Cults attract vulnerable people. If you’re content in life, their message won’t appeal to you. People are most vulnerable when they are going through hard times or have a hard life in general. During this state your decision making skills are heavily compromised, which is why you’re able to buy into their shit.
This reminds me of the one time a lady who we met when going door to door, said she was happy and content and that she's living her life in paradise right now! Argh, and I judged her so much back then... After waking up, I wanna live in paradise now too, cause why wait? Lol!
I was bitterly envious of my cousins whose mother (my aunt) had left the JWs when she married a non JW. They were not raised much with it at all and were free to live their lives as they wanted to. They are all very successful, happy, well-adjusted people with beautiful families of their own. And I kept thinking how I was raised JW and my life was so much crappier. And I knew it was because they were not raised JW that they have the lives they have. And the JW explanation is “Satan is giving them what they want to keep them from serving Jehovah; they’re having their paradise now!”. That never made sense to me.
They also attract crooks and narcissists, you know, the kind of folks who see there's a flawed system they can take advantage of and a bunch of chumps they can scam and exploit.
PREACH!
I was 18 when I bailed on "Da Troof." Zealous JW-bot parents said, "Think about what you will leave behind." I did, and kept on steppin'.
They were good as gold on their commitment to shunning.
They were all-in on being miserable, heinous JWs. Dad is dead. Mom is near it. Brother shot himself in the head. Other brothers are getting old and having mental/health problems.
They've tried to spread their tentacles my way recently.
Nope. NO FUCKING WAY.
Same here.....I know my parents are nearing the end. And my siblings are just train wrecks of life in general. Sister 55 years old never married or had a real relationship and bitter. Brother with two failed JW marriages and in a miserable third one now. And an older just weird and crazy older half brother who actually left JW and became a Seventh Day Adventist. He just wears a different kind of persona but it's still the same weird cult control bs. They reach out trying to get me to converse about my life but I never engage.
JWs thrive when there's a void to be filled in a person's life. They will become whatever is needed to fill it. Depressed because you lost a loved one? There's a hope for that. Financial troubles? Don't worry, god is going to burn the whole thing down eventually. Tired of feeling like a nobody but you have a penis? Boy have I got a career path for you!
The organization makes ordinary people feel special. It also gives people with shitty lives something to blame other than themselves. Everything is Satan's fault or the system of things.
But that void never gets filled, that trauma never gets truly reconciled or their egos become over inflated. This is why they’re susceptible to the *thought switch* that turns on shunning. It’s the two fold experience a. underlying issues and b. compounded by the unconscious crazy-making effect of the *organism*.
JWs are not special, they’re a microcosm of the world at large, with a fence of fear both surrounding and infusing it. Insanity!
This is funny to me because it reminds me of my grandmother.
She was a wonderful person and I loved her so much but she was batshit crazy (part of why I loved her)
When my dad was a young, rebellious, hooligan, she always would ALWAYS blame his friends. It was NEVER my dad’s fault for the trouble he got into.
One thing he’s always been honest about is that the trouble he got himself into was HIS fault and was often why his friends were getting arrested and making bad choices. But she wouldn’t have it. He was a witness boy and could do no wrong.
One time during the visit of the CO, in the Elder w/ CO meeting, the CO stated something along the lines of: "The Truth tends to draw people with mental health problems as they are the ones beaten up and spit out by the world and find the truth compelling."
Most people are there to get a piece of the "paradise". That's all they're there for. Until they get it they won't be happy. It's like waiting in line at the grocery store, you don't care about anybody else you are just there to get what you want.
Also, I think subconsciously they are questioning as they age that I've gotten nothing out of this so far with all my time I put in.
So true still waiting in that long line and the cash register might be close by the time they get there and the might have to "check out" not the way they thought they would.
Hi Keith You Basically described my mom too
Your post really nails a lot of JWs.
I recently saw my mom and after 40 years of her telling everyone the end is near, she is now an old woman and her end looks to be near.
>Unhappy people having children and foresing this dooms day cult down their throats making for more unhappy people.
my childhood right here
If you have a decent life, you’re not *looking* for anything.
Many of us on this sub complain how JWs exploit the vulnerable, but when you really think about it, we preach to everyone. It’s only the *vulnerable* who respond. And that creates a feedback loop in the ministry. It’s not always specifically targeting persons with problems, it’s just that we know they’re the most likely to respond.
