Many Miles

On 3/22/2024 at 1:09 PM, JW Insider said:

Not terrible, but it didn't get the right idea about the parrot's ears being covered.

And a bird impaled to the wall.

30 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

It would be a total mess, much like this forum sometimes gets.

OMG! Way more than a total mess. The lunatics would come out! There wouldn't be sufficient moderator controls for the tsunami release of pent-up raw emotion. The server facilities would be smoked! There'd be hands sticking out of windows waving white handkerchiefs.

9 hours ago, JW Insider said:

...if jw.org had a comments section.

Not holding my breath for that one, at least not for a comment section that publishes publicly.

4 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

’You want that bridge two lanes or four?’

Hey! Don't make fun of my favorite punch line!

PLUS, it's true!

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

I'm not sure, but I think it might actually be illegal to laugh at those grandfather jokes these days.

Oh, don't get me started! I can hear,

"Have you ever been in earshot of a grandfather joke? Call 1-800 blah, blah, blah, and get in line for your huge payout! Get what's coming to you! Call now! Don't wait! Time limits are closing! Call NOW! NOW!"

13 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Meanwhile, I rub shoulders,... hopefully I am never mean-spirited in doing so.

Tom you have treated me with vitriolic contempt with every braindead word you write! How is that not mean-spirited to those two working brain cells you're rubbing together? Did you lose one of them? LOL

17 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Trouble is, I’m not sure it’s worth knowing.

I'm not really that interested in whatever historical soap opera of this forum. Every social platform (including real life in-person platforms) has their share of drama, not to mention foibles we learn of individuals (including our own) along the way. Just rubbing elbows in any forum where I can learn and share is the more important thing to me.

13 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Oh, there is so much you have to learn.

That is such an understatement. Problem is, there is so much to learn and we are so puny in the universe my fear is we're not sufficiently intelligent to learn what there is to know.

3 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

No, he was not Billy The Kid. BTK was "Wally McNasty" ...

Oops. I thought Thinking was being humorous about AlanF and Billy the Kid, and I responded in kind. I had no idea this forum had a contributor "Billy the Kid". In that case I have to agree with Tom. There is no way AlanF would use a sock-puppet on a forum. Wasn't his style, at all.

18 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

I can’t imagine AlanF presenting as anyone other than AlanF

I wasn't saying AlanF presented as Billy the Kid but, rather, that he identified as Billy the Kid. Isn't that considered real these days?

35 minutes ago, Thinking said:

... was he billy the kid once? 

You know, there is a photo of him online suggesting that's a possibility! I'll have to see if I can find it. Found it.

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

As a moderator I remember having to warn Alan a couple of times ...

Please don't mistake me, AlanF could dole out as good as he got, if not more. He had it in him. I'm not trying to say otherwise. Whatever warnings he got I'm sure he got them the old fashion way, by honestly earning them. As I said before, I've been down range of assertions of his before as he has of mine.

I've also observed him interact with I don't know how many people over the years, including a now deceased person well-known back in the day as Friend. Those two would go after one another like nothing I'd seen before, mostly AlanF was right in his views, but Friend brought a lot to the table too. Both those men saw good in each other and ultimately they ended up collaborating on a then impressive presentation meant to leverage a known piece of internal information about a change afoot on the society's position on blood. That piece of work helped move the needle for products like Hemopure (a hemoglobin based oxygenation carrier).

My comments about AlanF were really to draw a circle around the man's personality and intent. He wasn't about trying to hurt people. He wanted to help people. But he had some rough edges because of things he had been exposed to himself that caused damage, something he was always trying to help others from having to go through as he did. He was passionate about that. When I look at contributors here I see similar things.

10 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Okay, now I see the reason for Aruana’s, Thinking’s and my trouble with Alan. We ‘refused to learn.’ That would make anyone furious.

To be clear, I was speaking from AlanF's perspective. Whether someone was, for whatever reason, failing to learn when AlanF thought them capable is something I would not know. I was just sharing a bit about how the man's mind worked and how he tended to interact with people. It was not my intent to suggest anything insulting.

