This blog post was submitted by Alanzo, one of the frequent commenters on this blog). It proposes a way to evaluate Scientology – by the way proposed by Scientology itself. This should prove interesting:
As Hubbard said, Scientology does not produce Understanding, but it produces UnderstandingS.
A good way to produce understandingS on Scientology itself, is to apply Logic 8 to various parts and areas of Scientology.
Logic 8 is “A datum can be evaluated only by a datum of comparable magnitude.”
So I propose the next thought experiment here on Geir’s Blog: Take a piece of Scientology and apply Logic 8 to it. Take any datum of comparable magnitude to any part of Scientology and compare the two data.
Here’s an example:
Compare the first Auditor’s Code (Original Thesis 1947) to the last Auditor’s Code (HCOB 1980).
Evaluate these two pieces of Scientology by comparing them with each other. Look at how one point of the code has been left out. Look at how another point has been added. Sometimes there will be explanations for these changes, sometimes not. You do not have to accept any explanation for what you see when you compare, just look at the differences, similarities and identities and decide for yourself.
See?
This exercise is totally free of any agenda, either pro Scientology or anti. It’s purpose is the same purpose as Logic 8 – to evaluate Scientology.
It is the application of Logic 8 to Scientology itself.
You don’t have to be limited to comparing something in Scientology only with something else in Scientology, though. In fact, I believe that the real value of Logic 8 begins to emerge when you start comparing parts of Scientology with things outside of Scientology.
For instance:
Compare the Citizen’s Commission on Human Rights to Amnesty International.
Or compare the Volunteer Ministers to the Red Cross.
“A datum can be evaluated only by a datum of comparable magnitude.”
LRH says that this is the ONLY way to evaluate something.
So let’s evaluate Scientology, then!
Who’s ready to start?
Comparison of the Auditor’s Code circa 1952 and circa 1976
1952 1. Do not evaluate for the preclear.
1976 1. I promise not to evaluate for the preclear or tell him what he should think about his case in session.
1952 2. Do not invalidate or correct the preclear’s data.
1976 2. I promise not to invalidate the preclear’s case or gains in or out of session.
1952 3. Use the processes which improve the preclear’s case.
1976 3. I promise to administer only Standard Tech to a preclear in the standard way.
1952 4. Keep all appointments once made.
1976 4. I promise to keep all auditing appointments once made.
1952 5. Do not process a preclear after 10:00 p.m.
1976 5. I promise not to process a preclear who has not had sufficient rest and who is physically tired.
1952 6. Do not process a preclear who is improperly fed.
1976 6. I promise not to process a preclear who is improperly fed or hungry.
1952 7. Do not permit a frequent change of auditors.
1976 7. I promise not to permit a frequent change of Auditors.
1952 8. Do not sympathize with the preclear.
1976 8. I promise not to sympathize with a preclear but to be effective.
1952 9. Never permit the preclear to end the session on his own independent decision.
1976 9. I promise not to let the preclear end session on his own determinism but to finish off those cycles I have begun.
1952 10. Never walk off from a preclear during a session.
1976 10. I promise never to walk off from a preclear in session.
1952 11. Never get angry with a preclear.
1976 11. I promise never to get angry with a preclear in session.
1952 12. Always reduce every communication lag encountered by continued use of the same question or process.
1976 12. I promise to run every major case action to a floating needle.
1952 13. Always continue a process as long as it produces change, and no longer.
1976 13. I promise never to run any one action beyond its floating needle.
1952 14. Be willing to grant beingness to the preclear.
1976 14. I promise to grant beingness to the preclear in session.
1952 15. Never mix the processes of Scientology with those of various other practices.
1976 15. I promise not to mix the processes of Scientology with other practices except when the preclear is physically ill and only medical means will serve.
1952 16. Maintain two-way communication with the preclear.
1976 16. I promise to maintain Communication with the preclear and not to cut his comm or permit him to overrun in session.
1952 17. Never use Scientology to obtain personal and unusual favors or unusual compliance from the preclear for the auditor’s own personal profit.
1976 17. I promise not to enter comments, expressions or enturbulence into a session that distract a preclear from his case.
1952 18. Estimate the current case of your preclear with reality and do not process another imagined case.
1976 18. I promise to continue to give the preclear the process or auditing command when needed in the session.
1952 19. Do not explain, justify or make excuses for any auditor mistakes whether real or imagined.
1976 19. I promise not to let a preclear run a wrongly understood command.
1976 20. I promise not to explain, justify or make excuses in session for any Auditor mistakes whether real or imagined.
1976 21. I promise to estimate the current case state of a preclear only by Standard Case Supervision data and not to diverge because of some imagined difference in the case.
1976 22. I promise never to use the secrets of a preclear divulged in session for punishment or personal gain.
1976 23. I promise to see that any fee received for processing is refunded following the policies of the Claims Verification Board, if the preclear is dissatisfied and demands it within three months after the processing, the only condition being that he may not again be processed or trained.
1976 24. I promise not to advocate Scientology only to cure illness or only to treat the insane, knowing well it was intended for spiritual gain.
1976 25. I promise to cooperate fully with the legal organizations of Dianetics and Scientology as developed by L. Ron Hubbard in safeguarding the ethical use and practice of the subject according to the basics of Standard Tech.
1976 26. I promise to refuse to permit any being to be physically injured, violently damaged, operated on or killed in the name of “mental treatment”.
1976 27. I promise not to permit sexual liberties or violation of the mentally unsound.
1976 28. I promise to refuse to admit to the ranks of practitioners any being who is insane.
1952: The Auditor’s Code was evolved from years of observing processing. It is the technical code of Scientology. It contains the important errors which harm cases. It could be called the moral code of Scientology. – LRH
1976: Auditor:__________________________
Date: ____________________________
Witness:
Place: ___________________________
1976: [The 1 January 1976 revision changed item 23 and added items 26, 27 and 28 which had earlier been
issued as HCOPL 2 November 1968, Auditor’s Code-Add to Pol Ltr 14th October AD18.]
I think that the most important change that occurred is in the addition of the words – in session – to many of the clauses of the auditor`s code. And note that there is no longer a statement that the auditor`s code is the moral code of Scientology. This is a really major change and to my mind, the beginning of the end.
Maria, this idea is very appealing but I’m not sure how feasible it is. For example, there are Scn posts – e.g. reg’s (and I don’t mean the CoS types), ethics officers, etc. whose job it is to make certain evaluations, which is one thing prohibited “in session” by the Auditor’s Code . And there are times in life also when evaluations are actually appropriate. But knowing you, you might have resolved what I’m looking at here.
But I do think that the use of the ARC triangle is one thing that would do very well for some of the points on the Auditor’s code and that idea fits in with the Code of a Scientologist, point 2: To use the best I know of Scientology to the best of my ability to help my family, friends, groups and the world.”
Marildi – I just don’t see that way I guess. This is how I see it:
Neither invalidation or evaluation are necessary to register someone for a service. What is necessary is an explanation of what service is available and that is delineated on the Grade Chart. In early times registrars did not collect funds, this was done by accounts. Ethics Officers do not need to invalidate or evaluate either, they can assist an individual to sort out their own conditions and apply them.
There is a staff function to do with post performance, but that is an evaluation of production, not the individual. i.e. there is a big difference between telling someone that their production on post is not in an acceptable range (given that the quotas actually makes sense) and telling someone they are a downstats. Its the difference between your stats are down, let’s get that sorted out and you are a downstat.
When the Mission switched over to policies which aligned with the 1976 auditor’s code, what was introduced was ethics gradients, including the practice of speaking derogatorily about another and speaking derogatorily to another. At the same time, I personally observed that this practice of denouncing others to their face and behind their backs became more and more common. When I pointed out that these types of actions, which coerce by invalidation and by evaluation were not okay because of the debilitating action on cases subjected to them, I was crammed on the auditor’s code of 1976, particularly the point that this only applied in session.
Frankly, I don’t see why these points cannot apply out of session. They are otherwise known as courtesy and respect and tolerance among most people on the planet. People in service organizations do not invalidate or evaluate another, except perhaps in agreed upon learning environments or environments intended to restrain or punish. There’s a big difference between offering someone ideas and asserting that they are out-ethics, have WHs, need cramming, etc. when they are not the staff of an organization.
One can say something to the effect of, I’ve noticed that you seem to be struggling with whatever, is this correct? Would you like some assistance with that? As opposed to you fucking downstat, get your ass in gear loser or you’re going to be sec checked. Maybe you think I’m very “namby pamby” in this viewpoint but personally, I think it is an extreme invalidation to treat someone who is devoting their life to staff in less that courteous and respectful ways and I think it is a totally disrepectful behavior to interfere in a public person’s life by asserting that what you are doing is the only thing right and what they are doing is worthless.
So no, I don’t think there is ANY justification for it. And I do think the auditor’s code was changed so that people could not say, “but the auditor’s code IS the moral code of Scientology,” and demand to be treated with respect. To my mind, the essence of respect is validation and valuation of another human being. It doesn’t have to be over the top fawning adulation, but it can at least be sufficient not to run over another person because you “know” what is best for them.
OMG, Maria, this is a GREAT post! And just what I was hoping for. I know I seemed to give a different impression (though I hope you got that I wasn’t talking about inval at all, just eval) but I don’t think there’s anything you said I don’t agree with. (My sentiments while on staff were like yours, for example.) It’s a matter of being able to differentiate between what actually constitutes eval or inval and to differentiate between what is and isn’t going to create a positive effect – in other words, the practical application of all the valid principles you mentioned. Sometimes there seems to be a fine line. No, “namby pamby” is hardly what I would call your ideas on this – they are stellar!
I think it would be a great subject to have a whole blog post and thread on. I myself want to sort out, as I say, the actual practical application of these points. Recently there have been comments to the effect that evaluation and invalidation are a good thing and I was really ridging on giving those a big, blanket okay, much less encouraging them. Such a slippery slope!
One key to all this, I agree, is the difference between evaluating and invalidating the individual vs. his actions (or statements) or production, and even with those it could be said in a way that isn’t a generality (or at least usually?). That is what some of us have been doing with each other and, again, I think it should be looked at and sorted out amongst us as to just what the moral code is here – or anywhere. And I would love to hear any further comment you may have on this subject, anytime!
Marildi: I have been working through a lot in the last several years and one of the things is comprehending this idea of native state or static and the definition of a thetan. A thetan has no mass, but it part of the theta universe, which also has no mass, and is not a part of the time-space continuum. So if we are both thetans, and we are part of the universe of theta, then that can only mean that we are not separate. Only the physical world has separation and in fact separation is what the physical world consists of – little separated parcels of theta surrounded by sheaths of mass and energy identified as things. Take away the things and all that remains is a “sea” of theta that isn’t separate. And that means there is no time-space limitations. And that means there is no waiting for answers, indeed the answer is at the point of question and so on.
So that means that you pervade and share being with me with no separation. Only at the point of division do either of us take on a persona that takes up a point on a comm line. The persona does not have to be a physical body and indeed it isn’t – we just misidentify it as being that way. The reverse is true – the body is immersed in us.
In a telepathic communication, is there really a cause, distance, effect? Well, that depends on how much space there is and if there is just an infinitesimal space, the smallest possible space before there is no space, then cause and effect are instantaneous and it seems to me that one would be one with the other and there could be no statement of who caused what.
And this, I have come to believe, explains why almost all of the truth teachings, the mystical teachings exhort pilgrims to love one another and to seek to be the purest possible reflection of love. Not a grasping and possessive love, but a freeing unconditional love. And this would make absolute sense for in loving another so freely and fully and unconditionally, one cannot help but love oneself and in that state there is no resistance, no fear, no ridge, no division and no fixed conditions whatsoever. But to be in the world at all, and communicating with others embodied, one has to play the part of cause and effect and limit oneself. But one can undo and mitigate the effects by always, always operating from the point of view that the other in front of you is your brother in the theta universe and you cannot diminish him without diminishing yourself – so its best to seek to act in the most loving, virtuous, respectful ways possible and have done with creating more and more and more disconnection, separation, pain, and horror. I have found that practicing this produces massive TA and case change. Its found in a variation as: “I recognize the divinity in you.” Its found in the admonition: judge not, that ye be judged. Its found in the great command: love your neighbor as yourself.
Anyway those are my thoughts on all this.
And I do think that auditing that does not embody this will ultimately fail and degrade instead of free and illuminate and transcend the bounds and limitations of the world we co-create.
Yes. Yes. And yes.
Maria, If I could have stated this as well as you just have, then I already would have. It is the answer to the answer to the answer.
Thank you so much, Maria. Much of what you said I have come to realize too – mostly because of discussions here. Just not long ago, because of having a better concept of Oneness, it hit me that this is what LRH was talking about when he said that an instant read was not even the speed of light but INSTANT. Before, I could never quite wrap my wits around that, thinking he must mean it figuratively. But now I realize that this is the reason why it is that, as soon as the auditor has put into words and had the thought him/herself, it “reaches” the pc and there is only the infinitesimal comm lag in the mechanics of the e-meter itself..
Getting the concept of Oneness made an interesting change in my viewpoint toward others – not that it can’t further evolve in that direction (ha ha) but the momentum is there. I recall that when it first became somewhat real to me I posted a comment that “Love thy neighbor” had taken on new meaning. Actually, the change in viewpoint for me extends to all life now, which I got largely from our man Campbell and his research. Plus, he too is “preaching” the same thing as what you said about other truth teachings, “to love one another and to seek to be the purest possible reflection of love.” His wording is to “become Love.” And his teaching as regards relating to others is basically to help them do so too.
This gets back to inval and eval. I’m thinking now that like everything else it’s not an absolute but that one should keep in mind what would assist the person toward greater “Love.” That can be tricky and liable to justification, but there are times (though probably few) where advised eval or inval about a person’s deeds (not the person) would be the thing to do to accomplish greater Love. For everybody (by definition :-))
And this, as others have noted too, is what you are doing so well with your wise postings – increasing the Love through greater understanding. All that study and hard work you’ve invested is bearing fruit and you are very fertile ;-).
Maria,
Your paragraph hit the crux of what I think went wrong with the application of ethics/justice.
” One can say something to the effect of, I’ve noticed that you seem to be struggling with whatever, is this correct? Would you like some assistance with that? As opposed to you fucking downstat, get your ass in gear loser or you’re going to be sec checked. Maybe you think I’m very “namby pamby” in this viewpoint but personally, I think it is an extreme invalidation to treat someone who is devoting their life to staff in less that courteous and respectful ways and I think it is a totally disrepectful behavior to interfere in a public person’s life by asserting that what you are doing is the only thing right and what they are doing is worthless. ”
I do remember very well when someone would take you aside and offer ASSISTANCE in moving up the Conditions – it was a ‘help’ flow and it was genuine.
I also remember the change when ethics gradients (the practice of speaking derogatorily about another and speaking derogatorily to another, etc.) started to take effect. It became an area where one was admonished either overtly or covertly for perceived transgressions, poor production, or simply not being fully dedicated (whatever that meant).
The G.O. had set up shop around the same time in the Mission/Org I was in – it all became very secretive – definitely not like earlier years. Goldenrod was much more visible on public whereas before the odd one would come out on a staff member, or sent down from Worldwide.
It became ‘hit’ not ‘hat’ and many started running around with a hunted look. I even remember someone being admonished at staff meeting for buying a b&w TV as somehow being off-purpose. Hell, I had just bought a COLOR tv the day before – a beautiful little Sony Trinitron … talk about missed withold 🙂
In the later ’70s witch hunts were common and goldenrod was flying fast & furious. Going to ethics was now demeaning, communication was cut by your fellow public & staff – a very degrading experience. Liability was the condition of choice for some of the most trivial transgressions – hell, they were likely Danger at most.
But, the org got painted & white-gloved numerous times – I guess that was the only plus-point out of it.
The fun had gone out of scientology at that point where I was at and I routed off staff shortly after.
I ended up going public and heading to St.Hill in England. It still had that old flavour I remembered and there were a lot of old-timers carrying on that original vision and feel.
I can’t remember how many times I was asked’ How’s it going’, or ‘Do you need any help?’ The staff there were simply fantastic and bent over backwards to see that you were winning & moving towards that mountain. Gosh, even the REG would come & have coffee or dinner with you just to chat about life – no hand out for more money, just genuine communication. I had many dinners with the staff there – they are truly friends and I care deeply about them.
I was there when St. Hill went St. Hill size for the 2nd time. Things changed again just prior to the event. The big boys from INT showed up, all personal effects of staff & public were hidden away, collections of HCOBs used for the OT levels were confiscated, ST. Hill & AO staff were running around with fear in their eyes, the Captain & others replaced and the new regime took over.
Prior to that you could talk to the Captain or she would just come up and start a conversation. Now, there was no communication, the new Captain would be surrounded by communicators, and public & staff in the hallway would part like the sea when they would walk thru, daring to look at them or totally out of sight as the warning that the ‘Captain was coming’ had been passed on prior to his arrival.
A sad sequence of events that was.
Here’s a thought for you Marildi:
Do the “psychs” have a code? Like a Code of ethics or something like the Auditor’s Code?
What do you think would happen if you compared the two?
Click to access Principles-of-Medical-Ethics-2010-Edition.aspx
That link came out as a link without good identification. It is the online link to the American Psychiatric Association, “The Principles of Medical Ethics With Annotations Especially
Applicable to Psychiatry.”
I don’t know about any of you other people, but Chris Thompson delivers.
Very interesting.
Yes “in session” allowed all kinds of behavior out of session, especially eval and inval, which was later standardly used as “too gruesomes” per the LRH policy on “getting compliance”.
I would say that comparing Scientology circa 1947-1964 to Scientology circa 1965-1986 would be valuable. Those two Scientologys are definitely data of comparable magnitude, and the comparison would produce a lot of cognitions.
“…what could be more important than to seek out these weak points in the writings”
Geir, let me sum up what I’ve come to and have tried to say already at different points: The tech should be reviewed to determine what the inconsistencies are, as there obviously are some. Whether or not they are indeed LRH’s inconsistencies or someone’s alterations of his writings, or are merely mislabeled as inconsistencies based on lack of knowledge and experience – all that remains to be seen by the review and sort-out that I’m certain will be done and feel must be done to salvage a true gift to mankind.
That sort-out should include ALL tech – auditing, training, admin and ethics – and it would require a team of trained and experienced tech and admin terminals, including those who have the data on the history of all the changes.
I’ve said too that I have no problem and actually agree that any of the tech can and should be researched and improved upon – while leaving what LRH achieved as its own body of knowledge and tech. And as well, I have no problem with anyone not practicing Scientology at all and instead practicing something else.
But getting back to what you said, with the first two paragraphs above in mind you can see why I agree with you totally on “what could be more important than to seek out the weak points in the writings.” However, as for myself, I don’t have the quals that are necessary for the sort-out, and thus I don’t particularly see it as my own personal mission. When I consider that (and other factors), so far I see my contribution as more along the lines of participating in the discussions and shedding light where I can – and having light shed on my own ideas is the personal benefit.
In relation to the current discussion, I’ve also come to realize that I should invest my energies in exchanges with those who are able or at least willing to try to be rational and also willing to have a true comm cycle – which is why I appreciate the ones I have with you, as I’ve said before. Thank you for this latest one, truly. And you can take a win on my having been shifted to whatever degree to a less fixed attitude. Some of what you said did impinge. 🙂
Sorry, I outdid myself and really got the above comment in the wrong place this time. LOL, how logical is THAT? 😀
Way to go, Maria! Johnny on the SPOT!
The first big prominent contrast which sticks out to me is a comparison of point 3s.
1952 3. Use the processes which improve the preclear’s case.
1976 3. I promise to administer only Standard Tech to a preclear in the standard way.
That is a huge technical difference which, to me, is very revealing.
Does anybody else see what I see?
It is a major shift from Result Focus to Process Focus. A serious decline in value.
Also, a serious decline in self-determinism for the Auditor. It went from “Do what you see as producing results” to “do what you are told to do and nothing else.”
Yes. Process Focus cuts down creativity, responsibility and self determinism. It also makes for variable results.
This is an Alanzo-approved conclusion.
Well done, Geir.
I see the change in this point as one illustrating LRH’s desire to codify the processes that would fit each case and will get the best results. It has nothing to do with the self-determinism of the auditor – you’re looking at an entirely different frame of reference there. We’re talking about a precise technology, not an activity of anyone’s personal think.
Even on the earlier version, the implication was that you would determine the best process based on what had already been discovered – not some personal think of one’s own. And, as I say, in the later version the specific processes needed for any given case had already been figured out and been found to be workable.
This conclusion is forbidden. It is not Alanzo approved..
Geir please delete this conclusion from the board.
It’s entheta.
I think the basic premise that any auditor starts with is to improve a person’s case by the use of Standard Tech.
So, what is Standard Tech? A process brought out in original form direct from research? The same process changed as and improvement was discovered? What the current ‘church’ promotes now as ‘Standard Tech’? Vinaire’s way of WordClearing or doing TR0? Original Book One? R3R? NED?
From an auditor viewpoint, Standard Tech theoretically would be the exact LRH minus all arbitrairies.
The purpose of auditing remains the same.
Whether or not changes achieve that purpose is another thing.
I find one of the poorest changes in the Auditor’s Code which led to the door being wide open to flagrant alteration of tech to be the following:
1976 25. I promise to cooperate fully with the legal organizations of Dianetics and Scientology as developed by L. Ron Hubbard in safeguarding the ethical use and practice of the subject according to the basics of Standard Tech.
26 (scientology.org website)
I promise to cooperate fully with the authorized organizations of Dianetics and Scientology in safeguarding the ethical use and practice of those subjects.
When it comes down to it, one hopes that what he receives is what the Old Man intended whether getting auditing withing or without the church.
“The purpose of auditing remains the same.”
I will contest that. If the purpose goes from “achieve the result” to “follow the process”, then the purpose most certainly does not remain the same.
I’m would think that the auditor thru his training would know what the general EP a process or rundown or Grade would be heading for – in other words ‘achieving a result’.
By ‘following the process’ would it not follow that the auditor would expect that?
Take Grade 0 – Communication. It is pretty obvilus that the processes of this Grade are addressing that subject and these processes, while each have their own EP, culminate into the Grade EP. By ‘following the processes/rundown’s, one does/should ‘achieve the result’.
I’m not saying ALL process will achieve a result on a specific PC – unreading items/no charge, but, the general movement up the Bridge is following processes to achieve a desired result.
Great, Dennis. I was just about to post the same comment.
The whole point of standardizing the processes was to make the desired result more certain. And I would add that the results that were worked out as the desirable ones were those that by research were found to handle the common, basic stumbling blocks and barriers of beings.
Anyway, I’m so glad there are a couple of well trained people (you and Maria) posting here!
Thanks Marlidi,
Another quick point:
Each one of us runs a process differently in that we have various levels of confront, awareness & understanding. Things I would have NOT considered an overt years ago I consider so NOW.
If I look at my viewpoint when running the Grades back in ’72-’73, and looking how I would run them now; there is a vast change in my scope of confront and awareness. I would run them now with a much broader look. Yes, they would run quick, but my ability to SEE those minute nuances within Communication & confront would open new doors.
As an aside, Grades were key-outs and to me could be run over & over right up the Grade Chart with an ever increasing breadth of wins.
I think this also links in with some of what Elizabeth runs with ARCx’s – a more basic look and more astounding wins.
It’s an evolution and, to me, whatever works is a good thing until there is no change.
Me too Dennis.
Dennis, another excellent point you make here. And you know, it’s not just a matter of the pc being at different levels on the Bridge as to how deep the process runs. This also varies from person to person as regards each of them on their first run of any given process or level. (I’ve been amazed by the differences.) And it has to do with yet another ingenious aspect to the tech in that, completely contrary to tech being evaluative, it is very much the opposite – i.e. when any pc or student has the realization that he now has (for example) the “Ability to communicate freely with anyone on any subject,” no one doing Standard tech is going to challenge that. No one is going to say that the pc’s (or student’s) “scope of confront and awareness” (as you worded it) could be higher – even though it perhaps could be, or perhaps it isn’t as high as that of some other pc’s. Besides the fact that such an evaluation would mess up a case – it doesn’t matter anyway because all will eventually come out in “the wash of tech” and get resolved and also because beings do vary.
I have no doubt in my own mind that with training and some experience you find out how brilliant the tech really is, as you well know too, my friend. And this is why it’s pretty rare if not virtually impossible to find critics among trained auditors.
Dennis, I had a thought on your last line: “It’s an evolution and, to me, whatever works is a good thing until there is no change.”
My understanding is that all the lower levels of the Bridge are meant to be taken just to the point where the pc is ready for the next level (i.e. at the point of EP) and all of those lower levels are mainly intended to get the pc ready for OT levels where the real core of case is handled. So the faster they move up, the better. I heard an OT VII completion once describe all levels before VII as essentially set-ups for it (just her personal concept, apparently).
And of course you’re right that the Grades are only key-outs (or releases), not erasures, which is why the certs state “Provisional.” But I’m sure you know too that the C/S may direct any of them to be done again if they have keyed back in enough that they are interfering with the pc’s life or auditing. And I believe you are right that gains can be had when they are re-done whether “needed” or not. This, btw, I would say is why the CoS is getting away with C/S’ing OT’s on the Grades (and objectives too) and they are winning – although in actual fact they should be moving up the Bridge. So it’s a stop. (And it’s just to make income, I suppose.)
Anyway, that would all be in a “Bridge setting” but what Elizabeth or Chris (and others) are doing with ARCx’s etc, or what some of them may be doing with KHTK or whatever else – this type of thing isn’t done within that Bridge structure and is thus a matter of “whatever works,” as you put it. However, the Bridge, as it is laid out, per my understanding is more streamlined and efficient and faster (when it’s “available,” that is) than any system of “whatever is working.” And that is the essence and the beauty of it as a set pattern or route.
(I had a lot of time I could be on the computer today, so lucky you gets these long-winded comments. :-))
Marildi wrote:
However, the Bridge, as it is laid out, per my understanding is more streamlined and efficient and faster (when it’s “available,” that is) than any system of “whatever is working.” And that is the essence and the beauty of it as a set pattern or route.
The standard bridge structure has been available since LRH released it. And all the corrections have been available since they were released, too.
And look at the mess that Scientology is in today.
I think what Geir is saying is if the emphasis on that standard bridge structure actually worked, with all its corrections, then Scientology would not have a violent psycho running the Church, thousands of families destroyed over the decades through disconnection (another “correction” to getting results on the standard bridge), as well as all the other problems that Scientology faces worldwide.
I think that Gier would say that this is a product of following the process too much and not following results.
Really, Marildi. If you look around at the state that standard Scientology is in, how can you possibly say that it works?
Al, by Bridge not being available I meant, for example, that some people aren’t allowed to do it for whatever reason (like Chris, with the SP declare – or you, for the same reason), but mainly what I meant is that the Bridge – with standard tech – isn’t even available in the CoS. It may be in the freezone but there again, not available if logistics don’t permit.
The Bridge structure today “with all its corrections,” as you put it, is not per LRH materials – so that “Bridge” doesn’t count. No, standard Scientology is NOT in. And I’m amazed that you continue to paint the picture in that light unless you need to do such (consciously or not)to give more “support” for your viewpoint. 😦
And I don’t agree with you, my new friend, or even with Geir my old friend (assuming you are speaking for him correctly) in the assessment or logic of the above. It is pure begging the question. And neither do I agree that tech is following a process rather than result. That is speaking from lack of training.
Alonzo: ” Really, Marildi. If you look around at the state that standard Scientology is in, how can you possibly say that it works? ”
Standard Scientology?? Far from it.
The Bridge is a structure or guide – yes, but it’s people who determine how it is used or abused.
It takes a lot more than a written chart to evolve into the ‘church’s’ version of scientology today.
It takes a dedicated effort to destroy.
Yeah Dennis, kind of like “standard car mechanic’ing.” I’ve sifted through dozens of car mechanics through the years including the “standard tech” of going directly to the dealer of the brands of vehicles for which I was seeking maintenance and repairs. I did land on a good mechanic through trial and error and his results are very standard and because of this I have stayed with him for approximately 12 years now. Whereas I received erratic service and results from others including the dealers.
I have not found “price of service” to be an indicator of “relative quality of service.”
Wow, Dennis and Marildi –
The standard Bridge and standard Scientology seem to be very elusive, difficult to implement and keep together, easily subverted, and very scarce.
