Who cares who said it? Who cares if it was Einstein, Hitler, Bach, Obama or the Easter Bunny? Who the frak cares?
The question is rather: Is it any good what whoever said?
It’s fascinating the mental laziness that some people indulges in. Discredit the source and the message dies. O RLY? Is that the logic of today’s revolutionaries? Or worship the source and anything sourced becomes gospel. Oh C’Mon!
What fallacy. Yes, it’s called Argumentum ad Hominem. And yes, I’ve been bitching about this before. And I think this will be my last repetition in trying to get some seriously dimmed down people to understand that a fact, statement or opinion stands or falls on its own merits. Regardless of who uttered the words.
Be bright enough to really examine the words themselves and don’t resort to lazy tricks to get others to toe your line.
The obsession about the Man is the one thing that the Church of Scientology Party-Line Toers and the Hard Core Critics most visibly have in common. It’s the sheer stupidity they share.
In the church it’s even policy to discredit the attacker to discredit his message.
It doesn’t matter whether the Man is L. Ron Hubbard, David Miscavige or some other Guy In Command. The obsession makes the obsessed look stupid.
I know the intended audience of this message won’t get it when I say; Get off it. But some others just might get the idea and not fall into the Rabid Hole.
Geir Isene - uncut 
Fact: There’s alot of stupid people about who just aren’t able to examin the contents of words combined into sentences.
I’m sorry but,
Fact: There’s alot of people about who just aren’t able to examin the contents of words combined into sentences.
and another
Fact: “stupid” is unnecessary, in the above sentence.
Creator and creation are somehow related and somewhat separated.
Related, yes. But a statement still stands or falls completely on its own merits.
True. And for that most of the talk seems to be useless.
Love this new blog Geir:) Full of theta delight. You are without a doubt one of the truly sane posters I have seen on the internet.
Thank you!
I would add to it that there are people to whom you listen to, because in most of the time they say good. And when you go down to the pub on the corner there are lots of alcoholist people who most of the time does not say intelligent thing. So you probably would not care to listen to them a lot and try to find a couple of wisdom in their words.
Otherwise I consider true what you state above.
And what you write here is a good explanation for how come the mental laziness.
lol
I’ve had some drunk people saying to me the most beautiful and wise things 🙂
Where you also drunk at the time? 😉
I’ve had both instances, of being and not being drunk. I rarely drink and when I do I don’t go unconscious, I do it moderately and remain in control of my judgement 😛
I like balance so I can commit excesses once in a while 😀
But again according to my experience, after I’ve really learned that KSW is a form of making scientology into a kind of a bed of concrete for the good of the system and the trick of DIV 6 introductory courses and books to get people in with nice words and borrowed wisdom just to keep them later for profit, I became a bit suspicious and I don’t want to spend my time anymore to study scientology and try to find out which words and theories of LRH are not a trap for the third dynamic of this system.
I understand that mental laziness.
There can be wisdom in inaction too. You don’t know how fertile may it be and what fruits can give in the future.
That acknowledgement sounded like a scn handling for “undesirable communications”.
I do not know why you provoke me, but if you call it mental laziness you did not get the point.
By the way, what good can you recognize in the words of Hitler?
I don’t know why got provoked. And I don’t think you got my point.
I didn’t read Mein Kampf, so I wouldn’t know. It’s on my reading list. Along with The Bible, The Koran and Mao’s Little Red…
Those first two books were on my reading list too but I erased them recently.
I mean, those first three books; the Mao Tse Tung one was never part of it.
Should I laugh now? I think you deal with this question without responsibility.
It is not easy to see that if you have a person who does not have the aim to enlighten but his only aim is to drive you into conflicting ideas, to drive you into dead end than if your purpose is not to get more knowledge on that particular person or your purpose is not to resolve his methods, etc. than it is quite pointless to read or listen to him.
It is like you want to have a pair of shoes and you go into the bakery to get one. Yeah, but I know you have on your list a pair of bread-shoes 🙂
Speculation as to intent is a slippery slope.
