xero

Of course voting even from a secular perspective as an individual is statistically meaningless. You'd be better off becoming your own lobbyist, influencing through campaign funding efforts and the like, and even that is generally not worth the time unless you're going to try to make a living off being a parasite on the beast.

Then there was crusty, cranky old Bro Manera. I remember being at an elders meeting w/him and floated the idea of turning unassigned territory into telephone territory that congregations could GET assigned and these could then work them any way they'd like - phone, physical, letters - the closest to in person was best, but the point would be to get to these people more frequently. He didn't get it. He said "I think it would be confusing to the ones who were working it.". I blurted out "I don't think you get it. No one's working the territory because it's not assigned. Why not just assign it and get the job done w/whatever means can be made?" As all the other elders (except one) looked at me like I'd lost my mind.

I'd like to know more about him and his background (or have a zoom chat). One thing I've had to navigate, as have many others is that there's often this misunderstanding that being interested in exploring subjects such as the ones that we as JW's profess to be interested in (like Jehovah and the Bible) is somehow disloyal if we decide that we on our own wish to explore further. A person can be faithful and quite frankly bored by material which is repetitive and containing nothing novel. It's not surprising that when you are truly interested in the material, that you eventually "make the truth your own" and strike off in some ways exploring areas not of interest to the average. This doesn't mean you're a "bad person" or "unfaithful" or even "unappreciative". It just means that you're not learning disabled or perpetually fascinated by spiritual milk ("Yes, I know. God's name is Jehovah. Fascinating"). Of course this is where the novelty in exploration can cause people who don't appreciate things this way to assume that one finds something deficient in the relationship or that it is failing them in some way or that these have failed the other. It can also (and understandably can) create conflict in the congregation. "Why is that brother reading that? Doesn't he appreciate the organization?". So if a brother or sister does have interests which aren't currently satisfied in this area it would be nice to know how these have managed to balance it out. Are these living a double-life? They realize that many people simply don't have the capacity to be AS interested in these things and they keep it to themselves? How do they do it? Should they have to do it? My sister (a non-JW) once asked me (she's high functioning autistic w/160 IQ) "What do you DO at those meetings? Just believe the same things together?" and I laughed and said this is how it goes Mary "Bro X to Bro Y. I believe Z. and "Bro Y says so do I whereupon Bro X responds, his eyes slightly squinting "Mighty fine! Mighty fine!"" She laughed (apparently I'm one of the few family members who can make her laugh). This reminds me of people who don't understand why when they value the same things, they still have problems in their relationships. The answer, I've read somewhere is that when there's a conflict of valued things, the relative importance of each to the other values isn't the same - hence the friction. So you may have some who say they value learning about Jehovah and the world he created and they value the Bible, but they may value the relationships between people and stability and continuity more than the novelty which might come from a new idea or a new discovery or even the prospect of further exploration. Take the great commission. I thought it was THE most important thing, but not everyone looked at it the same way. When I was first appointed as an MS I remember how happy I was we had a project to remake the maps for our territory. Well I knew that we weren't really working the apartment complexes properly because no one liked getting kicked out or having the police called on them, so I knew they really weren't getting worked at all and to me it was a lie when people checked these back in. So I decided to break every apartment complex into a separate territory so that people who really wanted to work these would work them. I redid all the territories in this way. Then after six months the CO came by and did his inspection and asked me about the territories and I explained what I did and why and he seemed satisfied. ("Where is the history of workage for these territories?") Of course no one really wanted to work these and so because I was a pioneer I decided to do them and I'd make raids on the apartments by working a few buildings and then running out before security got me. But truth was that no one wanted them at all. BUT we actually we finally telling the truth about our territory coverage. YAY! Then Bro Brandt (I remember him now) came back and checked the territories the next time, and complained about me to the elders and I remember being behind the counter when he came up to me and asked me the same question he asked me before, and I said "For the same reason I told you the last time you asked." (I was a little sharp, but I didn't like the tone of his voice). Then he said "What am I going to tell the society?" and I said "Why don't you tell them what you told them last time." (pretty much knowing I'm not going to be an elder ANY time soon. But quite frankly he pissed me off. The black brothers w/me behind the counter were a bit surprised by me. One (who'd been a gang member) later asked me if I'd grown up in the hood, because I didn't show any fear. I said, no, but I did grow up in Laredo where you'd get picked on all the time for being a gringo. The elders decided maybe someone else should be territory servant, but nobody wanted the job. Next time around, though, I did have a private talk w/Bro Brandt and he apologized. He said "Bro X, what did the elders tell you to do w/the territories?" and I said "Nothing." and he said "They didn't tell you to try to estimate workage?" and I said "No. I haven't heard a thing. Which elders did you tell? Let's go get them, get a room and straighten this thing out." We did and these elders had some really shameful looks on their faces. Thing is, now our congregation was finally having to take their commission more seriously because my remapping the territories made us look bad. I remember thinking how maybe getting the phone numbers of a number of these which we were totally locked out of might help. This was before telephone witnessing became a thing. So I looked around for telephone directories on disk and I found a few, but they weren't up to date. Then I did more research and realized that I could get a reel-to-reel tape from the utility department with names, addresses AND phone numbers! Everyone had to pay their utilities and their phone number would be up to date. Yay! But before I could get the brothers to approve of the $800 for the adventure ( I would have paid for it myself, but I had to also pay this third party to perform some extractions of the data to csv so we could put these in spreadsheets. So for the lockouts we tried calling the numbers I could get even if these were old off the disks I bought at work for other telemarketing efforts and coupled this with direct mail to get the rest. We did have one brother from Guyana who was up for innovation so we got all the difficult apartments and he acted as a general, we would get assigned maybe two doors and the congregation carpooled and parked outside and at 10 AM sharp, we'd all knock at the same time on our prescribed doors. BOOM! And we were gone before security could zip up their fly!

