Q7.2    How has the WTS managed to survive so many failed predictions?

This, to the lay observer, appears quite amazing. However, add a little
knowledge of human behavior, and the methods of the Church and it all
becomes much more believable. The following quote, on the subject of
cognitive consistency, is from Henry Gleitman's _Basic Psychology_ :-

"An example is provided by a sect that was awaiting the end of the
world. The founder of the sect announced that she had received a message
from the "Guardians" of outer space. On a certain day, there would be an
enormous flood. Only the true believers were to be saved and would be
picked up at midnight of the appointed day in flying saucers. On
doomsday, the members of the sect huddled together, awaiting the
predicted cataclysm. The arrival time of the flying saucers came and
went: tension mounted as the hours went by. Finally the leader of the
sect received another message: To reward the faith of the faithful, the
world was saved. Joy broke out and the believers became more faithful
than ever (Festinger, Riecken and Schachter, 1956)."

"Given the failure of a clear-cut prophecy, one might have expected the
very opposite. A disconfirmation of a predicted event should presumably
lead one to abandon the beliefs that produced the prediction. But
cognitive dissonance theory says otherwise. By abandoning the belief
that there are Guardians, the person who had once held this belief would
have to accept a painful dissonance between her present day skepticism
and her past beliefs and actions. Her prior faith would now appear
extremely foolish. Some members of the sect had gone to such lengths as
giving up their jobs or spending their savings; such acts would lose all
meaning in retrospect without the belief in the Guardians. Under the new
circumstances, the dissonance was intolerable. It was reduced by a
belief in a new message which bolstered the original belief. Since other
members of the sect stood fast along with them, their conviction was
strengthened all the more. They could now think of themselves, not as
fools, but as loyal, steadfast members of a courageous little band
whose faith had saved the earth."

Regardless of one's acceptance of dissonance theory, many of the
factors here are pertinent to JWs: the force of peer-pressure, the
desire to keep face, the temptation to throw good money after bad (c.f.
the gambler, who loses, but always goes back for another throw, to try
and get something back for his lifetime's squandering of money), the
clever changes in doctrine, historical revisionism and the proud
camaraderie of us-against-the-wicked-world.

Powerful additions to these are: many JWs are faced with the loss of all
close family, and all friends, if they leave - this is enough to make
many simply shut up and get on with it, or make them prey to easy
convincing; prior predictions are written-out of the history books, or
their nature thoroughly changed (viz. the duplicitous contemporary
description of the original 1914 beliefs); and even more incredibly - the
ultimate false prophet's trick - blame the suckers. Thus, anyone reading
WT articles after the 1925 or 1975 debacles, will conclude that the
expectations were unreasonably made by the flock, and questioning the
motives of those who sold houses and businesses - and this is the
standard response on the doorstep or on talk.religion.misc.

        "We see no reason for changing the figures -- nor could we change
        them if we would. They are, we believe, God's dates, not ours. But
        bear in mind that the end of 1914 is not the date for the beginning,
        but for the end of the time of trouble." (w1894 7/15, p 266)

Taking a look at the WT magazines and books *before* the dates reveals
quite a different picture; (WT: 9/1/1922,p262, 9/15/1922,p279, 4/1/1923,
p 106, 7/15/1924, p211; - cf Vindication, Vol 1 p338-339; Life
Everlasting in the Freedom of the Sons of God, p29-30; Awake! 10/8/1966,
p 19; W 1/1/1967, p 29; W 5/1/1968, p271; W 10/15/1969, p622-623; Awake!
10/8/1971, p26-27; Kingdom Ministry, May 1974, p 3 ("We hear reports of
brothers selling their homes and property and planning to finish out the
rest of their days in this old system in pioneer work. Certainly this is
a fine way to spend the short time remaining before the wicked world
ends")). JWs who can remember all this are by far in the minority
- most know the line about the 1975->end-of-world gap being the time
between Adam & Eve's creation, but are not aware that pre '75 this was
asserted to be *less than one year*. More than 1,000,000 JWs left after
'75; and as one may imagine, with the number who made the appropriate
financial sacrifices, there was much bitterness and even suicide.

