff. It was the rare individual indeed able to withstand that level of manipulation.
That being said, The Watchtower wishes it could brainwash people. What it does is flood them with repeated information and mindless activity. These are aspects of cult activity: but the participation is voluntary. Once the spell is broken, the human mind can recover.
But it is more of an abuser / abusee relationship than a brainwashing relationship.
I think many people use "brainwashing" as a way to describe the flood of false information; rather than using it in its strictest "Manchurian" sense.
CZAR
Bradley, you are soooooooooooo damn sexy when you talk psychology. Seriously, if you make a living out of this you'll find yourself on the couch just as long as your clients amidst a sea of lingerie and stilletos...
Anywho, I think the dispositional apects of people in the congregation have less to do with any sort of brainwashing as they do with situational attributes. Philip Zimbardo's experiement at Stanford where he hired various students to act out the role of prsion guards, and other students to act out the role of prisoners in a 2-week prison simulation is a relevant example. Even though the experiment was criticized because Zimbardo played an active role in humiliating and torturing the students, I still think this scenario is as revelant as you will find in explaining how JW's can easily adopt inhumane behavior just as much as soldiers in Iraq could adopt using torture on prisioners in Abu Gharib. Zimbardo said prisoners reacted in one of three ways: either by actively resisting, by breaking down, or by becoming zealously obedient "model prisoners". I think the longer an experiment or a situation goes on the scenerio evolves from simple "role playing" to people internalizing those roles, particularly as you mentioned, in an environment where people threatened and pressured to act in a certain manner. Given such a scenerio people will fulfill orders to do just about anything....
may be its not brainwashing, but my ex and I did notice something together after we had broken from
a hypnotic like JW spell....
we did have a form of tunnel vision while we were JWs.... when ever a doubt arose about a doctrine, my mind would see that doubt by itself in a context of the overall JW belief system which at the time I still found valid...in that context a single solitary doubt, even over a major doctrine did not carry much weight...
after we were out we compared our doubts and discovered to our amazement that there were dozens of them and seen at one time they made a mighty mountain which over shadowed our JW beliefs.
under the influence of the JWs, we were in a trance like state with similar results that hypnotists have acheived regarding amnesia like results.
I always wondered what I was being programmed with in all those assemblies where the main talk was right after lunch and no one could hardly keep awake.... I pondered at the time whether they did that by design.
Sorry Dud, don't agree.
Perhaps another way of looking at it would be, brain-training. Yes witnesses make their own desicions, but they are made because of the jw junk that was placed there before hand. If, to comform to the org, you are not allowed free thinking, or to think for yourself, then they are truley controling you.
IMO.
Bryan
Have You Seen My Mother
I don't have time to comment on all the responses at the moment, but I think the typical idea is summed up by Bryan:
If, to comform to the org, you are not allowed free thinking, or to think for yourself, then they are truley controling you.
No. Unless they actually "get inside your brain" -- biologically -- they cannot "control" you. Sorry, but that's just the way it is!
Gotta go for now!
Bradley