I suspect that there may be more people of the autistic spectrum among opposers. https://www.autismtas.org.au/about-autism/key-areas-of-difference/social-communication-differences/ My wife is undiagnosed, but I suspect on the spectrum. Opposers, it seems have problems with the whole vs parts and their relations to each other. One might hear in any congregation a clue to an ASD person go like this: ASD Person - "In the WT of year, month, they said X, but in the WT of year, month they said Y. They lied!" Normal person - "Consider the context, they may have said X, but in the context of this statement Z also was true which changes the Y they said into something more like Q, if you follow me." ASD "If they meant Q, then why didn't they say Q?" Normal person "Do you have balance issues when you walk? Do you like making rules for your social interactions? Is your communication with people one-sided?" ASD "Why do you ask?" Normal Person "You have signs of being ASD. You're not neurotypical. Your filter on the world is different."

He has a number of works available on Amazon and since my fascination is around archaeology and chronology I'm ordering a couple.

Here's another, same guy. I believe he's a witness. https://www.academia.edu/3290630/Dating_the_Biblical_Chronology

BTW Good paper I'm reading right now: https://www.academia.edu/33873583/Did_Jesus_Je_HoVaH_salvation_know_God_s_name?email_work_card=view-paper

I worked w/this guy who was pretty unusual. I remember helping him put a standard transmission in to replace the automatic he had. I was working w/him and tried witnessing to him and thought if I helped him along with his car it would mean more to him. He smoked a lot of weed and it was sort of weird going to meetings after being in his apartment because my clothes smelled of weed (which sort of tickled me to get some looks). But anyway, what was unusual about him was that in his weeded up state, he thought it would be a good skill to learn to read books upside down, so he'd sit in the break area reading everything upside down. He was pretty good at it.

My boss said I remind her of him.

ʎɐʍ sᴉɥʇ ʇᴉ op plnoɔ I ɹO

It's certainly a low-high-tech way of using forums, facebook and the like with overlords who want to control what you can say - even to your friends and family. More, though to be silently annoying.