So with so many thousands of Scientologists all over the world, 97.5 % of whom want nothing more than to apply standard Scientology in the standard way, how can you say that Scientology works if it is in the shape it is in?
There’s the PTS/SP tech, auditing rules on case gain, etc. which were all supposed to detect and route guys like Miscavige, but didn’t. There is ethics and justice procedures that were supposed to get rid of him once he was found out, but didn’t. There are confessional procedures and even auditing that is supposed to handle the case of an “SP”, but never did.
And now, this standard scientology can only be found in a few places on the planet, per your arguments.
So, how is it that Scientology, this thing that is supposed to do all the things that it failed to do, works?
Very persuasive.
So, how is it that Scientology, this thing that is supposed to do all the things that it failed to do, works?
I don’t know about anybody else, but these days I see it like this:
Scientology doesn’t work. You work. The auditor works. When the auditor’s code is fully in place, you work together, and that is very freeing. The processes are a means of exercising the the abilities and actions of the mind and the spirit. They are a means of assisting an individual to recognize his own relationships, own power, own decision, own self-awareness. The processes only provide a framework to explore one’s self. The whole point of an EP is ensuring that the exercise isn’t shifted to something else in the middle of the exercise thus making it impossible to finish the exercise. This exercises persistence. Persistence. this prevents the auditor from doing actions that result in yet another incomplete cycle of action, stacked on mountains of incomplete cycles of action. This develops the ability to hold a position, to keep at something, to not get sidetracked, to face the storms of the mind with equanimity.
LRH pointed out somewhere that the easiest thing a thetan does is change his mind. And that is why his postulates and decisions don’t stick. He gets tired of creating the same thing over and over and gives up on it for more interesting things when he gets bored or hits a point of discomfort. Its the sad story of people’s lives – they give up before they hit pay-dirt. I think the truth is that when you exercise persistence you come to realize you are exercising persistence and you realize that it won’t kill you to exercise persistence and you realize that persistence is actually required to have anything in the world! For the world is a persistence and it is persisting. And in seeing that for what it is, that is the end of its enthralling and captivating persisting mysteriousness. Its actually very zen. But only if it is done with the full application of the auditor’s code.
Maria just leveled.
Leveled? . . . Well something is happening here because Maria’s posts have me confronting the “right things” and causing niggling little q & a’s and whatnots to just shake out of my mind like my dog shaking water off her back. I have a mile wide FN that you really could not kill by killing me right now.
+plenty
Maria,
Loved your thoughts:
“The processes are a means of exercising the the abilities and actions of the mind and the spirit. They are a means of assisting an individual to recognize his own relationships, own power, own decision, own self-awareness. The processes only provide a framework to explore one’s self. ”
This directly relates to Al’s questions. It is up to the individual to discover for himself.
The Bridge is a structured guide to discovery of oneself and his relation to others in ever-increasing levels of enlightenment – this structure is similar to levels in other philosophies/practices – Rosicrucian-ism would be one. The data is a culmination of discoveries by various individuals & put into a sequence.
That sequence, as you know, was adjusted over the years. I’m not here to argue the validity of the data but simply to point out that it was one man’s work that accomplished this monstrous project.
I’m sure if he wanted to rip off people’s hard-earned cash he could have found much easier ways to do so.
One can be a car salesman and sell a great product with honesty & integrity with the idea of providing his customer with a safe reliable mode of transport – so happy in fact, that the customer will tell other how great the experience was.
OR, one can sell a dog of a car to someone; a car in such rough shape that it is a danger to the buyer & others, under the guise of a ‘perfect car – the best on the road’, and people will stay away in droves.
Both are selling cars, but one has turned the tech of salesmanship into a sham and sells overt products.
The same can be said of a Bookstore Officer selling the student what he needs or ripping off an old senile man for an $80k library package.
It’s not the books, the data or the structure. It is again, totally up to the individual.
He can use scientology for good or evil. The same goes with any other philosophy or religion.
In my own case, I was there for myself & others and we were winning big time early on. When the G.O. and S.O. stepped in, certain individuals within those organizations started to suppress – heavily.
Now in my case the goal of ‘freedom’ for my fellows and me was PARAMOUNT. Nothing could be more important – that urge was with me for as long as I can remember – aeons.
To have someone in authority within the church say ‘ I will make your life a living hell & you’ll be kicked out of scientology for eternity’, or, ‘ If you continue investigating me, you’ll never see OT or your ‘F-ing Bridge again’ These are a couple of choice verbatim communications given to me. Well, let’s just say it has a dampening effect on one’s actions.
I caved. To me I would have lost everything for myself & others who I could help, and, by caving, I also had lost everything.
My solution was to get up the Bridge so I could hold a position – never to be struck down spiritually again, and help my fellows. And that I did.
I don’t blame LRH for giving these guys the tools to destroy others – it was no secret that this was powerful stuff and could have nasty effects in the wrong hands.
These guys had a choice as you do AL, you can blame it on a piece of paper or a book with words in it, or you can look at it sanely and wonder ‘Why is it that my pc & I got such great wins out of this piece of data and Joe over there applied it and his pc came out nastier than ever yet Joe said the session went ‘great’ ?
The short answer Al is that it was never you that turned you off – yes, you did make the final decision and agree that it was all bad, but it started earlier.
You’re a decent guy and I DO understand the animosity that pops out from time to time.
Really … it’s not that bad.
Maria: “So, how is it that Scientology, this thing that is supposed to do all the things that it failed to do, works?”
Geir hit the nail on the head when he said that you “leveled” on this one. It couldn’t have been said better – you took hold of a great big subject of understandable criticism and put it in perspective in one fell swoop. And Chris’ comment that your posts bring out a confront of “right things” also couldn’t have been said better. That is the kind of effect your broad and knowledgeable viewpoint has the power to create. I’m so glad you are part of the conversation here. 🙂
Well, even though my question was never answered, it seems that everyone had a big win on it so I think I’ll end off there on that one.
Your needles are floating!
Thank you everyone! 🙂 And I mean that quite literally!
Alanzo,
Love it, though hubly suggest you apply your genius to providing guidance as to how to evaluate datums of comparable magnitude from Scientology and outside of Scientology.
For example, compare the IAS to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Both are billion dollar plus entities, but the Gates foundation reports accurate, precise and verifiable information on what they do, their overhead, etc. The IAS provides PR or lies on their activies, and keeps actual financial records hidden, provides unlimited expenses to its controller, innurement runs rampant. How do we evaluate a factually reporting entity against a PR/lie machine? Same goes for Volunteer ministers, which are defined as people who applied scientology to make a better world, an is counted with as little as “did you use ARC with anyone this week?” or “did you apply the communication formula this week”.
Or, did you make Barley formula for your baby this week.
The Volunteer Ministers arose in the 2000s, and I had already gone “SP” by then.
The reason I compared VMs to the Red Cross is because the VMs show up at disasters, just like the Red Cross does.
But what VMs do at disasters and what Red Cross workers do at disasters is very different.
Yes, and what Minister’s or Rabbi’s or Priest’s do at disasters is very different from what the Red Cross does.
Does that make everyone other than the Red Cross wrong?
They are different and administer their services differently.
Comparable magnitude? In a sense ‘yes’, but not in a large way.
We’re not saying “right or wrong”.
We are applying Logic 8, just as LRH intended, to Scientology in order to evaluate it.
“Right and Wrong” is a personal choice which enters the process way down the line.
Volunteer Ministers arose in 1976 with the publication of the Volunteer Minister’s Handbook. I entered Scientology green in July 1977 and without coaching or even a comm course under my belt, I nevertheless read and applied the VMH successfully getting for me and in my own estimation amazing results. I did touch assists on anyone who would 1. Complain of a body ache or pain, and 2. Would hold still for 5 minutes.
Ditto on what the difference between VM and Red Cross at disasters. But then I never understood that it needed to be hard or complicated to use Scientology to better conditions. One thing more before I get flamed is that when I was 22 years old and found Scientology, I had no frame of reference to be of value or use to help people. VM’ing supplied both the purpose and a tech to do this. It was a giant step better than what I had before discovering it and I did no harm using it.
Alanzo,
I think your example using the volunteer ministers is absolutely perfect. I was merely pointing out another piece of LRH tech that people have been thoroughly conditioned NOT to apply, and honestly, is a huge challenge for many people to overcome: Look don’t listen. It is not hard to go to any city and find someone helped by the Salvation Army or Red Cross by walking up to strangers and asking if they know of anyone who has been helped. You wouldn’t find anyone helped by the VMs without a contact list being provided by the COS. To a Scientologist, an assist is more real help than a hot meal and can change their lives, again because of conditioning being that Scientology is the only thing that can really help. Such people have probably never gone several days or a week without food. There is a lot of conditioning that prevents easy observation of data and productive comparison by people still in the mind set.
Mike, this is another very constructive post. It indicates some of the bath water that needs to be thrown out but not the baby – since it doesn’t do an A=A with the two. Like!
If there is one thing that the new resurgent INDEPENDENT SCIENTOLOGISTS have right, it’s that emphasizing the earlier LRH tech, and dumping the later tech, can get rid of the cult in Scientology.
Probably the biggest sign of a Scientology cultist is “Scientology is the only thing that can help.” That datum right there is the source of untold fanatic damage in Scientology.
Ask Tom Cruise.
By applying Logic 8 to Scientology itself, a scientologist begins to assume a wider context for Scientology’s ideas, and begins to develop judgement on the wider world in which Scientology exists. The fanatic’s perceptions begin to spread out and become more tolerant and accepting of non-Scientology tech.
+1
+1
Oh.
I will, Mikey Baby.
I will.
The comments in this sub-thread are referring to the CoS and its NON-Scn activities – not to any actual materials of Scn by LRH. And nobody disagrees with those outpoints except maybe the Churchies, who probably aren’t going to be reading or posting here anyway (they’re not “allowed” by the CoS). So you’re preaching to the choir at best and at worst simply parroting what has been said over and over. It gets to be old and is not relevant to any productive discussion. IMHO
Good stuff!
(pulls up a chair via bookmark tricks)
ohhhhh I’m gonna like this series! Thank you Alanzo, Mwah!
It is my understanding that there was a day when Scientology was fun. Was that back when the order was to “Use the processes which improve the preclear’s case”?. Like, “open your eyes to a brand new world!” ?
Aida Thomas does a great job documenting the “before and after” of Scientology’s scriptures:
I was thinking about any other church that handles the spirit and mind electronically to compare with but do not found any, so for me, scientology is not a religion but an electronic psychotherapy. I guess that a lack of a datum of comparable magnitude can serve to this purpose too.
Rafael, are you calling it an electronic psychotherapy because of the use of the e-meter as a tool that measures the very real electronic phenomena of the mind?
Dear marildi, thanks for your attention, well, not only for this, in fact i have been analizing the informatics advances from 1950 more or less to present time not only the e-meter appearance and came to the conclusion that lrh used these in the creation of dianetics and scientology as mind therapy and social control tools. It is not necesarily bad, because it follows the natural laws existing in the human beings but with bad intention it can be harmful.
Rafael, thanks for your attention as well. 🙂
The point you make about bad intention is one I have come to see as the key element with regard to Scientology’s past and future. It seems to me that what will be most needed for its future success is a wisely thought-out plan to ensure that bad intention doesn’t become the determining factor again.
Dear marildi, you are a good person but a wisely thought-out plan is out KSW # 1 and you know wath it means inside the church of scientology.
Dear Rafael, I’m not at all thinking in terms of the CoS and equating Scientology with it – because they don’t equate. I’m referring to the practice of Scn based on LRH materials only – primarily the technical materials and not necessarily the policy letters.
I don’t think you were participating in the recent discussion about KSW #1 but during that one I concluded that it may or may not be the case that this PL is in itself destructive. I do fully agree that it has been destructively applied – however, there is everything to be said for adhering strictly to a particular technology that has been found to be workable.
The biggest mistake in the application of KSW #1, as I see it, was to apply it to admin and not just tech as it clearly intended. And there have been other misapplications based on that PL, some deliberate (as with the CoS) but possibly for the most part just rote misapplication due to not knowing and applying the PLs that explicitly require interpretation and application of policy to be aligned with expansion and with achieving the purpose of well-trained and audited public.
Dear marildi, so you say, ” I’m not at all thinking in terms of the CoS and equating Scientology with it – because they don’t equate. I’m referring to the practice of Scn based on LRH materials only – primarily the technical materials and not necessarily the policy letters ” . then i can deduce that marildi is a boy of Astar paramejgian, Deputy sector commander ( Cap. Bill Robertson ). i will provide a link from one russian guy from the Galactic Patrol from moscow ( Thorn alion a.k.a. alleyon ) as info:
http://www.galac-patra.org/
Dear Rafael, I’m not sure exactly what you are saying but please be less esoteric and tell me directly what you want to say so that we can avoid mis-duplication as much as possible and so that we can carry on a productive conversation. (And at least refer to me as a girl. :-))
So you are a girl, an interesting one should i say, my point is your ” wisely thought-out plan to ensure that bad intention doesn’t become the determining factor again “. and as this plan is very diferent if you are a churchi or a freezoner i am trying to figure out your position for that matter. what i can say by now is to avoid false pretensions and assumpsions and stick to the integrity and honesty is the key on this..
Wow, Rafael, if you have any consideration about my being a Churchie you must not have read many of my comments.
Also, whose and which false pretensions and assumptions were you referring to?
marildi, i have no consideration at all to freely communicate with a churchie, the problem which i have found is that churchies usually run away and fast when i use my analisis ability to lrh, scientology and scientology related materials. It seems that cowardice and not looking to the internet has been taught to them by their area ethics officers exept may be for the intel and legal personnel.
The false pretentions to wich i am refering to are many and has been and will be covered in this blog. By whom ?, lrh and current leaders of the church issuing policy based on these false assumptions. So you will undertand my opinion in this, the errors of the church will not be handled changing leaders I.M.O.
Rafael, I am definitely not a “churchie.”
I’m interested in an example of the false assumptions you speak of so I can get a better understanding of your viewpoint that changing leaders won’t handle the errors.
If you are not a churchie what is your position ? freezone, independent, gnostic, agnostic, ateism ? i would love to know it. Dear, changing leaders is not the solution, our leaders are looking with honesty the solution to the bad practice of scientology worldwide. the false assumptions are many and will be covered in this blog as soon as Geir decides to post the theme on these so be patient.
Dear Rafael,
(1) I’m an Independent.
(2) Which leaders do you mean who are “looking with honesty to the solution to the bad practice of Scientology worldwide”- the CoS leaders??
(3) This particular thread on “Evaluation of Scn” may be the closest Geir will get to a theme on its assumptions.
I think a recent development as reported on Marty’s blog is very relevant to this discussion between Marildi and R. Nunez.
I am referring to Debbie Cook’s blockbuster email to her fellow CoS Scientologists:
http://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/reformation-division-within-corporate-scientology/
Dear marildi, our church of scientology leaders and the independent scientology leaders, the problem is that both are fighting an unrealized enemy, the false lrh philosophical assumptions, correct these and you will have a beutiful church and religious practice ( but first you should dodge with this f…. ksw # 1 ). Geir is a genious and do not worry about he being thousands of times closest to the false scientology assumptions.
Valkov, it seems that truth sells, check this on paul haggis and related subjets:
http://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/paul-haggis/
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=HJ5h9o0kL-w&vq=medium
An electronic psychotherapy can be compared to a non-electronic psychotherapy, right?
Take out the electronic part and you have a psychotherapy.
Much can be learned about Dianetics especially, from comparing Frued and especially Breuer’s work in psychotherapy 100 years before Hubbard. In fact, you will find the argument Hubbard made for “talk therapy” came straight from these two guys. And you will see many similarities in Breuer’s work to Hubbard’s.
Comparing the two is very enlightening. It provides a much broader foundational context in which to evaluate Dianetics and then Scientology, too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Breuer
Everyone that was in Scientology has read KSW dozens, if not hundreds of times. How does an individual Scientologist, who is clearly charged with the preservation of pure Scientology apply KSW to 5 or 10 revisions of all the basic books since the founders death, and revision of hundreds of policy letters in a totalitarian structure?
How have others reconciled the “absolute” nature of KSW in 67 versus the various changes often marked, through the remaining quarter century of his life ending in 86
An individual’s capacity to justify and make things right and match his own world view is much greater than I have previously thought. The last two months of blogging have disabused me of any notion that this capacity has any limits.
Gier, I have so experienced that observation in working with ex SO especially, trying to help them build or rebuild lives, or careers, or support themselves. It seems almost as if people can be completely blind to these areas: SO members saying, especially recent ones, “I know how to work, I am one of the most productive people you have ever seen, I can be a millionaire within a couple of years if I put my mind to it”, etc. What they fail to see is especially in today’s SO, the hours have nothing to do with production, and survival requires both spin and lying; production is not pure production for its own sake, but culturally, impossible targets and quotas result in the aim of sufficient compliance and documentation to get your senior off your back. This, done for long enough becomes pervasive in personal habits.
I question whether this is a Scientology/cult phenomena, or a basic human flaw.
I think it is a basic human flaw magnified by cult conditioning – that people will make oneself and what one has invested oneself in right by justifying it. I believe this to be the flaw what mind control exploits.
Can’t argue with you on that, Geir. But it seems to me that the other side of the coin exists too. In other words, there’s a basic human flaw in making oneself right by criticizing (as opposed to justifying) one’s past connection to something that was at the time considered a good thing (by self and others) but is now getting lots of criticism – whether that criticism has actually been proved to be valid or not. It’s a type of jumping on the bandwagon, maybe. More likely, IMO, it’s the sunk cost fallacy in reverse, so to speak. (Is there such a thing? I can see that it would behoove me to learn all the fallacies if I’m going to hang out here. :-))
And also, this particular human flaw could be seen as what makes Black PR work or false data work.
With either of these two sides of the coin, I think we need to be careful that it doesn’t then act as a filter. And, yes, I’m working on that myself.
Bingo.
I have found an excellent course from Berkeley in Social Psychology, which has 2 or 3 lectures devoted solely to Cognitive Dissonance Theory. These lectures provide an excellent context to organize your observation here.
I highly recommend these lectures.
The lectures can be downloaded for free from iTunes. The lectures numbered 7, 8 and 9 are devoted to Cognitive Dissonance Theory. Here’s the course on iTunes.com:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/letters-science-c180v-001/id391536743
Also see my magnificent blog post on Cognitive Dissonance Reduction Techniques.
http://alanzosblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/cognitive-dissonance-more-about.html
Yup. And for me, the easiest thing is to fool myself that I have “hacked it.” And I personally am an EXPERT at this.
I do have my moments of “not stupid” though.
I state to the point of “ad-nausium” that I am just “meat.” I do this for two reasons:
1. I’m the only one here promoting such a view and it helps people think.
2. I would really like to be proven wrong and find some kind of evidence that is reliable either through reason or science that I really am a spiritual being.
The truth is that I really don’t know. I know that different experiences of cult-conditioning could produce BOTH beliefs as permanently fixed ideas.
From what I can see, there is no real evidence of a co-created universe and you in your “On Will” piece agree that it would not be provable from inside this universe.
I don’t know. I really don’t. I could be spirit, meat or both depending on the universe.
But I’m a “glass-is-at-the-half-way-point” kind of guy, so I’m just gonna drink the water and not complain.
A friend of mine suggested this koan to me: Sit and look at my awareness and just ask “What is this?” over and over. So far, the only answer I can come up with that is reliable is “wow.”
And that is enough.
_/!\_
Katageek: “I would really like to be proven wrong and find some kind of evidence that is reliable either through reason or science that I really am a spiritual being.”
KG, if you are truly serious about that, listen to about 10 minutes or less of this lecture – you may just find the scientific evidence you’re looking for.
Start at about 11:15 where the lecturer talks for a couple of minutes about his credentials and background as a scientist. Then for another 5 min or so, he describes briefly how he came to be involved in paranormal research and what sort of evidence he found, using strict scientific protocol. The whole lecture is actually an overview of his work in this regard but this short segment will give you the gist of what I think you’re looking for, and if it is you may want to look more into it. Let me know what you think, okay?
_/!\__
Marildi, I watched about twenty minutes.
Now he does use one piece of reliable science that has rocked our world, “The Double Slit Experiment.” And yes, that experiment kicks serious ass so hard that even the word “ass” becomes “ssa.”
🙂
… BUT …
He doesn’t discuss real protocols. NOTHING HE DID WAS LIKE THIS:
EXAMPLE: “My friend and I took some dice threw them into behind a visual shield. Then we BOTH EXTERIORIZED and went behind the shield, read the dice and recorded the results. AND THEY MATCHED. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN THAT WE DID THIS ALL AFTERNOON.”
He also made a number of what I call “SSS-es.” “Stupid Sweeping Statements.”
These are statements that are fluff and are obviously incorrect and make the claims and work of the pseudo-scientist sound actually important
EXAMPLE: (not literal but close enough): “This is the first time science has taken this seriously.”
REALLY? Honkey PUH-lease.
Okay, let’s take the double slit experiment and extrapolate it to the real world (a big BIG stretch) and say that whenever one observes a remote viewers claims through the lens of the scientific method that the claims collapse into a falsehood just like a light wave/particle collapses into a particle.
Let’s PRESUME that remote viewing is like the famous Michigan J. Frog animation and can only sing and dance when others aren’t looking.
What would this tell us?
It tells us that Science trumps Spirit. It tells us that rock ALWAYS breaks scissors.
So just remember, whenever someone says they can remote view YOU HAVE THE POWER THOUGH SCIENCE TO SHUT THEM DOWN BY TESTING THEIR CLAIMS IN REAL TIME.
SCIENCE = ROCK
ART = PAPER
RELIGION = SCISSORS
The double slit doesn’t tell me who is looking through these three lenses. Srry.
Maybe we “know about” spiritual matters because at the root of it all we are spiritual. And maybe because of the type of physically encrusted existence that we experience it is not possible to experience these spiritual matters anymore than it is possible for the monkey to experience the taste of a cookie he has clenched in his closed fist inside the too-narrow neck of a cookie jar.
Maybe there is at the root of the wave-collapse the intention to create from a field of “infinite possibilities” the perfect solidity of an “impossibility.”
KG, don’t forget that I specifically said it was just a brief overview but that, based on what was being said there, you may want to look more into it – in which case I think you will find a lot of examples equivalent to yours about the dice. There were careful records kept as to what was being observed and then verified afterwards. Yes, of course he made some sweeping statements and inferred so himself but also indicated that these have been fully detailed and documented.
I intentionally picked that particular video and the short segment of it just to give you a general idea of what the man states has been proven scientifically, so that you would bother to check it out without having to spend too much time. And as I said, if you were truly serious about your quest, I thought you would be interested in checking further into it. And, sweetie, I will also say that I hope you have enough un-biased rationality on this subject to be both skeptical AND open-minded. 😉
p.s. By the way, he does extrapolate the double-slit experiment to the everyday world. Just for you I found a place on this same video where he goes into it a bit, starting at about 1:40:30. Listen to at least 10 minutes. Here and there he alludes to things he said earlier in the lecture but I think you can get the general idea. Again, though, this is just a basic overview.
Compare Hubbard’s Ethics System to Aristotle’s Ethics System, specifically Hubbard’s “Greatest Good for the Greatest Number of Dynamics” to Aristotle’s “Golden Mean”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_mean_(philosophy)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomachean_Ethics#Book_II:_That_virtues_of_character_can_be_described_as_means
Reading Aristotle’s whole “Nicomachean Ethics” has many parallels to Scientology. In fact, comparing this text to many texts in Scientology brings about huge realizations about what Hubbard was actually up to. Specifically look for what Hubbard made a Scientologist responsible for, and what Aristotle made someone responsible for when talking about their ethics condition.
The texts can be found here:
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html
I have found the best way to get through Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” is with an audio book.
A free one can be found here:
http://librivox.org/the-nicomachean-ethics-by-aristotle/
This is the kind of Logic 8 exercise which you have to do on your own. I can not spoon-feed your evaluation, but I can tell you that you will definitely see Scientology ethics in a whole new light. I think any Scientologist would benefit from this application of Logic 8.
The ” greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics ” is not an ethics tool, it is the lrh big money and cheap personel justification. It was good to have a 4 dynamics formula to solve any problem but the remaining 4 are field for the managment handlig of resources.
You should check out Aristotle’s “Golden Mean”. It is a great formula to apply to living ethically. And when you compare it to Scientology’s, the differences are striking.
Mr. Nunez, I find that for me, the principle is exactly an “ethics tool”. It is very similar to Buddhist attitudes towards “Right Conduct” in life. Both incorporate the principle of “minimum destruction”, doing the least possible harm, for example.
But then, how LRH used it, or how you might use it, and how I might use it, could be 3 different cases.
So much seems to depend on a person’s intentions, doesn’t it?
Dear Mr. Valkov, the dynamics idea in this optimal solution formula is based in the ” fact ” that you are currently using the space of your body ( dynamic 1 ), the space of your wife and children ( dinamic 2 ), the space of your various related groups ( dinamic three ), the space of the mankind ( dinamik 4 ), the space of any living life form ( dinamic 5 ), the space of the M.E.S.T. universe (dinamic 6 ), the space of yourself as a stably exteriorized spirit and operational in space ( dinamic 7 ), the space of yourself as objetive cause over this universe and others increasingly up to the infinite ( dinamic 8 ). Mr. Valkcov, if you are using these concentric afinity circles in p.t. it is the correct formula but with honestity if you are not, then you are being stolen by the church of scientology with this justification. Evidence of operating in space with independence of the body is the proof that you can offer.
“the space of yourself as a stably exteriorized spirit and operational in space ( dinamic 7 )”
Rafael, this is a vastly different definition from any of LRH’s.
Mr. Nunez, I’m sure we could eventually arrive at some agreement if we talked long enough.
I have had little or nothing to do with the CoS in 25-30 years, but I like to study LRH’s philosophy and I find the Dynamics as well as the concept of Ethics as “Reason and the Contemplation of Optimum Survival” as great concepts for meditation and contemplation.
How the CoS uses them is I’m sure quite wrong, or they wouldn’t do the things they do.
Dear marildi, you forgot to include the correct definition, but i will give my source of this definition, look to the lrh approved pictures of himn to asia poem. Haaa !!!! and in your opinion, is metteya the same new avatar for the age of acuario called maitreya for the leaders of the new age some 50 years ago ?.
Dear Mr Valkov, now i understand , you say, ” i have had little or nothing to do with the CoS in 25-30 years “. dear friend there are new news, this organization right now is a mafia-like corporation per the statements of the lrh trained class 12 c/s Karen de la carriere, check her declarations in the blog of marty rathbun. ( just one person declaring there ).
Dear Rafael, I’m not sure what you are referring to in Hymn of Asia but it is not part of the technical materials in any case. Here’s the definition of seventh dynamic in the Tech Dictionary, taken from FOT, and it is quite different from the one you gave:
“The SEVENTH DYNAMIC is the urge toward existence as or of spirits. Anything spiritual, with or without identity, would come under the heading of the Seventh Dynamic. This can be called the Spiritual Dynamic.”
And you can see from the definitions of the other dynamics too that they are all “urges” in a certain direction, not necessarily fully accomplished states as you described above.
Dear marildy, you are Q & A my comment but i am sure you very well understand it. the relation of the 8 dinamics with space and afinity is basic even in lower levels of training. As regards to ” i am not sure what are you referring to in himn to asia “, i can not believe that you do not have at hand a book copy of the himn to asia poem to see his lrh approved pictures. i googled new age maitreya and found the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maitreya_(Theosophy). so it is esasy an straight answer.
Rafael, there seems to have been some misunderstanding as regards the dynamics but let me just say that I do understand what you mean about the relation of the dynamics to space and affinity. However, the seventh dynamic definition you apparently extrapolated from Hymn of Asia is not according to the official definitions.
As for your other comment on Hymn of Asia, I have only a small edition which doesn’t have any pictures of LRH. However, from what I understand Maitreya (Sanskrit) or Metteyya (Pāli), according to Buddhist scriptures, is to be the successor of Buddha. And I assume you wish to make a point about LRH claiming he was the Mettayya. What is it and how does it relate to Scientology? With all due respect, I hope we aren’t going to get into ad hom rather than evaluating Scn in and of itself.
Dear marildi, as i see it, this optimum solution formula will need a post by itself to cover the real meaning of the dynamics being used to apply it as an ethics tool.
