Quote:
Originally Posted by PriestlyScribe
Here is some more hard evidence of "Controlled Frenzy" & "Cultural Imperialism" from 1987:
FTTT Int. Young People Summer Conference | Graduation Ceremony | Aug 2, 1987
Video link - https://youtu.be/1oqk-nkfaoA |
There's a young woman testifying at the 50 minute mark, saying that a couple friends wanted to kill themselves, then that the reality is Christ, and the others miss that, and they don't know the meaning and purpose of their human life. All that seems fairly straightforward Christian gospel, except that she keeps nervously rocking back and forth, like a bouncing or hopping move but she can't quite leave the ground. So I'm watching it, and think about young teens and the socialization process that leads them through high school, sometimes to suicide, to drugs, to video games, to dangerous car races (also to church group, college, marriage, jobs).
To me, her voice intonation and body language are saying, "I want to be in the GROUP!! Can't you see that I belong to the GROUP!!" She's using the hop and the rhythmic intonations and the terminology to integrate herself. The translator beside her is doing the same thing with the militaristic hand chop and rhythmic intonations.
But the woman can't even hop in sync with her rising and falling vocalizations. She just kind of nervously bounces up and down, like a twitch or a tic. Now we may say, "She's speaking in front of a large audience. Judgment begins in the house of God. This is a training" Yes, and it's not "in spirit", but in "nervous energy", as she's trying to pass muster with the large group in front of her. It's no different from the dynamics at a LC "home meeting" or "college meeting" or Sunday "Lord's Table meeting" except now the stakes are higher. High school teens and college students find themselves faced with a peer group and try to fit in. None of them wants to be judged, rejected, and cast out. So in the LC they cry out in sing-song cadence, using the special words, and make the special hopping motions. "I want to be-LOONNNG! Can't you see I want to be-LOOONNNNGGG!!" And then the group says "amen" in unison and the warm fuzzies hopefully appear.
The whole "exercise your spirit" mantra is a vehicle to subsume oneself to the group culture. First, one gets into a psychic "state", no different from Primal Scream Therapy or roaring in unison at a concert or sporting event. Yes, sometimes it's good and even therapeutic to shout, but this is cultivated, rhythmic, systematic group shouting. And in the LC, going into this "state" publicly, in front of others, is the orientally-sourced "lose-your-face" way of group acculturation.
No different from getting a gang tattoo or wearing the 'colors'... see the uniform clothing, matching baseball caps and patches, the same language, the same intonations and body motions (hopping, rocking, fist thrusts), and it tells a simple narrative. As one of my elders used to say, "You're in the (Chinese) army now". Group-sourced reflexive non-thought, group language, dress, behaviour.