Look at the actual words and form an opinion based on that – not a preconceived idea of the author’s intent.
Of course I am not talking about the case when the Church wants to invalidate somebody as a “critique”. But in certain cases that can be valid as well.
For sure. I think I put my ideas to this post a bit out of context. In the given context you are right.
I am mid reading the Bible cover to cover. I am amazed by the value of the data in it so far. Some of it really does give one a better, more ethical, happier life if you really get it and apply it using study tech. I have had people who have never once read the Bible tell me that it is made up B.S. I am grateful that I can look and decide for myself instead of having the nerve to give an opinion on something I know nothing about. It really is a fascinating book, a real page turner.
Stupidity is the inability to evaluate data.
Ignorance is the lack of data to evaluate. Geoffrey Filbert in Excalibur Revisted.
My evaluation of the people of mass consciousness is that:
Many people are not intelligent enough to form a useful or informed opinion on anything.
Many others are only intelligent enough to argue to defend their ignorance, stupidity, sins, parrot others and the like.
So yes, Geir most people are not capable of properly evaluating data or independent thought, honest thought and honest perception or even true self responsibility. They need someone to do their thinking for them. They are called sheople. Very low on the scale of intellectual evolution.
Diogenese II
Yupp.
Fortunately for the sheople there are the good sheperds. Their dear leaders, those who evaluate and judge better for them and can lead their way.
I have heard similar stories under different names.
What is low on the tone scale is to feel superior to anyone.
High is to elevate them.
He didn’t mention the tone scale, though…
True. He said “Very low on the scale of intellectual evolution.” and the tone scale is supposed to be emotional.
They are somehow related and somewhat separated.
Geir you really have a talent for cutting right to the heart of difficulties. You communicate key matters with a remarkable simplicity. That is no mean feat.
One of the principle obstacles I have encountered over the decades in any discussions in which I have participated on the subject of scientology has been the oft met difficulty of others to separate the various subjects contained within the field of the general topic of scientology from the individual, L.Ron Hubbard. This is true whether I have been speaking with “Hubbard Loyalists” or those who by nature are vehement critics of all things scientology.
This unfortunate tendency makes it extremely difficult to have rational discussions on the efficacy of scientology techniques as any such dispute frequently reduces to personal reactions to the life & conduct of L. Ron Hubbard. That is certainly an important aspect of the general history of the church of scientology, but it is essentially irrelevant to questions relating to the specific utility of scientology techniques in enhancing spiritual insight & responsibility.
The conflation of Hubbard with the subject of scientology was clearly a deliberate misdirection introduced and purposely intended by Hubbard as is made clear by his infamous KSW as well as key content found in sec check lists and the Co$ history of “ethics proceedings”. Still, it severely impairs the ability to rationally examine the subject of scientology and is therefore a great impediment to progress. It would have been better to ignore Hubbard completely, than do as he directed and make him the focus of scientology.
Spot on.
Whether you want it or not, it’s very hard for the general public to accept a system created by someone who lied so much. And that is not exclusive of scn. When the discrepancies are too big, people will not buy it. That’s why someone works hard to keep the public uninformed otherwise the public would probably stop supporting a few things in society.
But I know nothing! I am just a child.
A general comment: I know this blog post jerks the emotionally tensioned. It flies in the face of the usual “kill-the-messenger-to-bury-the-idea”. This is the modus operandi of the church and the hard core critics alike. And both will defend this way of operating to their demise – simply because they cannot bare to be wrong. They must be right.
People are not stupid, actions are.
No stupid people? Anywhere?
“Man is basically smart.” – Overdriver
😀
People can be anything. I have seen it before and it’s somehow a continuous vision.
