TrueTomHarley

On 9/28/2020 at 8:32 AM, TrueTomHarley said:

the author of the book The Graduate did not sell out—he died penniless in 2020, after a lifetime of giving away assets. More on him later.

The guy who wrote The Graduate—the book, not the movie—gave away all the money he made from writing it. He bought a house with his one-time movie rights. He gave it away within weeks—he would give three away during his lifetime—a lifetime that ended July 2020, He was 81.

The movie ‘The Graduate’ was a sensation—the highest grossing film of 1967, with seven academy award nominations. It is fussed over to this day for capturing the “alienation of modern youth”—though they are not so modern anymore, have long since put their alienation behind them, and many have done quite well for themselves, thank you very much. Many ultimately chose the life of plastic that the Graduate protagonist rejected.

But not author Charles Webb and his wife. Several times they came into money, and each time they would give it away. The Graduate movie is ranked the 17th greatest American film of all time by the American Film Institute; the “coming of age story is indeed one for the ages,” gushes Rotten Tomatoes. Webb didn’t make a dime off it and didn’t want to. He wouldn’t even do book signings—they were “a sin against decency.”

What kind of a guy does this? Many times he received windfalls. Each time he gave it away. “Mercifully I wasn’t written into [the Graduate movie] deal,” he told the AP. “Nobody understands why I felt so relieved, but I count my longevity to not being swept into that. My wife and I have done a lot of things we wouldn’t have done if we were rich people. ... I would have been counting my money instead of educating my children.”

He’s not kidding about educating his children. He and his wife Fred—she took that name so as to identify with a group of men named Fred afflicted with low self-esteem (you’re guess is as good as mine)—pulled their two children from school. They homeschooled. This resonates with me because I did the same, only mine were not pulled out—they never saw the inside of a school other than an experimental 6th grade, after which both chose to homeschool again. 

Homeschooling wasn’t legal when Webbs did it. It was when we did, even if a little dicey—there were always unpredictable hoops to jump through. Once, the school district turned down my curriculum plan on the basis of, of all things, a weak music curriculum. The kids were enrolled in Suzuki violin, for crying out loud! I went to the library, copied and submitted some gobbledygook from a music textbook, and they were as happy as pigs in mud.

A set of older friends in another jurisdiction were constantly harassed over their homeschooling—much more so than us. Yet my pal later reflected on his younger kids that were homeschooled vs his older ones that were not, and observed that the those of the first batch were far better at interacting with all factions of the community. Pretty much the same experience here—not that we had the contrast but we did have the experience of kids who readily mixed with all ages—whereas when I was in grade school, those kids in even one grade up might have been on another planet, to say nothing of adults. “I had no idea that there were so many stupid people,” said my son in complete innocence after he enrolled in the community college at age 16 and began his second experience in the classroom. 

The Webbs moved around a lot, sometimes camping, sometimes living out of a Volkswagen bus. Oldest son John called that part of his education “unschooling.” I know what unschooling is, too. We did it at times. It is simply a less rigid homeschooling, with more forbearance for letting youngsters pursue their own interests. I’d love to speak with these two kids—now adults. How did they turn out? “Not a lot of people picked up on it, but the title of ‘The Graduate’ was supposed to convey it was about education,” Webb told some reporter in 2006. He wasn’t keen on the mainstream model.

Meanwhile, he and/or his artist wife did stints at KMart, picked fruit, cleaned houses. “When you run out of money, it’s a purifying experience,” he said. Besides the VW bus, they lived in motels, trailer parks, even a nudist colony—they managed that place during their tenure. They named their dog ‘Mrs. Robinson.’

Now, these two were not Jehovah’s Witnesses. I don’t want to imply that they were. (Have JWs ever preached in a nudist colony?) Yet we have so many people who have renounced financial comfort so as to “have a greater share in the ministry” that when I see it elsewhere, it resonates no less than the homeschooling. I count as a friend today someone whose pursuit of a full-time ministry within Jehovah’s Witnesses triggered estrangement from his unbelieving oil baron family. “Look, Eric! Texas tea!” I call his attention to any gas station that we pass. 

The book that became the movie is not autobiographical. “I got interested in the wife of a good friend of my parents and ... [realized] it might be better to write about it than to do it,” he told the online publication Thoughtcat in 2006. Yet much of it was his life—his remoteness from his wealthy connected parents, for example, along with their world that he found so superficial. His relationship with his heart specialist dad was “reasonably bad,” he said, and with his socialite mom, he “was always looking for crumbs of approval.” He had figured he might get a considerable number of those crumbs with the publication of his book, for she was an avid reader who might boast “My son is an author!” but he didn’t—probably the skewering of her lifestyle had something to do with it. 