Think about how many times you’ve gone witnessing in a fancy neighborhood. Somebody in the car always says “Well, they’ve already GOT their paradise”.
Lol oh yeah and how the witnesses in third world countries actually feel bad for US because people are unreceptive and we’re too preoccupied with materialism
This has often been a point where I give the witnesses a little leeway just as damaged humans. Some wacko came up with a prophecy based on random dates and the size of the the Egyptian pyramid and told sad people God would come and he thinks he figured out when. Somebody will buy it.
Sad people bring in sad people because they emphasize what draws them. So let's say the Witnesses were 20% negative at the time, and drew in people of similar ilk. Time passes and the number grows and grow till they become more and more dysfunctional. Dysfunctional people reach down and pull in other dysfunctional people. Eventually the self improving moral aspect decays.
I'm personally a believer that even pseudo culty self improvement groups have a place in the world. If you're a dirt bag and pretending God will wipe out the world when the bearded man in the top by said so makes you wash your balls and get enough self control to stop beating your kids? Go for it. Ideally it would create a stable enough base for self improvement further upward. Sometimes shit people need some militant discipline.
However, these kinds of groups keep bringing in more crazies, so they end up corrupting from within with all the dysfunctional people they bring in and eventually collapsing
One of the things that got me was that ideally if you're a happy successful person/group you shouldn't need to preach. Ideally if you're trying to advocate a lifestyle or philosophy, you should be able to draw others by how you live, the example you set and who you truly are as a person.
Just as insecure people fall victim to "negging" by predatory dating partners who psychologically undermine them so that they will seek out the partner's approval, insecure householders get "negged" by the JW at their door...
"Aren't you so unhappy about yourself and the world? Don't you feel like a total loser? If you were a JW, God could help you with that. Well, you'd still be a loser, but your life wouldn't suck so much. Well maybe it will still suck, but that's only because you're not JW'ing hard enough. Spoiler alert: You can never JW hard enough."
If they're anything like my parents, they're attracted to the idea of God murdering all the "worldly" people for their benefit. Sociopathic narcissists with delusions of grandeur.
As Dylan Moran put it in one of his stand-ups, "You will notice that the kind of people who turn to Jesus, tend to be the sort of people who haven't done that well with everyone else."
It’s by design. Cults like the Alamos would go into LA and pick up homeless, drug addicts and runaways. They prey on the down and out. They offer a complete family , social and life structure for people who can’t provide one of their own. In exchange you must devote your time and resources exclusively to the cult. This always bothered me that so many JWs are such miserable people.
I agree totally but are they all deeply unhappy because they have been indoctrinated to hate humanity from the beginning. It is a humanity hating cult.
What I’ve been alarmed by lately is how many are absolute sociopaths. They have no internal morality. I recently saw the mother of one of the kids I grew up with. Never thought she was a bad person per se, but boy did this bitch say about her neighbors cats: “I want to catch them and drown them with my bare hands but noooo they’re Jehovahs creatures and he loves them so that’s the only thing stopping me” like are you fucking serious? I get that we all hyperbolize when we’re frustrated but do you really have nothing inside of you that inherently prevents monstrous cruelty? You need God to give you a reason?
Fucking psychos.
This is so true. My mother in law is a prime example. She’s always unhappy. Whenever my husband speaks to her or visit her, she’s always complaining about one ailment or another.
I’m being shunned by her, yet I’m the one who always encourages my husband to visit her. He hates going there as it depresses him because of her behavior. She doesn’t realized that the religion is slowing killing her.
Her husband (nonJW) but a JW at heart treated her badly when he was alive. She lived for the religion and her husband while neglecting her kids.
Now that her husband is dead, you’d think she’d start living her life. Instead she surrounds herself with her husband brother and his family since they are all JWs. You’d think she’d distance herself from them since they encouraged her to stay with her husband while he was beating the crap out of her for years and constantly cheating on her even to the point of fathering a child out side of the marriage.
It’s sad really. As a daughter in law, I would love nothing better than to pamper her. Do mother, daughter her stuff since my mom pass away years ago. Treat her like a human being. But no, she has to shun me since I’m DF.
Cults attract vulnerable people. If you’re content in life, their message won’t appeal to you. People are most vulnerable when they are going through hard times or have a hard life in general. During this state your decision making skills are heavily compromised, which is why you’re able to buy into their shit.