It is a very bad luck that you could not get a copy of the hardback edition of the himn to asia that included the lrh approved images on the dynamics wich illustrate his widely promoted eastern poem.
About lrh claming he was metteyya, is a very valid point of analysis not an ad hominem attack to the man. lrh, being the public figure he was, is now subject for any analisis we want as any dead men is.
Rafael, please describe to me these LRH images in Hymn of Asia. Now I’m curious.
Also curious about your analysis, if you don’t mind.
Dear marildi, you are touching a very hot point there, get the hard-back edition of the book and look for yourself please. And about metteyya, this is not the correct moment.
Mr. Nunez: “Dear Mr Valkov, now i understand , you say, ” i have had little or nothing to do with the CoS in 25-30 years “. dear friend there are new news, this organization right now is a mafia-like corporation per the statements of the lrh trained class 12 c/s Karen de la carriere, check her declarations in the blog of marty rathbun. ( just one person declaring there ).”
I have been reading and posting to Marty’s blog for 2 years and have read most of it, including the comments. I have also read Scientology-cult, Freezone materials, Sylvia’s blog, Old auditor, Jeff Hawkins blog, ESMB, etc etc, as well as studying LRH materials especially the lectures.
In fact, it was the IAS and it’s activities that led me to distance myself from the CoS the most, as well as having witnessed the “mission massacre” in the early 1980s. I did not really know what was happening, being out here here in Michigan, but I knew I didn’t like it. “Customer service” was already suffering back then because of those actions. It has only gotten worse and worse. The evolution has been towards “customer disservice”.
I have not completely taken my eye off the CoS in all that time.
Valkov, so you are the same Valkov there, i am glad to know it. I have been there since the first web page that Marty posted and have studied the same blogs and forums like you and much more. I agree on that we will eventually arrive at an eventual good agreement.
So if I try to live by the “Golden Mean”, does that mean I ought o balance every good I act I commit by a compensatory bad act?
Or that I should strive to commit only bland acts, avoiding the ‘good’ as well as the “bad” because they are extremes?
You don’t compare the acts. You compare the virtue you are trying to achieve, at its extreme, with the vice you are trying to avoid, at its extreme, and you find the golden mean – not the middle – between the two. That tells you the ethical action to take.
Keep reading, keep learning about this until you’ve got it, Valkov.
Then compare this system of ethical guidance with the system of “the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics”.
I’m not saying that you should find that one is better than the other. I am saying that Logic 8 says, ““A datum can be evaluated only by a datum of comparable magnitude.”
“Golden Mean”:
I don’t see how this is much different from “Ethics is Reason and the Contemplation of Optimum Survival”, which involves finding the “mean” by searching for the solution that involves ‘minimum destruction’ and maximum construction and preservation.
Optimum Survival depends exactly on finding this Golden Mean solution for each problematic situation.
A-ha!
So you have been thinking of this. Of course you have. You are an extremely thoughtful person.
If Aristotle came up with this “golden mean” 2500 years ago, where do you think Hubbard got his ethics system?
If you read Aristotle’s “Ethics”, you will find a huge number of concepts in it that Hubbard obviously “borrowed” for Scientology. Not just in Scientology ethics, but all over Scn basics.
The key here is in comparing what Aristotle wrote, to what Hubbard put into Scientology, and to what he left out.
Here’s a great example – Aristotle’s concept of responsibility, vs. Hubbard’s.
…Aristotle’s discussion is devoted to spelling out the conditions under which it is appropriate to hold a moral agent blameworthy or praiseworthy for some particular action or trait. His general proposal is that one is an apt candidate for praise or blame if and only if the action and/or disposition is voluntary. According to Aristotle, a voluntary action or trait has two distinctive features. First, there is a control condition: the action or trait must have its origin in the agent. That is, it must be up to the agent whether to perform that action or possess the trait—it cannot be compelled externally. Second, Aristotle proposes an epistemic condition: the agent must be aware of what it is she is doing or bringing about.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-responsibility/
The definition of responsibility Hubbard gave to Scientologists to apply.
RESPONSIBILITY: THE NON-RECOGNITION AND DENIAL OF THE RIGHT OF INTERVENTION BETWEEN ONESELF AND ANY BEING, IDEA, MATTER, ENERGY, SPACE, TIME OR FORM, AND THE ASSUMPTION OF FULL RIGHT OF DETERMINATION OVER IT.
Now apply Logic 8 and compare these two data of comparable magnitude.
Notice the “reasonable” limits which Aristotle placed on acts you could be morally responsible for.
Notice the lack of those limits in Hubbard’s definitions.
Which of these is closer to “reason and the contemplation of optimum survival”?
This is just one example applying Logic 8 by comparing Aristotle’s “Ethics” to Hubbard’s Scientology.
Good point to bring up – that about responsibility. Fodder for another thread on how reasonable one could be toward responsibility with what expectation of commensurate spiritual improvement.
Valkov wrote:
Optimum Survival depends exactly on finding this Golden Mean solution for each problematic situation.
I love the “golden mean”.
Whenever I’ve applied it to a real life situation, the first thing I notice is the lack of the unwieldy “8 dynamic” apparatus which tended to submerge my own interests (1st dynamic) under the 7 other interests (dynamics 2-8), most of which never applied, and was very distracting. Its absence in applying the golden mean is a relief when you are truly trying to come up with the exact ethical thing to do for that precise situation.
The golden mean lets you think much more freely and in a much more targeted and relevant way to the exact ethical problem you are trying to solve.
At least I think it does.
And because you are dealing in virtues, vices and other socially responsible concepts that the Greeks taught – as well within a context of fate and destiny over the course of many lifetimes – you do not have to worry that all the “dynamics” will be covered, because they will. And for me, they will be covered in a much more personally intimate and satisfying way.
I’m the kind of person for whom everything is a moral crisis. My sense of duty to others and to society, and to my own fate and destiny over the course of many lifetimes, is paramount for me. The Golden Mean has helped me get back on course after the derailment of Scientology.
End of commercial for Aristotle’s the “Golden Mean”.
You may return to your regularly scheduled lives.
Yes this is an interesting and quite educational exercise to do. I’d have to add that you pretty much have to work in the precepts in the Way to Happiness, not just the ethics posts references. And you have to sort out which of the ethics policies were originally supposed to apply to staff members only and which ones were broad public issue. Then consider the auditor’s code changes, particularly the point that in 1952 it was considered to be the moral code of a Scientologist and that clause no longer applied by 1976. There is such a work out needed!
There are worlds of discovery available when you do this type of exercise. Its amazing. Sometimes I reject LRH’s work completely, sometimes I come to admire it completely and other times I see little difference really or it helps me gain perspective.
But DAMN its a lot of work to do this. I understand why people often don’t – it can practically become a full time career and really quite addictive!
Yes. It’s a whole new way of looking at Scientology for most Scientologists..
Also compare Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:
Compare the technology of Scn and Dn auditing to the technology of hypnotherapy.
Actually clear the term “hypnosis” from non-Scientology, Non-LRH sources, study the techniques of hypnotherapists, study a little bit of the history of hypnosis and hypnotherapy, and compare the technologies.
Eye-popping stuff, there.
Hypnosis: 1. An artificially induced altered state of consciousness, characterized by heightened suggestibility and receptivity to direction.
And this relates to auditing how?
Very good Valkov. You looked up a definition.
Now study a little bit of the history of hypnosis and hypnotherapy, some of the techniques of hypnotherapists and compare that technology to auditing.
You’re doing great.
Or, if you believe that this would not be a fruitful exercise for you, don’t do it. Apply logic 8 in some other way.
Actually, to do this justice, one has to use the 1954 definition of hypnosis. This is from the Consolidated Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary published in 1954:
Hypnotic: Having the quality of producing sleep; tending to produce sleep; soporific.
Hypnotism: A sleep-like condition brought on by artificial means.
Hypnosis: The hypnotic state; a sort of sleep artificially induced, often by the person fixing his attention on some bright object, being accompanied by more or less unconsciousness.
No auditing produces these effects.
The current definitions of hypnotism, which redefine hypnotism to include any absorbed attentive state whether a waking or unconscious state, were developed by various psychologists at least 15 years after DMSMH was released.
I would say that Dianetics influenced psychology a great deal, for it was actually the first instance of asserting that unconscious memories could be accessed without the need of inducing sleep or states of unconsciousness. Unless of course you can provide me with a reference in the annals of psychology that introduce this idea into the mainstream of psychology. I have read hundreds of papers now on the subject and not one of them introduced this idea prior to 1950 — they all thought it required sleep/unconscious hypnotic states for access. And it should be noted that the characteristic of this type of hypnotism is that the subject DOES NOT REMEMBER the hypnotic session. The therapist reviewed the session with the person AFTER they have been awoken.
Both Freud and Jung thought that simply talking about past traumas could be of value. Jung favored dream analysis and archetypes. Freud had his own preferences. Either way, neither one of them considered talking to a conscious individual to be hypnotic therapy and neither one of them attempted to access memories from incidents where the person was unconscious without the use of sleep induced hypnosis.
And for the record, the receptive quality of the “subconscious” mind was discussed at length by New Thought writers such as Holmes, Bailey, Trowell, Burnell, just to name a few. These people were the true precursors of the affirmations and law of attraction movement, and undoubtedly one of the actual sources of the changes in the definition of hypnotism. But they were not talking about psychology’s 1954 definition, they were talking about how people groove in belief systems on themselves and others, a phenomena that begins the day you are born and continues to the day you die. Essentially – thoughts are things and you get what you expect. This is the genus of propaganda, subliminal advertising, repetitive advertising, Think and Grow Rich, mesmerism, entrainment, and so on. They are the great grandaddies of this entire idea that you can “re-program” your own mind with suggestions and affirmations used repeatedly and impressed on your own mind. External suggestions and affirmations and triggers have no effect / influence on a person who maintains a positive state of mind, so their primary emphasis was on techniques that assisted people to gain and maintain a positive state of mind. Maybe I’m just really cynical these days, but I find it really coincidental that the rise of these “new” ideas of psychology just somehow managed to surface when the materials of these writers passed into the public domain.
So add to your list the materials of the New Thought writers of the late 19th century and the early 20th century, especially The Science of the Mind by Earnest Holmes.
This should be cross-posted to the “groundbreaking” blog post.
No auditing produces these effects.
James Braid, the person who coined the term “hypnosis” realized he had made a mistake in naming it that and tried to change the term to be more accurate. His more accurate term was “monoideaism”, meaning “fixed on one idea”.
James Braid was a contemporary of Freud’s.
From the wikipedia article: Braid later changed his sleep-based physiological theory to a psychological one which emphasized mental concentration on a single idea, giving this the name of monoideism in 1847
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Braid_(surgeon)
Keep digging, Maria. You’re doing great.
Also, Maria –
No auditing produces these effects?
Have you ever heard of, or experienced, “dope-off” in session? During TRs? While doing repetitive Scn drills?
There is a lot to learn here and if you are going to do a proper evaluation, you have to leave the Hubbard-installed assumptions behind and duplicate the text in front of you. It is true that Erikson and others greatly expanded our understanding of hypnotic and trance states 15 years after Hubbard wrote Dianetics, but the two men’s work are not related.
Keep studying, you are doing great.
Condescending, much?
By the way, does auditing fix the pc’s attention on one idea?
Does auditing ask one question and get one answer *always* before moving on?
One incident.
One command.
One process.
One thing at a time, with good TRs, with no distractions to the one incident the pc is concentrating on in his mind.
Is that a good description of proper auditing?
It’s also a good description of proper hypnosis.
These two areas are of a comparable magnitude. There is much to learn about auditing and about Dianetics and Scientology by comparing the techniques of hypnosis with the techniques of auditing.
G wrote:
Condescending, much?
Wow, G. I really did feel that Maria was doing great, as I would anyone who did this type of exercise. In fact, I’ve seen Maria do this kind of stuff all the time, and on many other subjects before this thread came along on your blog.
There was no condescension on my part whatsoever. It was an acknowledgment of what Maria had done so far, and an attempt to encourage her to continue.
Mistrust is an interesting thing. When you mistrust someone, you put a big void there and fill it with all kinds of destructive and evil intentions. It is a bias about the person that blinds you to who they really are.
You see what you see, but that doesn’t mean that what you see is real.
We could do a show of hands whether your communication was seen as condescending 🙂
He’s cried wolf too many times lol
Alanzo, you need to read more than wikipedia articles if you want to understand these subjects. In this case it is completely misleading.
This is from a biography about Braid:
“Even in Neurypnology, Braid complains of the misconception that hypnotism should be accompanied by a loss of awareness, resembling sleep. [b]This problem finally led him to argue that the word “hypnotism” should be reserved for those cases in which the subject experiences no recollection afterwards of what happened during the process, [/b]though he emphasised that this accounted for only 10% of his subjects. The other 90% of Braid’s subjects were in a “sub-hypnotic” state referred to as the “vigilant” or “waking” state, or as “concentration”, “abstraction”, or “monoideism”, meaning focused attention upon a single idea or train of thought to the exclusion of other stimuli. He increasingly recognised, moreover, that hypnotic suggestion and other techniques could be surprisingly effective without any induction whatsoever, in the normal state of mind.
Braid therefore introduced the term “mono-ideo-dynamic”, and related expressions, to describe the general theory that focused attention, along with expectation and other psycho-physiological factors, can enhance the ideo-motor response and bring about a variety of physiological changes as a result. Braid concluded it was necessary to emphasise the fact that suggestion may be operative in the waking state, and increased even in states of reverie or focused attention which it would be incredibly misleading to describe as “nervous sleep”. He carried out many experiments debunking pseudoscientific placebo therapies including “subtle energy” treatments like Mesmerism, magnets, crystals, homeopathy, etc. Ironically, these Victorian “nostrum” (i.e., quack) remedies were the precursors of many of the currently popular complementary therapies with which modern hypnotherapy is frequently associated. However, Braid was perhaps as well-known in his own day as an intelligent and powerful critic of pseudoscientific therapies and paranormal claims. In any case, his own observations increasingly forced Braid to recognise that real effects could be produced by various forms of suggestion and autosuggestion in the normal waking state, without any specific induction technique or change in the nervous state.”
It is because of Braid’s work that hypnotism was defined as a sleep-induced state by 1954. Braid is just one of the many individuals from the New Thought movement that understood the power of auto-suggestion and other-suggestion, awake, asleep or otherwise, from others, from yourself — doesn’t matter. And this is where we get repetitive T.V. commercials from. And it is the source of the book “Think and Grow Rich,” among others.
What this article does not mention is that the New Thought writers and researchers discovered that the ONLY sure protection from being at the mercy of suggestion from all and sundry is to work to achieve a positive attitude in one’s life. And it is auditing is defined as anything that raises tone level. In the bands from 2.0 on up, other-suggestion is not effective. Of course, auto-suggestion still is, and of course it is – they are called postulates and decisions and considerations. You do it all the time, every waking moment of your days. Auto-suggestion as a therapy, according to Braid would not be hypnotism because it requires you to deliberately DO something and to do something you have to be AWAKE.
According to Braid, your suggestions on this blog are far more “lethal” than any encountered during TRs, because you are actively attempting to instill ideas in others by repeatedly denouncing in ways that drop people down the tone scale.
And I might note that the fact that you remember doping off during TRs says at once that you were not in a state of hypnotic sleep as it was defined in the 1954 dictionary and materials covering the subject of hypnosis.
You COMPLETELY missed the point. Your assertion that LRH’s claims in the 1950s that Dianetics is not hypnotism is based on definitions that were NOT in existence in 1954.
And perhaps you need to review how you word your statements on blogs. Let me ask you this: did you experience a thrill of satisfaction as you wrote your words in a hurtful way?
And if so, is that really what you think this is all about? And if not, may I suggest you give some serious consideration to what Geir is telling you – your efforts to get at truths can be severely curtailed by poor presentation, and I personally would not like to see that happen for I do enjoy what you bring to discussion even if I may very much dislike the tone in which it is presented.
p.s. Alanzo — you really do not need to do anything but present your ideas and there is no need to be anything but a contributor to the ongoing discussion. I LIKE your contributions, whether or not I currently agree with you and whether or not I have a different data set than yours. The joy is in the finding and the comparing. Please accept my apologies if I seemed to be replying harshly to you. The truth is that I MISSED you very much when you went away on the ScnForum and I am ABSOLUTELY delighted to see you here. So please accept my last communication in the spirit in which it is given – I really don’t want to see you given a yellow card! Please, please, please Alanzo, give some thought to your presentation and before you post try to ensure that it is respectful and thoughtful for I will be very disappointed if I can’t have my Alanzo fix.
+1. I really like Alanzo, too. There is a lot of good energy and good heart. It is a lot to take on all-comers in this type of venue. Geir has been doing it and makes it look easy. I know my limitations and I would be over my own head in a hurry if I tried this.
Does anyone else here find some people and places to be a bit grey after a rollicking round of Geir blogging? Getting drunk with my visiting out of town relatives does not provide the same stimulation as you all do here.
hehe
Maria –
I apologize if I hurt your, or anyone else’s, feelings. Really. It is not my intention. My explanations in this thread and elsewhere for why I say what I say are actually the truth. Whether you believe me or not, I can not control.
And so I don’t try to get you to believe me. I just say what my intentions are and move on.
A big reason I handle it like this is that once my intentions become the subject, then we are off the point. And I want to stay on the point. OK?
There are 3 basic concepts being discussed in Braid’s biography you quoted. I’d like to know what your understanding of these concepts are.
And since this is Logic 8, then it is important to look at and understand non-Hubbardian sources to compare to Hubbard’s statements in Scientology. I’ve provided some for you below.
1. What is a “suggestion”?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suggestion
2. What is a hypnotic state? What is a trance state? How are these states different from regular, ordinary walking-around states? What are the characteristics of these states as described in these Non-Scn sources? Think about these descriptions from these non Scn sources and see if you can identify when you are in a trance state, and when you are not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trance
3. What is hypnotizability? Hubbard says that anyone above 2.0 on the tone scale can not be hypnotized. This is false. There is much more data on that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnotic_susceptibility
You do great research. Any other non-Hubbardian sources would be great that you can find on these concepts, as well.
Maria wrote:
You COMPLETELY missed the point. Your assertion that LRH’s claims in the 1950s that Dianetics is not hypnotism is based on definitions that were NOT in existence in 1954.
If Braid said that hypnotic states were monoideaistic in 1847, and he went to great lengths in 1847 to describe hypnotic states as primarily monoideastic – even going to the point of trying to re-name “hypnosis” to “monoideaism” at that time – then how can these definitions not be in existence in 1954, over 100 years later?
Alanzo, this study area is HUGE – I have just finished a study cycle of 25+ tomes (and I do mean TOMES) regarding the roots of hypnotism from the mid 19th century and early 20th century. And I have just completed studies of modern day “hypnotism” which is also a mish-mash of ideas. Braid is a TINY TINY segment of that information. Wikipedia makes it look all streamlined. Its not. Not even close!
Consequently, there is not much I can offer in the way of quick summaries on this area. It is the wildest (and most fascinating) mish-mash of information, observations, studies, and theories I have ever encountered, ranging from alien implanting, evil devils and demonic possessions, ethers, magnetism, you name it. There is so little agreement on the subject its a wonder anybody continued at all in the area. The one thing that is a recurring theme is that people are definitely affected by thought.
But as regards Braid – read again what he said:
“This problem finally led him to argue that the word “hypnotism” should be reserved for those cases in which the subject experiences NO RECOLLECTION AFTERWARDS of what happened during the process… ” (from his biography)
He is saying that hypnotism needs to be narrowly defined to therapies in which the patient has NO RECOLLECTION AFTERWARDS. And that is exactly how hypnotism was defined in the 1954 dictionary. And that is exactly the definition that Hubbard used in early Dianetics when he said that Dianetics was NOT hypnotism. He is making the exact same distinction as Braid and for exactly the same reason.
Note: Braid compares the state of hypnotism with other patients that were in a “sub-hypnotic” state referred to as the “vigilant” or “waking” state, or as “concentration”, “abstraction”, or “monoideism”, meaning focused attention upon a single idea or train of thought to the exclusion of other stimuli.
Finally, Hubbard was not the first to suggest that establishing a positive state of mind protected one against UNWANTED suggestion. This was a very common conclusion early on, one that Braid agreed with.
But I don’t really see what the point is anyway because I thought that the point of this thread is to offer information that people can access to do their own comparisons. Spoon feeding people conclusions has little value as you well know.
For anyone interested, check out the “New Thought” writers of the late 19th and early 20th century, starting with Earnest Holmes, Burnell and Troward. They worked heavily with the concepts of hypnotism, suggestion, auto-suggestion and so on and their treatises contain bibliographies you can use to access their source works (if they are pulling from other writers.) http://www.sacred-texts.com/nth/index.htm
As far as modern hypnotism goes, good luck with that! A google search will yield MILLIONS of results and thousands of websites teaching about it – if you can tolerate the massive amount of information, often conflicting, its a wild and fascinating ride!
Don’t even bother with wikipedia on this – their summaries are so generalized as to be useless. Makes it look all seamless and agreed upon and “official” and nothing could be further from the truth.
Al sez: “You see what you see, but that doesn’t mean that what you see is real.”
ROTFLMAO!
If that’s true at all, it may just as well apply to you, too.
In which case what are you trying to do? Lead us all into seeing the same unreal things you see?
Ever heard the word “solipsism”?
Would that you should doubt and judge your own reality as much as you doubt the realities of others!
Or perhaps you do?
Chris: “Does anyone else here find some people and places to be a bit grey after a rollicking round of Geir blogging?”
Yes, Chris, That’s why you and I haven’t yet been able to keep our resolution to cut back. 🙂
“rollicking round of Geir blogging” Lyrics for a song? Maybe a “round” to the tune of “For he’s a jolly good fellow…”
Maria wrote:
Finally, Hubbard was not the first to suggest that establishing a positive state of mind protected one against UNWANTED suggestion. This was a very common conclusion early on, one that Braid agreed with.
What did you think of the hypnotizability scale?
Don’t you find it a more scientific way to answer the question on who can be hypnotized than “above 2.0 on the tone scale” or “establishing a more positive state of mind?”
Maria –
Yes – this area IS HUGE.
And that was my point in suggesting it as a Logic 8 exercise.
(By the way – I’m not the only one who can suggest Logic 8 exercises here)
I am very glad you have dug up all these things. I won’t tell you to keep digging because I guess that is considered condescending here. I knew you would do very well with this.
By the way, one observation I have made after the books I’ve read and the research I’ve done in the area WHICH NO ONE HERE HAS TO ACCEPT AT ALL is that Dianetics and Scientology has its roots in therapeutic hypnosis (hypnotherapy – the full remembering kind) and Hubbard made it very much more standardized and highly sophisticated.
It’s why I say that Scientology is a highly developed form of hypnotherapy.
After I used this as an area of comparable magnitude to auditing, that’s what I concluded. It pisses off followers of Hubbard for me to say it, because of how Hubbard defined hypnosis for them. But since I believe Hubbard’s definition was way too narrow – when you actually look at hypnotherapy as it is – then that is what I concluded.
Others may conclude something else.
What do I think of hypnotism as currently defined is a better question than what do I think of hypnotizability scales.
As currently defined as any self or other induced altered state of consciousness receptive to suggestion, I find it to be a useless concept.
These are the problems with it:
a) Consciousness itself is not well defined – it has been the subject of religion and philosophy for as long as there are written works of man, and now science has entered into the amazing array of speculation about consciousness. About all you can truly say about it is that it is a subjective state that cannot be measured other than in terms of ability to respond, measure or perceive. But of course, one is not measuring consciousness then, one is measuring the effects that seem to proceed from consciousness. The scale appears to be from deep sleep to fully awake – whatever that means.
b) Altered state assumes that there there is a “normal” state of consciousness. This assumes that there is some “standard” or “average” state of consciousness. Yet none has ever been established other than in terms of measuring abilities.
c) Suggestion is also poorly defined. From Wikipedia: “Contemporary hypnotism makes use of a wide variety of different forms of suggestion including: direct verbal suggestions, “indirect” verbal suggestions such as requests or insinuations, metaphors and other rhetorical figures of speech, and non-verbal suggestion in the form of mental imagery, voice tonality, and physical manipulation. A distinction is commonly made between suggestions delivered “permissively” or in a more “authoritarian” manner. As Harvard hypnotherapist Deirdre Barrett describes in the book Tales from a Hypnotherapist’s Couch, most modern research suggestions are designed to bring about immediate responses—an arm rises immediately, whereas hypnotheraputic suggestions are usually post-hypnotic ones are intended to trigger responses affecting behavior for periods ranging from days to a lifetime in duration. The hypnotheraputic ones are often repeated in multiple sessions before they achieve peak effectiveness.” (My comment: most people can do the same thing with wide awake self-affirmations, whether verbally or as repeated physical actions such as learning how to skate.)
d) Receptivity is another word that is ill defined. On the one hand, absorbed attention is considered to be a state of receptivity, on the other hand, deep hypnosis which is characterized by obedience to commands or suggestions is considered to be a state of receptivity. Being in love is a state of absorption as well. Communication itself requires a state of receptivity. Otherwise no communication can be received and responded to. Learning requires receptivity. And every day we take suggestions from others and respond to them!
Its ridiculously ambiguous.
By the definition above, all people are hypnotized all the time whenever they alter their state of consciousness, which of course happens all day, every day, moment to moment as their attention shifts from one thing to another. The question is only how often does it shift and how absorbed is that attention and is that attention shift self or other induced? The answer is that this is continuous and constant. Try it yourself. Walk around today and self-remember as you walk and you will notice your own consciousness shifting continuously. Its a difficult exercise to manage to self-remember for any more than a few moments at a time. This of course, is the genus of meditation, to achieve a steady state. So then ask yourself, which of these many states is the real and normal state?
So I am with Braid and with Hubbard on narrowing this definition to other induced states of receptivity in which an individual does not recollect what happened.
The rest of it can be defined as varying states of consciousness that can be identified by responsiveness and ability, such as imaginative faculties, memory, response time to real-time events in life, emotional states, concentration, persistence, and so on.
There is a wealth of information and effects to be viewed in this arena. I think it is misleading and counter-productive to put it all in a single bin and create an apparency that it is all the same phenomena, particularly when it is based on specious “norms.”
Maria –
Your conclusions about hypnosis in this thread are not Alanzo-approved.
I’m going to need you to go through and revise your conclusions to be more in line with mine, or I am going to have to ask Geir to delete your posts.
Now which is it going to be?
Al posted:
“Mistrust is an interesting thing. When you mistrust someone, you put a big void there and fill it with all kinds of destructive and evil intentions. It is a bias about the person that blinds you to who they really are.”
Sounds like a synopsis of that movie I’ve been watching – “Alanzo vs.the Scientologists”.
Valkov wrote:
Sounds like a synopsis of that movie I’ve been watching – “Alanzo vs.the Scientologists”.
I do not think that the overwhelming majority of Scientologists are in any way evil or even destructive. If I did, I would not be here, or any where else I’ve been on the Internet debating them for the last ten years.
I will not be here for long, though. The wind sighs for songs on a planet far away. Tell this to your sons, and their sons, and daughters, and to all who are on the Hamster Wheel to Total Freedom: “The beer was free. Keep it so.”
The beer was not free.
Maria wrote:
So I am with Braid and with Hubbard on narrowing this definition to other induced states of receptivity in which an individual does not recollect what happened.
The rest of it can be defined as varying states of consciousness that can be identified by responsiveness and ability, such as imaginative faculties, memory, response time to real-time events in life, emotional states, concentration, persistence, and so on.
There is a wealth of information and effects to be viewed in this arena. I think it is misleading and counter-productive to put it all in a single bin and create an apparency that it is all the same phenomena, particularly when it is based on specious “norms.”
Hypnotic states, states of receptivity to suggestion, trance states where a person is most suggestive, are extremely common in everyday life. If you narrow the definition to only some slice that validates Hubbard’s theory of engrams, then you will not be able to identify when you are in a hypnotic state, or when hypnotic states are likely to occur. The idea “I’m not unconscious, and I can remember everything, so I’m not in a hypnotic state!” IS FALSE.
I believe that Hubbard intentionally instilled this very definition into Scientologists in order to blind them from being able to identify when they are in more suggestible states.
The fact is that TRs, being “in session”, repeating phrases to a wall, and going down the “time track”, all create states of heightened suggestibility WHILE ALSO creating a state of mind that is focused enough on single subjects to gain insight. Prayer and Meditation are most definitely trance states, and yet they are ALSO very therapeutic.
