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TrueTomHarley

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  1. Haha
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from JW Insider in Paul's Letter to the Galatians and the Struggle for Doctrinal Purity   
    Whose? Can you type in your sleep?
  2. Like
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from Pudgy in Paul's Letter to the Galatians and the Struggle for Doctrinal Purity   
    Whose? Can you type in your sleep?
  3. Upvote
    TrueTomHarley reacted to George88 in Pennsylvania Court VS Ivy Hill Congregation of JWs, 2024   
    This is completely inaccurate. The determination is made by "secular" courts, not the Watchtower, depending on the court. By requesting special treatment as an apostate, you would be asking the courts to treat the Watchtower differently.
    This is a misconception. The Watchtower does not dictate how the court will assess that privilege. It is not your place to instruct the court on what to do.
    This observation lacks logic as, under Catholic rule, a confession is meant to obtain absolution from clergy who do not possess the authority to forgive sins, as they are not God.
    There seems to be some confusion between "sin" and "obligation." Elders play a crucial role in guiding sinners towards repentance, emphasizing the principle of forgiveness. However, they do not possess the authority to forgive "murders" – that power lies solely with God. Additionally, elders are obligated to report any grave concerns to secular authorities under a court order, demonstrating a contrast to how clergy in other religions may defy secular authority, even in the face of a court order regarding clergy confession.
    Before you and others jump to conclusions and "twist" my words as usual, it's important to recognize that these are two separate situations.
    Can you offer evidence of Jesus attending a school of thought to become a Rabbi, according to the understanding of priestly qualities in Judaism?
    This exclusive opportunity is dedicated to former members who seek to create confusion by advocating for different treatment of the Watchtower by secular courts, labeling them as "haters".
  4. Upvote
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from Anna in Do-Jehovahs-Witnesses-have-humanitarian-aid-programs-in-addition-to-their-door-to-door-ministry?   
    (Quora question) Besides being a significant source for literacy in lands where it is poor, they are well known for disaster relief, prompting taking care of their own, in catastrophic times. They thus provide a good example for other groups to follow, for there is no reason that anyone cannot do as they do.  In recent years, some critics have attempted to spin this exercise of brotherly love as a lack of concern for anyone else. They do this even though they themselves would—say, in the event of an earthquake—check on family members first, never dreaming that anyone would frame that as indifference to the suffering of others. Jehovah’s Witnesses are a family, frankly not large enough to fix everyone. If opponents refuse to acknowledge that love of God can form the basis of family, that is hardly the Witnesses’ fault, is it?  
  5. Upvote
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from Joan Kennedy in Do-Jehovahs-Witnesses-have-humanitarian-aid-programs-in-addition-to-their-door-to-door-ministry?   
    Man, you are petty and self-blind, aren’t you?
    The above is an excellent example of ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime.’ Who can’t see the superiority in that?
    Why on earth can’t you emulate the Jehovah’s Witness’ relief effort among whoever you associate with? Then, you would be so occupied, you would have neither time nor cause to be envious of the deeds of others.
    People without Bible principles tend to be slow to roll up their sleeves. They also not to get along, so cooperation is amongst them is difficult. All they have to do is adopt the Bible principles that Witnesses have, and they’d be okay. Your assignment is to discern what impels Jehovah’s Witnesses to do what almost nobody else does, make a full mea culpa, and then take your leave as gracefully as you can.
  6. Like
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from George88 in Do-Jehovahs-Witnesses-have-humanitarian-aid-programs-in-addition-to-their-door-to-door-ministry?   
    Man, you are petty and self-blind, aren’t you?
    The above is an excellent example of ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime.’ Who can’t see the superiority in that?
    Why on earth can’t you emulate the Jehovah’s Witness’ relief effort among whoever you associate with? Then, you would be so occupied, you would have neither time nor cause to be envious of the deeds of others.
    People without Bible principles tend to be slow to roll up their sleeves. They also not to get along, so cooperation is amongst them is difficult. All they have to do is adopt the Bible principles that Witnesses have, and they’d be okay. Your assignment is to discern what impels Jehovah’s Witnesses to do what almost nobody else does, make a full mea culpa, and then take your leave as gracefully as you can.
  7. Upvote
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from Joan Kennedy in Do-Jehovahs-Witnesses-have-humanitarian-aid-programs-in-addition-to-their-door-to-door-ministry?   
    (Quora question) Besides being a significant source for literacy in lands where it is poor, they are well known for disaster relief, prompting taking care of their own, in catastrophic times. They thus provide a good example for other groups to follow, for there is no reason that anyone cannot do as they do.  In recent years, some critics have attempted to spin this exercise of brotherly love as a lack of concern for anyone else. They do this even though they themselves would—say, in the event of an earthquake—check on family members first, never dreaming that anyone would frame that as indifference to the suffering of others. Jehovah’s Witnesses are a family, frankly not large enough to fix everyone. If opponents refuse to acknowledge that love of God can form the basis of family, that is hardly the Witnesses’ fault, is it?  
  8. Upvote
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from xero in Do-Jehovahs-Witnesses-have-humanitarian-aid-programs-in-addition-to-their-door-to-door-ministry?   
    (Quora question) Besides being a significant source for literacy in lands where it is poor, they are well known for disaster relief, prompting taking care of their own, in catastrophic times. They thus provide a good example for other groups to follow, for there is no reason that anyone cannot do as they do.  In recent years, some critics have attempted to spin this exercise of brotherly love as a lack of concern for anyone else. They do this even though they themselves would—say, in the event of an earthquake—check on family members first, never dreaming that anyone would frame that as indifference to the suffering of others. Jehovah’s Witnesses are a family, frankly not large enough to fix everyone. If opponents refuse to acknowledge that love of God can form the basis of family, that is hardly the Witnesses’ fault, is it?  
  9. Upvote
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from JW Insider in Do-Jehovahs-Witnesses-have-humanitarian-aid-programs-in-addition-to-their-door-to-door-ministry?   