I think it really depends what a person’s focus is on and how much time they have available for activities that fall outside that focus. For someone focused on buying nice cars, TVs and a house and raising three kids, taking the time to really examine incoming information on its own merits can be very time consuming. If time is in short supply then its just much more convenient and expedient to determine if an individual can be seen to be a trustworthy source of good information that can be relied on. If that information is mostly right, then their occasional bullshit can be safely ignored. If that information is mostly wrong, then anything they say is dismissed. It’s quick, convenient and doesn’t require much effort. For someone focused on finding truth or venturing down a path of spiritual awareness, this approach is pure disaster for truth is very much an infinite scale of true/false/maybe/sometimes/not always/mostly/32.667% of the time, etc. and one has to be willing to take the time to really get in there and personally check it out and shift one’s viewpoint on a very continual basis.
As far as obsessing over the man goes, people obsess about other people rather constantly. I can’t tell you how many men and women I have encountered during my life who have obsessed about a sexual partner or a teacher or someone with major influence in their lives. It’s all a part of “look what he/she did to me” and more to do with a lack of personal responsibility than anything else. “The devil made me do it” is the cry when a person does something they regret and when they encounter actions by others they care about that are painful, its “the devil made him/her do it.” It is much more painful to think that you did these things because you wanted to or for reasons you don’t understand. If someone else led you down a garden path, then it wasn’t you that did it. If a loved one does something awful, its much more comforting to continue to think well of them and chock it up to the influence of an awful other person. And maybe that is true, but the action taken was not taken by the other who influenced them, they only influenced the action.
It’s the blame game i.e. it wasn’t me, it was that bad person over there.
And this is exactly why I do understand the mental laziness involved. And I mean that in a good way also.
I’ve been giving this a lot of thought — why the obsession with the man?
What I have started to understand is that it isn’t really an obsession with the man, it is a backlash against invalidation. It goes like this — LRH took the view that Scientology is very important, so important that nothing in your life has any value in comparison. The only valuable activity is freeing beings. All else is not valuable, not important, not worthwhile. None of your personal goals have any value, none of your creations have any value… unless of course they somehow contribute to freeing beings. To be on the Scientology team is to share that point of view, to live it through and through and through. Clearly the people who did do that did come to share that view. Those that did not, left. In KSW LRH makes it pretty clear, get them on board with dedication or get them off the lines. This was building an army of auditors who considered nothing else important i.e. no other fish to fry.
That’s all the further I got on this — can you help me work through this? I cannot help but think this is a critical area to work through, at least for me.
I agree that this is an important point to explore. It deserves a blog post on its own.
But I still see the man-obsessions in area far away from LRH and Scientology. The inability to look directly at the validity of something and instead attack the source to discredit the message is rampant. Painting Galileo as an heretic, finding dirt on politicians, “attacking the critic” etc.
That is true. What matters the most is the veracity and workability of things said and actions done.
Yes, you are 100% correct. “Bad” people, “good” people have little bearing on the value of a concept. It’s really “is it that way” or “does it work that way” or “is it a valid concept” and very often, the jigsaw puzzle is incomplete so there are concepts that cannot really be judged accurately one way or another or some are “educated guesses” that can be used to explore further. They don’t have to be 100% accurate to open doors to new knowledge or discovery. Sometimes they just have to open doors for exploration or verification or extrapolation. Of course, one has to be willing to accept the inevitable consequences of changes that result from further exploration or greater validity or even having what one thought was valid dismissed in favor of more refined or more productive or more valid concepts.
So perhaps there is an element of protecting one’s position, protecting one’s status, one’s acquisitions, one’s power, one’s comfortable state in the scheme of things.
For some it may be mental laziness. For others it may be pushing against perceived possible loss so the idea must be protected even if wrong.
I look forward to your blog post on the thoughts I mentioned — I am so glad that you are willing to explore what I brought up. I really find it helpful to discuss these things.
You said: “For some it may be mental laziness. For others it may be pushing against perceived possible loss so the idea must be protected even if wrong.“. = Good catch.