Hypnotic states are, and always have been, the most therapeutic states for human beings. They are the times when you are focused and contemplative enough on one thing, to the exclusion of other things, that breakthroughs and catharsis and miracles can happen at all. Almost all life-changing epiphanies come from being in a trance state.
They just create this one vulnerability for the person in that state: they make you more vulnerable to suggestion.
Both the good and the bad parts of hypnotic and trance states are true, and they both have to do with why Hubbard used them.
The most important question is why Hubbard would so narrowly define hypnosis as to convince Scientologists that he was not producing hypnotic states in them.
“Hypnotic states are, and always have been, the most therapeutic states for human beings. They are the times when you are focused and contemplative enough on one thing, to the exclusion of other things, that breakthroughs and catharsis and miracles can happen at all. Almost all life-changing epiphanies come from being in a trance state.”
Speak for yourself Alanzo. I have found awakened states to be the most therapeutic.
Prayer, meditation, and the state of being IN SESSION are all hypnotic states.
And they can be very awakened states because they are states where you are fully focused on one thing, to the exclusion of other things. You remember everything you prayed about and meditated about and ran in session.
In these hypnotic states, you become much more awakened and aware of what you are focused upon (monoideaism) – so aware and focused that you realize things that you would not be able to realize in a regular, walking around “window shopping” state of mind.
Hubbard himself said in Dianetics that any time to send someone down the time track, they become more suggestible.
How can you become more suggestible if you are not in a hypnotic state?
To person living in a 10 dimensional spacial world, we would all be in continual hypnotic trance.
Touche’
Alanzo, I might have agreed with you one time about this definition of hypnotic states. Then I read about what happened when they put long time Tibetan meditators onto EEG machines. The “hypnotic” states are alpha and theta. These guys were off the chart on gamma, which is awake, more awake than beta.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_wave
http://www.selfhypnosismadeez.com/hypnosis_info/how_hypnosis_works.htm
Also consider the implications of the following info, from a guy who decided to try out the e-meter as a biofeedback device. It seems to me that it wouldn’t be hard at all to do and with biofeedback machines readily available, an easy enough comparison to make. Note that he is conjecturing partway through, rather than simply reporting but really his approach is fascinating and could be extremely fruitful in sorting things out.
“Rising or high TA (above 3.5) correlates with the relaxed, dreamy (parasympathetic(5) response) alpha brain wave patterns and falling (or below 3.5) TA with the alert “fight or flight” (sympathetic(6) response) beta brain wave patterns, so an alpha response to a threatening stimulus would indeed be non-confront (or, less likely, very high confront). However, years of “clearing” apparently train the brain into a chronic, paradoxical state of very high beta (animal alertness) and very high uncontrollable delta (deep sleep) with almost no alpha as if to suggest a suppression and splitting of alpha into beta and delta – enhanced ability to process stimuli at the beta level, and a complete shutting out of stimuli which cannot be forced into beta awareness (see upper level repeater technique for a glaring example of this principle in practice). ”
http://worldtrans.org/fgordon/emeter.html
And yes, a multi-dimensional being would probably find us to be hypnotized. I think we are and the job is waking up!
Compare Hubbard’s model for the human mind (Reactive Mind, Analytic Mind, Somatic Mind) with Freud’s model for the human psyche.
Even more fundamentally, learn the purpose and role for modeling in science, and what a model actually is. Then compare Hubbard’s model for the mind and how he used it in Scn, with how models are treated in science.
A good datum of comparable magnitude for Hubbard model of the human mind where you have the Reactive mind as a “held down 7”, the Analytical Mind as the “part of the mind which estimates effort”, etc etc, is the idea of a model itself.
What is a Model? Is it the thing itself? Is a model a “fact” as LRH called the reactive mind, and which many scientologists have come to accept without questioning? How should a model be considered when you are using it?
Learn more about models. How they should be used. And how they should not be used.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_modelling
“Modelling” according to the article, is a substitute for direct measurement and experimentation.
Do you believe “the mind” can be directly perceived, and perhaps experimented upon?
What would happen if you looked directly at your mind? What if someone else looked directly at your mind?
Or, do you agree with this: http://www.idea-seminars.com/articles/map.htm
The father of general semantics, Alford Korzybski stated, “A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness”. What this means is that our perception of reality is not reality itself but our own version of it, or our “map”. This implies that no-one actually directly perceives anything.
What this means to me is, your map is not necessarily any better than mine; your leaps of logic and association of unassociated things convinces me of it.
Or do you think my understanding of “modelling” lacks something?
Sounds great, V.
Compare the Scientology concept of “theta” and “thetan” to their similar spiritual concepts found in the Upanishads.
The Upanishads are fundamental Hindu texts which are associated with the Rig Vedas, or “Vedic Hymns” as LRH called them.
When approaching these texts it is important to read them within their own context, rather than associating them too much with what you have learned from Scientology. You will recognize many concepts here, including a very clear and thorough description of what Hubbard called “theta”.
But it is in the application of Logic 8, where you will compare and contrast, look for similarities, identities and differences that you will evaluate.
This study is also very validative for a Scientologist, and, literally, mind-expanding.
You can start with the wikipedia article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upanishads
As philosophers, and their bodies of work, compare Hubbard to Plato, for instance.
Read or listen to a few Platonic Dialogues, like “The Apology”, “Crito” and “Phaedo” and read a few critiques of Plato, and compare Plato as a philosopher to L Ron Hubbard as a philosopher.
Plato was a philosopher who showed with reasoning that past lives, and the immortality of the soul, was responsible for all knowledge.
I named the 3 texts above because I thought they would be fascinating for a Scientologist to read while comparing L Ron Hubbard as a philosopher to Plato as a philosopher in an application of Logic 8.
The Apology tells the story of the trial, conviction and death sentence of Socrates.
Crito takes place with Socrates’ friends while in his jail cell awaiting his execution
Which leads to Phaedo – the most life-affirming logical reasoning ever written on the immortality of the soul, and exactly how and why it is immortal.
I can not recommend these enough to any Scientologist.
The Apology
Free Audio from Librivox.org:
http://librivox.org/the-apology-of-socrates-by-plato/
Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apology_(Plato)
Crito
Free Audio by Librivox.org (look down the page)
http://librivox.org/short-nonfiction-collection-vol-024-by-various/
Wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crito
Phaedo
Free Audio from Librivox.org
http://librivox.org/phaedo-by-plato/
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaedo
Oh don’t be so reticent! If you’re going to study Greek philosophy then you really can’t ignore Plotinus! And there are so many others and wow, the ideas simply pour out in thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of great deliberation on all manner of aspects of knowledge. Here’s a few:
http://www.questia.com/library/philosophy/philosophy-topics.jsp
Maria –
Totally.
I’m also very found of the Romans, as well. Marcus Aurelius and Epicurus and especially Seneca’s “Letters from a Stoic” really helped me at a time when I needed it.
But for me, Plato provides a very well reasoned, spiritually whole, worldview of this life and past lives and even the between lives area (“The Republic”, Book 10). He provides as well a very sound, satisfying and revitalizing purpose for human existence. In addition, Plato is considered to have laid the groundwork for philosophy in all of western civilization. When you study his dialogues, you get why experts in philosophy keep repeating that “all of philosophy is just a footnote to Plato”.
This is the reason I suggested a few of Plato’s dialogues as a Logic 8 exercise. His work provides a good foundation upon which to evaluate any philosopher and their philosophy. It provides context and sets standards one can use to evaluate and to judge for one’s self.
Maria, I am starting to think this is all Al’s equivalent of Miscavige’s “The Basics” – it’s the looooong runway that will keep us busy for a few years giving Al time to…. what?
Anyway, a lot of it’s kinda cool.
Puts me in mind of that time long ago in India, when they called me Baba Shri Binder Dundhat-ji.
Compare The Data Series to what is now called “Critical Thinking Skills” or formal logic.
How are the Data Series similar to logic, and how are they different?
Don’t take Hubbard’s word for it as he gave in the Data Series – study critical thinking for yourself and see the differences, similarities and identities in each.
Here is a very good, basic article on the purpose and value of critical thinking skills.
I love its first line: “Critical thinking is the process of thinking that questions assumptions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking
It took me many years to resolve the differences, similarities and identities of the Data Series vs. critical thinking or training in logic. It changed my life.
The Data series can be extremely valuable. So can be critical thinking skills.
They are not the same. They have different purposes and different uses.
One can not supplant the other.
As regards critical thinking and assumptions, you`ll probably enjoy this list:
This is a list I have been working on for a while. It resulted from realizing that it is necessary to know what is assumed for the purposes of scientific thinking. These are the unstated assumptions science appears to be based on, assumptions that may or may not be provable. Some may only apply to the purely physical sciences.
Core assumptions of science:
1. the physical universe exists
2. the physical universe can be known entirely as it is in itself, quite independently of the biases of any observing subject.
3. meaning does not arise in an inert world, or even in living organisms, apart from in the minds of human beings.
4. there is no purpose in the physical universe, no inherent meaning in anything.
5. the physical universe is primarily orderly, it follows rules
6. effects proceed from causes
7. there are causes that are inherent in the physical universe
8. there is consistency in the inherent causes in the physical universe
9. inherent causes can be discovered
10. evidence from the physical universe can be used to learn about those causes.
11. evidence may be acquired by narrowing the scope of experience sufficiently to fully isolate causes
12. causes identified by evidence can be expressed as principles
13. principles are derived from simplification through abstraction
14. true abstractions can be expressed mathematically, if they cannot be expressed mathematically then they are not true abstractions.
Interesting delineation and a good starting point for a whole new discussion 🙂
Dear Maria, the supressive person is not the critical one per lrh, look at this interview with him ( in Bizerte, north africa, 1968 ) so lets be critical on scientology, it is ok. The comment starts at 12:00 min .
http://www.youtube.com/user/AnonymousArgentina?blend=1&ob=video-mustangbase#p/u/8/ad5bev4vdDg
Rafael: I am completely baffled by your response to what I posted. This movie has nothing to do with my comments on science assumptions and nothing to do with what Alanzo wrote either. I don`t get what the comment about suppressive people being critical is about – I don`t think I once mentioned anything about suppressives. This is one seriously twisted video any which way you look at it from pro or con and – I`ve seen it before.
Dear Rafael, Alanzo used the word “critical” but with a different definition than the one LRH was using in that interview.
Maria, Alanzo wrote about the scientology data series vs. critical thinking or training in logic so to me it seems to be of utility to know what lrh has to say on critical people about scientology ( remember that in the pts/sp pack any person critical of scientology could not be other than a sociophat unable to think properly ). As scientology is supposedly based on scientific methods, the scientology data series is related with a correct analisis of science itself, do not you think ?. About the video, i do not see the twisted part and i was in the sea organization to see much of what is described there.
marildi, what definition, the one that implies that the critical person has o/w on the subject ( i do not understand this was his meaning ). The second meaning avalaible is the critical thinking like when you use logic tools ( like the scientology data series ) to analize a subject ( like science itself ) where o/w and sociopathy do not make less of the scientific analisis even in the case that the discussion goes to scientology related scientific tools, eventually. So i am anticipating this.
Ah, I get it Rafael — good point!
I think what you are pointing out and rightly so, is that one has to ensure that there is a good differentiation between the critical thinking processes of logic and reason and these concepts:
CRITICISM, 1 . most criticism is justification of having done an overt. There are rightnesses and wrongnesses in conduct and society and life at large, but random, carping 1 .1 criticism when not borne out in fact is only an effort to reduce the size of the target of the overt. (HCOB 21 Jan 60, Justification) 2 . a criticism is a hope that they can damage, and that’s what a criticism is, with an inability to do so. (SH Spec 119, 6202C22)
NATTER, sometimes pcs who have big overts become highly critical of the auditor and get in a lot of snide comments about the auditor. Such natter always indicates a real overt. (HCOB 7 Sept 64 II)
WITHHOLDS LONG DURATION, are spotted by a nattery, critical or hostile sort of life. The case would be anywhere from 2 .2 on down to 1 .0 on the tone scale. (LRH Def. Notes)
These are a whole different breed of cat!
Rafael, in that video the interviewer says, “…You don’t allow criticism.” LRH responds by saying, “Oh no, a suppressive person isn’t critical – a suppressive person denies the rights of others.” My understanding of what he meant is: SP does not equal critical – SP equals denying the rights of others. In any case, here is a quote from HCOB Critics of Scientology:
“There is no good reason to oppose Scientology. In our game everybody wins. And we have this technical fact—those who oppose us have crimes to hide.”
Maria, i have nothing more to add, you undertand fast and well. ME, having been trained as finance inpector, am very aware of these differences.
marildi, bunnies have no crimes to hide and are good food too. I am more than that, i am a person. ( seek my crimes, it will not change my attitude towards scientology )
Rafael, I didn’t mean to imply that you or anybody else here who is critical has crimes. I simply cited the LRH reference for the context of the subject we were on. But there are other LRH references, including the dissem drill handling for antagonism – reasons for it can include false data, MU’s, etc. One has to have conceptual understanding to know which reference is applicable to any given situation, as I’m sure you know.
marildi, yes i know them, add to this an appropiate handling of originations and the battery is almost done to deal with antagonism. ( appropiate means, with common sense, not just what your senior say is )
Rafael, I didn’t mean to imply that you or anybody else here who is critical has crimes.
But LRH does intend to make you think they have crimes as the real reasons underlying their criticism.
I simply cited the LRH reference for the context of the subject we were on. But there are other LRH references, including the dissem drill handling for antagonism – reasons for it can include false data, MU’s, etc. One has to have conceptual understanding to know which reference is applicable to any given situation, as I’m sure you know.
All of these “reasons” that LRH gives for criticism of himself and Scientology are straw men, intended to get the Scientologist to ignore what the critic is saying, and to stop their thinking about it in their minds so that they never listen to criticism. And then, intends to get the Scientologist to condemn the critic personally as being a criminal, and not worth listening to.
See? If Critic A says “The IAS is being used to enrich David Miscavige”, LRH teaches the Scientologist to not look at what is being said, but to look past it and search for the “REAL REASON” the critic is criticizing Scientology. The REAL REASON is not the REAL REASON at all, but only LRH’s installed reason which is a technique used to get the Scientologist to stop thinking.
It’s why the Independents are having such a hard time getting the Churchies to listen to them. The “Kool Aide” is not being poured out from DM, the Kool-aide was mixed and served up by LRH himself in exactly the references you cite on the “technology” of handling criticism.
LRH’s technology for handling criticism is to IGNORE what is being said, KNOW the cause is something other than the critic is saying, and ATTACK the critic personally. This “tech” has done more harm to Scientology than any other, beside maybe PTS/SP tech. It holds in flaws that deserve to be criticized, keeps Scientologists blind, and makes them attack people of good will who are trying to improve things.
The first step to correcting anything is to recognize something is wrong. When it comes to communication then, the first step to correcting something is identifying what needs to be corrected by CRITICISM of it.
Marty and Mike are HUGE critics. It’s almost all they do. Right?
Well what does LRH say about them, then?
It takes a long time for a Scientologist to come up out of this kind of blindness-producing thought-pattern.
But if they truly seek to live with the truth, they can do it.
Alanzo: “LRH’s technology for handling criticism is to IGNORE what is being said, KNOW the cause is something other than the critic is saying, and ATTACK the critic personally.”
You obviously have not duplicated ALL the references. And as for how LRH himself handled critics, here’s an excerpt of a comment made by Margaret on Marty’s current blog thread:
“Back in the spring of 1970, the then well-known author and Scientologist — William Burroughs (he had just gone Clear) — started criticizing the Church and LRH publicly in the media. Most notably, he wrote a widely read piece in “Mayfair” magazine, a popular British men’s magazine in Mar. 1970. (He wrote this after being highly laudatory of Scientology and LRH in earlier articles.)
“While the content of the various articles is interesting, the most stunning thing is to look at how the Church and then Mary Sue and then LRH each personally responded publicly — all three in subsequent published articles in “Mayfair” in Apr, Jun and Aug 1970. They didn’t attack Burroughs or make him the enemy, they used ARC and found points of agreement. They even admitted to errors, and made a point of noting that the organization was working to correct them. And keep in mind that Burroughs was a Timothy Leary supporter! Burroughs then responded positively, and publicly, to LRH.
“It’s a fascinating comparison to how Miscavige and his “church” respond to public criticism today, and shows just how starkly reversed and self-righteous things have become in organizational Scientology over the last 20+ years.
“You can find the articles online (google “burroughs scientology mayfair”), or I’d be happy to email them. You guys (and anyone else interested) should really check them out, if you haven’t already. A fascinating look into the striking difference between Scientology of 1970 and Scientology of 2012.”
.
That’s an example of the difference between Miscavage and LRH’s handling of critics.
It is interesting, then to discuss why LRH then quite contrary to his own conuct in the above ordered staff to do the exact opposite when he wrote the policies on how to handle critics of Scientology.
I worked on the first computer project before the inception of INCOMM . It was reading and logging sources and keywords for every critical publication toward COS. This was I think 1979-80 and was defense preparation of the GO-9 court cases. Lots of people don’t know Scientology was instrumental in passing the Freedom of Information Act. Back then, I was told that LRH had invented a search engine so that all we had to do was enter all these millions of bits of data and the computer would then locate and cross-reference all the data and no WOGS had this. Thus, once again, Scientology was vastly superior and light-years ahead of WOGS.
If you are right about any ARC’ful handlings toward the critics of Scientology 30-35 years ago, I am not aware of it. My recollection of the events of those times were utterly “at war” with the critics of Scientology with Fair Game in full bloom.
I know that the AMA has its “quackery council” etc., but I cannot see how that Scientology, working under the direct orders of LRH, was ever anything but antagonistic toward critics and making its own trouble which it then assigned to outside influences and then invented more and more antagonistic handlings which caused more trouble. I never understood how Scientology could be so hard to disseminate or why I needed to be specially trained as a disseminator doing drills and practicing handling objections as most friends of mine were ever so curious about it. “HARD SELL” was a exasperating as it never made sense to me to attempt to get someone to sell their car to buy training or auditing when they needed their car to go to work to make money so they could buy training and auditing. This is my experience of being a Scientologist. I know some of you like to talk about the good old days when Scientology was fun, and I had fun too on training in a big and bustling ASHOF, working hard every day and studying hard every night… But it wasn’t Miscavige who implemented hard sell, etc., nor whose solution to his wife being indicted for following his orders was to disappear and put as much distance between him and her as he could.
I am puzzled not by your logic but by the amount of time and energy that you put into defending the tenets of Scientology. This constant fighting and defending to show how Scientology is really right after all expends lots of energy and I question the trade-off. Anyway, I hope I have not overstepped for after all, your time and energy is your own to expend as you see fit. I guess my point is that if this is an urge of yours then maybe take a look at this urge and likewise my advice is addressed to your antagonists as well. It is my opinion that there are urges flying about that are sapping energy away from actual research though I could be wrong.
Geir, this is the context of HCOB Critics of Scientology:
“If a government were busy making capital out of people’s ignorance of economics and world affairs and was playing a double game and a group came along and started to make its people smarter and more knowledgeable of true motives, that government would try to shoot every member of that group on sight.
“If a group of “scientists” were knowingly raising the number of insane to get more appropriation and “treatment” fees and somebody came along with the real answer, that group would move heaven and earth to protect its billions of rake-off.”
.
That context is different from other references for handling “critics,” in the PTS/SP course and on the Dissemination Drill PL
That’s not the one I was thinking of. I am sure Al can dig out the right quote where LRH goes into the exact steps one would take to handle a critic. And those steps are perhaps the most damaging to Scientology of all the writings by LRH.
What do you recall of those steps? Just the general idea.
“Attackers are simply an anti-Scientology propaganda agency so far as we are concerned. They have proven they want no facts and will only lie no matter what they discover. So BANISH all ideas that any fair hearing is intended and start our attack with their first breath. Never wait. Never talk about us – only them. Use their blood, sex, crime to get headlines. Don’t use us.” HCO Policy Letter of 15 Feb 1966: “Attacks on Scientology”
“If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace.” HCO Policy Letter of 15 Oct 1960: “Dept of Govt Affairs”
But even these were not the one I was actually looking for, but the serve the point quite well.
That’s the Scientology that I participated in.
Geir, lrh was a PR person very much in order to enhance his image over staff and public, but as regards to his orders on how to behave he was quite diferen. The following photo shows how he promoted himself with his daughter Diana Hubbard ( this is not the official s.o. uniform in mini short skirt ).
You may be in error as SO uniforms were a little bit make-shift until standardization in 1986.
Alanzo, you say ” But LRH does intend to make you think they have crimes as the real reasons underlying their criticism.”. This is very true, lrh attemp in handling critics was just to cave-in the person by whatever means and make them sue for peace. truth was not relevant.
Geir, on that first PL you quoted, the last couple lines of it is clarified by this other sentence: “Start feeding lurid, blood sex crime ACTUAL EVIDENCE [my caps] on the attackers to the press.”
On the second PL quote, I assume you’re looking at this part of it: “find or manufacture enough threat against them.” To put that in context, here’s an excerpt from the section where LRH uses the BMA as an example and sums it up with this:
“Make the distinct public and governmental impression and BMA impression that they’ve run into a barrage of arrows or electronic cannon and that continued attack by them will cause their own disintegration. As all this is being done on a THOUGHT OR IDEA [my caps] level the restimulation of their engrams results in the total impression that they are surrounded by their own dead and the battery may fire again at any minute. And if one makes in writing not one slanderous or libelous Statement, there is no defense by them.”
.
I do realize this is rather like war tactics. And that’s exactly how LRH saw the situation – as a “life and death” issue for Scientology and as a War, where abiding by normal standards of being fair and kind and “decent” isn’t the correct evaluation of importances. And I also realize that the GO and the IAS have taken this or similar policy to extreme ends that were blatantly wrong.
My objection to LRH’s strategy of “always attack, never defend” is its utter disaster for Scientology as proven by history.
LRH’s article describing the anti-social personality as synonymous with being an anti-Scientologist is itself teeming with anti-social comments according to its own definition.
1. LRH’s use of sparkling generalities is almost a signature characteristic of his writing, yet the number one characteristic attributed to the “anti-social personality” is that they speak only in very broad generalities. He goes on to say that “This is natural to them since to them all society is a large hostile generality, against the anti-social in particular.” For me, these comments are autobiographical and set up an interesting paradox as follows: Is Hubbard able to use very broad generalities without being anti-social, or are his listed attributes of the anti-social personality inaccurate?
“2. Such a person deals mainly in bad news, critical or hostile remarks, invalidation and general suppression.” My impression having spent decades of studying LRH and his works is that it is particularly laced with negativity as regards mankind, the direction of survival of mankind, and the support that he received from the people around him. I can list endless specifics from this sector of the galaxy being “a desert” to man left to his own devices will worsen and destroy a good technology. However, the most specific example may be the fact that LRH died alone except for the sycophants who gathered at his death bed to give him his final farewell — a salute to a life of false faces by giving the end of his life a final false face.
“3. The anti-social personality alters to worsen communication when he or she relays a message or news often embellished is passed along. Such a person also pretends to pass on “bad news” which is in actual fact invented.”
The OTIII incident is true for everyone. Is it?
“5. Surrounding such a personality we find cowed or ill associates or friends who, when not driven actually insane, are yet behaving in a crippled manner in life, failing, not succeeding. Such people make trouble for others. . . . It is quite useless to treat or help or train such persons so long as they remain under the influence of the anti-social social connection.”
Is it just me or is this circular argument totally self-fulfilling? Weirdly, this rant empowers the anti-social personality to exceed the powers of the social personality — utterly. The anti-social personality can bring the social man down but the social man cannot bring the anti-social up.
This is a uni-directional flow that in this physical universe does not have an equal.
“8. Many anti social persons will freely confess to the most alarming crimes when forced to do so, but will have no faintest sense of responsibility for them. . . . ”
Below this we would find persons who when confronted with crimes can see that no crime was committed and therefore feel no reason to feel any sense of remorse or shame.
“9. The anti social personality supports only destructive groups and rages against and attacks any constructive or betterment group.”
LRH only ever supported his own group and was at best condescending and snide to every other group on the planet. If they held no usefulness for him, they could go straight to hell.
“10. This type of personality approves only of destructive actions and fights against constructive or helpful actions or activities.”
Rightly or wrongly, LRH railed against all betterment groups on the planet saying that they were not true groups and that Scientology was the “only True Group.” This was because only Scientology was aligned with the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics and the least destruction for the greatest number of dynamics. Is this true? Is Scientology the only True Group?
“10. . . . The artist in particular is often found as a magnet for persons with anti-social personalities who see in his art something which must be destroyed and covertly, “as a friend” proceed to try.
Is Tom Cruise successful because of Scientology? And if so, what about now? Is he the best representative of what Scientology tech can do for a person? Is his career continuing to fluorish? Where do you see Tom Cruise in relation to Scientology 10 or 20 years from now. What about other celebrities? Is Scientology there to help them or use them?
Is CC International there for the artist or there to ensnare the artist? I wouldn’t expect a single answer to these questions. However the strategy for the CC structure answers this question and I don’t believe the answer is to help the artist except to the degree that the artist can become an OL in order to influence the PR of Scientology for the good.
“11. Helping others is an activity which drives the anti social personality nearly berserk. Activities however which destroy in the name of help are closely supported.”
If you can’t see the relevance of this one, take a drive out to Golden Era Productions and tell them that you are interested in learning more about the good works they are doing there and ask for a tour.
THE BASIC REASON
“The basic reason . . . behaves as he or she does lies in a hidden terror of others. To such a person, every other being is an enemy . . . to be covertly or overtly destroyed. The fixation is that survival itself depends on ‘keeping others down’ or ‘keeping people ignorant.’ If anyone were to promise to make others stronger or brighter, the anti social suffers the utmost agony of personal danger. They reason that if they are in this much trouble with people around them weak or stupid, they would perish should anyone become strong or bright. Such a person has no trust to a point of terror. This is usually masked and unrevealed. When such a personality goes insane the world is full of Martians or the FBI and each person met is really a Martian or FBI agent. But the bulk of such people show no outward signs of insanity. They appear quite rational. They can be ‘very’ convincing. However, the list given above consists of things which such a personality cannot detect in himself or herself. This is so true that if you thought you found yourself in one of the above, you most certainly are not anti-social. Self criticism is a luxury the anti social cannot afford. They must be RIGHT because they are in continual danger in their own estimation. If you proved one WRONG, you might even send him or her into a severe illness. Only the sane, well-balanced person tries to correct his conduct.”
Who more than the Sea Org is kept down and kept ignorant? Second to them are Scientology public. Who dreams up the nanny software in order to keep people ignorant of what is on the internet?
Who on earth was more paranoid than LRH or Captain Bill Robertson? Who asserted space opera and “outside influences?” Both of these men were VERY convincing in their stories and obfuscations.
RELIEF
“If you were to weed out of your past by proper search and discovery those anti social persons you have know and then disconnected, you might experience great relief. . . . The pity of it is, they will not permit themselves to be helped and would not respond to treatment if help were attempted.”
I feel much relief for having re-read this article of LRH’s. LRH promoted to actually isolate 20% of the world’s population. This percentage? Just a made up number by LRH. As Mark Twain once quipped, “There are three kinds of lies. Lies. Damn lies. And statistics.”
LRH was seriously sick and injured several times in his life in the Sea Org and consistently refused the most normal types of first-responder treatment. I think this is significant and indicative of LRH’s personality “type.” Did LRH see enemies everywhere? No doubt. Did he deliberately and covertly poison the well and destroy Scientology’s chances of success by planting viral problems within the Tech of Auditing and the Tech of Administration? Did he fit the description of an anti-social personality?
Or are there no personality “types” and is all this social/antisocial rant hogwash?
Chris, may be this explains too the following photo of lrh and dm published by jeff hawkins in 1981 as editor of the sea org magazine high winds. lrh and dm are on top of the photo well covered from the sun ( arms included ) and the girl down is tanning her arms and legs. Yes, uniforms were not standard.
Chris: “I am puzzled not by your logic but by the amount of time and energy that you put into defending the tenets of Scientology.”
