Posted by Tap [ThatAgnosticPerson] on April 04, 1999 at 12:53:47 {th2VaRoznY8c5nWRtv1gtly6WEe0Rc}:
In Reply to: Missing the Cong. posted by jimmyjames on April 03, 1999 at 22:08:16:
Obviously, your feelings are plainly human. It doesn't matter what organization you belonged to in your youth -- you'll always miss it.
I know that this is an overused kind of example, but I'm sure thousands of "Hitler youth" and "SS" members missed the good times during Hitler's reign. I'm sure they felt some of their fellow members were the "greatest people" they had ever known. I'm sure they "had a lot of fun" and look back on their past with longing.
Perhaps the fact that fellow Witnesses were the "greatest people" we've ever known is a reflection on how narrow our life has been. I probably felt the same way until 14 years of moving around the US and getting to know many, many people opened my horizons. At this point, I wouldn't put a single Witness in my "greatest people" category. Allowing oneself to be controlled -- not thinking for oneself -- and actively trying to pull others into your narrow little world -- is an automatic disqualification for any real admiration from me.
For me, instead of looking at "good times" I may have had, I look at what I and others would have been without the organization. When looked at in totality, I see the whole experience has a huge negative. I would much rather have never even known those people because then I would not have been handicapped for so much of my life. Had I had a more "normal" upbringing I would indeed miss the people of my youth and I wouldn't associate them with the kind of ignorance that I do now.
So, although I do occassionly wonder what happened to a few of them and I really do hope that some of them came to their senses, my viewpoint is that feelings of longing are natural and would happen no matter what religion I had been brought up in. But that doesn't change the nature of what I was involved in, nor the lives it makes miserable, nor the ignorance and hate it fosters. So, no, I don't miss them.