Still, whether you give up every dime or not—you don’t have to do it just for the sake of doing it. The ministry of the apostle Paul caused him to know both “how to have an abundance and how to do without.” (Philippians 4:12) He knew and was comfortable in both places. This fellow was good at doing without, but he seems to have panicked at having an abundance. Sometimes you have to renounce your past. Sometimes in doing so, you swing too far the other way. 

Maybe it was a starving artist kind of thing. He even made a cliche over it: “The penniless author has always been the stereotype that works for me. . . . When in doubt, be down and out.” But not for any romantic reason—he pushed back at that notion. “We hope to make the point that the creative process is really a defense mechanism on the part of artists — that creativity is not a romantic notion.” It’s not like he would recommend it to others, or maybe even to himself. It is more like he felt driven to it, half against his will. I think of how so many comedians developed and honed their comedy as a means of defendIng themselves from school-age bullies. There is even a video that suggests that.

A character from one of his other books—he wrote eight—an alcoholic painter, says: “What’s important for me is that I keep doing it, keep painting, and hold on to that feeling which goes along with putting the paint of the canvas,” he wrote. “It’s all I have and all I need.” This, too, resonates with me, a fellow who imagines himself a writer—and inherits the pluses along with the minuses.

“Lots of people momentarily embrace the idea of leaving the rat race, like the characters in The Graduate,” said one obit writer. “Mr. Webb [and his wife] did it, with all the consequences it entailed. If they regretted the choice, they did not say so.” And, “Webb has such an easygoing charm about him, such a friendly and sincere presence,” another wrote years prior. This also resonates with me, who—no, that is going too far. In the dog park I constantly have to apologize for my dog, who gets grouchy in his old age, “just like me.”

As though to get in the final word, the condensed obituary in TheWeek Magazine read: “The Graduate author who ran from success” Did he? Or is it that they can only imagine their own definition of success there at TheWeek?

11 hours ago, JW Insider said:

You are supposed to be praying for governments to find ways to obtain peace and security.  (1 Timothy 2:1, 2) . . .First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made concerning all sorts of men, 2 concerning kings and all those who are in high positions, so that we may go on leading a calm and quiet life. . .

Well, I am not sure that I would go that far:

”Rabbi, is there a prayer for the czar?”

”A prayer for the czar? Of course: May.........God.......bless.......the.........czar—and keep him far away from us!”

Just trying to scratch out a little tune, here, without breaking my back.

I have just one word of advice for you: “Plastics,” said the parent’s comfortable friend to Benjamin Braddock. Plastics—the new growth field in 1967, the year The Graduate movie came out—just as computers and then the internet would be to succeeding generations. Plastics—a graduate could make a killing in it.

But Ben didn’t want any career advice just then. Just out of college, with no goals at all, the only thing he knew is that he wanted no part of the phony monied world that had been his upbringing. He lolled around aimless at his folks’ upper crust home that year and ended up in an affair with his mom’s socialite friend—her idea, not his. “Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?” is a line from the movie that has endured.

It is the same Mrs. Robinson that Simon and Garfunkel sung about. Mike Nichols, film director had been after Paul Simon to write news songs for the movie and he didn’t want to do it—he was busy. Finally he said that he did have this song kicking around about times past and Joe DiMaggio and Mrs. Roosevelt, and the director said he’d take it! Just change Roosevelt to Robinson and he had a deal.

This explains why baseball great Joe DiMaggio blew a gasket when he heard his name in the song—so says the Ken Burns documentary Baseball. Who are those hippy long-hairs to drag him into their immoral movie that had nothing to do with him?! Joe was a traditional type of guy. Others in baseball just barely calmed him down with the plea that, while the mention may not have had any context, it was a compliment.

That line about going into plastics is another line that endures. At what point did ‘plastic’ come to stand for an entire world of materialism devoid of deeper values? It couldn’t have been just then in 1967. The plastic revolution of consumption was just getting underway. 

Yet if fits so well with an NPR report of 53 years later—of September 2020. There has never been any meaningful recycling of plastic! Ten percent is all that has ever been reused—tops. And the industry knew it all along! Recycled plastic doesn’t hold up well, is expensive to make, whereas new plastic is cheap. But with environmentalism sweeping the globe, that is the last thing people wanted to hear, so they weren’t told that. They were told that those recycling numbers within triangles on every plastic item meant something, and earth-friendly people the world over—I do it myself—sort out all their plastic for recycling bins. Waste Management sends the truck by a second time to pick it up.