The WT society has belatedly learned some lessons - they still make
predictions, but have learned to be careful in the way that they are
couched; whereas in 1925, the prediction was rock solid until the end of
the year, the hedges began right before 1975. Furthermore, much of the
material goes without historical record in the many speeches of the 5
meetings and 3 conventions a year; and there's also the technique,
discussed above, where rules may be presented as suggestion. They're also
not beyond changing older publications after the event, without notice.
The upside of predictions is that they get the organizational and
personal adrenaline going full and it packs in the recruits - in this way
they operate much like the politicians' promise of lower taxes (c.f. the
British Conservative party, which has cut taxes immediately before every
election they've called since W.W.II, and put them up afterwards; despite
any doubts on such a technique's morality, one cannot question its proven
efficacy). The downside is the loss of disappointed members, but people
soon forget, especially with some clever editorial manipulation and new
converts ignorant of the past.

Q8.0    Are JWs brain washed? If so, how?

This is another term which has been rendered meaningless by the
emotional baggage surrounding it. But more curiously, the standard JW
response to this is the stunning, `no, but we are "mentally cleansed"'
- another resort to synonym, although one could argue that the latter
sounds like a more thorough scrubbing than brain washing!

A less value-laden term is 'thought control': this has a subset - coercive
psychological control, which in the official definitions covers the
usual gamut of fear of exclusion, peer-group pressure, suppression of
dissent, fear of evil forces  - the classic cult brew. `Control' is
still an emotive and alien term, no-one feels their minds controlled
unless under torture-room conditions - `influence', `suggestion' even
'seduction' are probably better working terms; the JWs own term is
'mental adjusting' or `putting on the new personality'; however, the
more generically used term `thought reform' will be used here.

It's a prosaic, everyday effect, which if it didn't exist, would
result in lawsuits against advertising agencies for fraud; but the
ad-men are no fraudsters - they know the techniques which can create
needs, brand loyalties, manipulate mother-guilt and social insecurity
and they use them effectively on behalf of their clients.  It's naive
to suggest that Coca-Cola is sugary water, it's a vast value system in
which the consumer participates. Most toddlers are able to grasp the
essentials of changing their parents minds and twisting them round
their little fingers. The WatchTower itself has warned of the
widespread nature of thought reform:

             "Even conformity - thought control - has reappeared in our land
             just at a time when we are exhorting the world to stand fast
             against the tyrannies of Soviet fascism. And it looks as though
             we are in more danger nowadays of exploitation of mind than the
             body, of becoming mental robots than economic slaves" WT Feb 15
             1955, (quoting Adlai Stevenson)

Thought reform can go further than simple behavior manipulation - up to
a change of a persons complete value system. Unfortunately, most people
assume that unless they're sitting in a Chinese torture camp somewhere
in Korea, this cannot happen to them. But even the latter was a
remarkably simple and painless process: the guard would start
conversations about how wonderful the USA was and how fortunate the
soldier was to belong to it; gradually leading the soldier into
admitting that there were some tiny problems in the American Dream, and
gradually these problems would be magnified until the USA became the
Great Satan. This is the method as US Soldiers were prewarned in their
training videos during the Korean war. Less subtle regimes have used
open coercion, torture and deprivation to aid the process - the more
subtle are able to do much the same with a subtle hint of violence, or
in the case of religions the potential wrath of God, threat of demonic
attack and everlasting damnation. The most harmless, meek-n-mild,
nonviolent Christian may call on divine firepower which far outguns
anything a Communist secret policeman can use - `they can kill the body,
God can kill the soul', and you can't buy an eternal damnation bullet.

The technique works on three basic principles - a) no entity is
completely good or bad, one can always make a glass appear half-full or
half-empty, and find some flaw in any human endeavor, and b) we're all
convinced that `no one can make me change my mind', so convinced that if
someone does change our minds, we instantly rationalize reasons why we
really changed our own minds, and c) we all wander around with a large
set of untested presumptions about the world, usually handed down to us
by our families and communities. Hence at every point in the process the
guard never makes any criticisms of the US, he simply makes the soldier
comfortable in discovering these things for himself. It is for that
reason, that the GI has reached his own conclusions and they've not been
foisted on him from outside, that they can penetrate so fundamentally
into his world-view.