2 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Thinking and Aruana did not, however. His attacks on them were provoked only by their standing up to him.

I'm not intimately familiar with AlanF's participation here. But it's contrary to my experience that AlanF would attack things a person said for no reason. On the other hand, if he felt a person's intelligence was anywhere north of idiocy, he would become increasingly aggressive in his presentation of information and responses if the individual refused to learn. For AlanF, that reaction was somewhat of a compliment. It meant he saw intelligence in the person he was engaging. How what he said might make them feel was not something he'd spend much time considering, let alone worrying about.

A weakness AlanF had, in my opinion, was that he tended to discount the extent of influence emotion can have on a person's ability to comprehend. Academically he'd yield that latter point, but in discussion not so much. Some individuals have such an emotional need that there are things they just can't allow themselves to learn of because it would wreck the world they depend on. A person on a ledge we should not push. I'm not suggesting that's the case with the other names you mention. One I've had some decent amount of interaction with and find them pleasant enough and not tide down emotionally. But with AlanF seeing anything through another person's lens of emotion was something he had trained himself to refrain from as a matter of learning, and learning was what he thrived on and lived for.

AlanF and I have both been downrange of one another's conclusions and arguments, so I know that experience. Some of those discussions were more than robust! Thankfully we both gave one another full liberty to speak freely in our exchanges without thought of feelings. But I only know how I experienced it, not how the same would be experienced by another person. Another person could easily find it offensive, or even as an attack. Whether I agreed or disagreed with AlanF (or anyone else!) I always looked for whatever I can learn from each interaction, and there is always something to learn. That said, later in my life I have determined not to spend time suffering fools.

24 minutes ago, Srecko Sostar said:

In directed video films for JWs conventions, those who have been excluded/dfd return.

That's what I'd expect to see emphasized in video produced by the society. But my comment alluded to PEW research which found nearly 70% of persons raised as JW do not identify with the religion as adults, which is not something I would expect the society to produce a video of.

9 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

You mean that every obnoxious troll on the internet is underneath it all a gentle misunderstood soul?

It's no excuse for bad behavior, and I don't suggest a notion of interior 'gentle souls'. There are people who appear to be inherently straightforward in expressing their views and to the more genteel that might strike as crass or obnoxious. But that's different than being a bully. A person can be born with a personality that is straightforward. Bullies are made. Person's who project their thoughts straightforwardly aren't hurting or threatening anyone's person. Maybe their ideas. But not their person. So when it comes to "obnoxious trolls" I'm not sure what behavior you refer. I don't think AlanF was a troll. AlanF was a man who cared about facts, evidence and sound thinking. He also cared about people. Concern for people drove him, and in particular concern for people who were being intellectually manipulated.

8 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Yeah, just like the prodigal son’s dad ran a broken home. If he hadn’t, junior would have never departed. 

That was an instance of a person who, as an adult, returned to what he had been raised in. The situation with JWs is to the contrary. Children raised in the religion, as adults, cease identifying with it and don't return.

8 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Haven’t you spoken disparagingly of George88 or some of his personas?

I placed George88 on ignore. That's what I did.

56 minutes ago, scholar JW said:

6 hours ago, JW Insider said:

I'm not the one saying it is significant. I'm only saying that all evidence so far consistently points to 587 BCE as the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar. It's up to you to decide whether that fact has any significance:

Utter nonsense! The only significance of Neb's 18/19th year pertains only to the Fall of Jerusalem in 607 BCE which event is only described in the Bible as the basis for prophecy and not in NB History or Chronology.

scholar JW

LOL. Complete dodge.

2 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Well, you do have to stay in the place of safety, and there are plenty of scoundrels trying to lure you out of it. To me, this comment is completely antithetical to the theme of the Bible—that God has judged the world and the key is to flee from and be no part of it. 

While one ought not be unnecessarily difficult or confrontational (and I do think we step into that from time to time), I also don’t think the Bible’s message is that Christians should (or could) fix the world. You have to come out of it and not wander back in.