It doesn’t mean a thing. It all gets buried—all but 10%. For me personally this would have been fine ammo—better than the ammo that I did use—when I was kicking back at some atheist deriding Witnesses for preaching about God’s kingdom whereas they could be rolling up their sleeves to help with saving the planet! Look, we’ve nothing against saving the planet, I told him, and when there are recycling laws on the books Jehovah’s Witnesses no doubt obey  them more closely than most because they are good at obeying laws—they don’t figure that each new law is a line drawn in the sand that they have to cross in order to prove their courage. Yeah—they love cooperating in this regard, but it’s a little stupid to think they are saving the planet when, in one gigantic industry blunder, millions of gallons of oil can destroy the entire seashore. The BP gulf oil spill had just occurred and President Obama spouted tough talk about “kicking asses” over it. 

It was a great retort to the anti-religion humanist, but the worldwide plastic recycling scam would have been even better. Can someone look this fellow up for me? I’ll run this new one by him. “Look, I'm all for local clean-up-the-park days. Same with clean-up-the-roadside days,” I said. No one of Jehovah’s Witnesses will ever speak against them. In fact, in Russia, Witnesses do clean up the public parks—or at least they did before the ban. I didn’t know that at the time, but when I found out I included that tidbit in Dear Mr. Putin - Jehovah’s Witnesses Write Russia. 

“In Russia, congregations do it all the time,” Anton Chivchalov told me—the one who keeps an eye on the current persecution in that land. “Most congregations do it. It has become a custom for them. Parks are more or less okay, other people clean them too, but still there is garbage to clean, and sometimes the authorities just lack enough workers, so there may be tons of garbage at times. We clean not only parks, but any public areas. We usually ask the city administration to assign some areas for us to clean.”

I speculated within Dear Mr. Putin on how it must make a great backdrop for informal conversations on God’s purpose to make the earth a paradise. Do Witnesses still do it, with police guarding them to make sure no one talks about God? I’ll have to ask Chivchalov. Still, even as they did it, they did not imagine that they were negating the verse of how humans will be “ruining the earth” when God intervenes—ruining it, not saving it, and the NPR story that the emperor wore no clothes despite his loud voice—he recycles hardly any plastic at all despite telling people he does so they will not feel bad about buying plastic and will buy more—was an perfect case in point.

And young Benjamin Braddock, the aimless college grad of the movie, knew it instinctively—that the world his parents’s generation wanted to thrust him into was plastic—promising 100% and delivering 10%. ‘He probably went into plastics after all and did very well for himself,’ said some cynical commentator on the movie—so many of that generation sold out, as they do in all generations. Be that as it may, the author of the book The Graduate did not sell out—he died penniless in 2020, after a lifetime of giving away assets. More on him later.

9 hours ago, JW Insider said:

We got a great war in 1914 that killed more in a few years than several previous wars ever managed to kill in wars that lasted decades, or even hundreds of years.

I can recall saying in talks that if the first time the entire world was concurrently at war does not fulfill Matt 24:7, what does?

(“For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be food shortages and earthquakes in one place after another.”)

And if the greatest pestilence in history by death count, the Spanish flu, does not fulfill Luke 21:10, what does?

(“Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, and in one place after another food shortages and pestilences...”)

HG Wells said something in his Outline of History, about record-setting famine in Russia just afterwards and I used to throw that in, too, with the same question.

Only earthquakes were not included, and there was an article in the early 2000’s I think in which WT cited geologic surveys that earthquakes have been fairly constant through the centuries, are not notably on the increase, and they did not challenge it, though they did say that it is not really the Richter scale that is going to cut it with people today, but the effect upon populations, which is on the increase simply because population is on the increase.

And then Matthew 24:8 could be quoted: “All these things are a beginning of pangs of distress.“ Things start off with a bang, but we are still in for a long haul. Other things would transpire, the only good one being the preaching of the good news earth wide, “and then the end will come.”

Imagine. And Krogers is based in Cincinnati, a conservative part of the country. And the two fired—probably a couple of grandmas—aged 57 and 72.

They really want to risk losing conservative churchy shoppers. In Arkansas?

25 minutes ago, 4Jah2me said:

It matters not to me. 

Don’t worry. Be happy! Turn that frown upside down!

Maybe that will be the next year text

4 hours ago, 4Jah2me said:

But truth is that 2020 is not much different to any other year.

Historians of the future will be asked which quarter of 2020 did they specialize in.

Quarter 1: Pandemic appears out of nowhere and spreads throughout the globe within weeks. Society goes into lockdown. Stock markets plunge. Massive unemployment begins.

Quarter 2: People get fed up with lockdown. Churches defy them. College students and the young in general defy them. Police shootings prompt major protests in the streets. Renewed spikes in Covid 19 cases.

Quarter 3: Protests escalate to riots. Pro and anti Trump people fight each other in the streets. Some killings, Huge property damage. Record-setting fires burn throughout western states, destroying entire communities, the smoke dims Eastern skies. GOP and Democrats decline to help unemployed as they did initially, preferring to blame each other Instead for the suffering that ensues.