What to read seems to be dependent on time and interest at any moment. What not to read seems to be a decision made after examining some of the contents in a subject, or from a certain source. Ultimately. what to read and what not to read, seems to depend on what one wants to get out of reading. The same applies to whom to listen and whom not to listen.
One filters out based on one’s existing filters that determine one’s perception, thinking, and decisions. The greatest source of learning would then be a study of those filters that one is carrying around. This is the subject I tried to tackle in the KHTK essay on VIEWPOINT.
It seems to be almost impossible to perceive beyond one’s filters. But one can look at one’s filters and decide not to be limited by them.
.
In case of Scientology, one’s unresolved experiences with that subject may congeal around the identity or identities representing that subject in the form of distrust. Some facts about that identity may further congeal that distrust. From then on that distrust starts to act as a filter. Thus, a person starts to look at Hubbard and Scientology unfavorably and even with hate. Nothing would seem to shake that viewpoint. That viewpoint is well justified.
Now if one starts to look at that filter, one may then look at one’s unresolved experiences with Scientology. It may lead to looking at one’s unresolved experiences with, say, “Knowing how to know.” Further it may lead to… whatever is needed to fully recognize the filter.
Once one recognizes that filter one may look at those same experiences as a part of some game and no longer be bothered by them. He may decide that game to be over. He may then get fully involved with whatever game interests him now.
Life goes on.
.
Isene, I found this blog on LRH and Marty Rathbun.
http://barbaraschwarz.wordpress.com/
What do you think of it?
Greetings,
Eric Steiner
Right. Barbara Schwartz. Google her.
Let me get this straight – you want me to judge an opinion or a stated fact purely on the basis of the words alone, and not care who said it?
What you are also saying, is that if I do know who stated this fact or opinion, I should disregard my feelings for that person?
I’m sorry but I don’t live my life like that. I care very much for the source of the information that comes my way. It helps me take a view on how to treat it. If I hear an opinion I care very much who voiced that opinion. Is it someone who has a lot of experience? Is it someone with credentials? Is it someone with credibility? I can’t check every single fact for authenticity so if someone presents me with a fact then do I, on the balance of probability, believe that person?
If I hear an amazing statistic, does it bother me where it came from? Of course it does! Did it come from my taxi driver, from Gartner Research, from a salesman?
Let me tell you where your argument could be successful……So, Einstein tells me that e=mc2. He’s an eminent physicist. I’m strongly tempted to believe him. I can’t personally prove the fact, but I’ll take it on trust. Hitler tells me that e=mc2. He’s not a scientist, it’s an opinion of his, with no research paper to back it up. So I’m very dubious, how could he know this? So I don’t believe him. You’re right Geir, I should have believed Hitler.
But, of course, your argument then completely falls down because Hitler would never have said that e=mc2, and if he did it would have been the world’s greatest fluke. He would have been much more likely to pontificate on the superiority of the Aryan race and I would have been dead right to ignore nearly everything he ever said.
Let’s cut to the chase, you accept that LRH was imperfect, but believe that there was some useful truth in what he wrote, and we should therefore not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
The feeling of the average critic (in my opinion!) is that LRH wrote some very nasty policies, voiced some very far-out opinions, stated facts which he had no evidence for whatsoever and told some very fat lies. This poor behavior is closely intertwined with the things that you say he wrote which were good. LRH was no Alexander Fleming, he did not discover penicillin or a wonder-drug. If he had I could not care what he wrote about disconnection, it would be irrelevant. But he wrote about improving family life, and then he wrote policies on disconnection. He wrote about achieving a world without insanity and then he wrote OTIII. He wrote about an end to war, and then said you should never defend, always attack.
The problem lies not with the critics. I don’t believe our skepticism of LRH is unwarranted. The challenge is for the Scientology community to sort itself out. If there is some genuine goodness in what LRH wrote (whether by fluke or by design) then you need to throw out the rest and start again, because what we have currently is a complete disgrace of a church, and you can’t blame it all on DM, he is following the policy very well it seems to me.