The sole reason I cited that same authority you did was to point out JWs haven't built a social panacea. If that were the case then those raised in the religion would tend to be more compelled to remain compared to other religions. But that's not what we find, even in westernized societies where people are freer to do so.

2 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Believe me, if he was ‘tortured,’ he gave no sense of it here.

I dare say for certainty that I've known AlanF for probably decades before you encountered him here. Anyone acting as you described is screaming torture they've experienced.

Sometimes it's not enough to walk in another man's shoes. Sometimes you have to feel their feet walking in their shoes, a thing most of us are untrained to do. But fellow feeling would have us recognize a tortured soul when it's screaming at us. Bullies aren't born; they're made, and typically they didn't ask to be made. Rather, it was done to them. That's not to say AlanF was a bully, but in a text only format it could come across that way. In real life the man would stand up for the downtrodden every time. Every single time. Particularly if he saw someone being intellectually manipulated. He'd jump into that like a dog on a snake!

31 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

The trouble is, if you held to faith, you were one of those ‘stupid people’ to him. I detest these people who think they can muscle through on brainpower alone.

People deserve more than that. Where's your love for a tortured man? AlanF just wanted things people say to make sense. If they didn't make sense he found it troublesome if they tried to persuade others to accept their senselessness. His reaction was appropriately more averse when a senseless teacher had power to adversely affect someone's life over their senselessness.

He and I had calm and collected discussions about faith, including my own, which for the most part he yielded to as reasonable. When speaking about faith with someone like AlanF you must chose your evidence and presentation carefully. A mind like his would spot stupid in a nanosecond.

31 minutes ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Witnesses, on the other hand, though not without the minor mishaps stemming from being ‘earthen vessels,’ have achieved a peacefulness, unity, cohesiveness, that the world can only dream of. Pew Research says their membership (in the U.S.) is almost exactly 1/3 white, 1/3 black, and 1/3 Hispanic, with about 5% Asian thrown in. Translation: They have solved racism, the issue that is ripping this world apart, despite its educational advantage.

Racism is but one of many obstacles facing humanity. We certainly have not achieved a "peacefulness, unity, cohesiveness, that the world can only dream of." We can't hold onto our own children. According to the same source you cite (PEW), as adults, nearly 70% of person's raised in the religion no longer identify with it. That's not very unified or cohesive. It's probably not very conducive to a peaceful family life either given the shunning taught by the society. More than racism, two larger issues ripping humanity for millennia is politics and religion.

27 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

A high academic standard, yes. He graduated from MIT.

He always downplayed that.

27 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

But he left a trail of insults on this forum that would make a sailor blush.

From what I've read here, nothing like the H2O days though.

But, honestly, he was one of the rarefied souls who could argue with a stupid person and beat them with their own experience. He'd use it mercilessly as a club. It was no holds barred stuff. Not saying it's the righteous path, but he could release on demand.

1 minute ago, TrueTomHarley said:

The trouble with those who worship critical thinking is that they often presume they have a lock on the stuff. He did not suffer fools gladly, and a fool was anyone who disagreed with him.

To be sure, I used to egg him on a little. But I would later regret it. The self-congratulatory donkey could chew up an entire day.

Sounds like you knew him in his later years. By then he had settled down a bit.

8 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

Never in my life had I encountered a more unpleasant person than AlanF.

He could be tough, and rightly so. For instance, anyone who held a belief they would attempt to persuade others to believe, he held to an extremely high level of academic rigor, evidence and logically sound conclusions. It didn't matter if you were a friend. He held everyone attempting to teach to the same standard. He held himself to that standard too. In his mind if you taught but failed to stand up and defend what you taught, you were a coward and he'd say so in just that many words. He had  more respect for fools who'd stand up for foolish teachings than he did for teachers who refused to be transparent and stand and answer for what they taught.

His sense of humor was a bit dry and high-brow. To really see and feel his sense of humor you had to meet him in person. It rarely, if ever, came across in text-only formats, except for those who knew him in person and understood his humor. AlanF was a product of his raising, environment and high personal drive to know what could be known.