I was born into JW. That religion was the vehicle through which almost all of the positive values I have were taught. So it will always affect me to some extent. Hopefully I can remove all of the negative effects. I am not sure how long that will take.
maxwell
JoinedPosts by maxwell
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35
How long do you think being a JW will affect you?
by Adam ini haven't been on this board for a while.
i've been on a conservative ezboard trying to see if we can't do something about political issues.
i've also got a new job, had to get the car fixed, been best man in a wedding, and watched the two towers on vhs.
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Applying for a job, did you tell interviewers that you were a JW ???
by run dont walk inwhen going for a interview, did you tell the interviewer that you were a jw , and couldn't work meeting nights.
did you think being theocratic would help you get the job ???.
or were you the type to take the job, so you could miss the meetings.
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maxwell
On the jobs I first had as a teenager with the ever-changing hours, the applications always had an area to show when you were available, so I always made sure not to include meeting times. And I might mention my meetings when asked. It usually wasn't a problem because those types of jobs didn't expect to be your main gig. I could just as easily have had classes or after-school activities during those times.
On one of my first professional type interviews (for some internship), the guy asks me something like "What is the one thing you would like us to know about you?" I stupidly said something like "Well that I'm one of Jehovah's Witnesses and my convictions come first in my life?" And the guy snaps back at me "NO! That is not what you want us to know!" It was an internship type position as I mentioned and although it was a real interview and it might sound rude, he was really educating me. My answer had nothing whatsoever to do with the job. I didn't get the job, but I did learn my lesson.
After that I never mentioned it. I might ask about how often overtime or weekend work was required, but I didn't make a big deal out of it. Even non-JW may be concerened with limiting the amount of time they spend working overtime or weekends so that is a legitimate question to ask on an interview.
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I didn't get the job
by Elsewhere ini have been doing contract work for about four years now and i have been trying to get a permanent position for well over a year.
last week i did an interview for a job that would have been perfect.
it was even very close to where i live... within a five minute drive.. this morning i got feedback and they really liked me, but decided to go with another candidate.
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maxwell
I hope I'm not taking this thread off topic, but I've seen a few mentions of jobs being taken to other countries that have cheaper labor costs. I saw a segment on Dateline a few nights ago about call centers being relocated to India and other countries. Even one local government had contracted a call center in India, but stopped after one politician brought attention to it with an unsuccessful attempt to pass a new law forbidding this practice for their local government contracts. I was unable to find a link for the story, but I put "call center India" into NBC's search and the washingtonpost.com's search engines and both popped up stories about jobs being shipped overseas. Obviously not a good thing for job seekers in the US.
Free trade and globalization seem to be highly debated topics. I'm not an economist so I'm not too keen on the difference between free trade and globalization, but I don't think globalization is something that can be stopped. We can control trade to some extent with taxes and customs/import control. However, technology is continually making our world smaller, and I think a more fluid world economy is inevitable. If lower labor costs in other countries allows you to pay less for the things you want like clothing at Walmart or electronics at Best Buy, are you really against it. That is an if. I tend to think that a lot of the savings goes into corporate pockets. Everytime there's a World Bank or IMF meeting here it draws a lot of globalization protesters. They seem to be protesting because they feel that globalization will hurt people in other countries, not because it will hurt people in the US. But I wonder will they ever join forces with those who would like to keep jobs from going to other countries. Or maybe these are really two very different issues. But they seem to be related as I see it now.
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Picture of where you live
by RAYZORBLADE infor some of us on this forum, we're so far away from one another.
out of curiosity, do any of you have any photos of where you are from, or the communities that you live in?
here's one of toronto.
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maxwell
This link has thumbnails of a couple of pictures of the National Mall. Click on the thumbnails for larger pics.
http://photo.itc.nps.gov/storage/images/nama/nama-Thumb.00001.html
I live less than 10 blocks from the National Mall.
I grew up and hour east of Memphis. gitasatsangha has some nice pictures of downtown Memphis above.
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Did You Feel Obliged To Do Business With The "Brothers"or Did You Not Care?
by minimus injw's are always in some business venture of one sort or another.
i knew of some in the congregation that didn't do business with brothers and sisters because they'd gotten burnt too many times.
i knew of others that felt obliged to buy something from fellow witnesses, especially elders.
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maxwell
I never felt obliged to do business with the "brothers". I would evaluate them as if they were any other business. We had one "brother" who was a car mechanic. He happened to be very good. He had a day job working on a city's police cars and he had even been promoted to some type of managment position within the mechanic area. But he would do work on the side out of his own garage for the "brothers" or other people in the community that he knew. The work was always done very well and his charges reasonable and he even let me pay him over time once when I had some job that was particularly expensive. Even so not all my mechanic work went to him. Some I did myself, like oil changes and simple stuff. Replacing tires always went to Sears. I had brake work done once somewhere else.
