TrueTomHarley

Yeah, I think my vagus nerve when haywire for a time. Call it a nervous breakdown, of which the best way to describe it is to being stuck in that ‘fight or flight’ moment of unease for 4 straight years, during which there was not a night I slept more than 4 hours. During that time, my blog disappeared; you know I am ill if my blog disappears. I credit the truth for overcoming this breakdown—not the truth in itself or I would not have succumbed in the first place, but for providing the solid foundation upon which to recover. The disorder runs in the family, and my mother and grandmother both fared worse than me, having never recovered once struck. Now why go public with this, which I have not done yet in anything more than hints? [Almost] no man has ever had greater love than this: that he should bear his soul for his buddy @George88. Several times in the past, George has said things like: “While I do not feel the need to disclose the specifics, as there may be individuals here who lack empathy and would make light of my experiences while showing sympathy towards others like a coward would, the impact of these experiences has nonetheless been truly traumatic.” I suggest you come out with them. You do not lesson yourself when you do that. You gain the upper hand. Just like how Paul came to say that he would not lead off with his strengths; he would rather lead off with his weaknesses, because in serving through those the Lord was glorified. People may be more magnanimous than you suppose. If anyone makes light of your experiences, they reveal more about themselves than about you. This is because, apart from Alphonse, who does seem to like you, you give nothing of yourself. Worse, there is usually a tone of ‘rebuke from superiority’ in your comments, which brings out the best in no one. Giving of oneself is necessary to establish the human connection so that ones may feel inclined to bond with you. You don’t do it. You should. It would aid you to get past this problem you perceive, like Rodney Dangerfield, of getting no respect. So I am showing you the way. Got any specifics more debilitating than mine? Out with them. It may help smooth relations with your fellows online, and possibly everywhere else. Moreover, in so baring my previous woes, I am expressing the confidence that you will not try to use such against me. If I am wrong in that, then I will offer you another lesson in how to cope with ill talk. But I am confident the need for this will not arise. You may feel as privileged, George, as the woman at the well—excepting only that she learned for the first time that her companion was the Messiah, whereas you have learned for the first time that your companion is a fellow yo-yo with prior issues. When you return from enormous personal trial, it is a little like being raised from the dead. You know a little of how Job felt. It only benefits you going forward.

Is that all you get from those passages? However, should I befriend people that insult me? Now, now—not so prickly, if you please. It is not so much an insult as it is a request for clarification. Have you ever befriended anybody online? Even fine Xero you appear to find fault with.

He may yet be vindicated. Search phrases such as ‘after heart transplant changes in personality.’ A lot comes up, most of it quite recent.

It will help if I can have a clue as to what you are talking about. Is Xero on your naughty list, too?

I’ve often thought that, too. It is why I’ve in the past made my own little witticism, as though G .K Chesterton himself: It is hard to direct a large group of people. One says, ‘Thanks for the new rule!’ whereas his neighbor says, ‘Huh? Did you say something?’

In France it could be known as the Day the Beardstile fell. Maybe if they are doused with water they will melt away like the wicked witch, leaving the rest of us frrreeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! Then you would not be so sad and could instead be happy. Next thing you know, my spiritual life will have come round full circle, back to ‘Be good so you can go to heaven when you die and meet the Man Upstairs.’

You may be missing something here.

Precisely!

Some of those who never celebrated their birthday may soon be celebrating Beard Day. Mark December 15th on the calendar. We don’t have that many holidays.

I dunno. This looks a lot like Vic Vomodog who, years after he left the faith, would continue to show up at hospitals, bare his arm, and order, ‘Fill ‘er up!’ just to show Jehovah’s Witnesses what he thought of them. Doctors invariably tried to shoo him away, but he would always return.

It was a show well ahead of its time. Occasionally an episode is so surreal as to resemble a Twilight Zone. I like the running bit about the Chinese bellhop (is he really named ‘Hey boy?’) routinely reading Paladin’s telegrams and the gun for hire can do nothing about it.

Still working our way through the ‘Have Gun Will Travel’ shows

It is hard to go wrong with an Eddie Murphy movie. Unless it is too foul to watch. I feel a duty to screen movies for Many Miles who hasn’t seen that many. The Amazon Eddie Murphy movie ‘Candy Cane Lane’ is okay and pretty funny, assuming you don’t spaz out over Christmas. There is about a 20 year period of my life where I saw almost no TV, my ‘righteous years.’ There are shows that everyone speaks about of which I’ve never seen an episode, though a few I’ve caught up with afterwards, such as Psych. Public television was unlimited and free for my kids, but for commercial TV they had to redeem ‘TV tickets’ we issued them weekly, and it didn’t allow for much. To be sure, I believe they found a way to counterfeit them, but the practice still served to shield them from much rubbish.

Uh oh. I had no idea. So much for fine relations with @xero.