I’m chuckling to myself, Chris. Right there is a kind of proof of our “connected consciousness” :-). Recently, I have been asking myself the same question! And I have recognized that I start out in a discussion with a certainty that LRH and Scientology were so RIGHT in so many ways – that I immediately look for the outpoints in any criticism given. And they abound – the responses I get from diehard critics aren’t convincing or persuasive arguments but illogic and errors in fact. That’s with regard to the written materials that I’m familiar with.
As for the various criticisms of LRH himself, the vast majority of the conclusions I’m presented with are stated without giving any convincing basis for them – just bald assertions and generalizations. There may be such a basis, however, and I could indeed expend my time and energy researching along those lines. But my viewpoint up to now has been that it wouldn’t really make much difference to me what all the various terminals in Scn have perpetrated over the years, as I already know for myself the horrors that go on! This viewpoint goes for LRH too – since, as we’ve all agreed, knowledge should be looked at in and of itself. And that’s my only real interest – the knowledge and the tech and what IT has to say about whatever.
The other point I would make on all this is one I’ve tried to make before, which is my disagreement with bad-mouthing “Scientology” in a general way, especially by those who know its immense value and yet give equal or more time to criticism. The value of Scn far outweighs all the mistakes that have been made in its practice or management, to my way of thinking. It’s totally fine and utterly needed to learn from those mistakes, but I believe in a future for Scn – and whatever people keep “putting there” about it does create effects that ripple, as I see it.
The first part of you comment above is guilty of Psychogenetic Fallacy – if you learn the psychological reason why your opponent likes an argument, then he’s biased, so his argument must be wrong.
The last paragraph is: Argument From Adverse Consequences (Appeal To Fear, Scare Tactics) – saying an opponent must be wrong, because if he is right, then bad things would ensue. It is also false to claim that one can disregard the wrongs in a subject because it also does a lot of good. Although it is in alignment with LRH’s “if you’re stats are up, you can get away with murder” – it is still wrong by most ethical standards. We treat all murderers the same under the law – regardless of how many children they have tutored.
I also see a lot of this in your posts: Special Pleading (Stacking The Deck) – using the arguments that support your position, but ignoring or somehow disallowing the arguments against.
After thousands of words and conversing with dozens of bright people, I am no longer convinced of LRH’s good intentions.
Elizabeth asserts that LRH never invented anything but “stole” the materials describing the mind and implants on the whole track and the LRH was himself a clever implanter which is why he has the key to unraveling implanted ideas. I like this idea as it is explains some things.
I am not convinced that Scientology as it is is not a dead end. Scientology never made a Clear and never made an OT that is a clear matter of public record.
Did I use Scientology and did I have wins? Yes and yes. But what sort of person am I? I did my duty. I got good products. But I have always kept a kernel of myself to myself and never been a true believer of the zealot kind. Every zealous act that I committed of lying and telling shore stories or writing (one time) a disconnection letter felt like over acts to me and weighed on me.
I learn because I intend to learn. I was doing this when I found Scientology and then that actually went on hiatus for a while at the end of my SO duty. At that point, I began learning technology. But now that “I am back” I see things differently. Life is less starkly colored and I see the wave lengths of everything in everything.
LRH would accuse me of seeing A=A=A. But you know, that’s not it at all. I see differences in things, sure. But I really see sameness in things that I used to think of as a flaw when in the the SO. Today I see merit in critics complaints and arguments. Do they whine? Yes, lots. Me too. Are they just being victims? Sometimes.
My world is so much bigger than it used to be as a Scientologist that it is hard to just put my finger on a difference. It is more like riding my canoe down a river and entering the ocean. The universe seems wondrous and big and so much less desperate and frightening than the view I had as an SO member. Then I felt good and part of a tightly knit group of comrades.
Today I feel part of a wondrously warm universe of everythings.
Theetie-weetie? I don’t really think so. But maybe you or someone might?
And importantly, quelling our urges is conversely an expansion of our freedom. More elbow room — get me?
Geir: “My objection to LRH’s strategy of “always attack, never defend” is its utter disaster for Scientology as proven by history.”
It seems to me, from the context of the references themselves, that this strategy was intended for the vested-interest type of antagonism, such as governments or medical groups, or because of what Scn is capable of as regards to withholds.
No, it was intended for any critics of Scientology – as is evident in LRH’s own declares of people, the Fair Game policy and other references supporting this.
Geir: “The first part of your comment above is guilty of Psychogenetic Fallacy – if you learn the psychological reason why your opponent likes an argument, then he’s biased, so his argument must be wrong..”
On this one, I don’t get what you’re referring to. Please explain.
“The last paragraph is: Argument From Adverse Consequences (Appeal To Fear, Scare Tactics) – saying an opponent must be wrong, because if he is right, then bad things would ensue.”
That fallacy is explained this way: “saying an opponent must be wrong, because if he is right, then bad things would ensue.”
I wasn’t saying their argument itself was wrong for that reason (in fact, earlier in my post I stated “there may be such a basis” to the conclusions of critics but that they had not given a convincing one). I am simply questioning the emphasis on and spreading of the outpoints, rather than what I feel should be the emphasis – actual Scientology, its knowledge and tech. Besides, this was meant in answer to Chris’ question, not as a counter-argument to anybody – and Chris himself wasn’t actually making any argument one way or the other.
“It is also false to claim that one can disregard the wrongs in a subject because it also does a lot of good.”
I’m not at all saying wrongs should be disregarded. I’ve said more than once that the lessons must be learned.
“I also see a lot of this in your posts: Special Pleading (Stacking The Deck) – using the arguments that support your position, but ignoring or somehow disallowing the arguments against.”
Please give me some examples of “a lot of this” or at least one.
The last one is also a “defending like hell no matter what based on emotional bias” which is similar to “attacking like hell no matter what based on emotional bias” which Al is guilty of. It is about ignoring actual evidence contrary to one’s world view – not necessarily by ignoring the facts in the discussion but instead ignoring the facts in one’s head and then feeling the urge to defend regardless. This makes it hard to make the person guilty of it to see the fallacy – because in your head, you are already fully right in defending it.
This is why the challenge for you stand: Write down 5 logical fallacies that LRH in his writings are guilty of.
As for the first one; It seems you are pointing out more logical fallacies with Al’s posts than any others (admittedly, his posts do have more logical fallacies than most others – but not to the extent that your effort shows). That is again why I want to challenge you to, and I repeat: Write down 5 logical fallacies that LRH in his writings are guilty of.
Regarding:
“The last paragraph is: Argument From Adverse Consequences (Appeal To Fear, Scare Tactics) – saying an opponent must be wrong, because if he is right, then bad things would ensue.”
That fallacy is explained this way: “saying an opponent must be wrong, because if he is right, then bad things would ensue.”
I could refer you to the thread on the ARC triangle where you admitted that you didn’t like to see the arguments made because that could deter people from taking to Scientology.
Now; The challenge. The glove is on the ground.
Chris, the wall of fire materials are a great discovery from lrh and the church should give some kind of info to his parishioners about the stuff handled there and the wins to be expected with honesty. Spiritual salvation is not dependant of this stuff but increases the well being and condition of the person. If the person can afford it, it is wonderful, but if not, this is not the way to spiritual redemption. I will not recomend to run the exact processes by untrained or unexperienced persons as damage can occur. Just do not make persons feel bad because he/she can not economically afford these expensive mental stuff.
I do not know about this. If this is your reality and you have been helped by it then good. I congratulate you.
Geir: “It is about ignoring actual evidence contrary to one’s world view – not necessarily by ignoring the facts in the discussion but instead ignoring the facts in one’s head and then feeling the urge to defend regardless.”
What facts in my head am I ignoring? (I’m actually more willing to look than you are assuming.)
Geir: “It seems you are pointing out more logical fallacies with Al’s posts than any others (admittedly, his posts do have more logical fallacies than most others – but not to the extent that your effort shows).”
Up until that last post of mine I was still trying to get Al to see that his arguments weren’t convincing as they weren’t logical and I was hoping that he would then start making comments that I could actually consider. But the fallacy I quoted in that last reply to him included what I myself was on the verge of concluding: “It is likely that the person will just continue in the machine gun like attack of topic hopping [and other fallacies]. If they don’t stop, simply declare the nature of their fallacy and discontinue the argument.”
Geir: “I could refer you to the thread on the ARC triangle where you admitted that you didn’t like to see the arguments made because that could deter people from taking to Scientology. “
You are right about that. But that was not actually my argument – it was in answer to a question you asked as to what would happen if the ARC triangle were proven wrong. More importantly, it’s not the argument I’m making now.
As for your challenge that I write down 5 logical fallacies that LRH in his writings is guilty of, let’s take up one thing at a time so as not to change the Subject and leave the various ongoing comm cycles between us incomplete. That kind of thing is what I have found so frustrating because the issues brought up don’t get resolved.
Let’s consider this resolved.
Now, the challenge:
Write down 5 logical fallacies that LRH is guilty of in his writings.
p.s. One other thing you said: “It is also false to claim that one can disregard the wrongs in a subject because it also does a lot of good.”
I’m not at all saying wrongs should be disregarded. I’ve said more than once that the lessons must be learned, I’m sure you can recall. And the interpretation above misrepresents what I said in the very comment it is in response to, which was this: “It’s totally fine and UTTERLY NEEDED to learn from those mistakes.”
As for your last post, “Let’s consider this resolved. Now, the challenge: Write down 5 logical fallacies that LRH is guilty of in his writings,” I don’t know what you mean by “consider this resolved.”
It seems to me, as I said, to be changing the subject – over to one of how logical can marildi be about LRH’s logical fallacies – rather than actually resolving the subjects already started. I won’t ignore your challenge but can you please respond to the points in my last post first?
I consider you totally right on all your accounts regarding our exchange here.
So, the issues are fully resolved.
Now, the challenge: Write down 5 logical fallacies that LRH is guilty of in his writings.
Geir: “I consider you totally right on all your accounts regarding our exchange here.”
Assuming for the sake of argument that the above is sincere, here is how your challenge strikes me. Firstly, I haven’t made any statement that LRH never committed any logical fallacies so it isn’t actually my own claim. Secondly, this is a loaded question since if I say I don’t know of any, I’m sure I’ll be faulted – and if I do find some I imagine I’ll be faulted in some way as well. But be that as it may, since I don’t know of any off the top of my head what am I supposed to do with that challenge – start going through all the materials one by one?
On the other hand, I don’t have a problem with taking up this subject; I think it might be enlightening. However, since this is your own implied contention and not mine one way or another, I think it should be you who cites some of what you think are LRH’s logical fallacies and then I can agree or challenge those. The discussion should prove to be constructive one way or another and I would be happy to have it.
It is sincere.
I don’t claim that you say that there isn’t any logical fallacies in LRH’s writings.
It is a challenge, plain and simple. It is what will graduate you to the Logic Officer on this blog.
Out of LRH’s millions upon millions of words and tens of thousands of concepts. I am very sure you will find many, many more than only 5 logical fallacies.
Now again – the challenge: Write down 5 logical fallacies that LRH is guilty of in his writings.
Geir, if the intention is to test me in order to “graduate me to Logic Officer,” even if that’s meant figuratively or just for a game (which is totally cool) I don’t understand the insistence that I find LRH’s logical fallacies as THE test. If it’s because you think I’m too biased to be able to spot them in him and you want me to “get that” or because you think I’ll somehow learn a lesson by finding them myself, I in tern insist that you could as easily show up my bias or illogic as regards LRH and “teach me a lesson” in that regard, by presenting some examples to me and thereby test whether my responses were logical. As a matter of fact, if you presented them yourself it would test both of us. 😉 And honestly, so far I don’t see that I am any more biased than you are – or you more than me, for that matter.
As indicated, I have no desire to pour over the materials for who knows how long. (Maybe you just want to keep me busy for awhile? :-D) Your opinion seems to be that this would be a fast cycle – which implies you think his logical fallacies are spread all over the place and I find that to be over the top,
Marildi; This is classic Q & A.
Do the challenge or refuse to do it.
Hey Marildi, You are taking this way too serious. This is a fun exercise and you’ll never get to do something like this hardly at all let alone in a friendly place as this. Like practicing for debate. Take two sides and debate them both for practice.
And unearthing fallacious logic does not in itself prove a datum false. It proves it inconsistent or illogical. So no risk there either.
This is freedom at its root. To think the thoughts we want. Any thought. It is a grand opportunity to uncover urges!
It’s not a contest except with yourself. These are the anchor points. It’s the bird and nest. It’s the old apron strings. And anyway, we’re here for you.
Geir, I don’t see it as a Q & A, I see it as an origination. Can I please get a TR 4?
I understand.
Now can we continue?
Good.
Take the challenge or refuse to take it.
It’s almost like someone saying, “Tails you lose, heads I win,” and then saying, “Do you accept the challenge or not?” So no – I don’t. Why would I accept such a thing?
I happen to love a good challenge. Really. Yours isn’t a good one, for the reasons stated – and your TR 4 on those was a brush off. If you came up with a challenge that made sense I would love it.
I suggested an alternate challenge, which you apparently aren’t accepting either.
There are many lurkers on this blog. I talk to some back-channel. Arguments forewarded by posters who are seen as emotionally biased will easily be dismissed by everyone except those that share the sane bias. Critics will praise Alanzo. Die-hard Scientologists will praise you and Valkov. The main group of readers could take the postings of the three of you with more than a grain of salt. It is human nauture – both bias and the reaction to it.
With your newfound skill and excellence in spotting logical fallacies, you would do your arguments great service were you to rise above any bias and show that by being able to spot logical fallacies with LRH himself. And what could be a better challemge, to use a skill to challene one’s own ideas?
You are fending off what Geir is saying by taking the challenge personally as an Ad Hom variant but I’m not in the market for red-herring today. When we confront what is making us uncomfortable we always win and by this I am not meaning Geir nor his challenge. I direct your attention to the urge that you feel to defend Scientology even while not practicing it. May I say that and not as an attack? Are any of us “researchers” here “practicing” Scientology? I am thinking — no, but I may be wrong.
Sometimes my own illogic makes me feel uncomfortable. This is because my thoughts won’t flow freely through the filter of my logical screen. This discomfort is my tip-off to go “a-ha!” and take a closer look. This is always always productive for me.
As I wrote before, if I think of a syllogism not as a truth finder but as a consistency tester, I remain more calm and courageous, and I tend to not activate my own bias. I try to never begin with a judgement. Begin with a format. This is mechanical. If inconsistencies appear, then we can “worry” about what to do with them, not before. Doing this in reverse is a definition of bias.
Chris, of course you aren’t theetie-weetie. Your ideas sometimes go over my head :-), but for the most part they make a lot of sense to me. And I sincerely think it’s great that you are following the path of your choice in a “think-and-look-for-yourself” way.
In spite of how I may appear to be fixed in my thinking and ultra-biased toward Scientology, I stated earlier on this thread, even before Maria used the phrase, that “the be-all and end-all” is no longer what I believe Scn to be (I used to). I do believe that for what it is (witness the Groundbreaking thread alone), it is highly, highly valuable and I feel strongly that it should be preserved and forwarded – it is “the best we have,” as even Geir said.
Believe me, I know as well as you do, how it was in the SO. But I don’t for a minute believe that was Scientology – i.e. “the message” as LRH called it in this lecture:
“Well our task is to bring Dianetics and Scientology to a society. And the unfortunately necessary via on the line is organization. You understand this? I mean that’s an unfortunate via.
“…and when the organization itself becomes more important than the message, you no longer have a message going to the public, right?” 28 Dec 1954, Unification Congress, Introduction.
Geir, your test of my being able to “spot logical fallacies with LRH himself” includes in it being able to search them out in a sea of materials. And as I’ve said, this implies that you must think they are all over the place. I don’t believe that and was baffled by your insistence on this particular kind of test, so last night I actually made an attempt at it. I ended up feeling like I was looking for needles in a haystack and, even though the needles may be there, I couldn’t find them. So you can go ahead and chalk it up as a flunk if you want.
Since it’s you and I trust your intentions, I also tried to figure out what the intention would be for such a test and I remembered the last exchange we had on the ARC triangle. You asked me a question and I said that I just couldn’t figure out the answer, whereupon you turned it back to me and insisted I answer it for myself. I could immediately see the sense of what you were saying even before I figured out the answer. And you were spot on – I came to my own conclusion that way. It seems that you’re now attempting something similar, although in the ARC triangle exchange there was something specific being discussed – and that made it different. And note that in both instances Scn and LRH were “at stake,” so I don’t think it has to do with any bias that I protested the validity of your proposed test. The first instance rang true for me but this one didn’t.
In any case, I’ll say again that I’m willing to take the challenge of being able to spot the logical fallacies in any LRH statements presented to me as having them. But at least narrow it down to a few paragraphs or something like that – where I would need to find the illogic. I don’t know what else I need to say to get across that I am very willing “to rise above any bias.” I’ve had this happen at times already in the discussions here, as I think you know, and was nothing but glad about it when it did – truth indicates.
With the Internet and Google close at hand and with critics of Scientology having been busy pointing out inconcistensies and logical fallacies in LRH’s writings for decades, I would be surprised if you could not find a few that you could agree being genuine logical fallacies. If you are sincere in your opinion that the work should be improved upon, what could be more important than to seek out these weak points in the writings with your newfound skill and then consequently go ahead and improve upon it?
I trust you can be a real asset in this quest for an even better Bridge as LRH so elegantly laid his glove down for others to pick up in DMSMH (the Diantecis book for you lurkers).
Please be very careful laying down a major premise such as “truth indicates.” This is a setup for a fall.
“…what could be more important than to seek out these weak points in the writings”
Geir, let me sum up what I’ve come to and have tried to say already at different points: The tech should be reviewed to determine what the inconsistencies are, as there obviously are some. Whether or not they are indeed LRH’s inconsistencies or someone’s alterations of his writings, or are merely mislabeled as inconsistencies based on lack of knowledge and experience – all that remains to be seen by the review and sort-out that I’m certain will be done and feel must be done to salvage a true gift to mankind.
That sort-out should include ALL tech – auditing, training, admin and ethics – and it would require a team of trained and experienced tech and admin terminals, including those who have the data on the history of all the changes.
I’ve said too that I have no problem and actually agree that any of the tech can and should be researched and improved upon – while leaving what LRH achieved as its own body of knowledge and tech. And as well, I have no problem with anyone not practicing Scientology at all and instead practicing something else.
But getting back to what you said, with the first two paragraphs above in mind you can see why I agree with you totally on “what could be more important than to seek out the weak points in the writings.” However, as for myself, I don’t have the quals that are necessary for the sort-out, and thus I don’t particularly see it as my own personal mission. When I consider that (and other factors), so far I see my contribution as more along the lines of participating in the discussions and shedding light where I can – and having light shed on my own ideas is the personal benefit.
In relation to the current discussion, I’ve also come to realize that I should invest my energies in exchanges with those who are able or at least willing to try to be rational and also willing to have a true comm cycle – which is why I appreciate the ones I have with you, as I’ve said before. Thank you for this latest one, truly. And you can take a win on my having been shifted to whatever degree to a less fixed attitude. Some of what you said did impinge. 🙂
Geir’s challenge is not so much about LRH writings as it is about our urges to defend. And you ARE qualified to look at your own thoughts.
“Geir’s challenge is not so much about LRH writings as it is about our urges to defend. And you ARE qualified to look at your own thoughts.”
Do you think I don’t know that?
I’ve noticed from a number of comments you’ve made here and elsewhere that you seem to be convinced I don’t “look at my own thoughts.” Rest assured I got your general viewpoint on that and you really don’t need to keep repeating it. Apparently, you meant this last repetition to apply to my comment(s) above, but I assure you that in my reality I have been “looking at my own thoughts.”
As for this other comment: “Please be very careful laying down a major premise such as ‘truth indicates,’” the fact is that you could translate my use of “truth indicates” to mean – that’s what I perceive as truth and this is my own thought on the matter.
Again with the straw. My comment was directed at your comment that you weren’t qualified to evaluate Scientology. The obvious point is that you are avoiding taking a critical look at LRH and Scientology. This is the blood in the water which is drawing the sharks.
I think you are quite competent to evaluate Scientology and even more qualified to take a look at your bias — the line which you won’t cross which could be pointed to and the accusation made, ” She there, with the pink legs sticking out — she criticized LRH.”
But you are in a “pickle” (baseball slang) bouncing between trying to be both progressively objective and at the same time loyal to the Tech and LRH. It is uncomfortable and I spent years there myself and there is a disloyal feeling of having cheated but the fractal iteration moves on and we with it. Sometimes it just takes a while to notice. I have been enticing you to play for a year now . . . c’mon out Marildi!
This is only one little thing and not any type of aspersion on your wonderful research, good ideas, and fabulous progress studying physics, and lately your work with the fallacious arguments. It is a single little point only and you can afford to look at it — you’ve plenty of leeway and friends coaxing you out.
. . . or else, yes, I am the Devil trying to make you lose your everlasting soul. (I have to write “humor” as you got just a little bit solid on this last cycling of repartee.)
Truth neither indicates because it is true anymore than experiencing agreement with some datum means that the datum is true. The indication of locating correlating data in the mind might produce a consistency or take away an inconsistency and the resulting datum might have a new level of truth but it is not proven true by the fact of one’s cognition. Truth for oneself maybe but we are discussing consensus truths.
Or one can decide to be a true believer, but if I were one, I would just say that I am and put an end to the arguing for that is the trump card of arguing. LRH said it, I believe it, that settles it.
Chris said:
“3. The anti-social personality alters to worsen communication when he or she relays a message or news often embellished is passed along. Such a person also pretends to pass on “bad news” which is in actual fact invented.”
The OTIII incident is true for everyone. Is it?
———————–
I’ve been considering this information about thought-forms, with consideration to the data on ho’oponopono concepts. :
“The selfishness, the sordid motives, the prompt response to evil impulses for which the human race has been distinguished, has brought about a condition of affairs unparalleled in the system. A gigantic thought-form hovers over the entire human family, built by men everywhere during the ages, energised by the insane desires and evil inclinations of all that is worst in man’s nature, and kept alive by the promptings of his lower desires. This thought-form has to be broken up and dissipated by man himself.” (A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, p. 947/8)
[…]
“All activity of every kind is the result:
a. Of thought-forms built consciously or unconsiously.
b. Of self-initiated thought-forms or of the effect of the thought-forms of others.
c. Of responsiveness to one’s own inner impulses, or of responsiveness to the impulses of others, and therefore to group thought-forms.” (A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, p. 977)
http://www.esoteric-philosophy.net/thoutforms.html
Ho’oponopono
http://www.idreamcatcher.com/hooponopono/
I’m understanding two messages from you that on the one hand that the Tone Scale is a self-fulfilling affirmation and then conversely that there does exist in reality a thought-form hovering over humanity prompting us toward our carnal instincts.
Are these inconsistent with one another or are you going to blend them or did I miss your point?
Chris: “Again with the straw. My comment was directed at your comment that you weren’t qualified to evaluate Scientology.”
Hey cowboy, I think the telltale Straw is hanging from your own mouth ;-). Where did I say I “wasn’t qualified to evaluate SCIENTOLOGY”? In the above post I was talking about a TECHNICAL sort-out and said that it would need highly trained people to do it – which I am not.
You also said, “I think you are quite competent to evaluate Scientology and even more qualified to take a look at your bias — the line which you won’t cross…”
I really don’t get why you point to me in particular and say that I “won’t” take a look at my own bias. This isn’t any more true for me than it’s true for most others posting here – including you when you come out with the surprisingly bitter criticisms that you do. Perhaps the bias is more yours and that’s why you (and maybe others too) are so touchy about mine. If that’s the case, I’ll admit – been there done that myself :-).
Nevertheless, it’s not going to do any good trying to push that off on me, or your other evaluations – pretty much the remainder of your post. Please realize this type of thing doesn’t do any good. It just doesn’t work that way and in fact it can make it more difficult for the person. No fun being preached to either.
And normally you are a heap o’ fun (how’s my Arizonian?)
So no, this isn’t about “the Devil trying to make me lose my everlasting soul” but let me throw some baseball jargon back at you and say that from where I stand in the field I see you as Off Base where I’m concerned. So how about we both ease up on the personal evaluations and speak to the content of the posts. And be buddies again :-).
Otherwise, I’m going to have to start promoting that rule thingy :-D.
Chris: as regards the thought-forms and Ho’oponopono – I am continuing with Alanzo’s OP which is to find data that could be comparable. The thought-form data seems to parallel the idea of a group bank, and so does the information in Ho’oponopono. In particular both of them advocate working to dissipate (dissolve) this bank as a critical activity of healing or actualization.
My own personal realization about this is that I am literally playing with fire when I act in ways that activate this bank in myself and others by fomenting or keeping going hostilities and negative attitudes and emotions.
To give you an example of how I am thinking about this, I’ll use Alanzo as an example. Let’s say he posts something that seems antagonistic to me. I have a choice. I can jump to a conclusion (postulate) that he is destructive and really create on it until I can say (apparently truthfully) that he is a destructive being or I can say jeez, I am having quite a reaction here – what’s with that? And I can clear off that reaction and instead conclude that he is a person doing his best to bring about a better condition or state for everybody. Now it may be true that he has his own healing/clearing to do on all this, but I can’t do that for him. But it also may be true that what I am doing is contributing to making it hard for him to be who he really is, which is a citizen of the universe just as I am. And I think it is very invalidative to decide that he can’t or won’t act in ways that lessen the effect of group bank. Why should I be surprised that this offends him and upsets him? Of course, he has a choice to do one or the other as well, but this presupposes that he has thought this through himself.
The way I figure it is that what I can do is not keep putting my own crap on the line and triggering a chain reaction that serves to dump all of us into the murky soup of group bank. I think that if I am going to work on ramping up my ability to create, then I have to also ramp up my responsibility for what I create and quit blaming others for my own continued creation of horrendous states of mind that result in horrendous acts of brutality – not just in the tiny world of Scientology but in the world in total. Ripple effect.
I personally think there is a group bank – but it isn’t just static – its being built as we speak and it is one ugly son of a bitch.
I see what you mean. LOL This is what I was taught as a child for the reason I was to use good manners.
If I follow you correctly, thought-form is a way of saying reality? Then another way of saying how we can proceed with caution is to have good TR’s, a good heart, and not go out of our way to create effects that others cannot easily experience?
I am following you closely on the group bank idea. My own personal research is not revealing other kinds of mind. There is for me mind and I attempt to understand and get my little piece of it under control. I observe the ripple effects as you say. I see how my splash ripples outward. So far I can see and like your previously posted model of encapsulated theta surrounded by theta. The separation being cause solely by our own considerations.
I am not yet minus these separation considerations, hence my individuation still exists. Above pan-determined might there be another layer which needs another name. Vin says unknowable and the Scientologist says static, native state, etc., but with the encapsulating considerations missing might there be a magic moment of merging which results in a totally new sense of life?
Maria: “My own personal realization about this is that I am literally playing with fire when I act in ways that activate this bank in myself and others by fomenting or keeping going hostilities and negative attitudes and emotions.”
The above is just one of the many things you said in that post that are superbly quotable. If ever there was a post to go up on the wall, Maria – this is it. Love you! 🙂
Excellent! A few more in this clip:
Wow. Thanks aotc – it seems I really missed some along the way – now I can extend my list!
Glad to assist 🙂
The key point of Data Series that I like is that it focuses on inconsistencies rather than on consistencies. Consistency is what is left after inconsistencies are removed.
Compare peer-reviewed, double blind sciencific techniques, and why they are set up that way, to the techniques Hubbard used to develop the technology of dianetics and scientology.
And what are “the techniques Hubbard used to develop the technologies of dianetics and scientology”?
Good question.
When you know the techniques of peer-reviewed, double blind science, the fact that you have to ask that question at all about Hubbard techniques tells you something.
What does it tell you?
It tells me that you don’t know what techniques Hubbard used.
Yes. Because he never published them, or allowed anyone else to see them outside of his secret CMO “pilot” projects. In addition, in KSW, he says that he had risen above the bank and nobody else had, and so he was the only person qualified to decide the workability of his tech.
So, when you compare that operating basis to a datum of comparable magnitude – say how research methods are handled in science – what kind of evaluation can be made of that?
Actually Al, it seems to me that the workability of his tech has been judged by all the people who have practiced it and by the collective experiences of all those who received auditing and training over the years, and are even now receiving it, mostly outside the CoS. It is that collective opinion of it’s results that establishes it’s workability, not necessarily whatever LRH claimed for it.
