Posts by Check_Your

I got this idea because my JW wife went to lunch with a depressed, older sister. She is an outcast. She told my wife, "the friends forget about some of us older ones"

I told her, "well we won't forget about them"

That came from a ubm. It came from a worldly. It came from someone who Jehovah will slaughter any day now.

Don't think those expressions of love don't cause difficult conflicts to rationalize.

CYP

45

UBM strategies: Befriend the KH outcasts

by Check_Your_Premises in

jw
friends

in the spirit of jgnat's strategies, and her "making friends" post:.

i have noticed that the kh has a heirarchy.

there are the elders families, and young couples that everyone wants to do things with because they have all these things in common.

Check_Your_Premises

and that limits his exposure to jw's a little. At least on a social level.

THis is a good point Carla!

Yes, everything is a trade off. I never meant to imply that doing such things didn't have costs. You always have to ask if the costs outweigh the benefits.

I think he gets plenty of social interaction. Because I do go to the hall and to some of the meetings, I realize the extent to which she is influenced at the meetings and book study. I see how the social interaction appeals to her need for a sense of extended family. Now I see that as something I can address.

You can't influence the situation if you don't understand it.

CYP

45

UBM strategies: Befriend the KH outcasts

by Check_Your_Premises in

jw
friends

in the spirit of jgnat's strategies, and her "making friends" post:.

i have noticed that the kh has a heirarchy.

there are the elders families, and young couples that everyone wants to do things with because they have all these things in common.

Check_Your_Premises

Terry made some great points about dillusions on another post. The problem with dillusions is they cause us to act in ways that aren't consistent with reality. When we act outside of what is reality, we can usually expect to get the well known "reality check". His analogy is that if you pretend a wall doesn't exist, eventually you are going to bloody your nose, bumping into that wall.

I think a wall that is easy to bump into is to demonize the JW. Believe me, I understand those who have become enraged by the mindless, runaway train that is the WT. The costs to me have been more than I ever thought I could bear, and they have literally taken from me the only thing that I ever hoped for.

But I think it is another thing altogether to take that anger, and what the WT is to me which is the greatest enemy I have ever faced, and apply that anger to each individual JW. They are not the WT. They are not even the JW. They are people who are "captives of a concept". They are dangerous. They are misguided. They are your enemy. But they are people. Just like us they have hopes and dreams. And when you reduce them to a one dimensional representation of all that is evil you are seperating yourself, to an extent, from reality. Additionally, when you have hatred as a motivation you actually end up becoming like what you despise. Eric Hoffer went into detail about how this phenomenon comes about in True Believer.

I guess it matters what your goals are. If your goals are to help your loved one to have the ability to have a different perspective, you are not served by giving in to hatred. It keeps you from behaving in a way that does not feed the persecution mentality your JW loved one. Additionally, validates their concept that people who aren't JW are so unbalanced.

In context of how you view other JW's, your hatred keeps you from reaping the benefits of the Godfather, "keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer". As an openly raving aggressor you are easily recognized and thwarted. As a cunning, hidden foe you are able to draw close to your enemy and "slit the throat" of his cult mind. You are able to observe and manipulate how your loved views those who influence him the most.

I guess it is a matter of whose needs you wish to serve. Your need for justice or your loved ones need for compassion and understanding. Just remember, nothing sticks it to the WT like a freed mind. Nothing supports their goals more then the hateful opposer who validates all the bonds of the JW mind.

CYP

45

UBM strategies: Befriend the KH outcasts

by Check_Your_Premises in

jw
friends

in the spirit of jgnat's strategies, and her "making friends" post:.

i have noticed that the kh has a heirarchy.

there are the elders families, and young couples that everyone wants to do things with because they have all these things in common.

Check_Your_Premises

In the spirit of JGnat's strategies, and her "making friends" post:

I have noticed that the KH has a heirarchy. There are the elders families, and young couples that everyone wants to do things with because they have all these things in common. BUt then there are the divorced/older/single/married to ubm women and men. There are the very shy and quiet types. There are the older men that just don't "have what it takes" to be an elder. Nobody really talks to them or takes any interest in them.

Besides being a decent human being, and befriending the friendless, the KH outcasts provides two interesting opportunities for the ubm.

First, it is an opportunity to show genuine Christian love. By taking notice and interest in the outcasts, you provide a stark contrast to the status obsessive witness'. People notice these things.

Second, the outcast could be a valuable ally. The WT world thrives on a lack of info. The key info that a ubm always wants is the "inside info" on all the members of the cong. When you know the history and tendencies of the members, you know what motivates them and what to expect from them. Also as a ubm, you need to know what is said about you and your family. Again, if you are privy to this info you know what to expect from the members. The most important info you want is examples of or how to facilitate JWBB (JW behaving badly). Especially if it can be directed at you, the honest, yet unbelieving mate.

Thoughts?

CYP

60

What Are Most JWs Disillusioned Over?

by minimus in

jw
friends

what is their achille's heel?

Check_Your_Premises

Thanks Terry

CYP

15

New Tradition around here: How to handle disfellowshipping commitees

by Check_Your_Premises in

jw
friends

i asked richie to do this, but he didn't get df'd... he got his priveleges reinstated!!!

anyone who remembers that one knows that richie came up with about the funniest picture anyone has ever posted here.

anyway.... i really want to start a collection here.

