That doesn't preclude what I am saying. The JWs are an extremist religious group which meets the definition of totalitarianism. Which is a specific highly dysfunctional group dynamic. Their group narrative means everything to them. They will shun (from families) even young teens who dissent or disagree; the group means more than family b…
That doesn't preclude what I am saying. The JWs are an extremist religious group which meets the definition of totalitarianism. Which is a specific highly dysfunctional group dynamic. Their group narrative means everything to them. They will shun (from families) even young teens who dissent or disagree; the group means more than family bonds. You might read through a few of the websites for escaped JWs and see whether you still hold the same opinion.
We all want other people to agree with us and share our values, especially our nearest and dearest. That general desire is greatly inflamed when we feel, rightly or not, that the larger world is out to get us. Individuals who feel that way may react to dissenters in their own family by shunning them.
That makes for a family tragedy, but it does not prove that the whole group stands for shunning of apostates. We might feel that way about the group in general if that is our experience with multiple members of it, as many of us have been coming to conclude about Democrats in recent years. But experience may vary, and unless it is firmly written down in the very doctrine of the religion/cult/ideology/party, we cannot really say that the entire group is categorically that way.
Snowin...I know you mean well. And that you are trying to work this out according to your own experiences in life. Sometimes, however, people have one or two experiences which they interpret incorrectly, and then they base their beliefs on this. They simply do not know the wider facts of the situation.
I have expertise behind me here, in topics such as Evolutionary Science and Cultic Studies.
The JWs are most certainly an extremist religion manifesting totalitarianism (which is not solely political). Individuals in JW can be decent and helpful, as long as their groupthink remains unchallenged. Being in totalitarian groupthink does not always present as being some kind of monster.
You need to read several JW memoirs of "leavers". And a few of the best JW survivor websites. I think you are very naive here just because you have never been exposed to the actual facts.
Yes, we can indeed say that certain groups are totalitarian. It has been a formal field of academic study for a long time. You need to familiarize yourself with the facts before jumping to these conclusions. You are misunderstanding this.
" Humans vary, and every member of every group at bottom is a conscious, feeling, individual agent who makes his or her own choices"
No they aren't. I know you think that sounds wise, but it is not correct.
It is known in many ways (I will not bother explaining to you these details) that most human beings are conscious only to an extent. It is what the theories of the unconscious and how it runs us are all about. Even our deeply embedded early Attachments pattern our minds in unconscious ways, to which we obey. The well-known basic experiments in Psychology all bear this out too.
People who fall to cults or extremist religions or any kind of totalitarian group are either born into that situation and had no choice, or they are threatened into it, or they go blindly into it through their own dependency needs.
Maintaining as you did that they all had a conscious choice as free individuals is just silly. The truth here is very contrary to that.
I said that each human was a conscious, feeling, individual agent making their own choices. I did not say that there were no non-conscious mechanisms of their mind influencing those choices. Ultimately, everything we do is determined by what we are and by the circumstances in which we find ourselves. At the same time, we still have to go to the work of making the decisions that steer our lives, and there is no contradiction between those two facts. We are free and determined at the same time. The determinism is within us, not just outside of us.
The point of the statement you quoted is that we are each different, and therefore make different decisions. One Jehovah's Witness does not think and behave identically to another one.
I believe in evolution, but I would regard "Cultic Studies" in much the same light as I would "Racism Studies," "Anti-Semitism Studies," or "Heretic Studies" as defined by any particular religion, cult, or political ideology. The trick is to take a pejorative that can just be made up, apply it exclusively to your opponents, reify it as an "ism," imagine it as an academic field of study, and pretty soon you can get a Ph.D. in muckraking your enemies.
I am certainly no expert on the Jehovah's Witnesses, but those I have spoken with have impressed me favorably. That would particularly include one working family man who used to visit me to discuss evolution and the Bible, and whose "groupthink," over half a year of Saturday mornings, was very definitely challenged by this non-supernaturalist Darwinian, without him ever turning into a monster. He was a very polite and sincere person whose conduct toward people whose views contradicted his own could be a role model for any of us.
Certainly the JW leavers you have read have other experiences, which are also facts. The facts of my positive experiences don't contradict those of their negative ones, or vice versa. Humans vary, and every member of every group at bottom is a conscious, feeling, individual agent who makes his or her own choices, which aren't necessarily the same as the next person's.
What specific conclusions do you claim I have jumped to, that you disagree with?
I think that because you are unaware of many of these issues, you simply write them off. It's easier for you that way. Otherwise you would have to work at learning these.
You sound like one of the WOKE, actually, plugging your ears to anything that does not suit the way you want to see the world.
Cultic Studies is a cross-discipline along with the Psychology of Totalitarianism and Anthropology and Evolutionary Science. You'll probably tell me next that you never heard of Psychology...or science. Or you never heard of cults. I am taking all of this as a joke. You can't be serious.