    (Quora question) Besides being a significant source for literacy in lands where it is poor, they are well known for disaster relief, prompting taking care of their own, in catastrophic times. They thus provide a good example for other groups to follow, for there is no reason that anyone cannot do as they do.  In recent years, some critics have attempted to spin this exercise of brotherly love as a lack of concern for anyone else. They do this even though they themselves would—say, in the event of an earthquake—check on family members first, never dreaming that anyone would frame that as indifference to the suffering of others. Jehovah’s Witnesses are a family, frankly not large enough to fix everyone. If opponents refuse to acknowledge that love of God can form the basis of family, that is hardly the Witnesses’ fault, is it?  
  10. Thanks
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from George88 in Do-Jehovahs-Witnesses-have-humanitarian-aid-programs-in-addition-to-their-door-to-door-ministry?   
    (Quora question) Besides being a significant source for literacy in lands where it is poor, they are well known for disaster relief, prompting taking care of their own, in catastrophic times. They thus provide a good example for other groups to follow, for there is no reason that anyone cannot do as they do.  In recent years, some critics have attempted to spin this exercise of brotherly love as a lack of concern for anyone else. They do this even though they themselves would—say, in the event of an earthquake—check on family members first, never dreaming that anyone would frame that as indifference to the suffering of others. Jehovah’s Witnesses are a family, frankly not large enough to fix everyone. If opponents refuse to acknowledge that love of God can form the basis of family, that is hardly the Witnesses’ fault, is it?  
  11. Like
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from Alphonse in Do-Jehovahs-Witnesses-have-humanitarian-aid-programs-in-addition-to-their-door-to-door-ministry?   
    (Quora question) Besides being a significant source for literacy in lands where it is poor, they are well known for disaster relief, prompting taking care of their own, in catastrophic times. They thus provide a good example for other groups to follow, for there is no reason that anyone cannot do as they do.  In recent years, some critics have attempted to spin this exercise of brotherly love as a lack of concern for anyone else. They do this even though they themselves would—say, in the event of an earthquake—check on family members first, never dreaming that anyone would frame that as indifference to the suffering of others. Jehovah’s Witnesses are a family, frankly not large enough to fix everyone. If opponents refuse to acknowledge that love of God can form the basis of family, that is hardly the Witnesses’ fault, is it?  
  12. Upvote
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from Pudgy in Do-Jehovahs-Witnesses-have-humanitarian-aid-programs-in-addition-to-their-door-to-door-ministry?   
    (Quora question) Besides being a significant source for literacy in lands where it is poor, they are well known for disaster relief, prompting taking care of their own, in catastrophic times. They thus provide a good example for other groups to follow, for there is no reason that anyone cannot do as they do.  In recent years, some critics have attempted to spin this exercise of brotherly love as a lack of concern for anyone else. They do this even though they themselves would—say, in the event of an earthquake—check on family members first, never dreaming that anyone would frame that as indifference to the suffering of others. Jehovah’s Witnesses are a family, frankly not large enough to fix everyone. If opponents refuse to acknowledge that love of God can form the basis of family, that is hardly the Witnesses’ fault, is it?  
  13. Upvote
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from Joan Kennedy in Lots of Threads on Chronology Here.   
    Lots of threads on chronolgy here. Why should I weigh in? All it would do is rain on someone’s parade. If it is of an interest I don’t give two hoots about—well, there are plenty of things interesting to me that others don’t give two hoots about. ‘Let it be. Let it be. Whisper words of wisdom. Let it be.’
    But, what about those words of wisdom, Tommy? What are they? How come you don’t care about what everyone else here does? How come whenever the topic comes up, you join Pudgy in picking off fleas off yourself?
    Because it seems analogous to someone finding a document in the engine room of the Titanic to the effect that the ship is not going down in the next 20 minutes, but will take 10 minutes longer. Apart from finishing a final cup of coffee in your stateroom, which can be done so long as you keep tilting it to correspond to the increasing pitch, what difference does it make? 
    None of this is to undermine those with serious academic interest in the topic. Go for it, you guys. But also recognize (as most already do) that 90% of those who have made a tiny sliver of Persion history their cause would have difficulty naming who was president the year of their birth. They just latch on to the issue because they think they can embarrass the Witness organization that has based certain expectations on historical events and it turns out theirs is not the majority academic view. Oh, yeah, they’re intense students of history on that account, but otherwise are hard pressed to distinqush Karl Marx from Groucho Marx.
    It’s just like I wrote in ‘In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction:’ those ‘apostates’ who become too wrapped up in this issue end up becoming de-facto cheerleaders of this system of things, hoping it will go on and on forever because that would embarrass their former brothers. They may overestimate the ‘embarrassment.’ ‘New light’ always solves the problem, should one be identified. To be sure, adjusting would be awkward, but not a deal-breaker. 
    I doubt the need for it will never arise. I think the brothers will play chicken with the present understanding, which for all I know is the correct one. How many times have I seen the news story that begins with ‘Everything you thought you knew about such-and-such is wrong.’ Majority opinions, even in matters of science, fall all the time. What a great way to end this system of things: with a colossal game of chicken between the two main protagonists!
    The system will end before resolution is necessary, or else life may become so tenuous that nobody cares.
    I also don’t care about it because, even if I win, most of my opponents will mutter, ‘Okay okay—but what about Adam and Eve? You believe that fairy tale?’
    Every so often I find myself aligned with Pudgy, always a worrying development, who says, ‘If it doesn’t have practical consequence, who cares?’
     
  14. Upvote
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from Anna in Q: How much credit do PIMO Jehovah’s Witnesses owe to Zoom for freeing them from attending boring meetings at the Kingdom Hall?   
    On the venues I have seen, a sense of optimism prevails among most, having ‘escaped’ from the ‘cult.’ Some of the younger one taunt GB brothers, reminiscent of adolescents mocking out their teachers. Some of the older ones greet new ‘escapees’ with, ‘Welcome to your future!’ They all but sing the song, ‘The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades.’
    It is an optimism that prevails in few other places. Elsewhere, people are anything but optimistic about the future and a fair number are not even sure there will be one. Even the songwriter pointed out that the ‘job waiting’ after graduation is in the nuclear industry and the reason he’s ’gotta wear shades’ is the threat of conflagration.
