i recently had a very long conversation with my mother, about what jehovah's witnesses teach and believe now.
while i could gleam ideas and thoughts, that kind of worked with the religion i once called home.
more often then not, i had to come to a extreme conclusion.
Village Girl:
Free to Be Me: Nailed it with the title of this thread "I was a Jehovah's Witness in a different religion" There wasn't really a need for another comment after the title. Everyone gets it.
Take notice AAWA! That's a theme worth developing. Right here on good ol' JWD
http://www.anti-agingfirewalls.com/2013/04/19/autophagy-the-housekeeper-in-every-cell-that-fights-aging-2/.
the above relates to one my interests, fighting the aging process (i've seen it and decided not to participate).
the really cool thing is that it ties together nearly every successful anti-aging intervention into one biological process.
I eat a low calorie diet. I walk two miles a day. I do moderate weight exercises. I take some metformin. I never smoked. I hardly drink.
I pay close attention to mental hygene and stress to keep it down. I take a lot of OPC's. One day I'm going to wake up, take my vitamins, exercise, spend time with loved ones and die.
I haven't seen anything on the horizon that excites me about beating back the inevitable. I also haven't seen anyone who came back from the grave.
Who by worrying can add a cubit to their life.
i recently had a very long conversation with my mother, about what jehovah's witnesses teach and believe now.
while i could gleam ideas and thoughts, that kind of worked with the religion i once called home.
more often then not, i had to come to a extreme conclusion.
The watchtower never provided emergency food that had a long storage life. Everything had to be refrigerated after opening and would still expire shortly thereafter. The problem is all of their "food" (in due season?) has expired and is now unsafe for consumption.
Back in the 60's and 70's they still had the "generation" due date. That expired and they took it out of the old cans and put it in newer cans to make it look safe.
At this point I think all of religion is just Grown Up Santa Claus. But the false JW idea is worse than the false concept of dying and going to heaven. Most religions have the best of both worlds. You live your life and then you die and go to a better place. At least they had the dying part right. Knowing for a certainty that you are going to die in your 70's or 80's kept the idea in mind that if there is something you want to do you had better do it. But being told that there is a catastrophe awaiting that you must keep in mind so that you survive it, keeps you in a state where you fall victim to putting your life on hold. That would be fine if something REALLY happened but if you have been a JW for 63 years like I have (3rd generation), you burried a lot of sincere relatives that squandered their life and their children's economic security for nothing.
A lot of people that became JW's after they were adults don't appreciate the deep disappointment of those who were raised to believe that they and their parents and grandparents weren't going to die. At the deepest part of our brain is a paradigm of profound sadness that is worse than a hell where you could be tortured in the presence of other people who had the satisfaction of knowing they chose their path. Dante couldn't have thought up anything like it.
SAHS,
Maslow had an interesting theory. His only problem is that he defined self-actualization by a narrow set of what he felt were the "highest" goals.
He singled out certain people as examples of self-actualization. In reality everyone is self-actualizing. Even if your main concern is to get food for the day you are no less self actualizing then a person who spends all day contemplating the mysteries of the universe. Some people have strong needs for comfort and security. Others have a dominant need for control and freedom. Our temperament is defined by what we want and how we get what we want. Also what we avoid and how we avoid it.
I would prefer a series of concentric cirlces to a pyramid. The smaller inner circle would represent the number of people who value exploration and have a high tolerance for ambiguity. The other circles would reflect the larger percentage of people that seek security, control and comfort. Just because one person prefers an abstract or spiritual goal doesn't mean they are at the top.
if salvation is not possible except thru the governing body, however qualified that idea might be, it still would make them agents, substitutes, or 'stand ins' acting for god/christ.. by definition, they have declared themselves to be vicars.
collectively, they have adopted a title - "faithful slave' - no different from christendom/jews doing so, with 'father', reverend, rabbi or so on.. wrong if one person does it?
is it wrong for two?
It's even worse!!!
If they are a Governing Body then each member is a Governor.
Governors are rulers. They are actualy the Ruling Body.
By declaring themselves such they are RULING.
"You have begun ruling as kings without us, have you? And I wish indeed that you had begun ruling as kings that we might rule with you as kings. ....
We are fools because of Christ but you are discreet in Christ." 1Cor 4: 8-14
who should be responsible for financially supporting jehovah's witnesses, who put misguided faith in the failed 1975 "end-of-the-world" predictions, and went full-time preaching without any consideration for retirement many years later?.
kindness is an act of grace not an obligationare successful brothers ethically required to help aging moneyless sister?
toronto star.