It’s almost a ‘peer review’ that has taken place over the past few decades. The difference being, that to evaluate LRH a datum of comparable magnitude is needed, right?
Only such would would really be qualified to do a ‘peer review’ of his work, right?
While that might be a little hard to arrange, I think your idea of comparing the works of other great philosophers is a good direction to go in.
Actually Al, it seems to me that the workability of his tech has been judged by all the people who have practiced it and by the collective experiences of all those who received auditing and training over the years, and are even now receiving it, mostly outside the CoS. It is that collective opinion of it’s results that establishes it’s workability, not necessarily whatever LRH claimed for it.
Well, if we are going to say that ALL the people who have done Scientology should be used as “peer reviews”, then I think the reviews are in, and Scientology is deemed to be a disaster.
Far more people have left Scientology after receiving services than have stayed in.
In fact, in 1993, Guy White, former Marketing Exec Int and LRH’s son-in-law, told me that the “Training and Processing list” was a list of every person who had done any scientology auditing and training whatsoever, from 1950 to that point in time.
He said that list contained 330,000 names.
The last poll of religious affiliations estimated the number of Scientologists worldwide to be around 25,000 to 40,000 people. Mike Rinder has said that it’s probably less than that now.
So if we use your method of “peer review”, then things aren’t looking too good for the workability of Scientology.
Actually Al, your post appears to be a red herring type of response which does not respond to what I posted, but to a different topic entirely.
My post is about this: “the workability of his tech has been judged by all the people who have practiced it and by the collective experiences of all those who received auditing and training over the years, and are even now receiving it, mostly outside the CoS.”
It has nothing to do with census figures or who considers themselves a member of the CoS or some ill-defined vague entity you call “Scientology”.
You totally shifted the discussion onto other ground. It amazes me that you either don’t get that after all these years, or deliberately ignore it to keep with your agenda.
Don’t you realize, that either way, you lose?
Or am I overlooking a third alternative?
Yeah, Scientology is such a ‘disaster’ that it boomed for 30+ years and spread all over the world. Until the CoS gradually ceased delivering it. But even so it has been ongoing with many good results in the Freezone, in Ron’s Orgs etc.
Don’t you ever LOOK, as Vinnie calls it?
“Boomed”?
Right, Valkov.
Whatever you say.
Valkov: “You totally shifted the discussion onto other ground. It amazes me that you either don’t get that after all these years, or deliberately ignore it to keep with your agenda.”
Val, okay if I quote you verbatim on my own replies to certain people? It would save a lot of time and energy. 😀
Sure Marildi, you can quote me, for what it’s worth. I’m a great believer in use of epigrams. I guess you realize that sometimes you are just talking to a recorded message. You only think you are having a dialogue.
So actually creating a ‘swipe file’ of quotes of yourself or other’s statements is a good idea, it could save a lot of time and effort repeating yourself from scratch.
I have been convinced for over a year that Al works from such a swipe file of canned, rote, ‘critical’ responses, whether stored on his computer, or in a mental machine he has running. That’s why a lot of his responses are actually non-seq. His “search engine” just pulls up some response based on a keyword it spots in your post, It’s no better than Google, which frequently pulls up junk responses. His SE sometimes pulls up ‘critic spam’; this is so he won’t get caught speechless as often as he would otherwise; being left speechless is death to a debater.
This is not to say he never thinks about other’s posts; he does when he has to. But sometimes the first response is one of the canned ones. Or just a dismissal. A good example is his reply below:
“Boomed”?
Right, Valkov.
Whatever you say.
Inspite of the evidence offered by hundreds of posters who were around in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, Al rejects the notion that Scientology ever “boomed”. He never explains how the CoS grew, from scratch, to be worldwide in less than 3 decades.
This is an example of my posting up against a “negating machine” preloaded with his stable datums, one of which is that Scientology never grew to any significant extent, never really amounted to anything.
It’s just a complete “must deny”.
There continues to surface Holocaust Deniers as well.
Valkov, this post was one of your best. Insightful. Witty. And really funny! Chris brought up the Holocaust Deniers – and we could add that there are still Flat-Earthers too.
But I’m going to hold out hope for Alanzo, especially since he’s made friends here 😉 (and maybe what we’re sensing is a good guy with a failed purpose as regards Scn).
Valkov wrote:
My post is about this: “the workability of his tech has been judged by all the people who have practiced it and by the collective experiences of all those who received auditing and training over the years, and are even now receiving it, mostly outside the CoS.”
The idea that this is some kind of peer-review process or that it is even remotely related to the subject under discussion – the comparison with scientific peer reviews – is not discernable.
I apologize, but when we started talking about comparing the peer review processes from science, and why they use their procedures, I thought that you were trying to come to some kind of quantifiable way to review the results of Scientology. But you’re not. You are on some touchy-feely kind of blow-out fn cognition thing about “the collective experiences” of everyone who has received auditing and training and…. what?
If you aren’t trying to get to anything quantifiable, and you have completely lost the plot with regard to the comparison of peer review processes in science, then don’t let me kill your f/n, dude. Just keep on cogging…
Better yet, learn about the sacred cows of the scientific method that have been promulgated by poorly constructed curriculums offered in public schools:
I`ve listed the principal myths below in bullet form, you can read the read in the link I`ve provided. It will really open up your eyes as to just what scientists ACTUALLY do and what scientific method is and is not.
The Principal Elements of the Nature of Science: Dispelling the Myths
Click to access TheMythsOfScience.pdf
Myth 1: Hypotheses become theories that in turn become laws
Myth 2: Scientific laws and other such ideas are absolute
Myth 3: A hypothesis is an educated guess
Myth 4: A general and universal scientific method exists
Myth 5: Evidence accumulated carefully will result in sure knowledge
Myth 6: Science and its methods provide absolute proof
Myth 7: Science is procedural more than creative
Myth 8: Science and its methods can answer all questions
Myth 9: Scientists are particularly objective
Myth 10: Experiments are the principal route to scientific knowledge
Myth 11: Scientific conclusions are reviewed for accuracy
Myth 12: Acceptance of new scientific knowledge is straightforward
Myth 13: Science models represent reality
Myth 14: Science and technology are identical
Myth 15: Science is a solitary pursuit
Also, it is important to comprehend that there is a history of scientific method and that many of those methods are STILL in use. Popper`s experimental methods of falsibility were intended to demonstrate that science is not infallible, they were not intended to become the only measuring stick of science. In fact, falsibility does one thing and one thing only: disproves something. That something has not yet been disproven or cannot ever be disproven does not disqualify it from the realm of science.
http://www.experiment-resources.com/history-of-the-scientific-method.html
Social sciences and psychology do not use double blind methods as their primary tool. Laws on human experimentation are the primary barrier to doing so. This link provides a diagram of the actual scientific methods used in the social sciences:
Click to access Social_Psychology_Lecture_1.pdf
Here`s a summary of scientific method in the social sciences:
1. Hunches based on background knowledge, personal experience, casual observation
resulting in:
2. Theory about social behaviour
resulting in:
3. Predictions derived from theory — hypotheses
followed by:
4. Empirical research to test predictions
resulting in
a) Predictions confirmed — confidence in theory increased (return to step 4 as needed)
or
b) Predictions disconfirmed — confidence in theory reduced
resulting in
i) theory is rejected
or
ii) theory is modified (return to step 4 and repeat)
Notice that it is based on the confirmation of predictions rather than falsification.
Consider the following:
“Science and technology are often thought of going hand in hand. But this is often not the case. The nearly invisible reason is that the technically-minded and the scientifically-minded don’t appear to be the same kind of thinkers.
Largely speaking, scientists are more likely to be theoreticians. But technicians are more likely to be engineers.
Scientists theorize and try to test their theories. But technicians build things, often just to see what the things can do. Indeed, technical advances can often be several generations AHEAD of scientific thinking. This is certainly the case with the computer industry evolved largely by technician-types, not by scientists. Indeed, many technological advances have been achieved by technologists who possessed little in the way of legitimate or conventional scientific backgrounds.”
http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/Your17Senses.html
Note: the computer sciences departments do not reject the works and developments of their “technicians” on the basis that there isn’t a theory to cover the working instruments of computer technologies. That’s why you do have a laptop and do have an internet connection. They ignored so-called “pure” science and worked from the basis of building upon what works and streamlining that. That is heuristic science at work in the computer sciences.
Expanding this, here’s a very thorough look at just what science is comprised of, and how blind studies fit into that:
“The procedure that gets taught as “The Scientific Method” is entirely misleading. Studying what scientists actually do is far more interesting.”
[…]
“The fact that we learn a lot from paying attention to a surprising event certainly does not depend on following the intricate procedures of some magical “scientific method.” Infants do that; Pigeons do that. Hundreds of million years of evolution prepared animals to pay special attention to novel events, and we’re all very good at it.
In fact, no explicit theory is required at all for scientists to learn from surprising discoveries. The first person to see microorganisms moving around in a drop of pond water had no theory stating that they should be there, or that they shouldn’t be there. Surprise amplifies learning when the surprising discovery supports a theory, when it is at odds with a theory, and when there is no relevant theory.”
http://www.dharma-haven.org/science/myth-of-scientific-method.htm
LOL, Alanzo, you’re trying to snow the Queen of Snow. You must be having to run your snow plow full time by now. 😀
Snow plow full time = funny
You may soon be nominated for honorary Arizona Cowboy if you continue to quip like this.
Thanks, pardner. 🙂
Hey, we haven’t heard from Alanzo all day – you think he’s snowed in? Snowed under?
It’s not really directed at Alanzo at all! It’s really that I have become a critical thinking addict! I am even critical of critical thinking and along the way many, many subjects have come under my enthusiastic tear down. I got onto this line of the myths and assumptions of science when I was studying the methodologies of the non-physical sciences such as psychology, sociology. On top of that, philosophy has had long and bitter debates about critical thinking, scientific methodologies, and so on. Learning all this has really opened up my thinking and helped me to get rid of a lot of misconceptions and really flawed/uninspected areas of thinking.
Oh I know, Maria. It wasn’t you directing it at anybody – it was me comparing. Just teasing Alanzo. (But I wouldn’t want to be compared with you either! :-))
Seriously, what you’ve posted on this and other subjects are valuable summaries and insights from a lot of study. Have you ever considered writing a book? Or at least some articles to submit to various publications or websites?
I know. And you’ve produced a lot of thought-provoking material along the way.
Here is an excellent summary of how the peer-review process works, that explains why it didn’t catch Dr. Hwang Woo Suk’s falsified work on stem cells and why many scientists are pushing for an open Web based system for publishing and collaboration. The article examines the positive aspects of peer review, its very real drawbacks and limitations and the direction that current scientists are taking to solve the bottleneck and limitations it creates in scientific progress.
The assumption is that peer review ensures quality – this is not correct – the referees (as they are called) do not have access to the original documentation and must rely on the written presentation. Peer reviewed magazines/journals are inundated with thousands and thousands of papers and consequently can only review submissions for originality, convention, and innovation. The journals themselves provide prestige and recognition critical for funding and support (publish or perish) and offer a hand-picked digest of reading materials for their subscribers/readers.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/scientific-experiments/scientific-peer-review.htm
Full transparency all the way to raw data is needed.
Yes, and that is what most of the scientists themselves propose. They want open access and see the Internet as an exceptional tool to provide that. Their position is that the referees and journals can only publish so much each month with a downside of possibly important findings getting lost in the refereeing / journal selection process. The proponents of open access believe that peer review should not be the purview of a few referees who are not active research scientists themselves, but only able to provide expert opinions on the quality of the work as presented in papers. They think that open peer review will be just as effective and perhaps even more effective – with the advantage that important papers will not be hung up for months with the magazine/journal refereeing process.
I would like to have access to LRH’s raw data.
This process, of course, violates a key principle in LRH’s discovery process:
Our technology has not been discovered by a group. True, if the group had not supported me in many ways I could not have discovered it either. But it remains that if in its formative stages it was not discovered by a group, then group efforts, one can safely assume, will not add to it or successfully alter it in the future. I can only say this now that it is done. There remains, of course, group tabulation or co-ordination of what has been done, which will be valuable—only so long as it does not seek to alter basic principles and successful applications.
The contributions that were worthwhile in this period of forming the technology were help in the form of friendship, of defense, of organization, of dissemination, of application, of advices on results and of finance. These were great contributions and were, and are, appreciated. Many thousands contributed in this way and made us what we are. Discovery contribution was not however part of the broad picture.
We will not speculate here on why this was so or how I came to rise above the bank. We are dealing only in facts and the above is a fact— the group left to its own devices would not have evolved Scientology but with wild dramatization of the bank called “new ideas” would have wiped it out. Supporting this is the fact that man has never before evolved workable mental technology and emphasizing it is the vicious technology he did evolve—psychiatry, psychology, surgery, shock treatment, whips, duress, punishment, etc, ad infinitum.
So realize that we have climbed out of the mud by whatever good luck and good sense, and refuse to sink back into it again. See that Seven, Eight, Nine and Ten above are ruthlessly followed and we will never be stopped. Relax them, get reasonable about it and we will perish.
What if a scientist published a statement like this in a peer-reviewed journal?
What kind of reception would he get?
What a silly question. Policy letters are not scientific papers.
Maria wrote:
What a silly question. Policy letters are not scientific papers.
But this is a main principle in the process Hubbard used in developing the mental technology of Dianetics and Scientology?
So my question still stands: what if a scientist published this stance as his process for developing a mental technology?
I reckon work like that would be quickly ignored and relegated to the scrap-heap.
You are confusing scientific papers with the technology extrapolated from those papers. Scientists publish all kinds of information, and all kinds of technologies are developed from science findings. For example, technical specs of linux processes are not published as scientific papers. Only the actual science that are the foundations of computer processes are. Computer software companies release all kinds of manuals and technical papers that are not in the realm of scientific papers and I might add that they make all kinds of claims – Microsoft is notorious for that.
Keep in mind also that the ONLY purpose of peer-review is to gain recognition for the purposes of funding and support. These are journals, they present summaries of scientific works, but they are not and never are the scientific work itself. You really need to read the article about peer-review and its role and purpose. In reality most scientific work goes on outside of the peer-review process, particularly when the scientist already has funding – they often keep their work secret until they are fully prepared to exploit it. This is because of the proliferation of corporate financed research. The corporate funders set things up so that they can gain financially from the work being done. They do not normally tip their hand until they are good to go.
Finally, if in some impossible world it was accepted for publishing, the journal doing the publishing would lose its clientele immediately for publishing a work that is clearly not a scientific paper.
When you look at these scientific peer review procedures, and compare these procedures from science to the procedures LRH used to develop the tech – as an application of Logic 8 – what you see?
Is it only the flaws in scientific peer review – without comparing that part of Scientology with it?
The purpose of the Logic 8 exercise is to find things of comparable magnitude to things in Scientology, and to compare the two, in order to evaluate Scientology.
To see the flaws in scientific peer review is an important part of learning about it. So now that you have a good idea of scientific peer review – compare the two.
How do the procedures that LRH used to develop the tech compare with the procedures of scientific peer review?
As Geir has rightly pointed out, there is no raw data available. All we have is the publications and recorded lectures plus a very few commentaries from people who participated in the early foundations. That’s all. The procedures of development are not documented in a published form and I have no idea where they may be at this time. I keep an eye out for posts from people from earlier times who might have that information or know where the data ended up but so far there is just nothing at all about this.
To make matters much more difficult, in the 50s, the organization was reclassified as a religion and the confidentiality of confession was invoked. So even if there was a repository of source materials, they would not be open for inspection – or should not be anyway.
Finally, Buddhism, which is somewhat similar in nature, also has never been subjected to peer review and neither have most “spiritual” practices. Its just not feasible.
Bottom line: it is not impossible to do a valid comparison.
The best I’ve been able to come up with is reviewing the materials against the earlier works of the New Thought movement and other mind/spirit works of the late 19th and early 20th century. Kind of my own peer review by comparison. Those early works do summarize many of the tests and research procedures into the area of mind and thought. That’s been very fruitful for me, and fortunately, the works are freely available now – most of them passed into the public domain in 1978.
An alternative would be to do what Vinnie has been trying to do, which is review the materials from the ground up, establish some kind of means of attracting and summarizing feedback as materials are tested.
I should point out that many, many of the underlying elements of Dianetics, taken as examinations of specific procedures or concepts have been the subject of papers that have been published. I suppose one could sift through all of those and organize them and see how that shakes out.
Here’s a good example:
Cultivating Positive Emotions to Optimize Health and Well-Being
Click to access CultPosEmot.pdf
There are thousands of of these types of studies. THOUSANDS.
Maria wrote:
As Geir has rightly pointed out, there is no raw data available. All we have is the publications and recorded lectures plus a very few commentaries from people who participated in the early foundations. That’s all. The procedures of development are not documented in a published form and I have no idea where they may be at this time. I keep an eye out for posts from people from earlier times who might have that information or know where the data ended up but so far there is just nothing at all about this.
Not true that there is nothing at all.
Many people who were at Saint Hill and were involved in the development of the late 50’s early to mid 60’s tech like Alan Walter, Gordon Bell, the person posting on ESMB as DartsMohen, have written up extensive first hand data as to how the tech was developed there and under what type of “scientific” process.
You also have published issues like the Expanded Dianetics LRH C/Sed issues, and you have David Mayo and what came out of the court trials with him. That evidence was all about how Hubbard developed the tech. You also have people in the CMO in the 1970’s and those who worked in RTC tech compilations unit like Dan Koon, and those who worked with Mayo and Hubbard like Melanie Murray – but they’re not talkin’.
So it’s not that there is nothing at all about this, you just have to be willing to look at their data, or get the guys who want to continue the cover-up (Dan Koon & Melanie Murray for two) to cough it up.
To make matters much more difficult, in the 50s, the organization was reclassified as a religion and the confidentiality of confession was invoked. So even if there was a repository of source materials, they would not be open for inspection – or should not be anyway.
There is nothing that I listed above that would breach confessional confidentiality.
It is available.
You just have to be willing to look at the data, make a comparison to data of comparable magnitude to data outside of Scientology, and evaluate it.
What they were working on was the technology developed from the science. You could certainly do the same as they did – just start out with the original thesis essay, test the principles by extrapolating a technology to audit people and monitor the results. There’s really not much more to it. You could come up all the way through to the last technology presented if you could get enough people to participate.
I expect that somewhere along the line you would have to acknowledge that you were dealing with phenomena not strictly in the realm of science, then again maybe not. Its not a project I would take on personally. The science is summarized in the axioms and logics BTW.
Nah, ” The science is summarized in the axioms and logics BTW ” . these needs to go first to an independent lab ( independent from scientology ) otherwise these are religious belief.
Rafael – if Darwin’s work had to go to a lab it would be a religion too.
Maria, point for you, but not yet the game.
Rafael – I am not having a game of win and lose here. And I am neither defending or attacking Scientology. Nor am I attacking or defending science. I’m not attacking or defending anything. Truth is that I don’t give a damn one way or another so points on the wall are meaningless to me.
As I see it, if there is going to be talk of applying logic 8, then I think it is important that the common myths and misconception about “scientific method” and “peer review” be examined before proceeding so that there is some semblance of accuracy. Otherwise, why bother?
Reading these materials was quite an eye opener for me – hopefully others will find the information valuable. It isn’t just on the subject of Scientology that people have blind spots and a lack of critical thinking. For me it has been on many subjects which I had never thought to really dig into. This is one of them.
If decades of intimate familiarity and use of a subject does not make you a peer, what does?
Maria –
What if the process that exists around the guy in the article below was around Hubbard and his “results”, too?
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57357720-10391704/red-wine-researcher-dr-dipak-k-das-published-fake-data-uconn/
Would people like Lisa McPherson still be alive today?
Al,
“How do the procedures that LRH used to develop the tech compare with the procedures of scientific peer review?”
This is asking to compare apples and baseballs, approximately. Peer review are Reader’s Digest summaries of research results. They are like reading reviews for which washing machine should I buy?
Developing a tech is something utterly different.
And as I asked you before, What were the procedures LRH used to develop the tech? And you never answered that question.
I actually did answer your question, Ivan Petrovia Valkovich.
No one knows. The data is missing – even the procedural data.
To put this in a Scientology context, the missing data on LRH’s procedures in the development of the tech represents the outpoint of “omitted data”.
In scientific circles, you could say the presentation of their procedures would be the pluspoint of “All Relevant Data Presented”.
That is, IF your ideal scene was “Transparency of Data”.
Here’s a Scientology logic exercise for you:
If YOU were L Ron Hubbard and you developed a mental technology that you claimed was scientific, and YOU never published any of your procedures or data, what ideal scene would you likely be operating under for this NOT to be an outpoint of omitted data?
See? In the Data Series, an outpoint is only an outpoint in relation to its ideal scene.
So if you were Hubbard, what ideal scene would you be operating under for this NOT to be an outpoint?
Pure Scientology investigatory logic here.
Let’s see if you can apply it.
Compare the rights of an American citizen, and how they effect the application of the american justice system, to the rights of a Scientologist, and how they effect the application of the Scientology justice system to Scientologists – as written by Hubbard.
You don’t have to worry about the “squirreling” done by the Church – read the issues themselves by Hubbard, and compare the two justice systems.
Compare the Creed of the Church of Scientology – what “We of the Church Believe” – with the Scientology justice system – what we of the Church enforce on Scientologists.
Again, don’t worry about David Miscavige and his squirrel applications. Read the original Hubbard on it.
Compare the “Ron” of the 1950’s to the “Ron” of the 1970s.
Compare Hubbard with himself over time while going “clear” and “OT”, developing the technology, and while running the Church.
Did he himself change over the years? Did the ideas he wrote about and emphasized change?
How?
These links might be helpful for doing this:
http://www.freezone.org/timetrack/tt-index.htm
http://www.freezone.org/LRH/lrh_biography.htm
http://www.freezone.org/reports/reports.htm
http://www.freezone.org/timetrack/pub-sources.html
Of course, there’s the chronological series of policy letters, technical bulletins, SO EDs, OODs and other issues that you can sometimes find on wikileaks. What you have to look out for is that current CofS has made changes to the newer re-issues of the materials so it makes it really hard to figure out what the hell is going on.
Wikileaks has a good section on it describing the cultures of the 1940s through to the 1960s, and key historical events that can be helpful. For example, my father was a man of the 50s – when a man was “king of the castle” and women were “best barefoot and pregnant.” There is a world of difference between the cultural viewpoints of the 50s and now, particularly as regards women and children, male dominance and acceptable punishments.
This book may be of help as well, for it covers the infamous AMA Committee on Quackery that was finally disbanded in 1987. This committee attacked all alternative health methods starting in 1963 – their primary focus was Chiropractors but they fomented numerous attacks on just about anything including vitamins, massage, acupunture, Scientology, and so on.
My studies into the materials of Scientology shows a really severe shift in how the organizations were managed and the start of efforts to standardize and streamline as a top priority – the earliest beginning date on this process seems to be 1963.
In any case, the book nicely summarizes the operating climate of the 50s through the 80s in the arena of alternative care. Scary. Horribly enough, the AMA is back at but with a veiled approach through local legislation.
Murder by Injection by Eustace Mullins
http://www.whale.to/a/mullinsbk_m.html
If you don’t have time to read the book, there’s a summary from the viewpoint of chiropractors here: http://www.mytexasdoctor.org/pdfs/amatactics.pdf
That’s enough for now.
As you can see, the genuine application of Logic 8 to Scientology is a not a one-shot deal. It can’t be done in a post on a blog. And no one else can do it for you.
I hope I have provided some food for thought, and I hope that people use this thought experiment to think and see things in new ways, and to evolve. I’d also like to express my admiration for Geir Isene and to his deep love for the ideals of intellectual honesty and critical thinking.
I’d also like to thank L Ron Hubbard (and Alfred Korzybski) for giving Scientologists Logic 8 to evaluate Scientology with.
Let’s give a hand to Ron!
I believe we see your bias in full bloom here. Was that the point of the OP? To sell your thesis on Scientology?
Everyone has a bias, Geir.
Even you.
I have been applying Logic 8 to Scientology for a full decade now. I do have my own conclusions which have resulted from this.
However, I do not in any way think that your conclusions should be the same as my own. The OP is very clear on that, as are many of the comments I have made in this thread.
If you apply logic 8 to some of these same areas of Scientology, it would be most interesting to see what you come up with. As it would be for, and from, all contributors here.
The point of the OP was to get people applying Logic 8 to Scientology itself.
Having said that, I apologize if my tone was a besmirching one with the line “Let’s give a hand to Ron!”
It’s just so hard for me sometimes.
I’ve been pretty good. I’ll try to do better.
You should.
What I see here is simply your effort in an underhanded way to sell your own thesis on Scientology by the way you attempt to guide this thread to the places you want others to arrive. If you don’t watch it, there will be consequences. I’ll be watching.
What I see here is simply your effort in an underhanded way to sell your own thesis on Scientology by the way you attempt to guide this thread to the places you want others to arrive. If you don’t watch it, there will be consequences. I’ll be watching.
There is absolutely nothing “underhanded” about anything I have written here, or how I have presented my self. I have intentionally stayed away from my own conclusions and presented comparisons that I have found fruitful to evaluating Scientology. I started off the discussion and put out food for thought in this thread. That is all. Others are completely free to refute my comparisons or think up their own – including you.
Your comment to me is an underhanded way for you to label me “1.1” which of course is an ad homenim argument from you.
If you believe that comparing Scientology to the things I have compared them to is somehow invalid, then say which ones, exactly.
And why.
Otherwise, your post to me about my underhanded intentions are ad hom attacks.
Stick with the subject, Geir.
How have you applied Logic 8 to Scientology?
I see what I see. Watch it. Do heed my warning and do not start a quarrel with me over this point.
You refrain from calling me underhanded, and stick to the subject, and you’ll have no quarrel from me.
There is no condition for you not picking a fight with me over this. Leave it. You simply won’t win this one or get the last word. I am hosting this thread on your request. Now behave.
Having reviewed some of Al’s references and the questions he suggests readers ask themselves, I do not see the “course of study” or “exercises” he has posted for readers to do, as in themselves leading to any ‘biased’ or predetermined conclusions.
I think each person will come to his/her own conclusions.
We all know Al has his ‘stable data'(‘bias’) about LRH and Scientology; we tend to evaluate anything he posts as an attempt to lead readers to the same conclusions he is holding.
But I do not think doing the application of Logic 8 in the ways he proposes, will necessarily lead even one single person to the same conclusions he holds.
And I think Al has actually done a very good job of refraining from injecting his own conclusions into his posts here. And even more importantly, he has done a very good job of refraining from trying to structure his ‘course of study’ to lead anyone to any particular conclusions.
So my conclusion so far is that doing Al’s ‘program’ won’t somehow lead us into some kind of lock-stepped biased thinking about LRH and Scientology.
In other words, doing his program honestly will not ‘sell’ anyone Al’s own personal thesis, although it may lead to some greater agreement on some of his ideas, because they are actually perceptive.
So unless Geir sees something I don’t see so far, I do not agree with Geir’s conclusion at this time, about where this ‘thought experiment’ will lead any particular person.
Of course I do expect Al will continue to try to ‘sell’ his ‘thesis’ to people; but this thought experiment will not accomplish that. However it may result in readers acquiring data they were not aware of before, which could lead to a fuller and more balanced understanding of LRH and Scientology.
So, Merry Xmas and Happy New Year Al.
Oh, I do see a pattern. Backed up by old Al in full bloom in a back channel e-mail exchange.
Jesus. I think I am having a coronary.
Thank you Valkov.
“Oh, I do see a pattern. Backed up by old Al in full bloom in a back channel e-mail exchange..”
Whoa… not sure I have duplicated correctly what you seem to be saying but it would explain the incongruity. Could you please clarify it a bit?
I would rather not elaborate as the back channel was between only me and Al. I can say this much though; I was millimeters away from blasting him in new and ingenious ways.
Thanks for filling us in about that, Geir. My point is only that without Al there to evaluate for us, his exercises will do us no harm and may even lead to some new perspectives.
Beyond that, I do expect that Al will be Al with all his fixed stable data about LRH still in place.
The thing about any stable datum no matter how off the wall it may be is it still reduces the person’s experience of confusion. Of course like any MU it can still lead to strange ideas and the commission of overt acts. And when it contains some truth that makes it all the harder to resolve it.
I wonder where he thinks the ‘process’ he has outlined for us to follow would lead us? I am guessing, to the usual place, “the Scientology catechism of Al”. I think he will be
disappointed.
