Posts by neverendingjourney

19

My awkward elders hearing

by Andamormonjustbelieves in

i was baptized when i was 14 years old.

i hadn't had any real relationship with a girl up to that point.

but when i started going to high school i learnt the joys of experimenting with girls, so i did not stay a faithful member of the congregation for long.

neverendingjourney

"Did you put your hands below her shirt?

Did you kiss her exposed breasts?

Did you fondle her genitals? Did she fondle yours?"

These were all questions asked during my JC when I was 19. Good times.

65

My Introduction - An ex-elder's story of waking up later in life.

by doubtfull1799 in

background:.

my parents got the “truth” while i was in primary school.

i was baptised at 14. i loved school and was extremely studious.

neverendingjourney

Welcome.

I had the same bout with borderline-suicidal depression 13 years ago and now the religion is something that's mostly a distant memory for me. It gets better.

It's also encouraging to see that smart people are still leaving the Witnesses after discovering the logical inconsistencies and flat-out lies. I was beginning to wonder whether they'd already been purged. I wonder how I would have reacted had I still been a Witness when the overlapping-generations teaching was rolled out. That might have been a step too far even for me at the peak of my involvement.

16

NPR News: Lack Of Education Leads To Lost Dreams And Low Income For Many Jehovah's Witnesses

by breakfast of champions in

http://www.npr.org/2017/02/19/510585965/poor-education-leads-to-lost-dreams-and-low-income-for-many-jehovahs-witnesses.

can't comment on this right now because i'm heading off to school .

transcript:.

neverendingjourney

@LongHairGal

I completely agree with you. I don't have any use for their nonsense and haven't for almost a dozen years. I've just seen embittered forces win out time after time. If a congregation becomes known for being "liberal" it usually doesn't take very long before outside forces make their voices heard and usually the CO will bring the hammer down.

I specifically remember a congregation who became known for having particularly compassionate elders, except for one nasty SOB. A few of the elders allowed the youth to have large, supervised parties (gasp!). Eventually the SOB was able to get the CO to remove a few of those elders on dubious grounds and the congregation quickly returned to its prior condition, a fertile land for him to rule over as a tyrant.

A major driving force was the complaints the CO received from JWs in neighboring congregations who complained that such parties were wrong and they were having trouble keeping the youth in line when the neighboring elders were allowing it in their own congregation.

29

The true cost of being raised as a witness

by stuckinarut2 in

how do you view your upbringing as a witness?.

most of us who were raised as witnesses would appreciate that some aspects of our upbringing were ok. a foundation and measure of stability came with it.. but, it struck me too, that we also lost so very much!

and we lost a lot of potential.. by this i mean, we need to look at not just what we lost, or what was deprived of us, but what that ended up costing us as adults into the future.. if i take $10 from you, you have lost just $10.. but, if you were going to use that $10 to buy something that would end up earning you $1000, then i actually took $1000 from you!.

neverendingjourney

I struggle with this question. On the one hand, you can find some good in the most miserable situations. For instance, a cancer survivor might tell you how the experience made them view each day as a gift and helped them cherish each and every day. Hell, even a prisoner can tell you they get three meals a day and clean water to drink. On the other hand, the religion makes you sacrifice in ways that are counterproductive materially and harmful to the soul.

In my personal experience, it's possible that growing up a JW was a net positive, but for reasons outside of my control. My mother was completely unequipped to raise a family. My father had no interest or was incapable of providing any kind of guidance. He wasn't a deadbeat. Although poor, we never went to bed hungry.

We grew up in a poor neighborhood and attended failing schools (the kind that have two or three armed police officers on permanent patrol). The average classmate is divorced, working a menial job and living day-to-day. A lot of my classmates have felony records and have spent time in prison. At least three classmates are in prison for murder. Gangs were rampant.

The religion gave my mother the justification to become a zealot about protecting us from "the world." I did not have friendships outside of school growing up. My mother was inactive, so we didn't have friends at the KH, either. My entire childhood consisted of going to school and coming home to watch television or play Ninetendo. My childhood and adolescence were robbed from me.