I’m sorry but I would, using your example, treat a fact or opinion presented to me from Albert Einstein very differently to a fact or opinion from Adolf Hitler. The fact that you would not distinguish one from the other perhaps explain why you have been involved with a mind-control cult and I have not.
You are confusing opinions with fact in relation to my blog post.
And to extrapolate on that confusion, a critic must reveal his life to the public in order for the receiver of the criticism to thoroughly evaluate what he says?
Geir – firstly thankyou for posting my comment, I apologise for thinking you would not.
I have posted a simple blog response, several paragraphs long. I have tried to use some logic and a thought experiment to explain why I think you are misguided to be willing to put the identity of an author to one side when considering facts and opinions you are evaluating.
I therefore don’t think it is necessary for you to know my entire life in order for you to consider the validity of my response to your blog. You can evaluate it purely on the basis on my logic and reason.
But what if you wanted to buy a car, and the seller emailed you to say he would give you a 10% discount if you paid now, and collected it in a week. You would want to know plenty about the seller before agreeing to the sale.
Well LRH is not selling something as simple as a car, he is selling a whole new reality. On that basis then yes I think you should know the truth about his life before deciding whether you want to buy into it.
That’s why the truth about LRH is such a major issue for the Church and for the critics. That’s why the Church writes so many fanciful things about LRH. How else could you sell someone such a beautiful peice of blue sky without convincing them the seller is almost a god?
Would you consider reading a Piece of Blue Sky by Jon Atack, or Bare Faced Messiah by Russell Miller. Both avaialable for free on-line. Both authors can be googled if you want to find out more about them!
Don’t worry, I’ve read plenty – including your recommended reading list (couldn’t get through the whole of Bare Faced Messiah though).
As I said, you are confusing opinions and facts. You are right about the source regarding opinions – but not regarding facts (except for economy of time which I have already covered in the comments myself). Facts and also workability of procedure still stands or falls on its own merits. The assembly line production of Mr. Ford was a procedure. It was workable regardless of the personality flaws of Mr. Ford.
You seem to agree with Hubbards policy regarding handling of critics (i.e. discredit the source). I do not.
Here’s an example of Church policy in full bloom. It is not dissimilar to a critics character assassination of Hubbard to discredit his technology. It’s an either/or proposition.
…except that it’s from Freedom Magazine.
We are both sensible people, I trust you accept that Freedom Magazine cannot be relied upon to any extent whatsoever. It’s reason in life is to publish CoS PR material, and it doesn’t really care about anyone’s freedom (except the freedom for DM to behave however he wants to).
Now in this particular case, there probably is some truth in the facts of the article, although I don’t know for sure. I detect the nasty tone, I can tell they are trying to smear Rathbun, we all know he is no saint, he himself is clear about that. Strangely enough, the article just makes me feel sorry for the guy, he clearly had a very tough life if the story is true, and Freedom Mag just comes across as horrible, trying to use these things to imply he himself must also have problems. Hardly the right way for a Church to behave. I find it hard to believe that a Scientologist would not read Freedom Mag and be disgusted, or at best very puzzled by the content!!
When you read those Hubbard biographies, how did you react? Did you think the authors were being malicious, or truthful? Did you detect a hidden agenda? Was it just a smear attempt do you think? If so, why do you think they would do that? Why have so many people written such negative things about LRH?
By the way, partly based on our little conversation I downloaded a free Hubbard audio recording, I picked the first one on the list which was Borrowed Glory. I evaluated it based on the content only, not the author. I’ll keep my opinion to myself, but I at least tried!
Goodie.
My point is that Marty’s criticism of the CoS cannot be invalidated by character assassination just as Paulette Cooper’s criticism also cannot be discredited that way, or an anon protester just as LRH’s tech cannot be discredited that way. It stands out as a glaring logical fallacy. The famous Argumentum ad Hominem.
Dear friend:
Tell me please how can it be possible that Scn – considering it an ideological and practical system that is REALLY GOOD FOR – would give so much profit to its creator?