    Then there is an Amber Scorah who wrote a book upon going ‘apostate’ which was hailed by the media. The reviews lauded her ‘courage’ for facing the death of her newborn just following her ‘escape’ from a ‘high-control’ religion. ‘The dodo!’ I found myself thinking. Here she leaves a place where the death of a newborn would have unleashed scores of genuine comforters with a resurrection hope that never fails among Witnesses to soften the blow, to enter a community where there is no such comfort, but only the harsh loss itself, and she still counts it a victory! egged on by people who have donned the shades, know the meaning of the song, accept its possible outcome,  and still count it a victory for facing the future unafraid, without the ‘crutch’ of religion. It’s as though the closer the Atomic Scientist Doomsday Clock gets to midnight (now, 90 seconds to go) the more they cheer, so drunk are they that humans should rule the earth through their own self-determination, and not God.
    I recall Amber’s name because I made a mental note to read her book someday, along with Rolf’s. I’ll probably never get around to either of them because everyone has a tale of responding to woe. Everyone has a tale of reacting to things that don’t entirely square (as though everything in the greater world does). Everyone has a tale of miscarriage  like Job and/or being undermined by characters like Eli, Bill, and Zop. Mine is as good as theirs—they should read my books, not I theirs!—which have the added advantage of showing how you can throw out the bathwater without throwing out the baby. Or, just read and meditate on the Book of Job. That will do the trick, too.
    At our Kingdom Hall, the torch has been passed to a younger generation of elders. One of them handled the ‘Instruction’ talk last night, ‘Remain Loyal Despite the Actions of Others.’ Have you ever been hurt by another brother or sister? he asked. ‘It could have been accidental. It could have been deliberate; we’re imperfect,’ he said. He then related how he had had such an experience in another congregation at the hand of fellow elders. He gave no details, other than how it hurt him deeply and he wrestled for a proper reaction.
    ‘What about the sister in the picture?’ he returned to the text material, commented on the accompanying photo. Here she is being yelled at. Right outside the Kingdom Hall. That’s not pleasant, is it? It probably was traumatic. What will she do? Who will she tell? (the photo inset shows her in prayer) Will she tell everyone in the congregation? [laughter, because the friends are contrasting that with the inset] Will she go to another congregation? Will she leave the truth? He then returned to his own experience. ‘Do you want to leave the congregation?’ The CO had asked him, and pointed to one or two where they needed help. The CO presented it that neither option, stay or go, was wrong, but, ‘If you stay, you will grow.’ He did stay and did grow. He related how, by staying, he got to see how Jehovah handled the issue in time.
    It is always a matter of stay or go in the face of adversity. Sometimes the go is to a different congregation. Sometimes it is to leave the faith entirely.
    The Bethel brothers do push back against apostasy, but with such a non-applicable vagueness that you wonder if they are not keeping something under wraps. They give the solution without mentioning the sticky scenario that requires it.  ‘The unanswered argument always appears stronger for that reason,’ I read somewhere. It makes those who examine it overestimate its strength and those who don’t can become almost superstitious, fearing the power of ‘poisonous’ words.
    It can happen. Every malcontent wants to control the narrative. He wants your agenda to be replaced by his. To indulge him in all his accusations is dumb. However, to pretend he doesn’t exist isn’t all that much better. 
    Sure. It’s inconsistent to present investigation as bad when it was investigation that led us to become Witnesses in the first place. It’s enough to say, ‘Well, you wouldn’t want to hang out there, but if you go there at all, watch out for toxic people, hypercritical people, unforgiving people, and OCD people—all of whom present in great numbers.’
    The brothers really do give excellent counsel on combatting apostasy, but it can come across as hamstrung by a determination to avoid specifics. In the latest monthly broadcast one of the helpers gives such a talk. It is overall pretty good. But it starts with something like, ‘have you ever heard negative reports on JWs? It might be about (he mentions a few things that no one cares about—maybe they did at one time, but not now) and then says, ‘or maybe it is about our view of disfellowshipping. Bingo. I’d love to see a talk specifically on this topic. Maybe this is not the occasion for it, but is there one somewhere? A talk explaining the need for such discipline, and backing it up with secular considerations, not just the biblical ones that resonate with fewer and fewer people today. Something along the lines of, https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2018/08/the-trump-card-of-christian-discipline.html, maybe.
    No need to present a litany of court cases, which opposers want done. There’s hardly a point, anyway. The pattern today is that activists influence law to the point they sometimes replace it. Lower courts may be swayed, but higher courts, not yet so infiltrated, overturns negative rulings on the basis of higher principles. Will this trend continue? Who knows? As activist ‘wokeism’ advances, with it’s demand of ‘inclusion,’ sparks fly with any religion that wants ‘insulation,’ essentially, that wants to follow Jesus direction to be ‘no part of the world.’ In the secular world, we see that law is turned inside-out and upside-down in an attempt to advance political or social causes. Will such legal manipulation one day ensnare us at the highest court level? As it did in Russia, and then the ECHR overturned the Russian Supreme Count verdict against the JW organization and the next day Russia removed itself from it’s jurisdiction?
    So far, the earthly organization has proved adept at tweaking and amending policies to stay a step ahead of ones who use law in order to shut them down, Russia notwithstanding.  Always, such tweaks and amendments are lambasted as hypocrisy by opponents. Sometimes the brothers are somewhat clunky in response, but they do respond with what generally makes things better, leading some to say, ‘Jehovah uses the world to discipline his people!’ something I don’t say, but if it results in better policies and better navigation amidst a sea of circling sharks, why quibble?  
    If money is involved in any way, as it always will be with any large organization, then it is, ‘It’s all about money with them!’ Even if one takes this view, so what? ‘Is there any among you whose bull will fall into a pit who will not drop everything until it is pulled out?’ Jesus says. Preservation of money is an unremarkable concern in secular matters of life. Money has the power to do things, so you want to keep it if you can. It’s only the ‘love of money’ that messes you up, not money itself.
    The reason kids do not walk up and down the street with a shovel in winter or a lawn mower in summer, the way they used to, is that nobody will hire them. The reason nobody will hire them is that lawyers have exploited the occasional accident to award multi-million dollar verdicts. That’s why I pulled into the street of my childhood home to see my 77-year old dad, raised on a farm, perched atop his 2-story suburban home doing a re-roof. ‘Hey, Pop, you don’t have anything to prove at your age,’ I told him. It is also why every town used to have a ‘Suicide Hill’ for winter sledding, but now none of them do. It is safety, to be sure, but safety mostly driven by money. That hill was mobbed when I was a boy; my dad would take us there, as did many dads. Every so often, someone would break his leg. He’d emerge from the hospital on crutches with a bill for $100. Today, that bill might be in the hundreds of thousands, and people on TV would tell how their lawyer ‘got them 10 times what the insurance company offered.’