You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. I could continue giving you the facts all day, but you are determined to scoff at these. I don't care, actually, whether you become enlightened or not. It's your loss. It isn't doing me any favours. I was doing the favours for you.
Amazon Books is your friend, Start reading on these topics. It will expand your horizons -- do you the world of good.
A cult is a form of totalitarianism, first introduced to the West in large numbers through a Korean industrialist in the 70s. He had been trained in brainwashing methods in the Korean War, and found American youth very gullible to his tactics. He set-up what was essentially a human trafficking and profit-making organization, very lucrative for himself. The cover story was that this was a spiritual group.
Totalitarianism itself is a mental phenomenon, followed by specific behaviour patterns. It is aberrant group behaviour -- a dysfunctional human dynamic which includes a Cluster-B Personality as the leader(s), a group of followers who are emotionally vulnerable and have dependency needs, and a group narrative that becomes their entire belief system. To question or dissent to this is to be shunned, smeared, punished. A totalitarian group projects their own faults on a class of scapegoats. It is a playing-out of psychological phenomenon found throughout all of mankind's evolution, to one extent or another.
A religion -- such as mainstream religions -- is a structure of spiritual/moral beliefs BUT does not shun/punish dissenters. You are free to come and go. It is not rigid. A religion that shuns and punishes is totalitarian, whether leftwing or rightwing.
An ideology is a stringent, unbending belief system. This term is usually applied to totalitarian belief systems.
A few hundred years ago, mainstream religions were not only shunning their apostates, but sometimes burning them alive. Would you say that they were cults then? If so, when and how did they mutate into religions?
This applied only in rather small factions of mainstream religions. Too many people who want to dump on religion talk as if everyone was doing it. Not so. The Spanish Inquisition of the Middle Ages tortured and burned dissenters -- meaning those particular clergy in that particular place were being led by a Cluster-B Personality at the top. Perhaps a Psychopath. Like Jim Jones of Jonestown. They can pop up anywhere. Ultimately the wider Church hierarchy ended it.
Then we had the 17th century American Puritans, who by 1692 were also executing supposed "witches", usually meaning dissenters or those outside their group in some way. So the Puritans had morphed into totalitarians.
The Catholics in Spain righted themselves. Catholicism is not totalitarianism. Neither is mainstream Protestantism. It is possible to go through a totalitarian period or place, but then to become balanced again. However, some groups calling themselves religions have never been balanced.
That doesn't preclude what I am saying. The JWs are an extremist religious group which meets the definition of totalitarianism. Which is a specific highly dysfunctional group dynamic. Their group narrative means everything to them. They will shun (from families) even young teens who dissent or disagree; the group means more than family bonds. You might read through a few of the websites for escaped JWs and see whether you still hold the same opinion.
We all want other people to agree with us and share our values, especially our nearest and dearest. That general desire is greatly inflamed when we feel, rightly or not, that the larger world is out to get us. Individuals who feel that way may react to dissenters in their own family by shunning them.
That makes for a family tragedy, but it does not prove that the whole group stands for shunning of apostates. We might feel that way about the group in general if that is our experience with multiple members of it, as many of us have been coming to conclude about Democrats in recent years. But experience may vary, and unless it is firmly written down in the very doctrine of the religion/cult/ideology/party, we cannot really say that the entire group is categorically that way.
Snowin...I know you mean well. And that you are trying to work this out according to your own experiences in life. Sometimes, however, people have one or two experiences which they interpret incorrectly, and then they base their beliefs on this. They simply do not know the wider facts of the situation.
I have expertise behind me here, in topics such as Evolutionary Science and Cultic Studies.
The JWs are most certainly an extremist religion manifesting totalitarianism (which is not solely political). Individuals in JW can be decent and helpful, as long as their groupthink remains unchallenged. Being in totalitarian groupthink does not always present as being some kind of monster.
You need to read several JW memoirs of "leavers". And a few of the best JW survivor websites. I think you are very naive here just because you have never been exposed to the actual facts.
Yes, we can indeed say that certain groups are totalitarian. It has been a formal field of academic study for a long time. You need to familiarize yourself with the facts before jumping to these conclusions. You are misunderstanding this.
" Humans vary, and every member of every group at bottom is a conscious, feeling, individual agent who makes his or her own choices"
No they aren't. I know you think that sounds wise, but it is not correct.
It is known in many ways (I will not bother explaining to you these details) that most human beings are conscious only to an extent. It is what the theories of the unconscious and how it runs us are all about. Even our deeply embedded early Attachments pattern our minds in unconscious ways, to which we obey. The well-known basic experiments in Psychology all bear this out too.
People who fall to cults or extremist religions or any kind of totalitarian group are either born into that situation and had no choice, or they are threatened into it, or they go blindly into it through their own dependency needs.