It would be interesting to watch the mental phenomena on display following people having diametrical opposite conclusions to Al’s after following his own closely taped path.
“It would be interesting to watch the mental phenomena on display following people having diametrical opposite conclusions to Al’s after following his own closely taped path.”
A hearty belly laugh on that one! 😀
Geir wrote:
It would be interesting to watch the mental phenomena on display following people having diametrical opposite conclusions to Al’s after following his own closely taped path.
Not cool, Geir.
You promised me that if I wrote this post for you, that you would not let anyone conclude anything that I did not want them to conclude. You promised me that I could have total control over everyone’s conclusions.
You tricked me into coming up with this idea for you just so you could get your traffic stats up for year’s end.
And now you’re going to let anyone conclude what ever they want!
You are even going so far as to plot with Scientologists to have diametrical opposite conclusions to mine!
NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO HAVE A CONCLUSION DIFFERENT FROM ALANZO’S!
NO ONE!!!
I’ve been tricked.
Lied to.
And destroyed.
Exactly, Geir! 🙂
Utterly fair observation on the first and keenly discerning question on other.
Geir, I underestimated you. 🙂
I´m tired of burbling considerations, my brain is dry.
I´m checking out this U-tube acount, has a lot of remixes on science.
Wow! That was awesome!
Did you heard Richard Feynman talking about the unknowable? (The inconceivable nature of nature! Ha ha!)
Yeah. But to see all those guys, obviously so pumped spiritually, put to music and singing about such spiritual things from their own study of matter, was really great.
Yeah Man, awesome:-)
My idea for this OP about applying Logic 8 to Scientology itself came out of the observation that many times a Scientologist will never go outside of Scientology to think.
For instance, I have seen where “WiseOldGoat” will take references from “What is Scientology?” and use them as historical facts to make conclusions about L Ron Hubbard and Scientology history, completely ignoring non-Scientology approved sources and facts. And then other Scientologists will focus on “WiseOldGoat’s” data and conclusions because it validates their present worldview – it’s “safe” for them to think with.
I believe that this is a mistake that should be avoided.
I understand that I am subject to the same cognitive dissonance reduction techniques that anyone else is. I avoid dissonance, or “entheta”, in my head as much as the next guy. But I do believe that we should all try to look at ideas different, foreign, opposite, but of a comparable magnitude to the conclusions we hold. It is hard to do, but it does produce growth, advancement, and ultimately, happiness.
It may not produce happiness right away because looking at “unsafe” ideas can be temporarily upsetting. But when all the dissonance (entheta) in your head has cleared, and you’ve re-aligned your “stable data” to be in consistency with the new information, you’ll be happy.
For a while, at least.
Thanks for entertaining the idea of going outside of Scientology to find data of comparable magnitude to data inside Scientology to evaluate it.
I hope everybody has a great New Year’s Eve, and a very happy and prosperous New Year.
+10
Sorry, Alanzo, but I have to get in just a couple more retorts before the year ends. 😀
First, Valkov made a good point about this idea of yours being “a long runway” – and necessarily so since the datums in Scn are deep and broad. Other than Maria, who has already studied all you suggest and more, most of us would practically have to go back to college and major in philosophy, minimally. IMHO, your suggestion is not very practical or real.
However, the main thing I wanted to say is that the idea of applying Logic 8 to Scn, besides being impractical, is otherwise very far from the best way to determine the validity of Scn and probably not even an intelligent way – in light of the obvious way. That is to say, Scn is not merely a collection of datums – it has a technology that is wholly based on those datums, which make up the philosophy. So the obvious and best way for any individual to determine the validity of Scn is by means of the tech – a built-in test for it. And that is the approach recommended by LRH, not Logic 8. (There is some judgment required as regards what gets applied to what and that judgment is based on principles in Scn itself.)
You will, of course, find people like yourself who are more critical of the tech than appreciative of it, but I have observed that the vast majority of the time those are the people who have done little or no training – in other words, who have no real depth of understanding of the theory or not much, if any, personal experience with the practice of the tech Have you noticed, for example, the usual difference in viewpoints on this blog alone between those who are trained and those who aren’t? And by training I mean auditor training, not word clearing or admin training, for example, and not even the RDD (Read it, Drill it, Do it) training, which is essentially expedient and rote, that is done on the RPF with almost no theory that would give an understanding of the datums underlying tech.
Secondly, you made some generalizations about WiseOldGoat that, from what I have observed of his writings, are in fact misrepresentations of him. You did the same once before but at least that time you stated specifics that could then be contrasted with what he actually said and were then shown to be your own biased interpretation and opinion – and perhaps it was your wish to “validate your present world view,” as you so well phrased it above ;-).
One last thing. I would bet anything that the vast majority of critics would change their tune completely about Scn if they were to be taken in for an ARC break session or a correction list or word clearing, or other tech. And that, Alanzo my friend, would be what I would hope for you one day – just for your own sake, nothing else.
A great and prosperous New Year to you too! 🙂
Marildi wrote:
You will, of course, find people like yourself who are more critical of the tech than appreciative of it, but I have observed that the vast majority of the time those are the people who have done little or no training – in other words, who have no real depth of understanding of the theory or not much, if any, personal experience with the practice of the tech
Do I need to show you a list of trained auditors who left and are now critics of Scientology?
How many will you need to see before you are convinced that your position above is false?
10?
25?
500?
Or is this just a way for you to keep from looking at specific criticisms of Scientology by repeating to yourself, “They’re not trained. If only they were trained they would not be saying what they are saying.”?
Al, you even quoted my words in your comment, which specified that the majority of those who were “critical of THE TECH” were not trained. You then switched over to talking about auditors who are critics of SCIENTOLOGY. I know of many auditors who are critics of Scientology, meaning, the CHURCH of Scientology, but very few who are critics of THE TECH.
On this one, I believe you have committed the Fallacy of Ambiguity.
OK, critics of THE TECH then.
How many trained auditors do you need to see before you are convinced that your position above is false?
Geir, there seem to be a lot of posts missing on this thread. Yesterday, I couldn’t find any of the posts on fair game and others as well. Today when I click on the “commented” link of some posts it takes me to the top of the thread, and even typing key words of the post into the “find on this page” feature gets a “no matches found.”
Weird. I will poke around the settings and check.
Alanzo: “How many trained auditors do you need to see before you are convinced that your position above is false?”
It seems you didn’t get the point, Al. I was simply making the observation that the majority of critics are not trained and implied that this is significant. But it isn’t what convinced me of my position and I never said that it did, but you imply as much.
In other words, another Straw Man error in logic. Or deliberate use of the fallacy as a debate tactic. Or maybe just not taking enough care to duplicate. Take your pick :-D.
Come on Al, let’s make the exchange more productive and worthwhile. We are wasting our time and energy too much..
Marildi wrote:
However, the main thing I wanted to say is that the idea of applying Logic 8 to Scn, besides being impractical, is otherwise very far from the best way to determine the validity of Scn and probably not even an intelligent way – in light of the obvious way . That is to say, Scn is not merely a collection of datums – it has a technology that is wholly based on those datums, which make up the philosophy. So the obvious and best way for any individual to determine the validity of Scn is by means of the tech – a built-in test for it. And that is the approach recommended by LRH, not Logic 8. (There is some judgment required as regards what gets applied to what and that judgment is based on principles in Scn itself.)
L Ron Hubbard wrote:
“Logic 8: A datum can be evaluated only by a datum of comparable magnitude.”
Do you have an MU on the word “only” or are you into squirreling these days, since leaving the Church? (:>)
LOL. I think I must be squirreling these days because I read logic 8 and find myself questioning even its validity, chafing under its boundaries.
I think you may be familiar with Charles Tart already, but just in case you haven`t encountered his work, I think its really a great way to take a different look at things:
Here`s a couple of quotes about his work:
If humans are indeed on the verge of realizing that we are caught in illusions while thinking we are perceiving reality, how do we propose to escape? The answer, Tart has concluded, could come in the form of “mindfulness training ” — a variety of exercises for elevating awareness by deliberately paying closer-than-usual attention to the mundane details of everyday life. Gurdjieff called it “self-remembering,” and many flavors of psychotherapist, East and West, use it. Mindfulness is a skill that can be honed by the right approach to what is happening right in front of you: “Be here now” as internal gymnastics. Working, eating, waiting for a traffic light to change can furnish opportunities for mindfulness. Observe what you are feeling, thinking, perceiving, don’t get hung up on judging it, just pay attention. Tart thinks this kind of self-observation — noticing the automatization — is the first step toward waking up.
And –
“Yes, I do,” he replied. “We are indoctrinated to believe that intellect is what makes humans great, and emotions are primitive leftovers from our jungle ancestors that interfere with our marvelous logical minds. It is possible to train people to base decisions on the appropriate mixture of emotional, intellectual and body-instinctive intelligence. Compassion and empathy are emotions, and I agree with the Buddhists that these emotions are highly evolved, not primitive. With enough training in self-observation, we can develop a new kind of intelligence to bear on the world. Everyday life is quite an interesting place if you pay attention to it.”
In other words, I think Logic 8 may be a very good summary of just what the trap consists of.
Very good. Thus the logic is no more than a template used to wring-out the quality of our structure and to locate and correct inconsistencies in that structure. Net result? Better structure.
Add this too:
“The concept of natural evolution finds a prominent and expanded formulation within the integral worldview, in which physical, personal (developmental), cultural, and spiritual evolution are all viewed as aspects of a single process of concretion of the spiritual (Wilber, 1995). In the integral view of conscious evolution, challenges awaken systems within people and societies designed to cope with or adapt to those specific conditions. The crisis of our times and our world is perceived as challenging humanity to access the integral structure of consciousness. It is the most visible effect of a process of complete transformation, which could potentially lead to either global catastrophe or global renewal (Gebser, 1985; Sorokin, 1941; Harman, 1998; Capra, 1982). Gebser explains: “The way out of the dead end of the deficient rational structure of consciousness is the way of personal participation in, and cooperation with, the emergent mode of consciousness… If we do not overcome the crisis it will overcome us; and only someone who has overcome himself is truly able to overcome. Either we will be disintegrated and dispersed, or we must resolve and effect integrality”. The emerging integral archetype can be envisioned as a noospheric attractor which is drawing humanity beyond its limitations into further dimensions of consciousness and levels of perception. As our inner work of spiritual development nurtures the emergence of integral consciousness we contribute to the global awakening of humanity.“`
http://www.uvm.edu/giee/Tom/spirit/docs/IntegralScience.html
Alanzo: “Do you have an MU on the word “only” or are you into squirreling these days, since leaving the Church?”
What Maria said. 😀
+10
BTW the +10 is for Alanzo’s comment.
And Marildi, on wiseoldgoat – he’s really not on the same track as this logic 8 exercise anyway – he’s trying to sort through many of the confusions that I myself have had to try to work through. He does his best to work with substantiated data, but damn its hard sometimes to really get various pieces of information substantiated! IMO he does a great job of working with the available data that he can track down and somewhat verify. Trouble is that there are gaps and inconsistencies that are most difficult to reconcile and it seems that some may not be reconcilable at all. But I give him an A+++ for effort!
As far as personal experience goes, its true – when studying the materials of the mystics in particular, they point out that it is one thing to intellectualize, another to experience. And in the mystic, experience is actually considered senior to intellectual comprehension – in fact, its probably safe to say that they pretty much dismiss all the explanations in favor of transcendence or illumination. Integral science has begun to recognize that there is a training / state of the mind associated with mystic practices that is the hallmark of true comprehension, just as training in upper mathematics precedes being able to comprehend calculus.
Thanks, Maria. That was main point – why intellectualize about Scn when the tech of it is a ready-made way to experience it and to test it to find out directly whether it’s valid.
On wiseoldgoat, you said “he’s really not on the same track as this logic 8 exercise anyway.” I wasn’t thinking so either. It was actually Alanzo who was critical of him not applying Logic 8. The point I was making to Al, however, was not that one but that he had misrepresented the guy otherwise. In any case, I’m glad you pointed out that even though wiseoldgoat does his best to work with substantiated data (and that’s what I like about him) it’s very hard to do and even he hasn’t been able to do so fully by a long shot. Good to keep in mind – by both the pro-gang (Geir’s coinage) and the critics. You got me thinking, I wonder how much of the truth we’ll never know.
“You got me thinking, I wonder how much of the truth we’ll never know.”
Well, we might know everything eventually, but whether or not we can muster up documents and evidence is another matter entirely. The trouble with physical objects is their amazing ability to just disintegrate and disappear for good and many a case against a bad guy has been dismissed because it rained.
“…many a case against a bad guy has been dismissed because it rained.”
Maria, since your comment was in the context of claims about LRH, are you basically saying that LRH was a bad guy? This is a sincere question because I imagine you would be basing that conclusion on either substantiated data or some other type of knowingness. And I’m interested.
No Marildi – just generalizing about the difficulties of securing evidence one way or another.
Marildi wrote to Maria:
The point I was making to Al, however, was not that one but that he had misrepresented the guy otherwise. In any case, I’m glad you pointed out that even though wiseoldgoat does his best to work with substantiated data (and that’s what I like about him) it’s very hard to do and even he hasn’t been able to do so fully by a long shot. Good to keep in mind – by both the pro-gang (Geir’s coinage) and the critics. You got me thinking, I wonder how much of the truth we’ll never know.
Maybe you could duplicate my points a little better too.
I have just shown you how WiseOldGoat does not work with substantiated data.
Maybe if you would allow yourself to go to non-Church approved sources of information and use your critical thinking skills to discern the many facts which exist in them – not opinion, but facts – then you would not have to wonder about whether you can ever know the truth about Scientology history.
You can know the truth about the real history of Scientology. It is well documented and plentifully available. You just have to allow yourself to see it.
It is a serious lifetime mistake to cut yourself off from any source of information you can get on Scientology. Let the chips fall where they may, but learn the truth.
Alanzo: “Maybe you could duplicate my points a little better too. I have just shown you how WiseOldGoat does not work with substantiated data.”
No, Al, I did duplicate what you said about wiseoldgoat using the unsubstantiated data of WIS – and I know you ATTEMPTED to show that. But I will repeat my reply in disagreement with your having shown any such thing. This is for at least the 3rd time, BTW, beginning on the LRH admin tech thread. I’ll quote my last reply, above:
“WiseOldGoat made no inference whatsoever about the reliability of WIS and was only saying that the quoted statement might actually have been the fact of the matter.” And then I suggested you go back and read his article again.
Your comment above, in logical fallacy terms, is:
Argument By Repetition (Argument Ad Nauseam).
Marildi wrote:
“WiseOldGoat made no inference whatsoever about the reliability of WIS and was only saying that the quoted statement might actually have been the fact of the matter.”
1. Can you see the logical problem in your statement above? It is self-contradictory..
One one hand you claim that WiseOldGoat never said that WIS was a reliable source for the true history of Scientology, and then on the other you present that he used the WIS book as a reliable source for the true history of Scientology. The use of the WIS book to conclude about Hubbard’s ignorance of the crimes committed by his organization is evidence enough that he found it reliable. Do you see this?
2. I never said that WiseOldGoat “made an inference” about the reliability of WIS. That was never my statement, or my argument. I showed that he used it. With your repeated statement that WOG “made no inference whatsoever about the reliability of WIS”, you are repeatedly addressing an argument that was never made. You are wrapped up in your own straw man argument here.
I think you’ve become acquainted with the various logical fallacies now, and your use of them has become obnoxiously single-minded – using them overwhelmingly on people you disagree with personally, and never on a poster here who you believe shares your own point of view.
You have now graduated to the point where you should start applying the logical fallacies your own thinking and writing, and on the posts of other people who you believe share your point of view.
If you are going to be the Logical Officer here, then we are going to need to see a less biased use of the fallacies now, and a raise in your responsibility level with your understanding of the data.
I think you are ready now. It’s time.
So point out a logical fallacy on one of Maria’s posts, on Geir’s, on Dennis’, and an Valkov’s as your next practical assignment on your Logical Officer Full Hat.
And let’s see you publicly acknowledge one of your own.
Oh, and one more thing Marildi.
Before you can graduate from your Logical Officer Full Hat, you are going to have to successfully detail the logical fallacies that L Ron Hubbard used from a passage of his writing or taped lecture.
We can’t have a biased Logical Officer on Geir’s blog.
That would be illogical.
Correct.
Alanzo: “So point out a logical fallacy on one of Maria’s posts, on Geir’s, on Dennis’, and on Valkov’s…And let’s see you point out a logical fallacy of your own…You are going to have to successfully detail the logical fallacies that L Ron Hubbard used from a passage of his writing or taped lecture.”
= Moving The Goalposts (Raising The Bar, Argument By Demanding Impossible Perfection):
(If your opponent successfully addresses some point, then say he must also address some further point. If you can make these points more and more difficult (or diverse) then eventually your opponent must fail. If nothing else, you will eventually find a subject that your opponent isn’t up on.)
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#dogged
.
2. Alanzo: “Before you can graduate from your Logical Officer Full Hat…”
= Changing The Subject (Digression, Red Herring, Misdirection, False Emphasis):
.
p.s. Al, if it is your interest why don’t YOU point out the logical fallacies in any of the pro-gang comments? (Having difficulty finding any? Or trouble grasping what is and isn’t logical.)
Applause.
Al, if it is your interest why don’t YOU point out the logical fallacies in any of the pro-gang comments? (Having difficulty finding any? Or trouble grasping what is and isn’t logical.)
I just pointed out your own logical fallacies, and you ignored them.
I don’t think we can have a pointy-headed Logic Officer here who applies logical fallacies as a games condition, or as a running service fac on any one she disagrees with, and never actually addresses anyone’s point.
We already have a Blog Owner who does that. (:>)
So I’m afraid that until you can bring up your responsibility level, we can not allow you to graduate your Logic Officer Full Hat.
That’s too bad, but there are already plenty of Sea Org/Taliban/Religious Police Forces in this world already.
“I just pointed out your own logical fallacies, and you ignored them.”
What’s the use in repeating myself for the 4th time? Just look back at my comments here and on the LRH Admin thread, where the subject of wiseoldgoat first came up – if you are sincerely interested in my response. If you’re not, the above quote fits in with the rest of your post:
“pointy-head…who applies logical fallacies as a games condition, or as a running service fac on any one she disagrees with, and never actually addresses anyone’s point.”
And thus the whole post constitutes yet another logical fallacy:
Needling: simply attempting to make the other person angry, without trying to address the argument at hand. Sometimes this is a delaying tactic. Needling is also Ad Hominem if you insult your opponent. http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#dogged
Pointy-head? Here’s an image of the two of us:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://mrjam.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c00c753ef0120a5e6b847970c-pi&imgrefurl=http://mrjam.typepad.com/diary/2009/09/give-your-baby-a-pointy-head.html&h=275&w=384&sz=45&tbnid=dgRNX1AZFVJ_EM:&tbnh=86&tbnw=120&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dpointy-head%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=pointy-head&docid=GhjIRl_xygJGrM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=BkoFT7u8HtDciQLjmJ3SDg&ved=0CDYQ9QEwAw&dur=10360
LOL!!!
That is a funny picture!!!
We just disagree, Marildi.
Is it possible for you to accept that you and I disagree about something without then going on to believe that it is caused by some illogical, “down-toned”, “crime-based aberration”, or any other form of make-wrong?
Can you recognize when I have laid out my rationale for my conclusions? And can you accept them as simply different from your own, and can you simply let that be?
Many Scientologists were taught by Hubbard that something was either “sane” (agrees with Scientology) or it was “insane” (doesn’t agree with Scientology). It’s not a very good lesson to learn. The way out of that hole is to look for and recognize a rationale when it is presented to you, and to listen to it, almost like a song.
Is it in tune?
Is it dissonant with lots of chaotic noise and arbitrary assertions from uninspected and clashing assumptions?
Or does it flow harmoniously with a beautiful melody?
My logic is like a song. Sometimes its classical. Sometimes its jazz.
But it’s always right.
For me.
“Can you recognize when I have laid out my rationale for my conclusions? And can you accept them as simply different from your own, and can you simply let that be?”
Can you?
It’s a great question, isn’t it?
How did you like the line, “My logic is like a song.”?
I thought I’d get a bigger reaction out of you on that one.
Alanzo: “Is it possible for you to accept that you and I disagree about something without then going on to believe that it is caused by some illogical, “down-toned”, “crime-based aberration”, or any other form of make-wrong?”
I haven’t once considered your ideas as being “down-toned” or “crime-based.” It’s the third thing – they are illogical. And when that’s pointed out to you – with specifics – instead of acknowledging the fact OR refuting it in any way, you call it “make-wrong” and the like.
If you were truly sincere in your purposes, Al, you would be willing to confront whatever illogic there may be in your rationale – and then do a reassessment of it, either making it more rational or changing it completely. You’re never going to convince anybody with illogical reasons for your viewpoint, much less get them to the point of saying, “We JUST disagree.”
It starts to look like your real purpose is simply to carry on an argument for the fun of it or something. I’m glad you appreciated the pointy-head images 😀 and you do have a sense of humor – but as for your singing, I bet we could a lot more fun if you stayed more in tune!
Marildi wrote:
If you were truly sincere in your purposes, Al, you would be willing to confront whatever illogic there may be in your rationale – and then do a reassessment of it, either making it more rational or changing it completely.
I guess I could say the same thing to you, right?
If you were truly sincere in your purposes, Marildi, you would be able to confront whatever illogic there may be in your rationale – like when I showed you contradicting yourself, as well as your use of a straw man argument regarding WiseOldGoat “inferring” that WIS was a valid source for Scientology history. I never said he did, yet you repeatedly argued to that point which didn’t exist.
So we have you contradicting yourself in one statement, and using a straw man argument in another.
So if you were truly sincere in your purposes, Marildi, you would not make contradictory statements or straw man arguments like you do.
Right?
Or does your sincerity really have anything to do with it?
What if you were sincere in your purposes, were not insane, were not downtone, nor “brainwashed” or criminal in any way, and we simply disagreed?
Two reasonable, sane well meaning people who simply disagreed?
Is that possible?
Marildi –
One more thing. The human mind is not a perfect computer which computes everything perfectly unless it is glitched by a “held down 7” from unconscious incidents in the form of reactive mind “engrams”, “case” or “aberrations”.
A perfectly functioning human mind does not act that way, and that is not how it goes wrong. That is a false model for the functioning of the human mind, and Hubbard’s teaching here often acts as an uninspected assumption which causes all kinds of problems for Scientologists when they confront reasoning – their own or others.
It is a basic assumption Hubbard lays out in Dianetics and many Scientologists assume it and move on without inspection.
I hope you are not one of those are you?
That might explain why if you can find a place to cut and paste a title of a logical fallacy as a response into a minority of my posts – never responding at all to those which you can not refute – and which you thoroughly ignore when you spout your generalizations about how illogical I am.
So is that why you are so illogical when it comes to me and my comments?
Yes, I am no longer a believer in the reactive mind as taught. My experience is that there is a mind and the mind can be overloaded and the mind can be unloaded, degragmented and straightened out.
Then one day, done away with? . . .maybe . . .
Alanzo: “…your use of a straw man argument regarding WiseOldGoat …So if you were truly sincere in your purposes, Marildi, you would not make contradictory statements or straw man arguments like you do.”
Al, there hasn’t been any direct response from you to several of my replies to your claims and I give up trying to get you to duplicate what wiseoldgoat said and what I said about that. But even if my statements really were, as you claim, contradictory and straw man arguments, it’s interesting that this is the ONLY instance where you have (supposedly) found any contradiction or logical fallacy. And as you know, I’ve pointed out quite a few of yours – to which you made no reply, either acknowledging or refuting. In any case, your dogged repeating of the same thing falls under:
Argument By Repetition (Argument Ad Nauseam): if you say something often enough, some people will begin to believe it.
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#repetition
Alanzo: “Two reasonable, sane well meaning people who simply disagreed? Is that possible?” (first post above)
Alanzo: “One more thing. The human mind is not a perfect computer which…” (second post above)
.
“Fallacy of Aggressive Amnesia is an argumentation tactic whereby a person continually hops from topic to topic forgetting about the original contested premise. This is a very confusing and efficient tactic and can be quite aggressive in nature. It is similar to a red herring fallacy in that it distracts the other person from the original contested premise. The difference is the style and tactic of an almost unconscious like “amnesia” of all counter arguments. The person attempts to overwhelm or flood the argument with so many new points and arguments leaving no room to efficiently respond. Each counter argument is responded to with several new arguments or fallacies not directly related.
“Proposed Statement: A is B, C
“Contest the Premise: A
“Fallacy of Aggressive Amnesia: C is D! and E is F! and G is H!
There are few options when dealing with people employing this logical fallacy. It takes great mental control and discipline to deal with them. We have to keep bringing the focus back to the original premise or break away from the argument completely. It is likely that the person will just continue in the machine gun like attack of topic hopping. If they don’t stop, simply declare the nature of their fallacy and discontinue the argument. This is a defense mechanism of those wishing to create a security blanket mimicking logic and/or knowledge so that they do not have to confront their argument or beliefs. Often time these people will be intelligent but very intellectually dishonest.”
http://logical-critical-thinking.com/logical-fallacy/fallacy-of-aggressive-amnesia/
Marildi wrote:
Al, there hasn’t been any direct response from you to several of my replies to your claims and I give up trying to get you to duplicate what wiseoldgoat said and what I said about that. But even if my statements really were, as you claim, contradictory and straw man arguments, it’s interesting that this is the ONLY instance where you have (supposedly) found any contradiction or logical fallacy.
I don’t generally use logical fallacies as responses to people’s comments. I lay out arguments, and I try to reason in the discussion.
I certainly don’t hide behind cut and pasted titles of logical fallacies as a way to avoid communication with people, as an OSA-robotic style of dead-agent tactic like you do. You think that if you can cut and paste enough titles of logical fallacies under someone’s comment with whom you disagree that you are being persuasive, and that you are thereby dead-agenting the person as “illogical”.
You’re not. Your use (abuse) of logical fallacies simply results in an ad-hom argument which avoids the person’s points and attacks the person personally, which in my experience seems to be the only kind of reasoning available to someone locked in the Scientology mindset.
It is a very childish and serv faccy way of conducting yourself in a conversation, and even in a debate.
Pointing out a logical fallacy in someone’s comment does not compare to a well reasoned or persuasive argument, nor is your OSAbot style of communication fooling anybody.
Grow up.
“…dead-agenting the person as “illogical”
No, Al. Marildi is diligently pointing out logical breaks in The Content of your posts. Why do you take this personally rather than attempt to learn something from it?
Marildi –
Here is a pink sheet for you to help you through your Logic Officer Full Hat Checksheet.
It’s a reference called “Fallacy Abuse” which the author says “It tends to happen to people when they first have their consciousness raised to the idea of fallacies, and they become overly keen.”
Another person called it “The Eager Beaver”.
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive102008.html#10172008
One of the elementary school steps to learning logic and reasoning is to learn some logical fallacies, and then to practice being able to spot them. Just because you think you spotted one does not mean the whole argument is false, or that the person himself is “illogical”, insane, insincere, or too stupid and evil to take his ideas into consideration.
Further, spouting a logical fallacy and then ignoring the overall argument is not good logic, reasoning, or even very persuasive. It is actually a way of avoiding the communication.
Logical fallacies have a place in learning logic and improving reasoning. But they, in themselves, are not the whole of the discipline. They are actually a very small part of it.
It’s like learning TR2 and going around saying “THANK YOU” to every communication, including “My zorch hurts!”
So study this pinksheet and come back and I’ll starrate you on it. Otherwise we’re going to have to send you to ethics for being such an Eager Beaver.
“…or that the person himself is “illogical”, insane, insincere, or too stupid and evil to take his ideas into consideration”
Al, I have seen you many times try to paint another as portraying You as “illogical”, insane, insincere, or too stupid, evil or “SP” or some such. Why do you do this? Are you afraid that others consider you as such? Is it because you have an issue about your self esteem? Or is it merely a debate tactic (i.e. a Straw Man)? I really wonder since I see it quite often from you.
Also, why are you resisting so much Marildi’s effort to tech you better discussion manners and logic? I also wonder about this.
Please answer my questions sincerely rather than derailing, attacking the form of my post, disregarding my questions or question why I have the questions in the first place, etc.
Geir –
If you believe that Marildi is trying to teach me, or anyone else, better logic, let’s have her prove it.