On the other hand one "brother" once approached my father with an offer for "Excel". They sold long distance phone service and had a multi-level marketing structure. He was also offering to have my father come in "under him". I don't know if they still exist, but it just wasn't a good deal. My father politely turned him down. We already had good long distance phone service.
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Does any one remember when the cong's were segregated in the South?
by Victorian sky inlast night i watched the abc special on the 40th anniversary of king's "i have a dream" speech.
a memory came back to me of the last district convention i attented.
it was in west palm beach (anyone ever been to the leake teepe?
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maxwell
Sea Hag said,
Yes, when I moved where the need was great from NYC to Memphis in 1957 the congregations were segregated as was the schools. The schools were desegregated in the early 60's, but I'm sure the "brothers & sisters" fought to keep the congregations segregated longer than that.
My dad grew up in Memphis. His parents came into content with the JW around the early to mid-50's. We are black so they of course attended black congregations. They were in the Fairhaven congregation. I wonder if you ever had contact with that congregation. I have heard my dad and others talk about the less tactful black traveling overseers (not less tactful than whites overseers, just less tactful than any traveling overseer these days) from that time but not too much about integration. My dad graduated in 1967 from Booker T. Washington High School. I've seen my dad's year book and this school was still all black at least till 1967. I suppose that because it was an inner city school (i.e. in the middle of a black neighborhood), it may have been impossible to integrate it.
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As a YOUNG loyal JW, did you think you would see you're 60th birthday ?
by run dont walk inwith all the talk in the organization about the end being so close, and we have all heard this story over and over again for years, as a young/loyal jw, did you think you would see your 60th birthday.. if we were to walk into the kingdom hall today and poll all the jw's under 30, and ask them "will you see your 60th birthday", what kind of response would you get ???.
armageddon is not coming, the year 2014 will pass, as will 2025, 2075, 2100, and even 3000. .
would love to hear experiences from some of the older ones on this board, who probaly thought the same thing when they were young.
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maxwell
No, I didn't think I would see it in "this system of things." At least that is the way I thought before they changed the generation doctrine. After they changed that, and while I was still believing everything they said, I thought well I might die in this "system of things", so I'll make sure to prepare for being old in this system, but I'll still serve Jehovah. Strangely, I remember the summer before my first year in high school, that I was secretly hoping that Armageddon would NOT come before the end of the summer so that I would get a chance to see what the BIG high school was all about. My father has told me that he didn't think my siblings and I would become adults in "this system of things."
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to ex-jw's specifically: with what have you replaced your belief system..
by thebeliever inhow do you now understand the world... and your place in it?.
i personally believe in evolution... and also a "higher power"... it seems more and more people are drifting away from organized religion, but they are then left searching for meaning and purpose..... going to college/university and studying a normal curriculum, one is exposed to philosophy, the socrates and platos of history, who in many ways started widespread discussion on such topics as above.
some sort of philosophy has to be studied i believe, just so one can understand the history of man, from that point in time and how we came to christianity in the first place.. however, it is a very personal matter, as we must all find our own answers.. i believe it is natural for people to be drawn to ponderings of purpose and god, and there are many ways to seek connection to that souce.
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maxwell
I also don't think I replaced my belief system. There are many things that I thought I knew before that I don't know right now. And I feel ok with that. It's ok to not know if there's no way of knowing. I do believe that there is some "normal" things that most humans possess like a sense of fairness and the desire to be happy and the desire for those around them to be happy. I believe that there are "good" people and "bad" people and that sometimes bad people have to be restrained, punished or removed (I think that sometimes the death penalty must be used). However, I don't think any of these standards should be set for society at large by any one religion. A basic principle of the constitution is that no person's freedom should encroach upon another person's freedom. I think that's a good place to place limitations. And personally when I define a person or action as bad, it's when that person or action is unnecessarily limiting someone else's freedom. Harming a person is an even worse form of encroachment. Any religious group should have the right to practice their own beliefs, but if they try to legislate their beliefs or push them on others, then they are attempting to limit others freedom.
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maxwell
If any woman asks me to put the toilet seat down when I'm finished, I always ask them to put it up when they are finished. I've always wondered why that was such a big deal also.
Funny pics.
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If you could have one date with anyone, who would it be?
by obiwan ini've thought about this, the problem is there are so many wonderful choice's, i don't know where to start!
i always had a thing for tiffany, the singer, when i was younger!
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maxwell
My first choice would be Lil' Kim. The character she plays in her music has quite an edge, but I'd love to see if she can be tamed or if in reality she's a much different person.
J-Lo would be in the top 10 probably.