Pudgy

It doesn't surprise me. I've been for years meditating on the kinds of personalities necessary to generate a new religious group vs those required to grow the religious group vs those who wish to maintain the status quo.
I realize that I don't have the kind of personality which would gather a group for any purpose. I've always had the attitude of "Go about your affairs. Pursue your interests. The ones whom you run into along the way who are motivated will join in the manner of their choosing." - Clearly we wouldn't have the Bible or any religious organizations if everyone were like me.
I used to irritate this one sister who was a control freak about everything. Our circuit overseer's wife (Bro Rainer) was talking with my wife and she (Bro Rainer's wife) mentioned this diet "blood type diet" by Dr. D'Adamo. Anyway we both sortof got into it for a while and of course since we're all about knowing about blood I did a bunch of research and found while researching that the Japanese and Korean cultures are really big on blood types and personalities associated with them. (In Korea they made a movie entitled "My Boyfriend is type B") and so a bunch of people began to get into it. She, of course because the word "blood" was in the name of the diet was highly suspicious of the whole thing even after she realized it wasn't about eating blood pudding or blood sausages.
Anyway when I mentioned the blood type and personality thing it sortof tickled me that she was so irritated by the whole thing (she said "There are more than four types of people in the world!"), I paused and asked her what blood type she was and she "Replied A" and I said "Ohhhhh! That makes sense now." and she says "What do you mean?" and I say "Well as it turns out, people with blood type A are more likely to get stressed out over perceived ambiguity or perceived disorder because their brains produce more cortisol in response to stress and the way this is manifested when they try to reduce these levels is by trying to control their environment as well as the people around them.....pause...you see"
That annoyed her even more.
I'll bet Klein was blood type A for sure.

There's a Ted Talk I saw that suggests something along these lines as a sub current to all this
...."How does it feel to be wrong?...ans "It feels like being right."
We never feel like we aren't being unreasonable or unbalanced if we think we're right, but we could be.

I suppose reasonableness and balance is the key 😀

I remember a while back, when I was "super holy" browsing a brother's library and noticing Bible literature that was not from our source. In my self righteous judgemental previous self I was shocked and almost stumbled. The said brother then proceeded to recommend some of those books saying how interesting they were especially if we are into deep research. I was beside myself with disgust and loathing, wondering how an elder could be saying this...and is he even an elder, probably more of a closet apostate.  Well that was then, and this is now. Looking back I see how immature I really was, thinking myself spiritually superior to someone else just because they read other things besides "our" things. It works the other way too, do we consider ourselves somehow more intelligent and superior to those who only read "our" literature? Everybody is at varying stages of spiritual maturity and it is ultimately between them and Jehovah what they chose to, or not to, research.
The brother by the way is still our brother. His daughter sings some of our songs.

Bingo.
It’s the pure nastiness of one, not to mention the pure dodo-headedness of another. These annoy far more than the posts themselves, though sometimes the two are hard to unravel.
After Paul makes his speech in the Areopagus, he says: “Okay. Been there/done that. If I don’t keep looking upon all these idols, maybe I won’t keep getting so irritated. Maybe I can get around to writing some of those epistles that have been kicking around in the back of my head.”
People have different interests. Most friends only have so much time for reading, and many have only so much interest. If they choose to read Watchtower-only material, why would I have a problem with that? They trust the source. If I recall correctly, @Thinkingmentioned a circuit overseer who acknowledged that spiritual food must be written for the masses, necessitating those with extra reading appetite to do extra study projects. I wrote about some of that here:
https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2019/01/what-witnesses-are-allowed-to-read.html
If you go somewhere that ordinary theocratic reading does not take us—looking into the nitty-gritty of this or that complaint, for example, you have a responsibility to frame things in accord with the brotherhood, unless, like Rulf, you decide your complaints are so stellar and overriding that they justify your leaving the brotherhood, in which case you should do so. But where is he now? Doubtless the “scholars” he consoles himself that he will hang out with are few and far between—most “scholars” have concluded the further they get from God, the better—and his new best friends become some of the smarter adversaries here. Instead, I sort of like JWI, who comes up with some orthodox things, but still says “God’s people obviously need headship, as does everyone else, and the present arrangement is overall doing a good job.”
One long-ago article said, what if you come across some Bible account that seems hard to reconcile, even shocking? Do you do a 60-minutes blow-the-cover-off expose of God? Or do you reflect on how good he’s been to you, that you don’t have all the facts, and if you did, no doubt it would make a difference? Do you do a Jesus, who was overall quite merciful toward his disciples, even when they made blunders or veered into self-importance?

..... I know ... I feel the same way about cats.

..... I know ... I feel the same way about cats.

Of course, neither Dogs or Jehovah's Witnesses vote.
For Dogs it is because of the failed French Poodle rebellion of 1870, and we have had to eat from dishes on the ground, since then.