Quarter 4: The election. Never has been seen such incivility of opponents. Trump’s enemies proclaim he will not leave if he loses and will have to be dragged out of the White House. Hillary tells Democrats to, under no circumstances, concede a loss come Election Day. Social unrest intensifies. Only about one third of Americans say they will take a vaccine whenever one is produced. Serious talk of civil war is heard.

Just for starters.

1 hour ago, Anna said:

In my opinion, we have not seen the fallout of 2020 yet. I think we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg right now....

Nothing to see here, people. Move along, now. Why, from the days of our forefathers, all things continue exactly as from creation’s beginning.

4 hours ago, 4Jah2me said:

TTH is, as ever, insulting me. He just cannot stop doing it.  I wonder why ?

You do?

12 hours ago, TrueTomHarley said:

I actually did no more than scan it.

Now I have read it more thoroughly. Well—who knows? But a lot of it strikes me as pretty “out there.”

10 minutes ago, Outta Here said:

The important thing is, regardless of what does happen, will we ALL still be here?

On the World News Media Forum?  

On 9/10/2020 at 8:08 AM, JW Insider said:

“This must be it!" he says.

And of course, I'm all for it.

“In my letter I wrote you to stop keeping company with sexually immoral people, not meaning entirely with the sexually immoral people of this world or the greedy people or extortioners or idolaters. Otherwise, you would actually have to get out of the world.” Paul has to clarify who he was speaking about, because, obviously it was not possible to “get out of the world.”

Today it is! If you follow government advisories and go just a tiny nudge further, you all but have! And nobody saw it coming! Nobody foresaw a pandemic, and in case anyone did, no one foresaw how it would give ample opportunity to get out of the world.

Let’s get @Kosonengoing on this. We all know that 4J is nuts, denouncing that even if they brush their teeth at Bethel, those choppers are not really clean because it was not guided by holy spirit. Yes, holy spirit doesn’t direct every tiny little thing they do. But neither am I willing to send it out to pasture. Could holy spirit have something to do with this unexpected opportunity to “get out of the world?” What does Kos think?

One of our elders is very much given to spotting sentences from the Watchtower and reading extra meaning into them that may or may not be there. He was all excited when they commented on the uber-violent entertainment of today, that maybe it is preparing the hearts of non-worshippers for when “each one will lift up his hand against his brother”—pumping them up with an affinity for gore.

And now here we are just a few years down the road and people seriously discuss the possibility of civil war in the United States! And they are fighting it out right now in several US cities!

In the United States! The last time there was talk of civil war in the United States was during the Civil War! Now there is that talk again, with society splitting into two factions that hate each other‘s guts. No matter who wins the election in November, the other side is not going to accept it.

It is more than a joke when it is said: “Future historians will be asked: ‘What quarter of 2020 did you specialize in?’” They didn’t say it about 2019, 2018, or any other year in memory. There is something distinct, groundbreaking, and equally disasterous in each quarter. Factions do not trust one another. The population does not agree on “what the science says” or whether they should follow it regardless of what it says. It doesn’t agree on anything. As Pew uncovered, not only do they not agree on how to act in light of the facts, but they don’t agree on what the facts are. Factions can’t stand each  other and do all they can to demonize the other side.

Current happenings are entirely in harmony with how God has said he “will incite Egyptians against Egyptians, and they will fight one another, each against his brother and his neighbor.” It seems like a very appropriate time to “get out of the world” to the extent possible, and now current events and the organization’s example make it possible to a greater extent that even Paul’s day. It also seems like an appropriate time to lay off criticism for anyone saying we’re in the last of the last days.

40 minutes ago, Anna said:

But anything is possible.

I actually did no more than scan it. It wasn’t forwarded specifically to me, but it was thrown out there by someone I know and have regard for.

This is a little like how after I watch a movie, I will say to my wife how I intend to read some reviews to see if I liked it or not.

I think the best indication that the Witness organization is on to something with its ‘last of the last days’ characterization is a line I’ve heard on social media—and it invariably triggers an avalanche of likes: 

“Historians of the future will be asked what quarter of 2020 did they specialize in.”

Let’s throw this one into the mix—sort of related if we are speaking of worldwide political machinations. Someone forwarded it to me, and I need someone to give an opinion so that I can pass it along as my own.

http://thesaker.is/trump-vs-the-military-industrial-complex-military-coup-danger-escalates/?fbclid=IwAR0HwAzYpzeEnG5822ccVh5v6pCqkA9BPn9cCyAk-A_TYRkfJbhxfXcPICE

As for FDR (mentioned within), my assessment of him has gone up over time, and it was never that low. He was villainized among my Mom’s clan for bringing in socialist policies. But he was more practical than anything else, with no overriding ideologies, willing to try anything, like Teddy Roosevelt himself, both of whom acted contrary to the interests of their class. It took me the longest time to realize that Dad didn’t care a hoot about politics—it is just that Grampa would get cranked up and he was too gracious to tell his father-in-law to zip it.