But by the time I turned 18, I didn't have any of the baggage that I might have acquired had my mother not been as militant as she was. I could very easily envision a scenario where I would have been an accomplice to a crime because I was hanging out with the wrong crowd or a situation where I got a girl pregnant in our teens. The last meeting I attended was when I was about 25 years old and I felt like I've been running 7 years behind ever since. My 25 was essentially 18 for most people. I've managed to do fine and am currently in a really nice spot in my mid/late 30s where JWism is mostly a distant memory I reminisce about here once or twice a week.

I'd love to take a peek at the parallel universe where my parents never became JWs and see how things would have played out. It's possible I'd be in a worse position now simply because my mother was not equipped to raise us properly and JWism at least made her skew to the overprotectionism side of things.

None of this means all is well in JW-land. As others who left much later in life have attested to, the longer you stayed in the cult the more severe the ramifications.

Edit: The better solution would have been having parents who could skillfully navigate the challenges of raising kids in near-poverty without the unnecessary burdens of JWism, but given the hand I was actually dealt, this might have been the best possible outcome for me.

16

NPR News: Lack Of Education Leads To Lost Dreams And Low Income For Many Jehovah's Witnesses

by breakfast of champions in

http://www.npr.org/2017/02/19/510585965/poor-education-leads-to-lost-dreams-and-low-income-for-many-jehovahs-witnesses.

can't comment on this right now because i'm heading off to school .

transcript:.

neverendingjourney

My oldest son (degree in computer science) is a ministerial servant in a congregation where the majority of those his age have degrees. It's the "hot" congregation in our district.

In my experience, these places usually don't last very long. They're usually done in by a combination of JWs waking up and leaving and outside pressure exerted from embittered forces who aren't going to stand by idly while other JWs operate happily with impunity when they and their families were forced to pay the cost of no college in order to maintain good standing in the organization (If my kids couldn't go to college, it's not fair for others who did go to college to maintain their privileges).

4

NPR: Lack Of Education Leads To Lost Dreams And Low Income For Many Jehovah's Witnesses

by silentbuddha in

i'm just going to leave this here.. http://www.npr.org/2017/02/19/510585965/poor-education-leads-to-lost-dreams-and-low-income-for-many-jehovahs-witnesses?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20170219.

neverendingjourney

@Magnum

Welding is not unlike painting. You either have a skill for it or you don't. Some people who don't have a natural talent can learn techniques to help them become adequate and some people will never be able to draw anything more elaborate than stick figures.

There was a student there (ex-con) who had an incredible talent for welding. Within 3 or 4 months he was welding every alloy they put in front of him on every kind of surface imaginable. I was just so-so at it. There was another guy there who was a janitor during the day and was going to the school 4 hours a day, every day, after work. He could never get to the point where he could string together a bead on the easiest flat surface. The teacher bullied him and made it seem like it was his own fault. The poor guy appeared to have an IQ just north of mentally retarded and I don't mean that in a mean way.

A lot of young JWs from my generation got taken in by IT schools that promised to prepare you for professional IT certifications yet were unable to deliver the goods. There was usually weasel language there where they didn't guarantee results. There's a whole industry out there of schools that receive accreditations required to participate in the student loan program although the results just aren't there.

I remember reading that the Obama administration had begun efforts to crack down on these institutions, requiring that they meet certain post-graduation employment standards in order to continue being eligible for the student loan program. There was a huge backlash and lobbying effort against it. I'm not sure where those efforts ended up.

With respect to the trades, that's what I'm seeing now with JWs from my parents' generation. Men who never thought they'd grow old still working in manual labor. These jobs typically don't offer health insurance, much less a 401(k) or a pension. My parents subsist on social security alone. It's sad.

4

NPR: Lack Of Education Leads To Lost Dreams And Low Income For Many Jehovah's Witnesses

by silentbuddha in

i'm just going to leave this here.. http://www.npr.org/2017/02/19/510585965/poor-education-leads-to-lost-dreams-and-low-income-for-many-jehovahs-witnesses?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20170219.

neverendingjourney

I was a good Witness boy and shunned college in favor of a 6-month trade school. I responded to an ad in the paper for a welding school. I was supposed to graduate with the skills to make an above-average wage.

The cost was something like $10,000 in 20-years-ago money. I borrowed most of it using federally backed student loans.

In reality, I didn't learn half of the skills I needed. When the six months were up, I got a pat on the back, a cheap diploma and none of the skills I needed. I'd been conned. I couldn't get a job with what I'd learned. But what mattered, I guess, is that I didn't go to college.