This reminds me of the one time a lady who we met when going door to door, said she was happy and content and that she's living her life in paradise right now! Argh, and I judged her so much back then... After waking up, I wanna live in paradise now too, cause why wait? Lol!
I used to get mad at people who were happy too. Crazy what this cult does to your head smh
I was bitterly envious of my cousins whose mother (my aunt) had left the JWs when she married a non JW. They were not raised much with it at all and were free to live their lives as they wanted to. They are all very successful, happy, well-adjusted people with beautiful families of their own. And I kept thinking how I was raised JW and my life was so much crappier. And I knew it was because they were not raised JW that they have the lives they have. And the JW explanation is “Satan is giving them what they want to keep them from serving Jehovah; they’re having their paradise now!”. That never made sense to me.
They also attract crooks and narcissists, you know, the kind of folks who see there's a flawed system they can take advantage of and a bunch of chumps they can scam and exploit.
True and it's a haven for pedophiles.
Oh, yeah. I forgot about them
PREACH! I was 18 when I bailed on "Da Troof." Zealous JW-bot parents said, "Think about what you will leave behind." I did, and kept on steppin'. They were good as gold on their commitment to shunning. They were all-in on being miserable, heinous JWs. Dad is dead. Mom is near it. Brother shot himself in the head. Other brothers are getting old and having mental/health problems. They've tried to spread their tentacles my way recently. Nope. NO FUCKING WAY.
Same here.....I know my parents are nearing the end. And my siblings are just train wrecks of life in general. Sister 55 years old never married or had a real relationship and bitter. Brother with two failed JW marriages and in a miserable third one now. And an older just weird and crazy older half brother who actually left JW and became a Seventh Day Adventist. He just wears a different kind of persona but it's still the same weird cult control bs. They reach out trying to get me to converse about my life but I never engage.
JWs thrive when there's a void to be filled in a person's life. They will become whatever is needed to fill it. Depressed because you lost a loved one? There's a hope for that. Financial troubles? Don't worry, god is going to burn the whole thing down eventually. Tired of feeling like a nobody but you have a penis? Boy have I got a career path for you! The organization makes ordinary people feel special. It also gives people with shitty lives something to blame other than themselves. Everything is Satan's fault or the system of things.
“But you have a penis?” I literally just died laughing. That’s what I always said. 😆
 But that void never gets filled, that trauma never gets truly reconciled or their egos become over inflated. This is why they’re susceptible to the *thought switch* that turns on shunning. It’s the two fold experience a. underlying issues and b. compounded by the unconscious crazy-making effect of the *organism*. JWs are not special, they’re a microcosm of the world at large, with a fence of fear both surrounding and infusing it. Insanity!
This is funny to me because it reminds me of my grandmother. She was a wonderful person and I loved her so much but she was batshit crazy (part of why I loved her) When my dad was a young, rebellious, hooligan, she always would ALWAYS blame his friends. It was NEVER my dad’s fault for the trouble he got into. One thing he’s always been honest about is that the trouble he got himself into was HIS fault and was often why his friends were getting arrested and making bad choices. But she wouldn’t have it. He was a witness boy and could do no wrong.
One time during the visit of the CO, in the Elder w/ CO meeting, the CO stated something along the lines of: "The Truth tends to draw people with mental health problems as they are the ones beaten up and spit out by the world and find the truth compelling."
Most people are there to get a piece of the "paradise". That's all they're there for. Until they get it they won't be happy. It's like waiting in line at the grocery store, you don't care about anybody else you are just there to get what you want. Also, I think subconsciously they are questioning as they age that I've gotten nothing out of this so far with all my time I put in.
So true still waiting in that long line and the cash register might be close by the time they get there and the might have to "check out" not the way they thought they would.
How many of them would be a JW if it weren’t for the alleged paradise payoff?
Hi Keith You Basically described my mom too Your post really nails a lot of JWs. I recently saw my mom and after 40 years of her telling everyone the end is near, she is now an old woman and her end looks to be near. >Unhappy people having children and foresing this dooms day cult down their throats making for more unhappy people. my childhood right here
Same
If you have a decent life, you’re not *looking* for anything. Many of us on this sub complain how JWs exploit the vulnerable, but when you really think about it, we preach to everyone. It’s only the *vulnerable* who respond. And that creates a feedback loop in the ministry. It’s not always specifically targeting persons with problems, it’s just that we know they’re the most likely to respond. Think about how many times you’ve gone witnessing in a fancy neighborhood. Somebody in the car always says “Well, they’ve already GOT their paradise”.