On 9/13/2020 at 11:23 AM, JW Insider said:

The expression  "last days of the last days" is misleading

I’m not doing nothing until we reach the last of the last of the last days. Why inconvenience myself unnecessarily? It’s the same as when over the years the pioneer hour requirement is progressively lowered, then such a thing as ‘auxiliary pioneering’ is concocted, then the hour requirement for them is over time lowered, then it is even devised how to lower it still more during months of special activity. “I’m holding out for 15,” I tell people when I’m feeling punchy.

I forgive it all. It may sound a little clunky, but I forgive it. I even recommend it—or at least acquiesce to it.

“Soon we’ll be away from here—step on the gas and wipe that tear away!” That’s what the GB does. They step on the gas. They don’t sit in stuffy boardrooms discussing schematics of the car. The hop in the driver’s seat and drive that sucker! It is not an armchair activity for them. It is a participation sport, and they are not afraid to push pedal to the medal.

It is a little like Carl Jung after the Holocaust, his values shaken to the core, because he observed it and read a lot about it, and so he completely misses the meaning of Job as he takes shots at God in ‘Answer to Job.’ Jehovah’s Witnesses, on the other hand, didn’t observe it. They didn’t read up on it. They endured it. They lived through it. They were sent to the camps well before the far more numerous Jews, and their integrity saw them though. 

So it is that the GB today are doers to match their prowess as thinkers, maybe even outrunning it at times, convinced the latter will catch up. Do they counsel obedience for others? They are that way themselves. They obey first, then they think it through more thoroughly afterwards. Should this result in a clunky expression from time to time, so be it. They are not afraid to go all-in, and I so prefer them to the bland people of this system who must hedge everything they do.

Nor am I not going to be forewarned by it. I’m not about to let my ‘sophistication’ cause me to miss out. They deal with and want to counter the opposite view: “Why, from the days of our forefathers, all things are continuing as at Creation’s beginning!” People are rocked by unheard of calamities today—and yet in no time at all they have adapted to them and accepted whatever is the latest as ‘just one [more] of those things.‘ The urge to sleep is strong. Even 4Jah, saying whatever he has to in order to insult his former faith, not noticing when it contradicts what he has just said, scares us all with ‘Only five years more till the true-anointed appears and brings the end!’ and now sings “Que sera, sera’ no last of the last for me!”

5 hours ago, Arauna said:

But she will only be able to say so if you are a very good husband.

I do, for the most part, have her hoodwinked in that regard.

5 hours ago, Arauna said:

 I think you know how to get out of every situation with your golden mouth and humor.

Yes, but not always instantly.

Stephen King wrote an autobiographical book ‘On Writing.’ In it he says that if you are a writer you must simply adjust to the fact that you will be thought rude—this because your mind is so frequently elsewhere. Nobody really thinks me rude. I am not. But should someone fall into the trap of measuring rudeness by listening prowess....well, I can temporarily get into hot water over that. But I climb out of it and do the best I can to adjust.

13 hours ago, Arauna said:

women ... listen better than men do.  

Do you know my wife?

11 minutes ago, Anna said:

Actually, I didn't not like it, I thought it was very appropriate as I didn't realize it was you at first, and thought it was some ex-Witness taking the Mickey, so I called "him" vomit dog 😄

You mean I ditched a perfectly good bad name for no reason?!

Actually, I partly mellowed by being here. I began to think it a bit like waving a red flag at any bull that was an ex. They’re not all ex for the same reason, and I felt it wouldn’t hurt to soften the word. Vomodog still suggests the verse, while being less in-your-face. After all, how many Vomodogs (or Vomidogs) can you find in the phone listings?

Still, in all honesty, your objection to it was what started the ball rolling. And now you tell me you never had any objection? See if I listen to you the next time you want to rename another character!

15 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

I am definitely pro-Agenda21, after reading almost all of it.

Oh, great! You mean I’ve got to read all of that now? I was hoping you would say, “Yeah....it is pretty bad, but...”

10 hours ago, Arauna said:

I am not here to witness. 

I am. Well—not here, but on social media, yes. Not exclusively, though. You settle in social media like FB and Twitter just like you would settle in a physical neighborhood. As you interact with your “neighbors,“ by degrees people come to know of your faith and what makes you do what you do. I wish we did more of this, but in fact we do almost none. When we “friend” only those we personally know, whatever witnessing we do, barring some fluke, reaches only the brothers. 

I rather like it that the hour requirement of pioneers has been suspended, and yet people are still being appointed as pioneers—which begs off the obvious question of...well, you know what it is. Counting time inevitably leads to curious notions of being “on duty/ off duty.“ I don’t mind seeing it suspended, in favor of witnessing that is seamlessly integrated into our lives—sometimes distinctly “on duty”, sometimes, for the most part, “off duty,” but generally so seamless that it is hard to tell.