Many this kind of nonsense has to be hashed out before another leg of influx can begin. Sort of like the hundredth year anniversary of hauling out the nonsense that was trinity and hellfire. After all, Pudgy has pointed out that, given that this is the truth—that is, the collection of teachings so that the Bible makes sense, you would people would be beating down our doors to get it, rather than the reverse. Somewhere on social media there is the list, counting time—crossed out, no-beards—crossed out, and next on the list is ‘ties.’ I can’t see these ever being crossed out, but maybe we can reach the point of not insisting upon wearing them in the jungle (rain forest).

Soul patches and hair donuts should be grounds for immediate disfellowshipping and so should those with man-buns. I’ve taken advantage of my new freedom to wear a skull & crossbones, eyepatch, and cut off my leg for a peg leg. To hear the crazies on the exJW site, you’d think it might happen any second.

Judging from your down-home profile photo, you’re used to them.

It is only you that has fractionalized soul this way. This is why when you first gave your convoluted breakdown of ‘soul,’ I countered, ‘You wanna say that in English?’ I learned, as first explained in the Truth book, that ‘your soul is you.’ Yes, of course it has prerequisites. When you start qualifying any noun you utter as the sum of many fractions, then I’ll acknowledge you have a point. Meanwhile, there is a timeline we operate on. We are finite beings and must take things as they come. We don’t have the luxury of overseeing the past, present, and future as though they are equally plain. Occasionally, to be sure, we get around that inconvenience by condemning yesterday’s things in the light of today’s standards, but most fair people recognize that as a cheap shot. Go back to the philosophy professor, the great donkey, who speaks of ‘temporal omniscience,’ how we can view all events as real, even those that haven’t happened yet—and God knows the idiot surmises his fellows draw from that. Originally, blood was blood. Then, doctors began to separate it into ‘main components’ that might individually be transfused, and we said, ‘Who are you trying to kid? It’s still blood.’ Then they said, ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet,’ whereupon they came up with so many additional components, most quite tiny, that the HQ brothers threw up their hands and said, ‘We can’t figure it out. Leave it for every individual to hash it out best they can.’ You have already indicated the probable resolution with that form you cited several days ago. Things are settling down. It is only the hypercritical or vengeful who seek to keep them stirred up. Sure, it would be great to correct any missteps of the past. But that is the nature of the past: it is not the past when it first occurs, but is the present, and as such it is not so easily corrected. Best that is to be done in the overall world is to throw every such possible error into the laps of the lawyers, who will extract 1/3 of the involved wealth for their inconvenience in sorting it out.

This reminds me of a TV show the GC philosophy professor cited. ‘You couldn’t be more wrong!’ one character insisted, which prompted the reply, ‘What do you mean, more wrong? Wrong is wrong! How can you be more wrong?’ But then he went on to reason that you probably could. You could be wrong about something for a fundamental reason. Or you could be wrong for a picayune reason. He then cited some survey indicating most people are satisfied with being ‘mostly right’ as opposed to ‘absolutely right.’ This seemed to disturb him, as his conception of philosophy is that it searches for ‘absolute’ truth. It sinks his entire endeavor, for I don’t think humans are capable of knowing ‘absolute truth.’ ‘Mostly truth’ will probably have to suffice. I am suspicious of those who insist upon more. As a hobby, it is okay, but as a discipline upon which consequences hang, no. There are too many things like ‘the sum of all positive natural numbers is -1/12.’ Sounds crazy, no? Yet it is deduced from human reasoning on concepts of infinities, specifically ‘divergent series of infinities.’ Because they can yield such weird results, they have tongue-in-cheek been called ‘of the devil.’ You needn’t get overly technical on most things. A favorite line of mine is, “You don’t have to know everything.” It is not original. I read it in a context involving today’s failing schools. (Ours was a homeschooling family) But it packs a lot of punch. You don’t have to know everything. Yet most of contemporary society carries on as though you do. The Chesterton quote applies: The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”

Do you believe there is a God so that your interrogations would have any relevance here?

Most people can see that denominator makes a difference. Thus, while 1/4 and 1/100 are both fractions, most people can appreciate a difference. For that matter, whole blood is technically a fraction; 1/1

I’m not sure why not. As much belly-aching as there is about GB being ‘pharisaical,’ here we seem to want them to be Pharisees. Three things govern my thinking on fractions: 1) you shouldn’t have to be a microbiologist to serve God, 2) you can’t serve God when you’re dead, and 3) if they can’t figure it out, neither can I. I’m been surprised to find I am apparently in the minority in my position. This is why I queried about a breakdown of Bethelites regarding fractions but nobody seemed to know. ‘It’s not a cake until you mix the (minute) ingredients’ works for me but it is apparently the minority view. I was especially amazed that people could spin fractions as a money thing. It just made so much sense to me that blood is blood, yet fractions can be so minute as to liken them to those traces remaining when you drain an animal, that I never thought to go beyond that obvious comparison. ‘Eyeball it’ is what you said previously. To insist people go beyond that seems to me pharisaical. Beyond the dilemma to booze it up or not booze it up before the teetotalers (or alcoholics), this matter of fractions is the other ‘approved, (in the sense of being publicized,) use of conscience. We kind of gravitate to rules, even though we know rules quickly get out of hand. I think of the brother who quipped about the ‘Letters from Readers’ feature in those old Watchtowers: “I just read the question,” he said, “then skip to the bottom to see if I can do it or not.” He did quip. Honestly and truly, it was a quip. But there is also some truth in it.