Having all the values and assumptions one has based one's personality on
suddenly called into question is enormously stressful, and if a kind
person has an alternative ideology ready and waiting, this can be
slipped in, and become the new set of transparent assumptions made by
the washee. This technique, in its approach, duration and frequency is
remarkably alike the JW cold-call, return visit and home bible-study.
Gradually, the persons beliefs in his church, science or human
government are shot to pieces and then the new ideology quietly slipped
in its place. *The washer is not aware of this as a process any more than
the washee, it is simply the `natural' procedure.*

Furthermore, the thought reform experience can be far from appearing
negative to the reformed person. This is from the book _Thought Reform
and the Psychology of Totalism_ mentioned in the bibliography :-

   "Nonetheless, thought reform can also produce a genuinely
   therapeutic effect.  Western subjects consistently reported a sense
   of having been benefited and emotionally strengthened, of having
   become more sensitive to their own and others' inner feelings, and
   more flexible and confident in human relationships." (p.238)

One other term which is essential to understanding the evangelical
methods of JWs, encyclopedia salesmen and politicians is a technique
called *cold reading*. Again, most of the world's expert cold readers
have never heard of the term, and are not aware of using any special
technique. In the case of JWs, they're told at their instruction
meetings to take down personal details of the potential convert in their
notebooks, ask about how well their church is doing, track down what the
issues concerning them are, start a conversation on their obvious
hobbies, give a big smile - not out of any personal interest, but simply
to get their attention and make them feel that they're cared about.
References for cold reading can be found in the bibliography below.

Linked to this is the method, known in the Unification Church
('Moonies'), but by no means unique to them, as _Love Bombing_: a
display of instant friendship and affection, especially powerful amongst
the lonely and depressed. One ex-London Church of Christ (LCC) member
was drawn into that cult by "the unbelievably pleasant nature of many of
the individuals encountered", but discovered "The outward show of warmth
and affection masked what was occurring behind the scenes. The church
preferred to keep much of what it believed and practiced hidden from
outsiders.  They didn't, for example, tell visitors that the LCC
organization considers itself to be the only truly Christian church,
that all others are damned for eternity, and there is an unspoken agenda
to convert everyone who attends." - merely change the abbrev. for WTS.
The figures in Q2.1.1 help to explain the genuine excitement JWs usually
experience when a potential new convert looks likely.

Also crucial to the process is the withdrawal from what is pictured as
the `wicked world' - old friends are dropped, family contact
limited, workplace socializing curtailed; this has the twofold effect
of limiting the supply of non-WT controlled information and facing the
potential defecting member with a social crisis, which rises
exponentially with time in the cult, to a point where he may have to risk
losing every single friend and family member - a recipe for suicide,
depression or `shutting-up-and-getting-on-with-it'. [British Journal of
Psychiatry, June 1975, pp556-559, reporting on a study in Australia:
"members of this community are more likely to be admitted to a
psychiatric hospital than members of the general population."]

The following quote describes the actions, generically, of cult groups,
their means of taking in and holding onto members:-

"Groups generally engage new members by creating an atmosphere of
unconditional acceptance and support and offering a world view that
promises a solution for all existential problems. Engagement (or
conversion) entails experiences of intensely felt emotion or perceptual
change. It also provides a relief of neurotic distress and a feeling of
well-being. For the convert, these experiences serve to validate the
group's mission.... Recruits experience a *relief effect* with
membership. That is, the closer they feel to their fellow members and
the group's values, the greater the relief in their emotional distress;
the more they become emotionally distanced from the group, the greater
their experience of distress. This relief effect serves as the basis for
reinforcing compliance with the group's norms, as it implicitly rewards
conformity with enhanced well-being and punishes alienation with
feelings of distress. It also keeps members from leaving the group
because they are conditioned to avoid the distress that results from
relinquishing the benefits of the relief effect."
(Cults: Faith, Healing, and Coercion, Marc Galanter, Appendix A)

" It is absolutely necessary to the structure that there should be no
contact with foreigners, except to a limited extent, with war prisoners
and colored slaves. ... If he were allowed contact with foreigners he
would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most
of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which
he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred and self-righteousness on
which his morale depends might evaporate...The citizen of Oceania is not
allowed to know anything of the tenets of the other two philosophies,
but he is taught to execrate them as barbarous outrages upon morality
and common sense." _1984_, Part II, Chap IX

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