Check_Your_Premises

Or how about taking pictures of ourselves hiding candy canes or chocolate easter eggs in the bathrooms? We'll be making JW children happy around the world.

Oh man. The scandals that would cause. CYP

15

New Tradition around here: How to handle disfellowshipping commitees

by Check_Your_Premises in

jw
friends

i asked richie to do this, but he didn't get df'd... he got his priveleges reinstated!!!

anyone who remembers that one knows that richie came up with about the funniest picture anyone has ever posted here.

anyway.... i really want to start a collection here.

Check_Your_Premises

I love you JGNAT!!!

How about taking pictures of ourselves like Richie, but doing all sorts of apostate things. Take a picture holding COC. Or maybe take a picture with a cigarrette in your mouth or wearing a cross!!!

CYP

15

New Tradition around here: How to handle disfellowshipping commitees

by Check_Your_Premises in

jw
friends

i asked richie to do this, but he didn't get df'd... he got his priveleges reinstated!!!

anyone who remembers that one knows that richie came up with about the funniest picture anyone has ever posted here.

anyway.... i really want to start a collection here.

Check_Your_Premises

CUrses...

All my great ideas have ONE snag that keeps them from coming to fruition.

I guess they aren't all that great then are they?

CYP

60

What Are Most JWs Disillusioned Over?

by minimus in

jw
friends

what is their achille's heel?

Check_Your_Premises

Hey Terry, welcome back.

Are there only costs to Christianity? Are there NO benefits?

Do you think ALL minds are capable of coming up with an athiestic system of ethics?

Beyond the individual level, what about the macro level. How does the belief in meaning beyond what we can arrive with ourselves as a starting point, effect societies as a whole. Without a higher purpose for our existence, we have only our existence. We only have our life. The funny thing is how wretched, nihilistic, and cowardly a man with nothing he can care about beyond his own skin can become. We see it now in the post-modern Western world, as it can't even muster enough energy to defend itself from a mindless, backward, 12th century caliphate. It's only weapon, and the only one it needs is that it believes in something and it's enemy does not.

This is an excerpt from Wretchard the cat at http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/

He discusses the issue from the perspective of modern liberalism, but you could replace athiesm with liberalism and the excerpt would hold (since athiesm is a tenet of modern liberalism)

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Kimball and Steyn on the end of the West

Two essays in the New Criterion talk about the West almost in the past tense. Roger Kimball's After the suicide of the West pronounces his post-mortem: a civilization suicided from despair; death from want of a reason to live. The contradiction within liberalism -- within multiculturalism -- Kimball argues, is that it unwilling to believe in anything definite, even in itself.
... an essay called “The Self-Poisoning of the Open Society,” ... dilates on this basic antinomy of liberalism. Liberalism implies openness to other points of view, even ... those points of view whose success would destroy liberalism. But tolerance to those points of view is a prescription for suicide. ... As Robert Frost once put it, a liberal is someone who refuses to take his own part in an argument.
And having emptied life of belief, liberalism has not coincidentally also emptied it of meaning. Kimball quotes Douglas Murray to evoke the atmosphere of a civilization partying frenetically on the brink of black nothingness.
It may be no sin -- may indeed be one of our society’s most appealing traits -- that we love life. But the scales, as in so many things, have tipped to an extreme. From seeing so much for which we would live, people in our society now see fewer and fewer causes for which they would die. We have passed to a point where prolongation is all. We have become like the parents of Admetos in Euripides’ Alcestis -- "walking cadavers," unwilling to give up the few remaining days (in Europe’s case, of its peace dividend) even if only by doing so can any generational future be assured.
Liberalism's first step is to render the past, with its ties to memory and tradition, despicable and valueless. From there it inevitably proceeds to make the future futile. The "me" generation is liberated not only from its myths but also from its dreams. Kimball cites James Burnham. Modern liberalism, Burnham writes:
does not offer ordinary men compelling motives for personal suffering, sacrifice, and death. There is no tragic dimension in its picture of the good life. Men become willing to endure, sacrifice, and die for God, for family, king, honor, country, from a sense of absolute duty or an exalted vision of the meaning of history… . And it is precisely these ideas and institutions that liberalism has criticized, attacked, and in part overthrown as superstitious, archaic, reactionary, and irrational. In their place liberalism proposes a set of pale and bloodless abstractions—pale and bloodless for the very reason that they have no roots in the past, in deep feeling and in suffering. Except for mercenaries, saints, and neurotics, no one is willing to sacrifice and die for progressive education, medicare, humanity in the abstract, the United Nations, and a ten percent rise in Social Security payments.
From Kimball's perspective the contest between Islam and liberal civilization is not simply between East and West, but between the living and the dying.

How then should we live? Why do we keep bumping into this wall of needing meaning in our life if it is in fact reality that our life has no meaning? Have we yet to evolve to where we accept the meaningless of our existence?

Again, Terry, welcome back.

CYP

Check_Your_Premises

Posts by Check_Your_Premises

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Kimball and Steyn on the end of the West