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Personal Attacks


dmiller
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All right --- I'm a small fish in a big pond here, but I'm getting tired-as-Hell-of-hearing

the *accusation* of "personal attacks". I'm wondering how other's *categorize* them??

There certainly have been accusations of personal attacks for various reasons, but one I think is most notable regards allegations of sexual abuse. The reason should be obvious; this is a very personal subject to those involved, and suggestions or implications that one did not do all one could to avoid a situation have been construed as personal attacks. Anyone have any comment on this?

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Aw, Tom wouldn't smote a flo. :biglaugh:

Maybe it is time to just lay it down and get to it. The rest of this may be one big sack of wasted time. It's time to get serious. It's long overdue. Enough Alternative Lite rock already. It's time to spin some deep death cult metal madness. This all needs to go somewhere, sometime. Let's push it to the limit and see where it goes. That would be better than dikking around and being nice if it's not really meant. Let's just burn this mutherfuggin thing down one time and get it over with.

Who's up for it? :dance:

Touch Me In The Morning...then just walk away...

It's a little lonely some mornings over here. All the little grease spotters are sound asleep with visions of Santa bringing joy into their lives...what am I saying...? :asdf:

Bump is up for it! :dance: I KNEW this was just another politically correct, don't talk to me like that whining, boring thread, made in America by retired twi junkies! The real "leaders" are out drinking at the farm playing pool, not woooosing around tv game shows talking about retirement.

Buy The Way, I always knew ol' Graucho still had a soft spot for the doc! The old glass eye ball falling in the soup was just a test of loyalty! :biglaugh:

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Bad Apology: Eight Ways to Screw up an Apology

1. Faux Apology

“I’m sorry if you were offended” is not an apology. The phrase blames the victim. It redoubles the offense by accusing the victim of being over-sensitive. Formulations of the faux apology are common in politics: “The president regrets any hurt feelings his statements have caused.”

I found this, apply it as you will here. A slight variation would be to tell a victim of abuse, "I'm sorry if you were hurt" by my (or others) actions.

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There certainly have been accusations of personal attacks for various reasons, but one I think is most notable regards allegations of sexual abuse. The reason should be obvious; this is a very personal subject to those involved, and suggestions or implications that one did not do all one could to avoid a situation have been construed as personal attacks. Anyone have any comment on this?

it IS a personal attack to tell someone they're a liar. I think it's particularly a sensitive issue for women, who never had a voice in twi and who were in general told to appreciate their husbands and leaders and forget about having feelings. now, they come somewhere and reveal things to help others and to heal, and for their supposed brothers to offer justifications for the abuser's actions, to write them off, or to place responsibility on the woman for being young, naive and trusting, IS a personal attack because they're basically saying "you're at fault for one of the following reasons: you're not seeing it from the pov of the person you're accusing (i.e. the rapist), you're lying, or you should have known better than to get on that motor coach with vpw."

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to elaborate further now that I've got my coffee...

little frankie comes to mommy and says "father so and so touched my pee-pee." mommy gets angry and says "don't ever say such awful things about our wonderful priest again! shame on you!"

frankie is confused because he was just attacked, and for what he isn't sure... mommy thinks he's a liar, or she's just angry about frankie talking about his pee-pee. what frankie finds as he grows up is that he feel worse and worse, his priest's behavior gets worse and worse, and whenever he tries to talk about it, people are aghast... at FRANKIE, not at the priest!

in twi many of us were like children of abusive parents, with no rights and no voice. if a woman was abused, leadership (mommy) didn't want to hear.

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Potato, just a thought & with all due respect...The Internet and GS may not be the most intelligent place to rediscover ones lost mental & emotional health regarding past sexual abuse.

Blaming individuals here at Grease Spot for not being more sympathetic or understanding regarding emotional female abuse 20+ years ago, is at best something of an illusion, and a risk you may (should) not want to take (no matter HOW cleverly you phrase it).

Expecting each member of a former cult community to line up and say everything you want to hear, is possibly a bit naive / immature and most likely never going to happen given the circumstances everyone has experienced.