If I was to count all the time I spend on social media, primarily my own blogging, in that case I have been special pioneering for many years. But the notion of counting time is a provision of the organization, so it is for them to define how it Is to be done. Since they are decidedly unencouraging on witnessing via social media, I count none of it.

10 hours ago, Arauna said:

I apologize if I have been rude.  I know I have been. 

Not to worry. I wasn’t thinking of you at all. I wasn’t even thinking of this site. It is a given that people will lock horns here. Besides, I don’t consider you rude at all. A bit heated sometimes, maybe, when addressing JWI, but he takes hold of an idea by the lapels and shakes it to death like a dog with a rat—what can he expect?

There is a place for everything, but for the most part I favor your type of sources—real people that you have spoken with. Of course, he knows real people, too, but with regard to input of think tanks or career policy analysts, I’m dubious of them. The educated set tend to see what they want to see—I distrust pure academics. No one lies, ideally, but they are trained to look at the world from a certain point of view, and that is what they tend to find. Business interests, too, have their own motives in exploring things, and they tend to spot what is to their advantage and not notice what is not.

An old friend of mine used to marvel at how Awake would succeed where conventional news sources would strike out. The latter would send their wildly over-educated correspondents into this or that barrio, and the locals, thoroughly impressed, and not wishing to appear stupid, would tell them anything they wanted to hear. Awake would send in their peers and come away with a truer picture.

I’ve often cited a certain BBC example of this that I saw. “Who do you trust today?” a reporter asked some local citizen of some developing and chaotic country. “I trust in God,” the fellow replies. “Yes, you trust in God,” the reporter says, eager to get this useless bit of trivia behind him, “but what of politicians?” The man answers that he trusts some politicians, but not all politicians, and the reporter chases down his thoughts of this familiar path, even if it is plainly not what the man considers important. Awake would have pursued his first answer, taking for granted the general irrelevance of politicians in most people’s lives.

10 hours ago, Arauna said:

It [denunciation of Babylon the Great] was needed at that time because religion was still powerful.  Today it is not needed any longer.

The way that I have phrased it is: “Why kick the old lady when she is down? We kicked her while she was up.”

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

Vic Vomidog much better before the name change.

Fear not, they are brothers—Vic Vomidog and Vic Vomodog. 

It is similar to what I said about Tom Irregardless: Of course, that is not his real name but his acquired one in view of his favorite word. His real name is John.

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

For me, though, it was like a bur in the saddle.

Fear not, I’ve given up horseback riding since the days of Mr. Ed.

21 hours ago, JW Insider said:

. It happens to the best of us, and by that I mean that there have been several documented examples even within and among our own religion. 

I have learned to live with it, and perhaps even acquiesce that it must be that way. Of course, I don’t know what examples you may have in mind, but...

Do you think I can persuade anybody that the (largely) atheist anti-cult movement is behind our woes in Russia? No. It is all the machinations of Babylon the Great is all anyone wants to hear. We are so hung up on Babylon the Great that we do not recognize that she is mostly licking her wounds these days, and a powerful atheist faction has arisen that would eradicate everyone clinging to worship of God—us no less than they. Yet we still, in the main, carry on as though publishers in Judge Rutherford’s day, announcing that religion is a “snare and a racket.” It is, but here in the West, it does not play as the most timely theme. The atheists and the skeptics perch above it all and ridicule the different religionists calling each other false. As rude as some trolls are here, I see brothers equally rude on social media with regard to tweets mentioning religion—appending insults that have little to do with the topic under consideration. Do they think themselves witnessing? It doesn’t leave a good impression. I could wish that we got training about social media besides the refrain to “be cautious” of it. 

Trained, we might be able to do some good with it. The articles posted on JW.org lately—about coping with anxiety, safeguarding children from the horror of world news, adapting them to “distance learning,” and so forth? These are excellent contributions—exactly what is needed today by anyone wishing to preserve sanity. It would take so little for ones who know how to use social media to judiciously spread this all over the internet, to the benefit of countless people. But we are advised to be cautious as to our use of it. We are not trained, and most of those who venture there with the idea of witnessing are horribly clumsy—saying outrageous things, oblivious to what their audience potentially might be.  It could be used to such powerful effect, but it is not in a nod to “caution.” 

Still, maybe the fixation on Babylon the Great, and turning a (it seems to me) blind eye to the atheists and skeptics is what one must expect of Bethel. They, more than anyone, strive to be “no part of the world.” Over time, they get to know little about it. They live primarily in the world of Scriptures, and the scriptures say that it is in the skirts of Babylon the Great (not the atheists or skeptics) that is found the blood of all those who have been slaughtered on the earth. Primarily, the sin is one of omission, not commision. Had religion not neglected to teach the Word of God, there would not be the bumper crop of atheists and skeptics of today. So who can say that Bethel is wrong to keep on harping over false religion—that picture is the overall picture, and the skeptics are but a resulting subset.