Maintaining as you did that they all had a conscious choice as free individuals is just silly. The truth here is very contrary to that.
No reply needed.
I said that each human was a conscious, feeling, individual agent making their own choices. I did not say that there were no non-conscious mechanisms of their mind influencing those choices. Ultimately, everything we do is determined by what we are and by the circumstances in which we find ourselves. At the same time, we still have to go to the work of making the decisions that steer our lives, and there is no contradiction between those two facts. We are free and determined at the same time. The determinism is within us, not just outside of us.
The point of the statement you quoted is that we are each different, and therefore make different decisions. One Jehovah's Witness does not think and behave identically to another one.
I believe in evolution, but I would regard "Cultic Studies" in much the same light as I would "Racism Studies," "Anti-Semitism Studies," or "Heretic Studies" as defined by any particular religion, cult, or political ideology. The trick is to take a pejorative that can just be made up, apply it exclusively to your opponents, reify it as an "ism," imagine it as an academic field of study, and pretty soon you can get a Ph.D. in muckraking your enemies.
I am certainly no expert on the Jehovah's Witnesses, but those I have spoken with have impressed me favorably. That would particularly include one working family man who used to visit me to discuss evolution and the Bible, and whose "groupthink," over half a year of Saturday mornings, was very definitely challenged by this non-supernaturalist Darwinian, without him ever turning into a monster. He was a very polite and sincere person whose conduct toward people whose views contradicted his own could be a role model for any of us.
Certainly the JW leavers you have read have other experiences, which are also facts. The facts of my positive experiences don't contradict those of their negative ones, or vice versa. Humans vary, and every member of every group at bottom is a conscious, feeling, individual agent who makes his or her own choices, which aren't necessarily the same as the next person's.
What specific conclusions do you claim I have jumped to, that you disagree with?
I think that because you are unaware of many of these issues, you simply write them off. It's easier for you that way. Otherwise you would have to work at learning these.
You sound like one of the WOKE, actually, plugging your ears to anything that does not suit the way you want to see the world.
Cultic Studies is a cross-discipline along with the Psychology of Totalitarianism and Anthropology and Evolutionary Science. You'll probably tell me next that you never heard of Psychology...or science. Or you never heard of cults. I am taking all of this as a joke. You can't be serious.
You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. I could continue giving you the facts all day, but you are determined to scoff at these. I don't care, actually, whether you become enlightened or not. It's your loss. It isn't doing me any favours. I was doing the favours for you.
Amazon Books is your friend, Start reading on these topics. It will expand your horizons -- do you the world of good.
Goodnight.
I would be interested to hear your definition of a 'cult.' How exactly, does a 'cult' differ from a 'religion' or an 'ideology'?
A cult is a form of totalitarianism, first introduced to the West in large numbers through a Korean industrialist in the 70s. He had been trained in brainwashing methods in the Korean War, and found American youth very gullible to his tactics. He set-up what was essentially a human trafficking and profit-making organization, very lucrative for himself. The cover story was that this was a spiritual group.
Totalitarianism itself is a mental phenomenon, followed by specific behaviour patterns. It is aberrant group behaviour -- a dysfunctional human dynamic which includes a Cluster-B Personality as the leader(s), a group of followers who are emotionally vulnerable and have dependency needs, and a group narrative that becomes their entire belief system. To question or dissent to this is to be shunned, smeared, punished. A totalitarian group projects their own faults on a class of scapegoats. It is a playing-out of psychological phenomenon found throughout all of mankind's evolution, to one extent or another.
A religion -- such as mainstream religions -- is a structure of spiritual/moral beliefs BUT does not shun/punish dissenters. You are free to come and go. It is not rigid. A religion that shuns and punishes is totalitarian, whether leftwing or rightwing.
An ideology is a stringent, unbending belief system. This term is usually applied to totalitarian belief systems.
A few hundred years ago, mainstream religions were not only shunning their apostates, but sometimes burning them alive. Would you say that they were cults then? If so, when and how did they mutate into religions?
This applied only in rather small factions of mainstream religions. Too many people who want to dump on religion talk as if everyone was doing it. Not so. The Spanish Inquisition of the Middle Ages tortured and burned dissenters -- meaning those particular clergy in that particular place were being led by a Cluster-B Personality at the top. Perhaps a Psychopath. Like Jim Jones of Jonestown. They can pop up anywhere. Ultimately the wider Church hierarchy ended it.
Then we had the 17th century American Puritans, who by 1692 were also executing supposed "witches", usually meaning dissenters or those outside their group in some way. So the Puritans had morphed into totalitarians.
The Catholics in Spain righted themselves. Catholicism is not totalitarianism. Neither is mainstream Protestantism. It is possible to go through a totalitarian period or place, but then to become balanced again. However, some groups calling themselves religions have never been balanced.