I naively told this story repeatedly to Witnesses and people usually got very uncomfortable when I did. It went against the grain of what "Mother" was teaching. With time, I realized that this was a common experience, but one most people didn't openly talk about. The fact is, most of these trade schools are there to make money for the owners who take advantage of the federal student loan system to make money off the gullible.

The welding school went out of business about 5 years after I attended. I later went to college and graduated from a real university. The money I'd borrowed to go to the welding school got added to the mix of loans I took out for going to college. It all got consolidated into one big pot that I finally paid off last year. The loans from that school followed me for 20 years. Since they were federally backed loans, I would have never been able to outrun them.

But the Society didn't care. The men in the ivory tower thought pushing people into trade schools made a lot of sense and weren't going to be bothered investigating the ramifications of that message.

89

Trump Voters, Is This What You Voted For?

by Village Idiot in

all that talk about hillary clinton's unsecured e-mails?

read the following:.

"deagazio posted additional photos from the weekend, including one of his dining companions kissing trump on the cheek, a selfie with white house strategist steve bannon and another selfie identifying a man named rick who he says is responsible for carrying the nuclear “football,” which allows the president to authorize a nuclear attack while away from the white house.. "“this is rick,” wrote deagazio.

neverendingjourney

Neverendingjourney, only some of Trump voters were White Nationalists and assorted racists. I think the issue is more complex.

I didn't say these people are racists or white nationalists. You can be motivated by a desire to see far fewer immigrants in the country without being a neo-Nazi. You can be kind to people of all races on an individual level while supporting a candidate who literally launched his campaign by claiming that Mexico doesn't send good people like those in his rallies, but rather sends a bunch of criminals, drug dealers, and rapists.

89

Trump Voters, Is This What You Voted For?

by Village Idiot in

all that talk about hillary clinton's unsecured e-mails?

read the following:.

"deagazio posted additional photos from the weekend, including one of his dining companions kissing trump on the cheek, a selfie with white house strategist steve bannon and another selfie identifying a man named rick who he says is responsible for carrying the nuclear “football,” which allows the president to authorize a nuclear attack while away from the white house.. "“this is rick,” wrote deagazio.

neverendingjourney

Trump won because the left lost the middle because they are endlessly trying to tell people what they really think and that they are nazis.

Right, because that's what I said. That Trump voters are Nazis.

And the Left didn't lose the middle. Clinton and Obama's 2012 totals were roughly the same. Clinton just had her support in the "wrong" areas.

89

Trump Voters, Is This What You Voted For?

by Village Idiot in

all that talk about hillary clinton's unsecured e-mails?

read the following:.

"deagazio posted additional photos from the weekend, including one of his dining companions kissing trump on the cheek, a selfie with white house strategist steve bannon and another selfie identifying a man named rick who he says is responsible for carrying the nuclear “football,” which allows the president to authorize a nuclear attack while away from the white house.. "“this is rick,” wrote deagazio.

neverendingjourney

Trump's core supporters represent a small but vocal faction in this country who have absolutely zero interest in living in a country with Democratic (with a big "D") leadership. Call it Obama's America for short. They'd rather see the country burn than see an emerging multi-ethnic, socially liberal, international American society. We're talking about 25-30% of the voting public.

There has also been an effort over on the Right over the past 30 years to delegitimize any governmental body or institution controlled by Democrats. For example, we've seen screeds against "liberal, activist judges," the Clinton impeachment, lock-step opposition to anything Obama proposed, that has culminated in the rise of a right-wing entertainment-media complex that has supplanted traditional news among that crowd.

For those core Trump supporters, it was never about Hillary's emails or local control of government versus control at a national level. It's about the changing face of the nation. They would rather see the country burn than see themselves lose the culture wars.

The reasons for Trump's victory are much more complex than that. These core Trump supporters alone could not get Trump elected, but the Right in America has been responsible for the delegitimization of our political institutions over the past few decades that has resulted in traditional Republicans completely losing control of their party. Has it been worth it? A lot of my Republican friends are torn on this issue, but these are people who didn't vote for Trump or who voted for him despite serious reservations.

When you go scorched-earth, you get to rule over exactly that: a country whose political institutions have been scorched to the ground.