Important emotional stress related issues have been previously stated to be best attended privately, under professional care. I think that approach would also alleviate most of the false expectations, personal accusations and aggravations that continue to go on around here unresolved.

Leaving us more time for happy, convivial interaction, and less time to have to keep apologizing for yet another faux pas which slipped out from under another person's fingers! :)

Now who's on first...I mean, ready for the next round! :beer:

Tom, come over here. I've got something special I want to show you & she's made in Japan! :biglaugh:

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Bad Apology: Eight Ways to Screw up an Apology

1. Faux Apology

“I’m sorry if you were offended” is not an apology. The phrase blames the victim. It redoubles the offense by accusing the victim of being over-sensitive. Formulations of the faux apology are common in politics: “The president regrets any hurt feelings his statements have caused.”

I do this occasionally. My implication is that "I truly AM sorry you feel that way. I didn't mean to hurt you. But you ARE wrong."

George

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Potato, just a thought & with all due respect...The Internet and GS may not be the most intelligent place to rediscover ones lost mental & emotional health regarding past sexual abuse.

Blaming individuals here at Grease Spot for not being more sympathetic or understanding regarding emotional female abuse 20+ years ago, is at best something of an illusion, and a risk you may (should) not want to take (no matter HOW cleverly you phrase it).

Expecting each member of a former cult community to line up and say everything you want to hear, is possibly a bit naive / immature and most likely never going to happen given the circumstances everyone has experienced.

Important emotional stress related issues have been previously stated to be best attended privately, under professional care. I think that approach would also alleviate most of the false expectations, personal accusations and aggravations that continue to go on around here unresolved.

Bumpy, I look at GS and the experiences people share here as a catalyst for my own recovery from waybrain. it might have happened 20 years ago or it might have happened a week ago, the time frame doesn't make the experience less real or less helpful to others who may find themselves coming from a similar background. I can't think of anyone I've chatted with here who's used GS as a replacement for private therapy, nor do I advocate it. however, if GS hadn't been here and there hadn't been helpful people who related to the things I posted and answered my questions, it would have taken a lot longer to get out of twi. it's possible I'd still be in, too afraid of what would happen to my family if I dared leave.

I don't think I blamed anyone for being unsympathetic. there's always the option to keep one's mouth shut instead of calling someone a liar just because their experience taints one's fond memories.

Leaving us more time for happy, convivial interaction...

if that was all GS was about, I doubt I'd be here. I came here because I needed to heal. I keep coming because there are still things to heal from, and more importantly, people will keep finding this place because twi still exists.

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Potato,

I'm pickin' up what you're puttin' down.

Sometimes we just need to holler out loud, whether or not anyone is listening.

Just want you to know you can holler in my direction anytime you want.

Don't know that I'll have any answers but I promise I'll listen.

That's what waysiders DO.

They listen to concerns that others might have, hoping that the answer will make itself known.

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Hi this is jeffsjo once again.

I wish I knew how to place quotes in here because a lot of them concerning "personal attacks" as being misguiding (often deliberatly) and as a tactic to put someone down in order to be "lifted up" I can relate to. When I was younger I related to this as "rap culture." Now I'm somewhat ashamed of refering to what passes as loving Christain discourse as rap culture. Rap culture is what it is, it doesn't pretend to be something it's not.

If an accusation is true, It still has to be handled with with good intentions for it to even come close to profitable Christain discourse. Even with good intentions it may end up being a complete flop in terms of " Does it succeed at ministering to God's people". Without a lot of care in every aspect it usually ends up as a flop in terms of helping people.

Concerning the events at TWI in the old days, I'm 100% convinced that there was bigtime problems that ruined the growth of the ministering of God's word. Many good people were hurt and their lives were damaged badly.