I think it indicates that people want a ‘king,’ somewhat like in Samual 8. They can’t handle subtle. They want a king. ’Alright, alright, we’ll give you king,’ says the visible org, ‘An entire Update to say ‘We don’t care about beards!’ That means you don’t have to either! Sheesh! We were trying to get away from that.’ Seen from a different standpoint, I think those seeking the downfall of the earthly organization also resemble those Israelites who demanded a king. Those ancients couldn’t handle the seeming vagaries of judges popping up here and there. They wanted a king, with all the trimmings, that they could see strutting around at all times.Similarly, people look real closely into the GB, see it is composed of men who have all the differing idiosyncracies of the first century disciples and they can’t handle it. How can God’s direction come from such a human arrangement? They either want an undisputed miracle-backed single entity (which we all know is not going to happen today) or they want dissolution of the whole model, going back to a ‘Jesus and me’ model. This usually means a ‘Me and Jesus’ model, since it is personal disagreements over this or that policy that motivates the desire to sink the earthly organization. They either imagine the ‘Jesus and Me’ model will continue to safeguard the unity and doctrinal uniqueness of JWs or they think that the unity and doctrinal uniqueness is not worth safeguarding—they are content to let it evolve, just like in the natural world of competitive struggle and how good things supposedly come of that. ‘Guardians of doctrine? Don’t make me laugh!’ they say. My Bethel chum told me many years ago that it gets more challenging to see God’s hand as you get tighter with the organization. The friends in general will ooh and ahh over this new direction from God, and you will say, ‘Yeah….it’s only because so-and-so is too stubborn to……’ This is where faith comes in. It is the divine/human interface. Fleshly eyes can only perceive the ‘Indisputable miracle-backed, controlled Prophet’ model or the ‘Jesus and Me’ model for congregation headship. It takes spiritual eyes to see that, if God is really worth his salt, surely he can move dedicated men to adequately serve as his conduit. The GB is screened by being anointed, further screened by a lifetime of full time service, further screened by intensive Bible training on how to work with others by implementing Bible principles. This training to work according to Bible principles, strive for unity, learn how to defer to one another, resist the temptation to run-over those with whom you disagree, produces good results. In individual congregations, elders periodically gather for such training in ‘elder schools,’ where they learn, among other things, that unity of the body is always the goal. This does indeed perform well, at least in my congregation, so I extrapolate it to others. (It might be different if my congregation was one of those basket-case Revelation 2 and 3 congregations) Though I am reliably informed (I can shake facts out if I want to but I usually refrain from doing it) that there is disagreement amongst our elders, you would never know it by the united front they display. Instead of shaking them down for disputes, I seek occasions to (genuinely) commend them for what they do. It is not healthy to ‘expose’ present disagreements. (not that I don’t lap it all up if I hear of them here) People thereafter pick their favorite horses, which encourages further division. Of course people are going to disagree. The thing that counts is for them to resolve disagreements and carry on unitedly. That is the evidence of having God’s spirit. Human traits will never disappear. ‘We have this treasure [of the ministry] in earthen vessels,’ but, being humble, God can work with such men as those comprising the Governing Body. Proud persons He can’t do much with other than squash them in time. ‘God is using imperfect people today because that’s all he has at the present time’ Mark Nourmair (approximately) says, not referring specifically to GB brothers. And, when the younger brothers fall to squabbling, the old-timer smiles, tilts back in his chair, and marvels, ‘It’s amazing what Jehovah accomplishes given what he has to work with.”

Yeah, it’s pretty much like I bless everyone here…No Exceptions!!…but not necessarily the dumb things many of them say.

Still scratching my head over the 60K+ downloads in a two-day period. 80 hits a day are average for my blog. Then one day it is 40K, followed by 20K? My entire blog consists of less that 1500 posts. It’s probably some AI bot kind of thing. As such, is it good or bad? If it trains AI to defend the good news and kick back that those who accuse our brothers day and night before our God, as in Revelation 12:10, then it is a good thing. But I suspect it is just as likely, if not more, to be some data-scraping thing for ignoble ends. Elon Musk capped access to other people’s tweets to the most recent two-dozen or so because AI-enabled competitors were scraping massive data in order to open competing sites, even contradicting sites, since everything is political these days. Most innovations of humans are immediately put to bad use, sometimes outstripping its good use. AI might be one of those things. Here is an article to the effect that fake and lying AI generated news channels are proliferating so quickly as to make uncovering the truth of anything a near-impossible task: https://medium.com/@ai.news.official/the-rise-of-ai-generated-fake-news-a-misinformation-superspreader-c1a7f8f97cba