Speaking of retrospectives....I was reminiscing on a place I lived as a kid and found this
This is the sort of thing a lot of people don't get about Mexican culture. They look for and see magic everywhere. What's interesting to me is that you have JW's who aren't that different from these people. I'm not sure what's worse - seeing God acting everywhere or never seeing his hand in anything at all. (This is what I grew up around. My parents hired a sitter for me and my sister before we went to school and they later told me that she was a curandera)

Of course, neither Dogs or Jehovah's Witnesses vote.
For Dogs it is because of the failed French Poodle rebellion of 1870, and we have had to eat from dishes on the ground, since then.

In Finland the government considers any suppression of the right to vote to be a violation of basic human decency and God-given rights of dignity and self determination. As such as they threatened Jehovah’s Witnesses with revocation of the charity status if they were involved with anything and violated basic human rights. Jehovah’s Witness charity status entitles them by law to siphon off tax money in relationship to how many parishioners they have and in this case it’s about $12 million a year. The Society does not want to lose that money, so they have made a dispensation for Finnish Jehovah’s Witnesses, and there’s no congregational sanctions of any sort if a Witness wants to vote in Finnish elections.
I know of one brother locally who the Elders called him up and ask if he had voted because they saw he was a registered voter. He related the incident above and they had nothing to say.

..... I know ... I feel the same way about cats.

Of course, neither Dogs or Jehovah's Witnesses vote.
For Dogs it is because of the failed French Poodle rebellion of 1870, and we have had to eat from dishes on the ground, since then.

Many communities in the US have websites where one only needs to type in a name and address and if you are a registered voter it tells you where to vote and displays some information about your registration. No one else but the voter is supposed to use this information. In the US, it should be very unusual for elders to "know" that someone in the congregation is a registered voter without misusing data.

In Finland the government considers any suppression of the right to vote to be a violation of basic human decency and God-given rights of dignity and self determination. As such as they threatened Jehovah’s Witnesses with revocation of the charity status if they were involved with anything and violated basic human rights. Jehovah’s Witness charity status entitles them by law to siphon off tax money in relationship to how many parishioners they have and in this case it’s about $12 million a year. The Society does not want to lose that money, so they have made a dispensation for Finnish Jehovah’s Witnesses, and there’s no congregational sanctions of any sort if a Witness wants to vote in Finnish elections.
I know of one brother locally who the Elders called him up and ask if he had voted because they saw he was a registered voter. He related the incident above and they had nothing to say.

.... most dogs have an IQ of about 120, but remember that you have to divide that by seven.

.... most dogs have an IQ of about 120, but remember that you have to divide that by seven.

Uh oh.
So much for the mystery of how Dr Max “Ace” Inhibitor landed that vote for County Coroner.

.... most dogs have an IQ of about 120, but remember that you have to divide that by seven.

Sen-yor Chavez ... if I may pose a relevant question ....
It seems that from what I have been reading in the past few months here on the Archive, that EVERYBODY without exception is mentally ill .... except you?
My Guardian is ASD .... he even labels my dog water bowl and food bowl with a tape label maker, which I have noticed is also labeled with a yellow tape "Label Maker" on the label maker.   And on the label of the label maker's label that says "Label Maker", is a tiny label that says "Label",
 

Sen-yor Chavez ... if I may pose a relevant question ....
It seems that from what I have been reading in the past few months here on the Archive, that EVERYBODY without exception is mentally ill .... except you?
My Guardian is ASD .... he even labels my dog water bowl and food bowl with a tape label maker, which I have noticed is also labeled with a yellow tape "Label Maker" on the label maker.   And on the label of the label maker's label that says "Label Maker", is a tiny label that says "Label",
 

Correctly handling the "Word of Truth", is the same as correctly handling a saw, a hammer, a level, or any other tool. 
WORDS are the tools with which we think.
If we use tools in a wrong way, what we build will be crap.
If we use words in a wrong way, what we think will be crap.
My considered dogged opinion is that Sen-yor Chavez is on the verge of hysterical panic.

Sen-yor Chavez ... if I may pose a relevant question ....
It seems that from what I have been reading in the past few months here on the Archive, that EVERYBODY without exception is mentally ill .... except you?
My Guardian is ASD .... he even labels my dog water bowl and food bowl with a tape label maker, which I have noticed is also labeled with a yellow tape "Label Maker" on the label maker.   And on the label of the label maker's label that says "Label Maker", is a tiny label that says "Label",
 

Correctly handling the "Word of Truth", is the same as correctly handling a saw, a hammer, a level, or any other tool. 
WORDS are the tools with which we think.
If we use tools in a wrong way, what we build will be crap.
If we use words in a wrong way, what we think will be crap.
My considered dogged opinion is that Sen-yor Chavez is on the verge of hysterical panic.

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