    The trouble with social media is that a comment from a principled and thoughtful person is immediately followed by one from a hedonistic moron who nonetheless carries equal weight. I am ecstatic about the internet. Something that would have taken me days to research I can now find out in seconds. But I haven’t lost sight of the fact that, by far, the greatest use of the internet is for porn. Closing in quickly is the spread of ‘misinformation,’ which is always in the eye of the beholder, lately countered with ‘fact-checking’ which is also in the eye of the beholder. AI Chat and, Lord help us, deep fakes, will presently make us all (except for some on this forum, of course) a flock of permanently-manipulated marks. AI tells us various things, but the Musk’s AI, fed differing algorithms, tell us another. And yet people are awed by artificial intelligence and count it as truly intelligent.
    It’s not so much the thought that you may be ‘manipulated’ on the JW website that rankles; it is the ridiculous thought that you will not be manipulated elsewhere, only more subtly, with the always reassuring majority backing, and it accord with the modern spirit to let no one tell us what to do! Those who decry brainwashing the loudest are not so much concerned about brainwashing, but about brainwashing that is not theirs. Everything must be seen in the context of, ‘Government by God, or Government by Man,’ the universal issue that Watchtower publications put their finger on a century ago. 
    Social media ‘exposes’ the faults of others, to be sure, but has it taken people anywhere other than it dawning on them they must rely upon themselves (not terrible in itself) because (the following is terrible) nobody is to be trusted. Twenty years into the widespread adoption of social media, has hatred been beaten back? Or has it increased ten-fold? These things are better seen in absence of any JW context, pro or con. Is there any figure anywhere, other than the occasional no-count entertainer or athlete, who garners overall public support. Or do we not just see the unseemly results when their respective enemies succeed in landing a punch or kicking them in the you-know-whats, revealing their shortcomings for all to see?
    All the same, if social media exists and becomes all the rage, as it has, you’d better learn how to use it. You don’t want to be like the Amish man who says, ‘Forget these wicked cars from the Devil. It’s horse and buggy for us!’ You will overall lose, because Christians are destined to lose, as enemies are written to have their day in the sun, as they did with our Lord, before the tables are turned to make victory our of defeat. But, even as you do lose, you will likely succeed in keeping more of your own people and will draw in a certain number of high-information people who can recognize the big picture—the sort of people JWs drew in decades ago from the religious world before anyone ever heard of social media. A bit of training would help equip ones so inclined, just as we train in other aspects of communication. 
    In Tom Irregardless and Me, I wrote about the JW website, then relatively new on the internet:
    “Members of the Governing Body thus repeat the pattern they are known for with any new technology: They eye it with suspicion. They advise caution. They know that when the thief switches getaway cars, it is the thief you have to watch, not the dazzling features of the new car. They follow the thief for a time. Convinced at last that they still have a bead on him, they examine the car. They circle it warily, kicking the tires. At last satisfied, they jump in with both feet and put it to good uses its inventors could only have dreamed of.”
    They have done that with the internet. They have not yet done that with social media. At present, the strategy still seems to be to hope it goes away.
     
  15. Upvote
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from Pudgy in Q: How much credit do PIMO Jehovah’s Witnesses owe to Zoom for freeing them from attending boring meetings at the Kingdom Hall?   
    What about all that fresh air and clean water you consume, resources that could be put to fine use?
    Really, Srecko, you don’t think you’re grasping at straws here?
    If she wants to saw off the branch she has been sitting on and congratulate herself on her liberation from the tree, it is her choice. My bad for implying a deficit of sense.
    As with your commentary on Amber, it would appear that your beef is with faith and religious community itself. That being the case, one wonders that you spend so much time on the one faith that has solved racism and will not pick up arms on any account.
    Probably another ‘eye of the beholder’ scenario. Just like how the one who doesn’t agree with how an opponent frames matters is always ‘arrogant’ on that account. I admit, I do not follow trial testimony closely or at all, but I have suggested in the past that since everybody hates jury duty and nobody believes a court outcome anyway, that the answer is to try all cases on Facebook and settle guilt or innocence by likes. It’s not like I’m trying not to do my bit.
    I do have one of those things. I have measured the Bethel brothers on it. They check out okay.
  16. Upvote
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from Pudgy in Q: How much credit do PIMO Jehovah’s Witnesses owe to Zoom for freeing them from attending boring meetings at the Kingdom Hall?   
    On the venues I have seen, a sense of optimism prevails among most, having ‘escaped’ from the ‘cult.’ Some of the younger one taunt GB brothers, reminiscent of adolescents mocking out their teachers. Some of the older ones greet new ‘escapees’ with, ‘Welcome to your future!’ They all but sing the song, ‘The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades.’
    It is an optimism that prevails in few other places. Elsewhere, people are anything but optimistic about the future and a fair number are not even sure there will be one. Even the songwriter pointed out that the ‘job waiting’ after graduation is in the nuclear industry and the reason he’s ’gotta wear shades’ is the threat of conflagration.
    Then there is an Amber Scorah who wrote a book upon going ‘apostate’ which was hailed by the media. The reviews lauded her ‘courage’ for facing the death of her newborn just following her ‘escape’ from a ‘high-control’ religion. ‘The dodo!’ I found myself thinking. Here she leaves a place where the death of a newborn would have unleashed scores of genuine comforters with a resurrection hope that never fails among Witnesses to soften the blow, to enter a community where there is no such comfort, but only the harsh loss itself, and she still counts it a victory! egged on by people who have donned the shades, know the meaning of the song, accept its possible outcome,  and still count it a victory for facing the future unafraid, without the ‘crutch’ of religion. It’s as though the closer the Atomic Scientist Doomsday Clock gets to midnight (now, 90 seconds to go) the more they cheer, so drunk are they that humans should rule the earth through their own self-determination, and not God.