In my case this happened after my days with TWI. I can't name names, but what basically happened was the leader of this group decided that instead of helping people stand on their own two feet he would only be interested in making people his "beeotches". This happened time and time again, I can't ever think of an instance in the later years where he would help anyone unless they were either completly submissive or were a real prospect of becoming one of his beeotches. Under these circumstances the integrity of God's word was the first casualty. If I questioned a teaching or a prophecy (Like the time he told people we would be attacked by the locals or the government) I became the enemy and my concerns were considered "personal attacks". I would be willing to be guilty of being a slanderer if it meant that the fellowship of believers were not complety mislead. The best I know to judge is that the integrity of God's word is the only good standard. And let me say that being right in the middle of a tough situation like that where you see people face to face, day in and day out (He led the fellowship into a comunal lifestyle) is exceedingly challenging.

I am also convinced (after years of watching him) that he would like nothing better than to make anyone left over from TWI he can find his beeotch. A lot of what he's practiced and taught ( especially the younger ones) I believe is only to convince people who remember the best of TWI that he's a man of God. If only he had been capable of love instead of selfish ambition. Just ask people like me who's only sin is questioning bad biblical workmanship or false prophecies (like saying Jesus Christ will return in 2001, and many others)

So in general I'm a little wary of people who try to build their ministries on what was TWI. Right now things don't look healthy at TWI, but there are people who would know better than me.

What I am looking for is the best of TWI. There are many things that I heard in the old days that I'm certain was the grace of God, and call me what you will but I don't plan on changing my mind anytime soon. The best way I know to look at it is to compare it to the reign of Solomon. Solomon built the temple, but later became full of himself and sinned against God. God still fellowshiped with him after he sinned too, even if only to let him know that HE wasn't happy and what HE'D do about it. Easy word's to say, but pretty darn hard things to consider. Especially when we can attach real live people to it.

I'm certain God's word lives. Often times it won't be the way we hoped or wanted it to be. How many times in the scripture were God's people given good things only to blow it, I think quite often. When I consider how things really are I have cried and am even now a little misty. But I refuse to give in to the ones who say nothing was good in TWI. My best judgement of "IT IS WRITTEN" is to compare it to Solomon. Painful, but I believe it to be true.

When I think of the Way Corps I think of people who were taught to be much better people than I am. Earlier today I was thinking that if I had Corps training I would be in a better place in terms of the physical things in my life, but when I lost my fellowship, wife,child & job I've taken it pretty hard. And am even now in trouble for things that I think someone in the Corps was trained to not let happen. A WOW vet intermediate class grad just may not be as stallwart as the Corps was taught to be I think. But I am thankful to have this place to share.

Bye and God Bless

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Howdy, JEFFSjo

If you want to quote from someones post, you click on the quote/reply thing at the bottom of their post.

Their post will appear and you can then proceed.

If you want to quote their whole post, you can drop down below the place where it says and post your reply.

If you quote portions only, you can delete the portion/s that aren't relevant to your reply.

When you do that, it helps to put the word snip before and after the section so it is clear that you have removed it from its context.

If you want to quote their whole post and respond to sections of it, you can insert your comments and use the bold, italics, underline, or color features to set your comments apart.

Or, perhaps you would like to change the font or size.

Now regarding the concept of this program or that program making someone more spiritual or knowledgeable, it is really part of the myth that beckoned people to enlist in these programs.

It's part of what drove people to constantly seek the next level up.

When I signed up for Fellow Laborers, for example, the idea was that we would study the Book Of Acts intensely for two years and take our advanced knowledge back to our home areas.

In reality, we lived in a commune, worked our butts off and had very little academic growth.

We scarcely even had time to just sit and read The Word for pleasure.

Many times I found myself envious of the people "back home" who could take the time to study aspects of The Word that they chose to. Please don't ever allow yourself to think less of yourself because you didn't have this class or that program to fill out your resume.

I am glad you have chosen to bring your own, very unique, perspective here to GSC.

We may have times when we don't agree but that's OK with me if it's OK with you.

waysider

edited 'cause my speeling ain't 2 good these here days.

Edited by waysider
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I dunno.. so what's the big difference between attacks, whether they are personal or impersonal?

An impersonal attack:

"sorry kid, you've got some real potential. And don't think it's anything exactly personal, and in other circumstances, we may actually have been friends. But I've just gotta blugeon SOMEBODY"

Personal or not, is not the effect the same?

:biglaugh:

Edited by Mr. Hammeroni
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