I stand all amazed at the stupidity of my TBM family members. My father went from one failed business venture to another even after being warned by other TBM’s he knew. He would simply ignore their advice or any of the warning signs and just “pray about it” and get the confirmation he wanted to proceed into something that cost him in the end.

My older brother went from one failed marriage to another. All with TBM’s of course. I tried to warn him about jumping into marriage with someone he met only a few weeks ago but since I’m the apostate he would dismiss my advice. The mere fact that he didn’t even speak the same language as his new bride didn’t dissuade him from jumping into that situation. He just prayed about it, got the answer he wanted, and that was that. She left him 3 weeks later.

My mom acts like a child. Doesn’t matter that she’s nearly 80 years old. This is not a condition that sometimes happens with old age, like a second childhood...she’s been that way my whole life. She routinely shows that she has no way of improving herself or understanding how to be a better person. Why should she? She has the “true church” supporting her in her choice to be absent at the wheel of her own life. In the end she hasn’t chosen to learn anything and is intellectually stuck in her childhood years a half-century later. She still calls Black people “Negroes” because that is what they taught her in school when she was little. Nevermind that things have changed since the 1950’s. She will not change. I’m pretty sure that most people don’t, or if they do change it is not always for the better. Still I do think my family members could have done a whole lot better for themselves if they weren't duped by the cult and led to believe that they have all the right answers and don’t need to question anything.

I have found that prayers don’t work - rather, they seem to be the biggest source of confirmation bias that runs in my family.

Some Mormons do seem to have pretty stunted social skills. Your mom in particular sounds like she is on the far end of that spectrum.

I don't know if the same thing occurs in other religious communities. The only one I lived in was Mormon. Most of my friends were neverMo, and none of their family members behaved the way some of the Mormons did, but that was still a pretty small sample for me to draw conclusions about. But yeah, some of the Mormons were kind of out there.

ETA: Hell, I was kind of out there, but I attribute that more to being Aspie than being Mormon, and I more or less eventually outgrew it, or learned to compensate, or something.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/07/2020 09:17PM by Brother Of Jerry.

The first law of heaven is credulity.

I think Mormonism shuts down your BS meter as a defense mechanism, like any good parasite.

Well said! It is interesting to see the cult as a parasite. A mental and emotional parasite. I'm going to use that.

This was one actually refreshing thing about dropping mormonism. The ability to think critically again.

I didn't have to discount everything I was seeing and thinking.
GAs could be morons, self promoters and downright despicable con men. Whereas, I would always have to act like I was the one with the problem.

Parasite! Well said - starts in the bowels of your mercy and doesn't stop until it grows up literally consuming all the spiritual emotional and mental food you need to survive as an adult.

Again, this is a great comparison! The parasitic cult will consume and consume until you have nothing else to give. I remember establishing boundaries with the cult as to how much I was going to give to it but I felt guilty a lot of the time for not doing enough.

Nice to have the parasite removed, that's for sure.

It is hard to have skills that have not been allowed by the cult you are a part of.

It isn’t something you can change in them, it is something they need to change in themselves.

Share every great goal and positive experience with them with enthusiasm. Omit failures or negative experiences.

Make your life so uplifting they might want to change their downers life.

Not just church. Share everyday positive experiences. It might take time but it may change their lives.

When my mother was 50 she told me she'd learned everything she'd ever needed to know. Refused to read anything but the BoM.

She's now 95. Stuck to her no learning program. Her reward has been a codependent life with my father and the Mormon church. She's had several psychotic breaks that she refuses to acknowledge.

Her refusal to learn anything new has kept her imprisoned in her broken thinking to the point it literally drives her crazy.

I thank Mormonism for a lot of this situation.

No wonder Nelson is so old.

But there's absolutely NO doubt they're all infected with congenital confirmation bias...right???

You should be proud and glad that your familial "gullibility gene" somehow skipped YOU!

Or so it seems to me...