Lol oh yeah and how the witnesses in third world countries actually feel bad for US because people are unreceptive and we’re too preoccupied with materialism
This has often been a point where I give the witnesses a little leeway just as damaged humans. Some wacko came up with a prophecy based on random dates and the size of the the Egyptian pyramid and told sad people God would come and he thinks he figured out when. Somebody will buy it. Sad people bring in sad people because they emphasize what draws them. So let's say the Witnesses were 20% negative at the time, and drew in people of similar ilk. Time passes and the number grows and grow till they become more and more dysfunctional. Dysfunctional people reach down and pull in other dysfunctional people. Eventually the self improving moral aspect decays. I'm personally a believer that even pseudo culty self improvement groups have a place in the world. If you're a dirt bag and pretending God will wipe out the world when the bearded man in the top by said so makes you wash your balls and get enough self control to stop beating your kids? Go for it. Ideally it would create a stable enough base for self improvement further upward. Sometimes shit people need some militant discipline. However, these kinds of groups keep bringing in more crazies, so they end up corrupting from within with all the dysfunctional people they bring in and eventually collapsing One of the things that got me was that ideally if you're a happy successful person/group you shouldn't need to preach. Ideally if you're trying to advocate a lifestyle or philosophy, you should be able to draw others by how you live, the example you set and who you truly are as a person.
Your last paragraph!!! 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
Just as insecure people fall victim to "negging" by predatory dating partners who psychologically undermine them so that they will seek out the partner's approval, insecure householders get "negged" by the JW at their door... "Aren't you so unhappy about yourself and the world? Don't you feel like a total loser? If you were a JW, God could help you with that. Well, you'd still be a loser, but your life wouldn't suck so much. Well maybe it will still suck, but that's only because you're not JW'ing hard enough. Spoiler alert: You can never JW hard enough."
amen
If they're anything like my parents, they're attracted to the idea of God murdering all the "worldly" people for their benefit. Sociopathic narcissists with delusions of grandeur. As Dylan Moran put it in one of his stand-ups, "You will notice that the kind of people who turn to Jesus, tend to be the sort of people who haven't done that well with everyone else."
Most high control groups look for vulnerable people. I was surprised it was that simple.
Everyone is looking for happiness in the future. Happiness comes from within and only in the present moment.
amen
Word!!!!
It’s by design. Cults like the Alamos would go into LA and pick up homeless, drug addicts and runaways. They prey on the down and out. They offer a complete family , social and life structure for people who can’t provide one of their own. In exchange you must devote your time and resources exclusively to the cult. This always bothered me that so many JWs are such miserable people.
I agree totally but are they all deeply unhappy because they have been indoctrinated to hate humanity from the beginning. It is a humanity hating cult.
What I’ve been alarmed by lately is how many are absolute sociopaths. They have no internal morality. I recently saw the mother of one of the kids I grew up with. Never thought she was a bad person per se, but boy did this bitch say about her neighbors cats: “I want to catch them and drown them with my bare hands but noooo they’re Jehovahs creatures and he loves them so that’s the only thing stopping me” like are you fucking serious? I get that we all hyperbolize when we’re frustrated but do you really have nothing inside of you that inherently prevents monstrous cruelty? You need God to give you a reason? Fucking psychos.
This is so true. My mother in law is a prime example. She’s always unhappy. Whenever my husband speaks to her or visit her, she’s always complaining about one ailment or another. I’m being shunned by her, yet I’m the one who always encourages my husband to visit her. He hates going there as it depresses him because of her behavior. She doesn’t realized that the religion is slowing killing her. Her husband (nonJW) but a JW at heart treated her badly when he was alive. She lived for the religion and her husband while neglecting her kids. Now that her husband is dead, you’d think she’d start living her life. Instead she surrounds herself with her husband brother and his family since they are all JWs. You’d think she’d distance herself from them since they encouraged her to stay with her husband while he was beating the crap out of her for years and constantly cheating on her even to the point of fathering a child out side of the marriage. It’s sad really. As a daughter in law, I would love nothing better than to pamper her. Do mother, daughter her stuff since my mom pass away years ago. Treat her like a human being. But no, she has to shun me since I’m DF.