    I recall Amber’s name because I made a mental note to read her book someday, along with Rolf’s. I’ll probably never get around to either of them because everyone has a tale of responding to woe. Everyone has a tale of reacting to things that don’t entirely square (as though everything in the greater world does). Everyone has a tale of miscarriage  like Job and/or being undermined by characters like Eli, Bill, and Zop. Mine is as good as theirs—they should read my books, not I theirs!—which have the added advantage of showing how you can throw out the bathwater without throwing out the baby. Or, just read and meditate on the Book of Job. That will do the trick, too.
    At our Kingdom Hall, the torch has been passed to a younger generation of elders. One of them handled the ‘Instruction’ talk last night, ‘Remain Loyal Despite the Actions of Others.’ Have you ever been hurt by another brother or sister? he asked. ‘It could have been accidental. It could have been deliberate; we’re imperfect,’ he said. He then related how he had had such an experience in another congregation at the hand of fellow elders. He gave no details, other than how it hurt him deeply and he wrestled for a proper reaction.
    ‘What about the sister in the picture?’ he returned to the text material, commented on the accompanying photo. Here she is being yelled at. Right outside the Kingdom Hall. That’s not pleasant, is it? It probably was traumatic. What will she do? Who will she tell? (the photo inset shows her in prayer) Will she tell everyone in the congregation? [laughter, because the friends are contrasting that with the inset] Will she go to another congregation? Will she leave the truth? He then returned to his own experience. ‘Do you want to leave the congregation?’ The CO had asked him, and pointed to one or two where they needed help. The CO presented it that neither option, stay or go, was wrong, but, ‘If you stay, you will grow.’ He did stay and did grow. He related how, by staying, he got to see how Jehovah handled the issue in time.
    It is always a matter of stay or go in the face of adversity. Sometimes the go is to a different congregation. Sometimes it is to leave the faith entirely.
    The Bethel brothers do push back against apostasy, but with such a non-applicable vagueness that you wonder if they are not keeping something under wraps. They give the solution without mentioning the sticky scenario that requires it.  ‘The unanswered argument always appears stronger for that reason,’ I read somewhere. It makes those who examine it overestimate its strength and those who don’t can become almost superstitious, fearing the power of ‘poisonous’ words.
    It can happen. Every malcontent wants to control the narrative. He wants your agenda to be replaced by his. To indulge him in all his accusations is dumb. However, to pretend he doesn’t exist isn’t all that much better. 
    Sure. It’s inconsistent to present investigation as bad when it was investigation that led us to become Witnesses in the first place. It’s enough to say, ‘Well, you wouldn’t want to hang out there, but if you go there at all, watch out for toxic people, hypercritical people, unforgiving people, and OCD people—all of whom present in great numbers.’
    The brothers really do give excellent counsel on combatting apostasy, but it can come across as hamstrung by a determination to avoid specifics. In the latest monthly broadcast one of the helpers gives such a talk. It is overall pretty good. But it starts with something like, ‘have you ever heard negative reports on JWs? It might be about (he mentions a few things that no one cares about—maybe they did at one time, but not now) and then says, ‘or maybe it is about our view of disfellowshipping. Bingo. I’d love to see a talk specifically on this topic. Maybe this is not the occasion for it, but is there one somewhere? A talk explaining the need for such discipline, and backing it up with secular considerations, not just the biblical ones that resonate with fewer and fewer people today. Something along the lines of, https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2018/08/the-trump-card-of-christian-discipline.html, maybe.
    No need to present a litany of court cases, which opposers want done. There’s hardly a point, anyway. The pattern today is that activists influence law to the point they sometimes replace it. Lower courts may be swayed, but higher courts, not yet so infiltrated, overturns negative rulings on the basis of higher principles. Will this trend continue? Who knows? As activist ‘wokeism’ advances, with it’s demand of ‘inclusion,’ sparks fly with any religion that wants ‘insulation,’ essentially, that wants to follow Jesus direction to be ‘no part of the world.’ In the secular world, we see that law is turned inside-out and upside-down in an attempt to advance political or social causes. Will such legal manipulation one day ensnare us at the highest court level? As it did in Russia, and then the ECHR overturned the Russian Supreme Count verdict against the JW organization and the next day Russia removed itself from it’s jurisdiction?
    So far, the earthly organization has proved adept at tweaking and amending policies to stay a step ahead of ones who use law in order to shut them down, Russia notwithstanding.  Always, such tweaks and amendments are lambasted as hypocrisy by opponents. Sometimes the brothers are somewhat clunky in response, but they do respond with what generally makes things better, leading some to say, ‘Jehovah uses the world to discipline his people!’ something I don’t say, but if it results in better policies and better navigation amidst a sea of circling sharks, why quibble?  
    If money is involved in any way, as it always will be with any large organization, then it is, ‘It’s all about money with them!’ Even if one takes this view, so what? ‘Is there any among you whose bull will fall into a pit who will not drop everything until it is pulled out?’ Jesus says. Preservation of money is an unremarkable concern in secular matters of life. Money has the power to do things, so you want to keep it if you can. It’s only the ‘love of money’ that messes you up, not money itself.
    The reason kids do not walk up and down the street with a shovel in winter or a lawn mower in summer, the way they used to, is that nobody will hire them. The reason nobody will hire them is that lawyers have exploited the occasional accident to award multi-million dollar verdicts. That’s why I pulled into the street of my childhood home to see my 77-year old dad, raised on a farm, perched atop his 2-story suburban home doing a re-roof. ‘Hey, Pop, you don’t have anything to prove at your age,’ I told him. It is also why every town used to have a ‘Suicide Hill’ for winter sledding, but now none of them do. It is safety, to be sure, but safety mostly driven by money. That hill was mobbed when I was a boy; my dad would take us there, as did many dads. Every so often, someone would break his leg. He’d emerge from the hospital on crutches with a bill for $100. Today, that bill might be in the hundreds of thousands, and people on TV would tell how their lawyer ‘got them 10 times what the insurance company offered.’
    The trouble with social media is that a comment from a principled and thoughtful person is immediately followed by one from a hedonistic moron who nonetheless carries equal weight. I am ecstatic about the internet. Something that would have taken me days to research I can now find out in seconds. But I haven’t lost sight of the fact that, by far, the greatest use of the internet is for porn. Closing in quickly is the spread of ‘misinformation,’ which is always in the eye of the beholder, lately countered with ‘fact-checking’ which is also in the eye of the beholder. AI Chat and, Lord help us, deep fakes, will presently make us all (except for some on this forum, of course) a flock of permanently-manipulated marks. AI tells us various things, but the Musk’s AI, fed differing algorithms, tell us another. And yet people are awed by artificial intelligence and count it as truly intelligent.