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I suppose I could make it harder. I could use rot13 on top of that.

It's a rudimentary IQ test. Apostates will always fail it.

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Exactly, you have to think of it like I do when I see the "mostly peaceful protests". It doesn't matter if its "mostly peaceful" when your business has been looted or burned to the ground. On the whole, his reign was a failure.

I would imagine someone could create a universal apostate-chatbot parsing internet posts and regurgitating responses from the respective apostate phrase-bank. I think some are actually chatbots. It makes sense that evil is parasitic of good as apostates never generate novelty since their existence is defined by the existence of those they oppose. Paradoxically, these would cease to exist should they succeed, and yet those are the impulses of the apostate - these are nihilistic in spirit and direction. These are like those who realize none would mourn their passing so they want to create a monument to their passing in creating as big a crater as possible in this world.

Idiot opposers are like people standing outside a gym trying to convince people that they don't need to go to the gym or that they're in the wrong gym and ought to go to their gym. At some point, your message is received and accepted or rejected. Failure to get the point when it's been rejected is just idiocy. It also undermines your own argument. It also suggests that these people want or need your help. Look up the word "officious" in the dictionary and you will find a really good definition of the persistent and pestilent sorts of opposers.

More thinking aloud... In Hebrews 13:7 it talks about listening to people, ostensibly ones who've taken it on themselves rightly or wrongly to be one's spiritual advisors and to contemplate the delta between their words/deeds and consequences to them personally over time and then imitate their faith in the word of God. Now later in Hebrews 13:17 it speaks of obedience and submission to those same ones, so I imagine then it would not be obedience to them, but to their faith application of God's word. In other words the biblical principle is what you agree to, but the corporate expression of the same in any given congregation might be different, yet we are not to forget that we are imitating faith in the bible and the principles on which it, that faith is, not the person or the practice. No deification of entities and no abdication of responsibility. On the other hand one can hardly imitate the faith of those one is not in constant community with, nor can one contemplate how their conduct is turning out. One can hope that ones we do not see and do not commune with in a close family/community setting such as was common in the first century are observed by those in these respective congregations and this is not unlikely as we have all traveled and seen this uniformity, one can reasonably surmise that this is true. It does argue for regular meetings and connections w/in congregations so we can watch each other's gardens of faith grow. W/o this we can't contemplate much. One more reason for in-person stuff as much as possible.

The other thing that comes to mind is how opposers don't appear to consider the damage they are doing to others in their misguided zeal to root out what they believe to be falsehoods. It never occurs to them that when they keep asking, knocking etc. it's open to them, not to others who aren't asking or knocking, yet these often insist that others listen to them and see things their way. Even if their way was correct, it's not correct to attempt to shove it down someone else's throat. That certainly isn't seasoning with salt. It certainly isn't with a mild temper. It certainly isn't with deep respect. This is why even if one is engaged in the door to door or telephone ministry that one be on guard to the manner we're going about it all. Never mind what others may or may not be doing, the question is what YOU are doing, not the organization, the elders or anyone else. What are YOU doing? We all have the same judge and we ought to remember it's not us.

Made me remember this!

https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/qc4zh7/south-park-abandon-all-hope

You know when you block some people and people respond to the blocked people, it's a little like detecting neutrinos indirectly. The people responding become neutrino detectors letting you know that they exist.

Consider how the bible shows so many actions taken, but not commanded by Jehovah on the part of his worshippers. One that comes to mind is the burial practices. The bible is silent as to any commands w/regard to burial and yet one would likely believe that these people had ideas about the body and resurrection which were in fact very, very wrong which neither Jehovah, not the prophets, nor Jesus himself, nor the 1st century congregation chose to address. If we had a twitter or blogs or were present in the midst of the congregation of Gods people over the ages we'd certainly see and hear much which was wrong. None of this, of course meant these people weren't part of God's organized people.