Another area of seeming bias is how we speak of ex-members—as though they are all train-wrecks, and will remain so until they come to their senses and return. This is a point of great ridicule among ex-Witnesses, who take bows before each other each time one emerges who is not a train-wreck. I mean, it really does seem an example of “confirmation bias” on our part.

Still, the Word indicates that those who leave after knowing the truth are like Vic Vomodog, whose name I changed from Vomidog to please @anna, who didn’t like the image. “A dog that returns to its own vomit” is how Peter puts it, so from there comes the notion that the world will “chew one up and spit one out.” If the brothers find someone who says it in exactly those words based upon his own experience, they eat it right up and cannot relay it quickly enough. 

It used to drive me nuts. It still does, a little, but it does so less. The brothers don’t know because they obey the Bible’s own counsel to not go where they might find out. “Keep an eye on those who cause division and stumbling and avoid them,” says Romans 16:17. So they do avoid them, and thus the only window they have to look upon them is that of scripture. 

Ah, well. I would like it if they didn’t do that, but who is to say they are wrong? It’s a little like God declaring that Adam and Eve will die the day they disobey. It the long run, it makes little difference whether that “day” is one of 24 hours or 1000 years. It’s a little like your spotting the glitch of the tablets long ago and saying “Who cares, really? Maybe it was that way.”

11 minutes ago, Matthew9969 said:

And it took Jehovah over 100 years to relay this truth to them...sheesh!

What is this idiocy? It is the most childish view that these louts have—as though anything spiritual should have been known from the getgo.

When Columbus sailed the oceans blue and discovered America, Queen Isabella said: “And it only took you 1492 years to find it...sheesh”

When Einstein revealed that E=mc2, the science community said: “And it only took you 6000 years to find it....sheesh.”

Ludicrous examples. But these immature “Christians” expect it to be just that way with respect to spiritual things—that Santa should deliver all the presents under the tree on Christmas Eve, and he had better not drag his rear end and be tardy with anything. The idea of research is abhorant to them—everything ought be handed them on a platter.

These yo-yos deserve each other.

32 minutes ago, Anna said:

Interesting!

I don’t want to imply that we’re buddies. He’s a “chum” because he wrote that nice review, but otherwise I do not know him. We traded emails for a time, but fell out of touch. He said chatty things while he was reading the ebook—I appreciated it, and he graciously did not mention a number of blips and typos that I have since found and removed. I rather wish he had. While I’ve no doubt his review is sincere, he probably discounted the book for not being up to format standards. But then again—he’s a scholar, not an editor.

The strange dynamic that is reality in “news” today is that if you are a member of a cause, you are biased and thus not reliable as a source. You would think that those with experience would be the first ones consulted, but they are the last. It is a skewed approach that really only applies with regard to religious views—with anything else, membership in a cause does not interfere significantly with their ‘expertise’—but it does with religion.

However, you cannot stay neutral with regard to the “word of God” because it “pierces even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and ...is able to discern thoughts and intentions of the heart,” says Hebrews 4:12. It separates people, either “for” or “against.” 

The “for” will be counted as biased under today’s system of news, and thus discounted. The “against” will not get the sense of it—whatever they say will miss the lion’s share of what matters. They will be like the “physical man” of 1 Corinthians 2:14 who “does not accept the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot get to know them, because they are examined spiritually.”

As for the opposite of the physical man who “cannot get to know” things of which he tries to report?—“the spiritual man examines all things, but he himself is not examined by any man.” So the only one who can report accurately is dismissed as biased in favor of the one who can’t possibly come to know what he is talking about. Is that a great system, or what?

It doesn’t matter what is said, as much as it matters who says it. This rule plays out time and again. From the German concentration camps prior to and during WWII, Jehovah’s Witnesses, who preceded the far more numerous Jews, smuggled out detailed diagrams of those camps. Those diagrams were published in the Watchtower—and dismissed by more respectable outlets as Time Magazine because they were not deemed credible. It turned out that only Jehovah’s Witnesses had “the scoop.”

The rule played out once more when Gunnar Samuelsonn, an evangelistic researcher, published that Jesus had not been put to death on a cross but on an upright stake  He received his 15 minutes of fame—his place in the academic community solidly cemented. Jehovah’s Witnesses have said the same for well over a century, only to be told to shut up since they didn’t go to college—what could they possibly know?