    It’s not so much the thought that you may be ‘manipulated’ on the JW website that rankles; it is the ridiculous thought that you will not be manipulated elsewhere, only more subtly, with the always reassuring majority backing, and it accord with the modern spirit to let no one tell us what to do! Those who decry brainwashing the loudest are not so much concerned about brainwashing, but about brainwashing that is not theirs. Everything must be seen in the context of, ‘Government by God, or Government by Man,’ the universal issue that Watchtower publications put their finger on a century ago. 
    Social media ‘exposes’ the faults of others, to be sure, but has it taken people anywhere other than it dawning on them they must rely upon themselves (not terrible in itself) because (the following is terrible) nobody is to be trusted. Twenty years into the widespread adoption of social media, has hatred been beaten back? Or has it increased ten-fold? These things are better seen in absence of any JW context, pro or con. Is there any figure anywhere, other than the occasional no-count entertainer or athlete, who garners overall public support. Or do we not just see the unseemly results when their respective enemies succeed in landing a punch or kicking them in the you-know-whats, revealing their shortcomings for all to see?
    All the same, if social media exists and becomes all the rage, as it has, you’d better learn how to use it. You don’t want to be like the Amish man who says, ‘Forget these wicked cars from the Devil. It’s horse and buggy for us!’ You will overall lose, because Christians are destined to lose, as enemies are written to have their day in the sun, as they did with our Lord, before the tables are turned to make victory our of defeat. But, even as you do lose, you will likely succeed in keeping more of your own people and will draw in a certain number of high-information people who can recognize the big picture—the sort of people JWs drew in decades ago from the religious world before anyone ever heard of social media. A bit of training would help equip ones so inclined, just as we train in other aspects of communication. 
    In Tom Irregardless and Me, I wrote about the JW website, then relatively new on the internet:
    “Members of the Governing Body thus repeat the pattern they are known for with any new technology: They eye it with suspicion. They advise caution. They know that when the thief switches getaway cars, it is the thief you have to watch, not the dazzling features of the new car. They follow the thief for a time. Convinced at last that they still have a bead on him, they examine the car. They circle it warily, kicking the tires. At last satisfied, they jump in with both feet and put it to good uses its inventors could only have dreamed of.”
    They have done that with the internet. They have not yet done that with social media. At present, the strategy still seems to be to hope it goes away.
     
  17. Upvote
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from JW Insider in Q: How much credit do PIMO Jehovah’s Witnesses owe to Zoom for freeing them from attending boring meetings at the Kingdom Hall?   
    On the venues I have seen, a sense of optimism prevails among most, having ‘escaped’ from the ‘cult.’ Some of the younger one taunt GB brothers, reminiscent of adolescents mocking out their teachers. Some of the older ones greet new ‘escapees’ with, ‘Welcome to your future!’ They all but sing the song, ‘The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades.’
    It is an optimism that prevails in few other places. Elsewhere, people are anything but optimistic about the future and a fair number are not even sure there will be one. Even the songwriter pointed out that the ‘job waiting’ after graduation is in the nuclear industry and the reason he’s ’gotta wear shades’ is the threat of conflagration.
    Then there is an Amber Scorah who wrote a book upon going ‘apostate’ which was hailed by the media. The reviews lauded her ‘courage’ for facing the death of her newborn just following her ‘escape’ from a ‘high-control’ religion. ‘The dodo!’ I found myself thinking. Here she leaves a place where the death of a newborn would have unleashed scores of genuine comforters with a resurrection hope that never fails among Witnesses to soften the blow, to enter a community where there is no such comfort, but only the harsh loss itself, and she still counts it a victory! egged on by people who have donned the shades, know the meaning of the song, accept its possible outcome,  and still count it a victory for facing the future unafraid, without the ‘crutch’ of religion. It’s as though the closer the Atomic Scientist Doomsday Clock gets to midnight (now, 90 seconds to go) the more they cheer, so drunk are they that humans should rule the earth through their own self-determination, and not God.
    I recall Amber’s name because I made a mental note to read her book someday, along with Rolf’s. I’ll probably never get around to either of them because everyone has a tale of responding to woe. Everyone has a tale of reacting to things that don’t entirely square (as though everything in the greater world does). Everyone has a tale of miscarriage  like Job and/or being undermined by characters like Eli, Bill, and Zop. Mine is as good as theirs—they should read my books, not I theirs!—which have the added advantage of showing how you can throw out the bathwater without throwing out the baby. Or, just read and meditate on the Book of Job. That will do the trick, too.
    At our Kingdom Hall, the torch has been passed to a younger generation of elders. One of them handled the ‘Instruction’ talk last night, ‘Remain Loyal Despite the Actions of Others.’ Have you ever been hurt by another brother or sister? he asked. ‘It could have been accidental. It could have been deliberate; we’re imperfect,’ he said. He then related how he had had such an experience in another congregation at the hand of fellow elders. He gave no details, other than how it hurt him deeply and he wrestled for a proper reaction.
    ‘What about the sister in the picture?’ he returned to the text material, commented on the accompanying photo. Here she is being yelled at. Right outside the Kingdom Hall. That’s not pleasant, is it? It probably was traumatic. What will she do? Who will she tell? (the photo inset shows her in prayer) Will she tell everyone in the congregation? [laughter, because the friends are contrasting that with the inset] Will she go to another congregation? Will she leave the truth? He then returned to his own experience. ‘Do you want to leave the congregation?’ The CO had asked him, and pointed to one or two where they needed help. The CO presented it that neither option, stay or go, was wrong, but, ‘If you stay, you will grow.’ He did stay and did grow. He related how, by staying, he got to see how Jehovah handled the issue in time.
    It is always a matter of stay or go in the face of adversity. Sometimes the go is to a different congregation. Sometimes it is to leave the faith entirely.
