WITHOUT SAYING A WORD

Violence, oppression, and coercion have many faces…some are physical in expression…some are emotional…and some happen without saying a word.

One example of my experience with this type of control happened two years before my father died.

He was in the hospital in a coma. We had no idea if he would wake up. In the several years leading up to his death he was in and out of the hospital many times.

This time one of my Disfellowshipped family told my daughter that my father was in the hospital and he might die. This time it happened in a town near where I was living. This one time I went to see him.

 

‘Loading Language’ is a technique used by ‘Trapping Systems’, or cults, to build the process of ‘Thought-Stopping’ into their members. Precisely defined language is used to construct a circular logic box designed to stop critical thinking. Often, in ‘Trapping Systems’, a great many very common words are defined in this way.

In a ‘Trapping System’ these ‘Loaded’ words are then woven together to create a world view that forms a closed system. So, phrases or whole paragraphs of ‘Loaded’ meaning can be built into a very strong container of logic. Logic that blocks out other sorts of reasoning and perspectives.

Members are trained to use ‘Thought Stopping’ techniques such as circular logic, meditation, chanting, or busying oneself with the group’s required work to stifle any Doubts. Questioning of the group and the requirements members are living with are forbidden in a ‘Trapping System’.

All information is to be taken in through the lens of the group’s world view. All decisions are to be made through the group’s way of defining things. Other members and the leadership enforce the group’s perspective through a variety of means. One of which is their secret coded language.

This coded language serves several functions. It creates a unifying perception of reality. It also creates strong sense of belonging for the members. This essentially secret group language also creates a wall separating members from the surrounding society. Generally, members of such ‘Trapping’ groups are taught to both feel superior to, and to fear, outsiders.

Some ‘Trapping Systems’ gather their people into compounds or group housing to physically separate them from the outside World.

My group is Part, but No Part, of This Old System of Things. Jehovah’s Witnesses live and work and go to school along side of the World, while holding themselves carefully separate.

My life within the Truth has given me decades of experience using a private language, made up of mostly common words. I found it fosters a fascinating and painful experience of standing side by side with the society of the outside world and standing within a ‘Trapping’ group’s separateness and superiority.