is your sense of loneliness (if you are lonely) heightened when you see what they share?
how do cope (if you are coping) with a sense of isolation, of not having a significant other?.
i know some single persons who are very happy as they are.
When i see what they share, i'm pretty happy being single and independent.
I can relate to that. Spending time with couples often makes me want to go home early from social events. I attend very few social events. They bore me.
How do i cope with any loneliness now? I like to have a few hobby's, and having a long term plan/goal on the back burner really helps.
Whenever someone asks what I do all alone by myself, I tell them, "whatever I want."
dr. jena barchas-lichtenstein is an anthropologist who received her doctorate through ucla.. https://www.linkedin.com/pub/jena-barchas-lichtenstein/43/427/702.
in 2013, barchas-lichtenstein submitted the paper "when the dead are resurrected, how are we going to speak to them?
": jehovah's witnesses and the use of indigenous languages in the globalizing textual community as a partial submission for her doctoral dissertation..
interesting details. with the jws in the simple majority, what good is that if they do not vote, participate in government?
Prologos, you may be asking that question without understanding the structure of their local government or the political climate of the region. The culture and politics of that region are unique and complex. In fact, a town of a majority 'pacifists' could be quite beneficial for some people besides the JW community.
Barchus-Lichenstein's work was done prior to 2013 but she does give detail on the geo-political characteristics of that region.
At this moment, the area of Mexico that Dr. B-L was in, Oaxaca, is blocked to the president of Mexico. He is not allowed in.
You should read Dr. B-L's account of being in the village when a celebratory day was happening - how the revolutionists were treated by the JW majority when the parade happened. Interesting.
The president is not allowed in the region right now. I wonder how much free travel the Watch Tower still has through that area?
roberto: my first reaction is ; " How the hell can she be so smart and skilled and still be a Jw?"
The author of the paper, Jena Barchus-Lichenstein, is not a JW.
She self-identifies in her research paper as Jewish. I was so impressed with her depth and broadness of knowledge about the JWs and the WTS, that I searched her out and asked if she had any connection to the JWs in her background. She replied:
In terms of my own interest, it so happens that I grew up directly across the street from Brooklyn Bethel. In fact, I can see into their gym from my father's apartment. But Bethel coexists with its neighbors largely by *not* engaging in much publishing in the immediate neighborhood, so we received fewer visits than most! I'd received visits in other places that I lived, and of course the literature tables are unavoidable on college campuses and in public transit, but quite honestly I knew very little at the time I started my research.
big pharma has been accused at times of "marketing madness," and that's a whole other topic, but isn't big religion guilty of marketing sin, after all there's no money in "normal.".
there's no guilt induced donations to be had in ok-ness.. if we were taught that consenting adult sex is normal, enjoying your life, celebrating your milestones and achievements are all normal.
making mistakes and occasionally swearing like a sailor - yep all normal.
Big Religion guilty of marketing sin
Yeah. There is big profit in Sin. It costs nothing to make, and every cent they squeeze from it is pure profit. The raw material is already there - religion just has to milk it.
And then religion takes Hope, packages that up as a commodity, and sells Hope as the cure.
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl6e4emx-4k
No, I was suggesting being imprisoned and/or fined for the offense- not a polite request. A cop doesn't just pull you over and politely ask you to stop speeding.
Whooooaaa.
Totalitarian control.
Thought crime police.
Imprisonment.
"Don't think like that...other people are thinking like that."
Group think outlawed.
Are you really proposing that, JD? Seriously?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl6e4emx-4k
One way or another, by force or, as others have stated here, just by time- religion will soon not exist. It's inevitable.
Or maybe, JD, we will learn to re-define 'religion' and understand it for what it really is - a vital part of political movements and political power structures. The template of 'religious' versus 'secular' has to disappear.
Politics and religion is one and the same - there needs to be an 'enlightened' view, if you will, as to what 'religion' really is. A political tool for government regimes.
yorkshire ripper peter sutcliffe 'planning his own jehovah's witness funeral' at broadmoor.
10 february 2015. while charles manson is busy avoiding being displayed in a glass coffin by his now ex-fiancee, peter sutcliffe is managing his own mortality within the confines of broadmoor hospital.. .
the yorkshire ripper apparently met with funeral directors to plan his own send-off.. sutcliffe, 68, contacted holmes and family funeral directors, whose office is three miles away from the high security hospital in berkshire.. he apparently wishes for the ceremony to be performed in line with his jehovahs witness beliefs.. sutcliffe was handed 20 life sentences for brutally murdering 13 women in the north of england between 1975 and 1980, and attempting to murder seven others.. police believed his killing spree started after he was conned out of money by a prostitute and her pimp.. however, sutcliffe later claimed the voice of god had commanded him to undertake the killings.. the independent (lots of photos of broadmoor psychiatric prison).
And here is another thing: the JWs have promised a serial killer madman that he will return in a physical body, with fresh victims ready and waiting, outside the confines of an insane asylum.
Why wouldn't you take that promise if you were Sutcliffe? Especially as the JWs have promised that the 'bad' people will be killed first. Bad people, in Sutcliffe's mind, are all those who put him where he is right now and are guarding him. He will LOVE the JW Paradise - no policemen, no lawyers - just those gullible JWs to deal with.
And...the JWs have promised that the Paradise, after resurrection, will be drug-free. Imagine - not even psychotropic drugs to hold him back! Truly the doctrine to tug the heartstrings of a madman. And he will be perfect. A perfect madman.
*maybe the JWs are only 'fulfilling prophecy' - Sutcliffe could be Satan - "let loose at the end of a 1000 years to roam this earth..." The JWs must be like Judas Iscariot..."just fulfilling Jehivah's will for them". You know how it goes when Jehovah calls..."it's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it..."
jehovah's witnesses are taught that it will be joy to be around a lion or other such animal without fear in paradise:.
it truly will be paradise restored.
what of the joy to be around a lion or other such animal without fear?