Is she repentant? I would make that a condition. Does she admit she was bamboozled? Is she willing to turn around? Is she truly a prodigal daughter willing to be a slave to her family just to survive? If so it is a family's obligation to help her.
If she is just going to keep going to meetings and out in service with the help she gets.... Forget about it until she confesses her error.
the wts will collapse along with the vatican very shortly.
here's the real danger (scam) to keep an eye on.. .
matt taibl article from april rolling stone...take heed.
Come, now you rich men, weep, howling over your miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted, and your outer garments have become moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are rusted away and their rust will be as a witness against you and will eat your fleshy parts. Something like fire is what you have stored up in the last days. Look! The wages due the workers who harvested your fields but which are held up by you keep crying out, and the calls for help on the part of the reapers have entered into the ears of Jehovah of armies. You have lived in luxury upon the earth and have gone in for sensual pleasure. You have fattened you hearts on the day of slaughter. You have condemned, you have murdered the righteous one. Is he not opposing you? Exercise patience, therefore brothers until the presence of the Lord. Look! The farmer keeps waiting for the precious fruit of the earth, exercising patience over it until he gets the early rain and the late rain. You too exercise patience; make your hearts firm, because the presence of the Lord has drawn close.
The trouble with the conspiracy theorists is that they think socialism and communism is their enemy. The enemy is the Devil/Greed that is in each and every one of us.
That scripture in James is one of the few I like.
And with all of these problems Americans fight over their right to have guns. Food, education, medical care is being robbed from everyone without a single gun being fired. Pile up your guns. Your are still as helpless as a worm in a thunderstorm.
There is a difference between wanting to be safe and wanting to get more information. An animal that encounters a clearly perceived threat moves rapidly away from the threat or in some animals they freeze and remain motionless. This is called harm avoidance. Harm avoidance is opposite novelty seeking. If an animal encouters a strange or unknown signal they have two choices. Play it safe and avoid harm OR approach it and explore.
If the animal runs away there is no dissonance at all because the conflict was resolved when the animal chose to flee. The only reason there might be dissonance is if the animal wants to explore the object. They may approach the object and then back off a little bit. They will edge closer and closer by alternating approach and withdrawal. The animal wants to know how much of a threat the object is or if it might even be useful as food. The state of alternation is dissonance because the animal hasn't concluded how safe or dangerous the object is. What keeps them in this state is the desire for information.
Premature flight is the conservative strategy. The animal knows most of the food things in its environment so it is safer to flee from strange things. On the other hand the animal that explores its environment has more options in the future. This is why play and exploration have survival value.
A cult will try to prevent exploration except for information that is favorable to their goal. Cognitive dissonance continues until you have a clear sense of an objects true nature. The way the cult shuts down your desire for orientation is by labeling certain things as dangerous and catastrophic if they aren't avoided.
So without the drive for exploration there would never be cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance would be disolved by harm avoidance and shutting down novelty seeking impulses.
this urban legend/anecdote was on the facebook page of a jw who is a facebook friend of mine.
it's kind of long but tell us what you think....it was all i could do to stop myself from making a snarky comment.
a young couple very much wanted to have a family, but his wife could not conceive, so they decided to adopt a baby.
These sorts of tales whether true or not have a very insidious bad side.
It makes everyone else think that they must be doing something wrong because they haven't been "blessed".
The "faithful and discreet slave ought to know better" and that time and unforseen circumstances befall all of us.
I don't believe cognitive dissonance is the driving force for discovery.
You are confusing a force with a particular condition.
The force behind cognitive dissonance is the force for discovery.
The force behind cognitive dissonance is the need for orientation/curiosity/play/seeking behavior.
Organisms have food/needs/hunger centered around their visceral system. Organisms have a need for control and action which resides in the muscular or motor system. Organisms have a need for safety through planning and decision making which is the function of the nervous system. And organisms need information with which to orient itself - sensory system.
When you are faced with conflicing orientational signals you have difficulty processing the data and arriving at a decision or direction. The ancients called this double minded.
The problem is when a cult creates a time pressure where you feel you must decide right now - that there are grave consequences if you don't "make up your mind" make a decision. In addition the cult will take over your source of information and severely limit other external sources. Under this pressure the cult develops a sense of urgency. When you feel urgency you crave external help. The cult is all too willing to show you the way.
Normally the driving force of curiosity/orientation/seeking will continue to scan the environment until a resolution based on fact or reality becomes clear. Curiosity is similar to playfulness. Curiosity is insensitive to time. It is child like and will take however much time is needed.
Cults, dogma, cheap philosophy and psychology try to inhibit this natural playfulness.
This is why cults emanate from a hierarchically organized position similar to a parent. Authoritarianism.