    The Bethel brothers do push back against apostasy, but with such a non-applicable vagueness that you wonder if they are not keeping something under wraps. They give the solution without mentioning the sticky scenario that requires it.  ‘The unanswered argument always appears stronger for that reason,’ I read somewhere. It makes those who examine it overestimate its strength and those who don’t can become almost superstitious, fearing the power of ‘poisonous’ words.
    It can happen. Every malcontent wants to control the narrative. He wants your agenda to be replaced by his. To indulge him in all his accusations is dumb. However, to pretend he doesn’t exist isn’t all that much better. 
    Sure. It’s inconsistent to present investigation as bad when it was investigation that led us to become Witnesses in the first place. It’s enough to say, ‘Well, you wouldn’t want to hang out there, but if you go there at all, watch out for toxic people, hypercritical people, unforgiving people, and OCD people—all of whom present in great numbers.’
    The brothers really do give excellent counsel on combatting apostasy, but it can come across as hamstrung by a determination to avoid specifics. In the latest monthly broadcast one of the helpers gives such a talk. It is overall pretty good. But it starts with something like, ‘have you ever heard negative reports on JWs? It might be about (he mentions a few things that no one cares about—maybe they did at one time, but not now) and then says, ‘or maybe it is about our view of disfellowshipping. Bingo. I’d love to see a talk specifically on this topic. Maybe this is not the occasion for it, but is there one somewhere? A talk explaining the need for such discipline, and backing it up with secular considerations, not just the biblical ones that resonate with fewer and fewer people today. Something along the lines of, https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2018/08/the-trump-card-of-christian-discipline.html, maybe.
    No need to present a litany of court cases, which opposers want done. There’s hardly a point, anyway. The pattern today is that activists influence law to the point they sometimes replace it. Lower courts may be swayed, but higher courts, not yet so infiltrated, overturns negative rulings on the basis of higher principles. Will this trend continue? Who knows? As activist ‘wokeism’ advances, with it’s demand of ‘inclusion,’ sparks fly with any religion that wants ‘insulation,’ essentially, that wants to follow Jesus direction to be ‘no part of the world.’ In the secular world, we see that law is turned inside-out and upside-down in an attempt to advance political or social causes. Will such legal manipulation one day ensnare us at the highest court level? As it did in Russia, and then the ECHR overturned the Russian Supreme Count verdict against the JW organization and the next day Russia removed itself from it’s jurisdiction?
    So far, the earthly organization has proved adept at tweaking and amending policies to stay a step ahead of ones who use law in order to shut them down, Russia notwithstanding.  Always, such tweaks and amendments are lambasted as hypocrisy by opponents. Sometimes the brothers are somewhat clunky in response, but they do respond with what generally makes things better, leading some to say, ‘Jehovah uses the world to discipline his people!’ something I don’t say, but if it results in better policies and better navigation amidst a sea of circling sharks, why quibble?  
    If money is involved in any way, as it always will be with any large organization, then it is, ‘It’s all about money with them!’ Even if one takes this view, so what? ‘Is there any among you whose bull will fall into a pit who will not drop everything until it is pulled out?’ Jesus says. Preservation of money is an unremarkable concern in secular matters of life. Money has the power to do things, so you want to keep it if you can. It’s only the ‘love of money’ that messes you up, not money itself.
    The reason kids do not walk up and down the street with a shovel in winter or a lawn mower in summer, the way they used to, is that nobody will hire them. The reason nobody will hire them is that lawyers have exploited the occasional accident to award multi-million dollar verdicts. That’s why I pulled into the street of my childhood home to see my 77-year old dad, raised on a farm, perched atop his 2-story suburban home doing a re-roof. ‘Hey, Pop, you don’t have anything to prove at your age,’ I told him. It is also why every town used to have a ‘Suicide Hill’ for winter sledding, but now none of them do. It is safety, to be sure, but safety mostly driven by money. That hill was mobbed when I was a boy; my dad would take us there, as did many dads. Every so often, someone would break his leg. He’d emerge from the hospital on crutches with a bill for $100. Today, that bill might be in the hundreds of thousands, and people on TV would tell how their lawyer ‘got them 10 times what the insurance company offered.’
    The trouble with social media is that a comment from a principled and thoughtful person is immediately followed by one from a hedonistic moron who nonetheless carries equal weight. I am ecstatic about the internet. Something that would have taken me days to research I can now find out in seconds. But I haven’t lost sight of the fact that, by far, the greatest use of the internet is for porn. Closing in quickly is the spread of ‘misinformation,’ which is always in the eye of the beholder, lately countered with ‘fact-checking’ which is also in the eye of the beholder. AI Chat and, Lord help us, deep fakes, will presently make us all (except for some on this forum, of course) a flock of permanently-manipulated marks. AI tells us various things, but the Musk’s AI, fed differing algorithms, tell us another. And yet people are awed by artificial intelligence and count it as truly intelligent.
    It’s not so much the thought that you may be ‘manipulated’ on the JW website that rankles; it is the ridiculous thought that you will not be manipulated elsewhere, only more subtly, with the always reassuring majority backing, and it accord with the modern spirit to let no one tell us what to do! Those who decry brainwashing the loudest are not so much concerned about brainwashing, but about brainwashing that is not theirs. Everything must be seen in the context of, ‘Government by God, or Government by Man,’ the universal issue that Watchtower publications put their finger on a century ago. 
    Social media ‘exposes’ the faults of others, to be sure, but has it taken people anywhere other than it dawning on them they must rely upon themselves (not terrible in itself) because (the following is terrible) nobody is to be trusted. Twenty years into the widespread adoption of social media, has hatred been beaten back? Or has it increased ten-fold? These things are better seen in absence of any JW context, pro or con. Is there any figure anywhere, other than the occasional no-count entertainer or athlete, who garners overall public support. Or do we not just see the unseemly results when their respective enemies succeed in landing a punch or kicking them in the you-know-whats, revealing their shortcomings for all to see?
    All the same, if social media exists and becomes all the rage, as it has, you’d better learn how to use it. You don’t want to be like the Amish man who says, ‘Forget these wicked cars from the Devil. It’s horse and buggy for us!’ You will overall lose, because Christians are destined to lose, as enemies are written to have their day in the sun, as they did with our Lord, before the tables are turned to make victory our of defeat. But, even as you do lose, you will likely succeed in keeping more of your own people and will draw in a certain number of high-information people who can recognize the big picture—the sort of people JWs drew in decades ago from the religious world before anyone ever heard of social media. A bit of training would help equip ones so inclined, just as we train in other aspects of communication. 