There is a thread over on jwtalk titled 'The Day After Armageddon' that is quite insightful - the comments are from apparent active JWs. it is an interesting read.
i have been thinking about how the notion of an 'earthly Paradise' feeds into the mind of a psychopath and also, included in that demographic, a pedophile. In essence, how the idea of returning to a physical body is what propels, and maintains, such an attraction to JW doctrine for the criminally disposed mind.
A pedophile cannot change - their motivation is always predatory in nature - the stalking, and catching of the victim is what is their primary focus. It cannot and will not change. Receiving a heavenly reward - going to a 'bodiless' place, is a pedophile's worst nightmare. But...the JW promise of a return to this physical earth, in a physical body, fulfills the pedophiles most secret desire - possession of the physical body of their victim. None of that carnal/physical material reality exists in heaven but there will be plenty to found here on earth...forever!
Or, at the least...maybe...a thousand years of indulgence in physical pleasures before having to face da' judge.
The JW Paradise ideology targets those who attracted to the notion of a 'pedophile paradise' in the millennium. Who do you think will survive Armageddon but still be there to offer 'tribulation and persecution' to JWs in the 'Great Tribulation'?
yorkshire ripper peter sutcliffe 'planning his own jehovah's witness funeral' at broadmoor.
10 february 2015. while charles manson is busy avoiding being displayed in a glass coffin by his now ex-fiancee, peter sutcliffe is managing his own mortality within the confines of broadmoor hospital.. .
the yorkshire ripper apparently met with funeral directors to plan his own send-off.. sutcliffe, 68, contacted holmes and family funeral directors, whose office is three miles away from the high security hospital in berkshire.. he apparently wishes for the ceremony to be performed in line with his jehovahs witness beliefs.. sutcliffe was handed 20 life sentences for brutally murdering 13 women in the north of england between 1975 and 1980, and attempting to murder seven others.. police believed his killing spree started after he was conned out of money by a prostitute and her pimp.. however, sutcliffe later claimed the voice of god had commanded him to undertake the killings.. the independent (lots of photos of broadmoor psychiatric prison).
vidiot: Is it just me, or does anyone else here think that a psychopath and the WT religion is, actually... a strangely good fit?
Like hand and glove.
Two peas in a pod.
Mirror image...
Yes. Good fit. Superb, in fact.
The Watchtower doctrine fits perfectly into a psychopathic serial killer's mental functioning. Just like Rose West, the opportunity to actually avoid going to heaven, where the insubstantial existence could not offer the chance to slice and dice bodies, Sutcliffe has had his most fervent desires answered through the JW religion.
He gets to come back again.
The ego-centric mental functioning of a pyschopath is incapable of changing, incapable of being anything other than what it is. A pyschopath will never, and can never, change. Ever.
The blending of the JW doctrine with the pyschopathic mind is as smooth and perfect of a fit as mixing cream in your coffee.
Delusion...meet delusion. Insanity. In its purest form.
Is the institutional administration aware that the JWs that visit this madman are promising him that he will return to this earth? Do they know that the JWs are fulfilling the wishes of a madman who just can't wait to start all over again?
To add:
A pyschopathic mind never changes. Their behavior will - in order to get what they want and desire. But the thought is the same - get what they want always. Change and control the environment and you can change behavior - but even in that changed/controlled environment is a mind that continues to plot the next best course of action to accomplish their overriding need to fulfill their fantasy. The JWs walked into that prison and gave him exactly what he needed - a new way to make his fantasy reality. The fantasy has not changed. It can't. He sees the JW religion as an opportunity to continue to be who he is - a madman.
and remember your boosters as adults!.
currently there is a measles outbreak in the u.s. the outbreak is clustered into communities where parents choose not to get their children vaccinated.
vaccination works primarily on herd immunity.
I think that the early campaigns of the Watch Tower Society, through their early anti-AMA stance and their relentless anti-vaccination campaigns in the Golden Age magazine during the 1920s and 30s and beyond, - which was circulated extensively throughout rural North America targeting the low educated masses - are now seeing the fruits of its labor. Those seeds that were planted, nurtured and watered by early Watchtower doctrine, fueled by 'alternative'/quack medicine - spread far and wide...are now bearing fruit.
I myself am a 'fallout' of those early Watchtower beliefs and was not vaccinated as a child. I have only ever had oral polio vaccine. As a newborn, in 1957, i contracted whooping cough and have been exposed to many childhood diseases, including measles. Yes, I survived. But I wish i hadn't had the diseases I did as a child.
I attempted to get vaccinated in early adulthood. I had a job at the hospital and it required me to be vaccinated. The tests that were required to assess my levels of immunity and tolerance to the immunization procedure were disastrous and resulted in being told by the medical doctor and public health nurse that it would be dangerous for me to embark on a vaccination program.
My children were both vaccinated. I was delighted that the vaccinations were developed, just prior to the birth of my son, for diseases that I had already endured and survived.
so i have been doing some reading lately.
i have yet to bump into the text that show that preaching is a requirement to qualify for baptism.
in fact, i have read more paragraphs that say otherwise.
Steve2: Decades ago, JW baptism became a parade to bolster religious identity and pride. It served, not as a personal symbol of acceptance of Christ as Lord and Savior (as occurred in the first century), but as a means to publically advertise organizational growth and prosperity.
And don't forget the implications it would have on the WTS' tax status as a 'religion' as well as qualify the 'publisher' to step up to the status of 'member' - a vital legal distinction that would be necessary to qualify as 'ministers of God' to side-step military duty.