How come its creator – who should be the greatest practitioner and LIVING EXAMPLE of his own work – was such a money-oriented person while being himself the most direct result of his own creation? A compulsive liar, deceiver and manipulator? Could such person give birth to anything close to humanity’s only hope for sanity, freedom and harmony?
CAN A PEAR TREE GIVE ORANGES?
I talke the last line as propaganda. Beyond that; Of course any person can strike gold.
So we obsess over the Man… the person. A person is a being. That beingness is there essentially to satisfy some desire.
The key characteristic of beingness that is most valued is INDIVIDUALITY. This concept of individuality boils down to “an indivisible unit (of consciousness) that is unique.” That uniqueness is based on the uniqueness of the desire it is designed to pursue.
Hubbard was an individual. He was pursuing a unique “desire” that defined him. Similarly, each one of us is an individual. Each one of us is pursuing a unique “desire” that defines us. As an aside, it is quite rare to witness an individuality defined by the single pursuit of a pure desire. Such individualities stand out because they go far in accomplishing their desire. Gandhi would be such a pure desire; and so would be Hitler. Hubbard may come close to being one. Here we are simply talking about a desire and not passing a judgment on that desire.
The output from an individuality is obviously designed to serve that basic desire that defines it. There is no question about it. But, what I posit here is that there is “knowledge in itself,” which may then be moulded by the desire-bound-individuality for its purpose.
Thus, any person outputs knowledge that is slanted by the desire-bound-individuality of that person. There is no knowledge from any single source that would be free of slant, whether it is Hubbard, or Hitler, or Gandhi. But underlying that slant there exists “knowledge in itself.”
The biggest hurdle to perceiving that “knowledge in itself” is not the slant put on it by its “source;” though that can be a significant hurdle.
The biggest hurdle to perceiving that “knowledge in itself” is the the desire-bound-individuality that the viewer is. When one can rise above one’s own desire-bound-individuality then one may perceive that “knowledge in itself.”
Please refer to A: VIEWPOINT: INTRODUCTION and subsequent posts.
.
Okay, you’ve intrigued me.
I’ve read your statements on the benefits you’ve got from Scientology.
To which part of Scientology teachings do you attribute your wins?
I can understand how people could find auditing very appealing, but is there anything more to it than the relief of talking through painful memories?
What about [deleted due to reference to confidential material]? If you don’t want to answer this one I understand.
Auditing has given me provable, real and lasting gains – more than I have had the time to publish. One tiny example is given in the blog post titled “Dreams”. It is more than mere talking. It strikes to the core of your issues in life and helps you solve them (more than just painful memories – it tackles a plethora of other issues you may want to do away with).
As for the question regarding confidential material – you are right, I won’t answer that as I want this blog to be perceived as safe for Scientologists to visit – regardless of whether they may be harmed y the material or not.
In fact – I believe that anything you think can harm you has the potential to harm you just as anything you believe can help or heal you has the potential to help or heal as well. This is covered elsewhere in a blog post. Ask if you didn’t read it.
Geir,
I owe you a few photos of old calculators. Sorry for the comm lag!
I see we’re head-long into the subject of LRH and SCN here.
I’ve been out of the church for a full year as of July 21st. And what I’ve learned is that critics are simpy trying to dead-agent the author. While rabid supporters are trying to dead-agent both the critics and those in the middle. This is due to a horrid lack of actual confront and the inability to differentiate the message from the sender.
From here on out, I won’t rely on another for my spiritual freedom.
Perhaps a doctor or a dentist, yes. They are experts in areas which I am not and in which I may need real, immediate assistance for my current body. Welcome to the physical universe! It has rules. Disobey and you will pay, one way or another.
No man has the monopoly on spiritual freedom and none ever will.
All of the troubles mentioned above stem from relying upon another to do your own living. Your own thinking.
YOU are your own eternity. YOU own the copyright. Pretending that you don’t, is where the trouble begins.
IO
Two words: Spot On!