    In Tom Irregardless and Me, I wrote about the JW website, then relatively new on the internet:
    “Members of the Governing Body thus repeat the pattern they are known for with any new technology: They eye it with suspicion. They advise caution. They know that when the thief switches getaway cars, it is the thief you have to watch, not the dazzling features of the new car. They follow the thief for a time. Convinced at last that they still have a bead on him, they examine the car. They circle it warily, kicking the tires. At last satisfied, they jump in with both feet and put it to good uses its inventors could only have dreamed of.”
    They have done that with the internet. They have not yet done that with social media. At present, the strategy still seems to be to hope it goes away.
     
  18. Upvote
    TrueTomHarley reacted to Matthew9969 in Q: How much credit do PIMO Jehovah’s Witnesses owe to Zoom for freeing them from attending boring meetings at the Kingdom Hall?   
    I attended 2 mega churches for several years, this type of music is nice to listen to but being in that concert type environment week after week gets old. Knowing what goes on behind the music also makes it out as just a show. Followed up by a regurgitated topical teaching that may use a scripture. And I found most people who go to mega churches are biblically illiterate. Even a pastor once said they were there to entertain people.
  19. Haha
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from Anna in Q: How much credit do PIMO Jehovah’s Witnesses owe to Zoom for freeing them from attending boring meetings at the Kingdom Hall?   
    In the sequel, Dorothy follows the yellow brick road as instructed. ‘Ah crap!’ she says at movie’s end. ‘California!’
  20. Upvote
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from Pudgy in Q: How much credit do PIMO Jehovah’s Witnesses owe to Zoom for freeing them from attending boring meetings at the Kingdom Hall?   
    I think that’s why everyone leaves me alone, more or less, because I don’t go to Bethel and tell everyone what to do.
  21. Haha
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from Pudgy in Q: How much credit do PIMO Jehovah’s Witnesses owe to Zoom for freeing them from attending boring meetings at the Kingdom Hall?   
    In the sequel, Dorothy follows the yellow brick road as instructed. ‘Ah crap!’ she says at movie’s end. ‘California!’
  22. Upvote
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from JW Insider in Q: How much credit do PIMO Jehovah’s Witnesses owe to Zoom for freeing them from attending boring meetings at the Kingdom Hall?   
    I think that’s why everyone leaves me alone, more or less, because I don’t go to Bethel and tell everyone what to do.
  23. Haha
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from JW Insider in Q: How much credit do PIMO Jehovah’s Witnesses owe to Zoom for freeing them from attending boring meetings at the Kingdom Hall?   
    In the sequel, Dorothy follows the yellow brick road as instructed. ‘Ah crap!’ she says at movie’s end. ‘California!’
  24. Upvote
    TrueTomHarley reacted to JW Insider in Q: How much credit do PIMO Jehovah’s Witnesses owe to Zoom for freeing them from attending boring meetings at the Kingdom Hall?   
    I also think this is much bigger than most people know. On a recent trip to California I visited a brother who had been involved in many of the scholarly efforts with people like Greg Stafford and many of the names that Juan Rivera mentioned some time ago. In fact, I had to double-check that this brother was not using the name "Juan Rivera" here on this forum. Years ago, a few of these names had contacts going up to HQ (Bethel), although HQ began cracking down (again) on any further scholarly groups, and finally was able to effectively get rid of them. This crackdown had also been tried in the early 1980's for obvious reasons too.
    Maybe the WTS was right to crack down because, when I met with this brother in California, he listed so many of the names of all these brothers who had finally left the Witnesses, including more famous names like Rolf Furuli and Greg Stafford, and even a scholarly member of the late 1980's Writing Dept, kicked out of Writing, but possibly still a JW as far as he knew. 
    I might be wrong, but I think sunlight is still the best disinfectant. People who are curious enough to go venture online "on their own" are going to hear all these things sooner or later anyway, so why not prepare them. Even when someone mentions Ray Franz' books, we can say:
    "Imagine, Ray Franz already knew firsthand about all of that stuff he reports and yet he still did his best to stay within the brotherhood, the organization. Even after he resigned from the Governing Body, and was no longer allowed to be an elder, he STILL tried his best to remain a member in good standing with  his congregation in Alabama."  
    Going around saying these things never happened, or that they are all lies doesn't help. In fact, it makes things worse for those who end up believing that and trying to defend the WTS against what turns out to be true. We end up looking uninformed, or haughty, naive, or worse yet, like liars ourselves.
  25. Upvote
    TrueTomHarley got a reaction from JW Insider in Q: How much credit do PIMO Jehovah’s Witnesses owe to Zoom for freeing them from attending boring meetings at the Kingdom Hall?   
    I got into some trouble with this post on FB. Several who use Zoom a lot were indignant, thinking I was calling them luke-warm Christians or worse. One, who has always been a pal, proceeded to tell me off on no uncertain terms.
    Of course, it is my own fault, as @George88 pointed out. Had I made clear from the beginning that the opening question was not mine, it would not have happened. I told this brother that 
    “I wasn’t speaking at all about you or any of the situations you mention. I should have stated—and would have were I to do it again—that the Question about ‘boring meetings’ is not mine, but was taken off a social media site (Quora) that pitches out questions for anyone to answer. I decided to answer it, and so the next three paragraphs are mine, but not the question itself. It may be the question was not written by a current Witness at all, but a former one. There are some in that population that openly boast of being PIMO, with the eventual ‘goal’ of being POMO (physically out/mentally out). Many of the friends have never even heard of that terminology, but it is sort of a modern-day ‘Demas has forsaken me because he loved the present system of things.’ It is among the reason that our numbers have been stuck around 8 million for many years now, barely growing at all. I wasn’t in any way speaking of ones like you.”
    upon which, he made a graceful reply and all is well again.
    On the one hand, I was heartened that so many black screens chewed me out, taking umbrage that I should think them PIMO. On the other, I was disheartened that so many had never even heard of the term—not the term itself, really, but the phenomenon. Alas, it does kind of smack (in the case of those who are shepherds) of not knowing the appearance of the flock.
     
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