Can the Falun Gong make the same claim—that if the “right people” do not say something, it means nothing? They will have to state their own case—not me. For all I know, they are the nutcakes that people make them out to be, but when I see how the media butchers stories of Jehovah’s Witnesses, I do not assume that other “new religions” are given a fair shake. (“New religion” is the scholarly term for movements a century or two old. The term is preferred to “cult” for being non-incendiary, and those who prefer “cult” reject it for exactly that reason.)

Everyone in my area recently received a copy of the Epoch Times in the mail, along with an invitation to subscribe. “What is this garbage?!” my liberal followers on Twitter sputtered, outraged at it’s pro-Trump outlook. “I took it straight out to the trash!” So I told them what it was and where it came from. As for me—naw—I skimmed a little bit, but no more—the articles were very long and seemed nothing I hadn’t heard before. Not putting my trust in princes, there is a limit to how much I will delve into identifying the good guys vs the bad guys. There all bad guys to one degree or another—all who would advocate rule by man rather than by God.

It may be that members of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Falun Gong are getting to know each other quite well in the remote areas of China. Bitterwinter.org reports:

“According to a document issued in 2018 by the government of a locality in Xinjiang, members of three banned religious groups—The Church of Almighty God (CAG), Falun Gong, and Jehovah’s Witnesses—must be sent to transformation through education camps and kept indefinitely until they have been “transformed,” i.e., become atheist. Their release depends on whether they have implemented five musts. These are a written pledge to stop attending religious activities; relinquishment of all religious materials in their possession; public criticism of one’s faith, promising to break up with it; disclosure of information about fellow believers and group’s/church’s affairs; and aiding the government in transforming other believers.”

The two groups are anything but “two peas in a pod.” The Falun Gong are intensely political and hostile to the CCP, whereas the Jehovah’s Witnesses are neither. “Mandatory singing of revolutionary songs was particularly hard on Jehovah’s Witnesses, who practice the so-called political neutrality and refuse to sing national anthems, salute flags, or serve in the army,” the report said. 

BitterWinter is a subset of the Center for Studies on New Religions, headquartered in Torino, Italy. It is chaired by Massimo Introvigne, identified as “one of the most well-known scholars of religion internationally.” (I see my chum George Chrysiddes, who wrote that nice review of my first book under the pseudonym Ivor E. Tower, hangs out here at least sometimes) His name cropped up repeatedly as I was gathering background for Dear Mr. Putin - Jehovah’s Witnesses Write Russia. Though I did not get it from him (I got it from Joshua Gill), I see he is of the same view as I that a resolute “anti-cult” movement, and not the Russian Orthodox Church, is behind the troubles of Jehovah’s Witnesses in that land. Head ones of the ROC might cheer that ban like children at presents under the tree, but it does not originate with them. The “anti-cult” movement has the same apparent goal of that explicitly stated in BitterWinter—that religious ones should “become atheist”—and the more mainstream faiths are so watered down already that it hardly matters what they believe—they’ll do whatever they are told to do.

If the charge is made that anything harshly critical of the CCP is a production of Fulon Gong—as I have heard—by means of their media arm Epoch Times, that certainly cannot be said of BitterWinter. It’s About page tells of a “network of several hundred correspondents in all Chinese provinces” who work at “high risk for their security – some have been arrested.” To be sure, it “receives some of its reports directly from members of religious minorities and organizations persecuted,” however it would appear that these ones do not call the shots. BitterWinter “is independent of any religious or political organization and is mostly the fruit of volunteer work.” It “does not take positions on political issues [Good!—Like JWs—will Hebrews 4:12 some day go to work on them?] and limits itself to the field of human rights.”

Unfortunately, “human rights” itself may be perceived as political. Invariably they focus on the human rights of individuals, whereas any government will be an attempt at balancing the human rights of individuals with the human rights of groups. With some, the human rights of groups far outweighs those of individuals. Even as Putin says he does not understand why his country persecutes Jehovah’s Witnesses, he qualifies the remark by observing Russia is 90% one religion, and “one cannot throw everything overboard just to please the sects.”

Frankly, I could wish that BitterWinter was all pro-Western propaganda that could be dismissed on that account, for our people are reported as undergoing some very tough times there—it makes Russia look like a cakewalk. However, the website initially strikes one as a treasure trove of unbiased documentation, exceedingly well-done, and well worth the donations it accepts, and well-worth boning up on.

At first I thought nothing appeared In BitterWinter with regard to charges of organ harvesting of the Falun Gong. However, searching the phrase “organ harvesting” pulls quite a bit of information up—here Is an example, including things already cited here—statements from the US State Dept, for example, or the UN. If they got their information from the Epoch Times, that would be one thing, but it may not be that way at all. 

“In response he said to them: “O faithless generation, how long must I continue with you? How long must I put up with you?”

1 hour ago, 4Jah2me said:

Oh dear, feathers ruffled very quickly. So, there must be some truth in my comment above.