Let’s start a thread on the “Logical Fallacies of L Ron Hubbard”, and let’s see how much Marildi contributes as a way of showing everyone examples of logical fallacies and how to avoid them.
And then let’s start a thread called “The Logical Fallacies of Alanzo”, and let’s see how much she contributes to that discussion.
Her obvious bias in the application of logical fallacies shows that she is not trying to teach me, or anyone else, better logic.
Also, Miraldi’s abuse of the logical fallacies is not a productive way of discussing Scientology, although it is productive in avoiding what people say in order to discredit them personally, which is what all Scientologists are taught to do in a situation such as this. And Scientologists follow Scientology. So if you see me say it often, it means I see it happening often.
It derails the discussion, too. And for that reason I would think that you would be interested in
curbing the adolescent, and often embarassing, habit of fallacy abuse on your blog.
These are the reasons I point out Marildi’s abuse of the logical fallacies, and how her abusive technique culminates into a simple ad homenim fallacy.
You can now be secure in knowing that I see it that way and have explained exactly why I do.
“although it is productive in avoiding what people say in order to discredit them personally”
You keep taking this personally although I have not seen evidence that she has been trying to discredit you personally. She has consistently been pointing out logical fallacies In The Content Of Your Posts. Please enlighten me on why you keep insisting that you are a victim of personal discrediting.
And I will issue this challenge to Marildi;
Point out five logical fallacies that LRH has been guilty of.
Here we have Marildi being accused of being abusive. How about looking at the definition of abuse?
— vb
1. to use incorrectly or improperly; misuse
2. to maltreat, esp physically or sexually
3. to speak insultingly or cruelly to; revile
4. ( reflexive ) to masturbate
— n
5. improper, incorrect, or excessive use; misuse
6. maltreatment of a person; injury
7. insulting, contemptuous, or coarse speech
8. an evil, unjust, or corrupt practice
9. See child abuse
Don’t want abuse? Don’t be abusive.
Which post are you refering to, Maria?
From Alanzo’s post:
“I don’t generally use logical fallacies as responses to people’s comments. I lay out arguments, and I try to reason in the discussion.
I certainly don’t hide behind cut and pasted titles of logical fallacies as a way to avoid communication with people, as an OSA-robotic style of dead-agent tactic like you do. You think that if you can cut and paste enough titles of logical fallacies under someone’s comment with whom you disagree that you are being persuasive, and that you are thereby dead-agenting the person as “illogical”.
You’re not. Your use (ABUSE) of logical fallacies simply results in an ad-hom argument which avoids the person’s points and attacks the person personally, which in my experience seems to be the only kind of reasoning available to someone locked in the Scientology mindset.
It is a very childish and serv faccy way of conducting yourself in a conversation, and even in a debate.
Pointing out a logical fallacy in someone’s comment does not compare to a well reasoned or persuasive argument, nor is your OSAbot style of communication fooling anybody.
Grow up.”
And that’s just one of the posts crying abuse. There’s another one too, just read backwards through the comments.
This is an abusive comment.
And it is a false characterization of Marildi.
This is:
Abusive ad hominem (also called personal abuse or personal attacks) usually involves insulting or belittling one’s opponent in order to attack his claim or invalidate his argument, but can also involve pointing out true character flaws or actions that are irrelevant to the opponent’s argument. This tactic is logically fallacious because insults and negative facts about the opponent’s personal character have nothing to do with the logical merits of the opponent’s arguments or assertions.
Thank you.
WordPress is not the best format for long discussions…
Maria wrote:
This is an abusive comment.
I lost patience with Marildi.
If I am going to be able to effectively show the problems with the ideas that Marildi is forwarding in defense of the indefensible, then I am going to have to have more patience with her, and the Scientology tactics that she uses.
I should not have lost patience with her.
I apologize.
Yes Maria, we must ask the right auditing question. When we land on it, well then the problem just falls apart.
In problem solving, there seems to be not so much any problem with “looking.” There does seem to be a difficulty in looking at the “right thing.” Questions unlock this. So the spiritual problem might not be so much in fronting up to things as it is a problem in fronting up to the right things. Maria and a lot of you here already know this so my writing it is just to set up my real point which is that its “importance is pivotal.”
So the “trap” if anyone wants to call it that, or the “puzzle of life” or however we would like to refer to our life’s quest seems to be not so much in obscuring the right “answers,” but in obfuscating the “right question.” This is what I mean when I describe various people’s brilliant insights as “counter-intuitive.”
The secret of the “counter-intuitive” solution seems to me spawned in the recursive nature of Creation. Someone misquoted me as calling it “non-intuitive” but this little misquote was a big mistake. The answers can sometimes be found by simply spinning around and looking over our shoulders in the opposite or in another vector. In this sense, the answers ARE intuitive, just found by looking in another direction.
The Universe is dynamic. It is on the move. And we have to be on the move if we are going to be fast enough to see where and when it is being created. 5.4*10^-44th seconds is not much time to look! Might “as-isness” of what-is simply be another term for the location and cessation of creating the perception of it? And if it were, then does the Scientology definition of exact time, place, form and event become reinstated as the definition of truth?
“And if it were, then does the Scientology definition of exact time, place, form and event become reinstated as the definition of truth?”
Ooooh – that’s good! That went ZING!
And as for the rest of your post, Chris, this one gets a frame and goes up on my wall so I can read it and remind myself when I get myself all immersed in the movement of it all!
Chris, I confess I didn’t quite have what you meant by, “counter-intuitive.” Glad you cleared it up – great concept!
Secondly, you made some generalizations about WiseOldGoat that, from what I have observed of his writings, are in fact misrepresentations of him. You did the same once before but at least that time you stated specifics that could then be contrasted with what he actually said and were then shown to be your own biased interpretation and opinion – and perhaps it was your wish to “validate your present world view,” as you so well phrased it above .
Marildi –
Do you believe that the What is Scientology? book is a credible or sufficient source for factual information on the history of Scientology, LRH, and the Church?
For instance, what it says about David Miscavige – do you think the WIS tells the whole story? Do you think it tells enough of the story on David Miscavige for a person to use it to make informed conclusions about him?
In that same way, when WiseOldGoat uses the WIS’s quote it “says on page 508 that it ‘had become entirely autonomous, operating without regard to Mr. Hubbard’s policies.’” do you believe that this is a credible source of evidence for him to conclude that L Ron Hubbard knew nothing about what his own wife went to federal prison for, and which sent Hubbard on the lam from the law, and into hiding for the rest of his life?
WIS is a sales book, right? It is intended to use in dissemination. It’s not, for instance, the court records and the criminal evidence that was presented during the trial that named L Ron Hubbard as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case and sent him on the run. The WIS book doesn’t even mention that, see? So the information in the WIS book is not a sufficient source of credible information to draw conclusions about this subject.
That was my point. It isn’t a mischaracterization at all. It is an examination of the evidence that WiseOldGoat used for his conclusion, and an evaluation of it. That’s an important part of critical thinking – to evaluate the quality of the evidence used to make a conclusion.
You presently disagree with my evaluation, that’s all. But that doesn’t mean I’m crazy, biased, or even that I am even wrong about this.
Only an idiot would look to the What is Scientology? book to find information about what sent Mary Sue Hubbard and 10 other top Scientologists to federal prison when court records, newspaper accounts, whole books by investigative journalists, and even people who were there, are all plentifully available.
Plentifully.
So again, this is my point, and my reasoning for it.
Don’t rely on the What is Scientology? book for your information on the history of Scientology, Marildi. It will only make me worry for you all the more.
You are doing a Straw Man on WiseOldGoat again, Al – the exact same one you did before. And I already pointed out to you how so. We’ve had this comm cycle! What gives?
WiseOldGoat made no inference whatsoever about the reliability of WIS and was only saying that the quoted statement might actually have been the fact of the matter. Go back and look at the whole context again.
Oh, and if you were trying to insult both his and my intelligence, you did so. 😉
And, btw, if you believe that every single thing in WIS is FALSE, let me know and I’ll clue you in on the other Logical Fallacy you are committing. 😀
What is Scientology? is not a valid source of evidence to use to conclude things about the history of Scientology in general, and the criminal acts which named LRH as an unindicted co-conspirator, and sent Mary Sue Hubbard and 10 more top Scientologists to federal prison for the felonies they were convicted of during their trial in the late 1970’s – when court records, newspaper accounts, books by investigative journalists, and the people themselves are available who were around at that time.
I never said that every single thing in WIS is false.
That would be your own straw man, right?
No, Al. I didn’t say you said that – I said IF you believed it …
Again, please please be more careful in your duplication of my comments. Otherwise, they’re not going to be worth it the effort to write them.
So I’m wearing you down, am I?
Remember, SPs can only restimulate! (:>)
Hanging out with Scientologists is good for a critic of Scientology.
Hanging out with critics is good for Scientologists.
“4. A characteristic, and one of the sad things about an anti-social personality, is that it does not respond to treatment or reform or psychotherapy.”
LRH was unable to be helped by his own invented technology. Was this because it was not as workable as he claimed or was it because he was an anti-social personality?
How do you know LRH was “unable to be helped by his own invented technology”?
Actually wasn’t he near death when Mayo was flown in to audit him, and his discovery of how to audit NOTs was the result?
And in the process, LRH’s life was saved?
That’s the way I’ve heard it. That would seem to be an example of LRH’s own “invented”(discovered?) technology helping LRH.
Maybe so. Your take on this is as valid as my own rumor mill which I use to churn out ruined reputations in every direction.
You might have noticed that anyone tabulating my posts would find me on every side of every line being drawn. I suppose this proves that I am not only SP but truly non-functioning psychotic. Anyway, I laugh at my own agreement with things that every poster on this blog says. I guess this proves I am just a wishy-washy girly-man, if that.
No Chris, I have noticed the same thing about myself. I too find myself going every which way, and I wonder to myself just what that’s all about. I am so glad you mentioned this because I have sometimes berated myself for doing this. Does this make me a wishy-washy manny-girl?
Maybe so. And maybe when a person’s ego gets out of the way and the truth won’t hold still to be nailed down as a “stable datum” they just float free. It is unnerving to let go of anchor points, but this is necessary to make any progress on the road to truth.
“6. The anti-social personality habitually selects the wrong target. If a tire is flat from driving over nails, he or she curses a companion or a non-causative source of the trouble. . . . ”
If Scientology technology has problems being effective then it must be the SPs who are holding down the statistics. If we remove the SPs then stats will rise. etc.,. I believe that at this point, enough SPs have been removed from Scientology to account for its current meteoric expansion into modern society. (wry humor)
This seems to be making a case for the possibility that DM is an SP?
Nice try Val, but only a true SP would say that DM was an SP. How do I know? Because DM is the leader of Scientology and the leader of Scientology could never be an SP. You are sooo busted! My devious calculating nature has at last ferreted-out the feral Russian. Where others have failed, I have succeeded comrade!
“7. The anti-social cannot finish a cycle of action.”
Like the Bridge to Total Freedom? Like the rest of the OT levels?
What makes you think the Bridge is not finished?
“The rest of the OT levels” are the original OT levels which the CoS stopped delivering many years ago – the original OT IV through VII.
I’m betting the Bridge is complete if those are included.
Additionally, LRH often said that the Bridge had 2 sides,, and that at least 50% of the gains were to be had on the Training side of the Bridge.
So you are saying that the Class 12, “old” OT7’s completed the Bridge to Total Freedom? You are proposing that there exist people who finished the bridge? And there are people who are cause over mest as regards all 8 dynamics. Really? and the earlier bridge charts showing OT levels above 7 were what? Mistaken? You have my attention.
For me, my jury is still out on whether or not there is actually any bridge at all. I am not talking about “help.” I have been helped. At the same time, the bridge to total freedom seems thorny in the extreme and more than this, where are the results? Or maybe rather where are the ultimate results? I can be convinced either way. I see a real possibility that the Bridge to Total Freedom is an implant strewn mine field, but I am flexible and ready to discuss.
“12. The anti social personality has a bad sense of property and conceives that the idea that anyone owns anything is a pretense, made up to fool people. Nothing is ever really owned.”
How does the Church of Scientology treat YOUR property? Using hard sell techniques, how did LRH intend to respect YOUR property.
And regarding the hundreds of millions of dollars of property that the Church owns, how do they feel about their contributing parishioners using their property? The public highway passing in front of Golden Era Productions in San Jacinto?
Well sure, if you don’t do a count of the social characteristics and only do a count of the anti-social characteristics, you will likely end up with a world comprised enitrely of SPs.
We see the same thing in the sociopath and psychopath characteristics identified by psychology. If you examine only those aspects in people, then an amazing number of people will be found to be psychopaths or sociopaths. Same thing.
Do you know any psychopaths? Just check this list of warning signs:
– superficial charm
– self-centered & self-important
– need for stimulation & prone to boredom
– deceptive behavior & lying
– conning & manipulative
– little remorse or guilt
– shallow emotional response
– callous with a lack of empathy
– living off others or predatory attitude
– poor self-control
– promiscuous sexual behavior
– early behavioral problems
– lack of realistic long term goals
– impulsive lifestyle
– irresponsible behavior
– blaming others for their actions
– short term relationships
– juvenile delinquency
– breaking parole or probation
– varied criminal activity
With the exception of juvenile delinquency, breaking parole and varied criminal activity, I have displayed these characteristics at least once in my life according to other people.
Be careful. I may be a psychopath.
Interestingly, the Dr. who offers this list adds: …many adult psychopaths do not seem to benefit from support, counseling or therapy and may in fact commit crimes again and sooner because of it.
Sounds awfully familiar somehow.
List excerpted from: “Are You Involved With A Psychopath?”
http://www.crisiscounseling.com/articles/psychopath.htm
Alanzo: LRH’s technology for handling criticism is to IGNORE what is being said, KNOW the cause is something other than the critic is saying, and ATTACK the critic personally. This “tech” has done more harm to Scientology than any other, beside maybe PTS/SP tech. It holds in flaws that deserve to be criticized, keeps Scientologists blind, and makes them attack people of good will who are trying to improve things.
LRH’s logic was that Scientology is so obviously beneficial that any criticism of it is an outpoint. He implicitly believed in Scientology being perfect and beyond criticism. That was his assumption.
.
.
Alanzo:
You never responded to my questions above (and now below):
“Al, I have seen you many times try to paint another as portraying You as “illogical”, insane, insincere, or too stupid, evil or “SP” or some such. Why do you do this? Are you afraid that others consider you as such? Is it because you have an issue about your self esteem? Or is it merely a debate tactic (i.e. a Straw Man)? I really wonder since I see it quite often from you.”
I would appreciate a sincere answer to my questions here.
Alanzo: I too would like to hear your answer on Geir’s questions.
LRH’s teaches Scientologists to handle criticism of LRH or Scientology in this way:
1. IGNORE what is being said.
Example: It’s just “natter”, “bank”, “case”, down-tone, etc – waste of time to take it up or even think about it.
2. KNOW that the cause of the criticism is something other than what the critic is saying is the cause.
Example: He is saying what he is saying because of his “case”, he’s an “SP”, “PTS”, or it’s because of “missed withholds” or “MU'”s or “evil purposes”, has an “axe to grind”, not trained, no experience with Scn, because they are “disgruntled apostates”, bigots, liars, too unethical to uphold the standards of the church, etc etc etc ….ad infinitum – All ’causes’ provided to them by LRH and Scientology cultural agreement.
3. Continue to ATTACK the critic personally (as above) in order to discredit them personally so no one else will think anything they have to say could possibly be legitimate.
Example: Declare them SPs or PTS and broadly publish the goldenrod, get them charged with a crime , call them “criminals” and show the mugshot, publish Freedom magazine articles and talk about their sex life, their bankruptcies, drunk driving records, etc, ANYTHING to personally discredit them to others. But do not “forward” what they say.
Look at Debbie Cook. Look at how the Church responded to her email in the press, as a most recent example. It gets done to everyone who criticizes Scientology or LRH.
Why?
Because whether Churchie or Indie – Scientologists will generally apply Scientology. It is a central belief in Scientology that you handle life by applying Scientology to various situations you encounter.
The situations regarding critics of Scientology and LRH are handled as above.
For 10 years I have been a critic of Scientology because I felt a duty to others in my society to warn the public about the things that Scientology will not tell them. I have also felt a duty to other Scientologists to warn them about what they are not being told, as well.
My purpose as a critic of Scientology has been to provide information to people so that they can make informed decisions about their own involvement in Scientology.
1, 2, and 3 above has been applied to me so many times in the course of my duty that I can smell it from a mile away.
Have I accused every single Scientologist I have ever encountered with applying 1, 2 and 3 above to me every time we disagreed? No, I have not. In fact, while it may seem to you that I do it all the time, I do not. I do it when I see it being done, as with Marildli.(and I will provide documentation on this for you as well later)
Have I ever accused a Scientologist, or anyone else, of attempting to apply 1, 2 and 3 above when they were, in fact, not doing so? Yes. I have probably been wrong about you a number of times. But I have probably been right about you – especially in the beginning – a couple of times as well.
I estimate that my percentage of being correct in my accusation of applying Scientology to me, as a critc of Scientology, correlates roughly to how likely it is that a fervent, KSW Scientologist (churchie or indie) will apply Scientology to life. Or, how often a person with this habit pattern from Scientology remains uninspected, and I first show up in their environment.
So the real question is “How likely is it that a fervent, KSW Scientologist will apply Scientology?” Or, “How likely is it that a newly ‘out’ person will dramatize uninspected habits that were ingrained in them from the time they spent in Scientology?”
When it comes to me being a critic, that percentage roughly correlates to the number of times I have accused Scientologists of applying Scientology to me. This correlation isn’t isn’t WHY I do it. This correlation roughly produces the number of times you have seen me do it.
So to fully and sincerely answer your question, Geir: I have been a critic of Scientology for a long time. And as a critic of Scientology, I have had standard Scientology applied to me many many times.
To answer you even more simply: I see what I see, Geir.
I see what I see.
I agree with your points 1-3 being the way of operation for many scientologists and certainly by the CoS. When applying stringently what LRH wrties in his policy on handling critics as well as with KSW/KAW, I see that you are right in many instances of the attacks against critics.
But please take a look at this thread again and see if you have anything here that you can improve upon. I believe many readers here can see that Marildi in fact spotted logical fallacies in your posts using generally agreed-upon fallacies. This is certainly not Scientology. But while Marildi keeps pointing out illogic in The Content Of Your Posts, you still insist that you are being a victim of personal scientology attacks. What would it then take to discuss with you without you taking it personally? Are we to simply give up in discussing with you?
+1
The +1 is on Geir’s comment:
But while Marildi keeps pointing out illogic in The Content Of Your Posts, you still insist that you are being a victim of personal scientology attacks. What would it then take to discuss with you without you taking it personally? Are we to simply give up in discussing with you?
Of course there is MUCH I can improve upon.
But when you say:
I believe many readers here can see that Marildi in fact spotted logical fallacies in your posts using generally agreed-upon fallacies. This is certainly not Scientology. But while Marildi keeps pointing out illogic in The Content Of Your Posts, you still insist that you are being a victim of personal scientology attacks.
You are ignoring points 1 to 3 above and Marildi’s abuse of the logical fallacies in achieving them.
I will show that she doesn’t just point out a logical fallacy and then stick to that one point as being logically fallacious. Her pattern is to ignore any point she can not find a logical fallacy for, and then take one point, or the finite collection of examples she has been able to cut and paste against, and generalize those to overtly state how illogical I am as a “critic”, and all critics are, or as a “person”. This *is* Scientology dead agenting. It is simply using (actually abusing) the logical fallacies in order to achieve 1 through 3 above.
What would it then take to discuss with you without you taking it personally? Are we to simply give up in discussing with you?
As I said, there is much for me to improve upon. But very few environments for me are, and have been, optimal environments to do that. They have in fact been battlegrounds in order for me to fulfill my duty and my purpose as I described above.
When I first got out in 2000-2001, turned around and began speaking up, I was fired from my job, followed by private investigators, had former friends and other people sent in on me as “OPs”, had OSA calling my family members to disconnect from me under threat of expulsion, and had my 82 year old father attempt to be turned against me after his wife, and my mother, had just died of a long battle with Alzheimer’s. There was really no where but ARS and a few other places where I could feel “safe” when I first began being a critic of Scientology.
It is also true that I have intentionally and consistently sought out areas where Scientologists gather in order to present critical information to them, thus actively inviting attacks such as 1 through 3 above. As I said above, I feel it is one of my duties to them to do that. And so I am very familiar with the terrain of the battleground, and what it entails. So there is no cry of “victim” here coming from me. As a battle-scarred veteran, I just know when I am being shot at, and who is doing the shooting, and what weapon they are using.
The good news is that as the critic movement has continued to grow on the Internet, the environment has definitely and steadily improved over the years. Now, more people than ever have taken up the cause and created islands of intellectual honesty, and “safety”, where Scientology can be discussed with fewer of these dead agent tactics being employed against their participants. I believe the Scientology Forum was an attempt by you to achieve that, but I’m afraid, for me at least, that environment was never accomplished there.
The environment you are attempting to achieve here with your blog is a huge improvement on the Scientology Forum in this regard. And as you continue to try to achieve your purpose of creating a safe place of intellectual honesty where Scientology can be discussed, I am sure that I will continue to improve.
So just keep on doing what you are doing Geir.
You are doing a lot of good for a lot of people.
Including me.
+1. Life is truly a journey and I would walk it with any of you.
Thanks, Chris.
I think a long cross country road trip with you would be a blast. We could go to Florida and pick up Vinaire, then fly out of Tampa Airport to Norway for lunch with Geir.
Then, we could get a Eurail Pass to Athens and fly to Australia to meet up with other friends I have there, finally ending up in LA for a breakfast at New York George’s.
The full round trip.
Great! Lets’ do it.
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Geir asked:
But please take a look at this thread again and see if you have anything here that you can improve upon.
A few days have passed and I’ve looked at the thread again, and yes, there is much I can improve upon.
Specifically:
1. I can and should have much more patience. I need to make sure that what I write is completely inoculated from rabid distemper, shooting from the hip, and even any irritation in my voice. I need to increase my self-discipline, patience, overall manners and professionalism.
2. When I am accused of logical fallacies, I need to understand that, just as you say, this IS a very positive opportunity. If it is a correct accusation, it is a positive opportunity to examine my own thinking and see where it has broken down. If it is incorrect, then it is an opportunity to show it is incorrect and why. In both these instances, everyone wins – because we are using logic to work out the kinks in our worldviews.
A note on this: any time anyone begins learning and using logical fallacies, it is a very very good thing. I realize that in the beginning, the lowest gradient (easiest) approach to applying logical fallacies is to apply them to someone you disagree with. And in practicing them that way, you eventually graduate to applying them to your whole life, your own thinking and even (God Forbid) to L Ron Hubbard Himself.
So when a Scientologist begins learning logical fallacies, I usually become their first target. I have decided that I have been an idiot to try to resist this for any reason – even if their applications are combined with Scn dead agent tech to discredit me personally. I have decided to welcome these applications of logical fallacies on me at any time because of the above.
In fact, I am going to issue an invitation to all Scientologists participating and lurking in this discussion:
Please use me as a moving target for your application of logical fallacies. Scour and scrutinize every word I write and see if you can find anything illogical in my posts whatsoever! Sometimes I will sprinkle in logical fallacies in my posts on purpose (as I did with Maridli on the line about looking at everyone’s quals as a way of determining if what they write is true That was a fallacious appeal to authority, by the way)
So be on the lookout – and use me for target practice!
3. I must make sure that I stick directly to ideas, and never, ever, spray the person with my nasty sauce. Not only because I hate it when it is done to me, and because it does repel the very people I am trying to persuade, but because I simply do not want to be that kind of person. And I hate it when I am. And so, I’m going to keep trying not to be.
After 16 years of being in Scientology, I looked around and realized that I had not become the person I wanted to become through Scientology. I was much more arrogant than I had been when I began Scientology, and I had become very unsympathetic seeing “wogs” and “downstats” everywhere. I had certainly not become the more loving guy I had told myself I wanted to become through Scientology.
It has been a struggle for me to lay down these habit patterns since leaving Scientology and that struggle really tends to kick in when I feel that I am challenged unfairly using Scientology dead agent tactics.
So, there’s your answer, Geir. It did not include any of the wrong items you seemed to want me to accept, but it is sincere and heartfelt, and it does represent a renewed sense of energy to improve so I can be more successful in what I am trying to achieve.
A fucking awesome post. Thank you.
Yes, that’s awesome Alanzo!
Alanzo, I am really impressed with your ability to step back and objectively confront such a big and personally significant scene. And then to honestly state your conclusions. Good example you’ve set!!
Hat is off Al. Great post.
Awesome post.
We all slip into logical fallacies. I know I do it. When we write, we are creating and blog posts are made with words cemented in the dress of “first draft” amid a flurry of creative thinking.
Misteaks happen.
But never forget that if we are TRUE SCOTSPEOPLE that we will NEVER fall for such fallacies! And that when we do fall for them, to just admit them.
LOOK at them. And laugh.
Hey Al,
Just reading and I thought I’d comment:
You mentioned:
” After 16 years of being in Scientology, I looked around and realized that I had not become the person I wanted to become through Scientology. I was much more arrogant than I had been when I began Scientology, and I had become very unsympathetic seeing “wogs” and “downstats” everywhere. I had certainly not become the more loving guy I had told myself I wanted to become through Scientology. ”
Great paragraph there …
I don’t think any of this turned the way we figured. Maybe certain aspects fulfilled some hopes & dreams, but like you, the arrogance of some people within the church and public was 180 degrees to my own concept.
I never got into feeling superior to ‘wogs’ – didn’t even like the word as it was used with a sneer. After all, those ‘wogs’ were my public. I do know this superiority attitude did become very prevalent in the ’80s – it was an embarrassment for me to see others emulating this concept and representing it as scientology.
I’ve seen this stuff before in other groups – you get someone to pump up a crowd – and it often starts with a real genuine survival intention or ideal. Then this creeping fervor and fanaticism moves in – usually instigated by one or two, and then a wave of agreement goes over the crowd. Once the majority of the crowd has agreed, it can easily move into a mob mentality and what we have today in the church.
Each country I was in had a different feel within each org. They were not all the same and they did change over time. But it was quite obvious that where the sea org stepped in, the superiority card was played. Within that group there are some real decent people – some in and some out. Now, most sea org, aside from the small number of auditors, haven’t a clue and even the newer auditors have nothing to compare to.
But back to your paragraph … I *did* become the more loving guy; yes, I was unsympathetic in certain situations, but the understanding of what I saw and could handle surpassed the effects of idiotic actions on my part.
Am I proud of where things have gone? Definitely not.
Am I proud of my contributions and intentions? Definitely yes
Can I move forward and continue to expand? Certainly.
Can I help others? Of course.
Dennis, you are such a breath of fresh air. I think of all the posts on this thread, yours are the least fixed in a viewpoint and the most accepting of other viewpoints.
On a related note, I appreciated your saying, “But it was quite obvious that where the sea org stepped in, the superiority card was played. Within that group there are some real decent people – some in and some out.” There have been a lot of other comments about the SO but I think this one was the first in a long time to not make a sweeping generality and leave it at that without adding something like your second sentence there.
The part on mob mentality was quite good too. By the way, I once got into an exchange on Marty’s blog where I dared ask a question that wasn’t politically correct and boy was I attacked. It ended up, though, that Marty stepped in and simply answered my question – and two of the more respected posters (RJ and OTDT) piped up and came to my defense, basically stating outright that it was mob mentality being displayed. What a blowdown that was for me! And it sort of restored my faith in humanity.
The last part of your post I could have written myself:
Am I proud of where things have gone? Definitely not.
Am I proud of my contributions and intentions? Definitely yes
Can I move forward and continue to expand? Certainly.
Can I help others? Of course.
Anyway, do carry on, Dennis – your attitude will hopefully be contagious! 🙂
Thanks Marildi,
Re: the S.O. – yes, I have so many dear friends, many still in the S.O. It’s rough to envision what they must be going through knowing how dedicated they were to helping others.
It must be a rough spot to be in – tough to leave with no place to go/no money/no job – and many of these worked with LRH.
As for RJ and OTDT – yes, they are two people I really enjoyed following – good laughs and great posts.
Thanks again 🙂
And critics who are ex-Scientologists seem to have learned these methods very well and continue to deploy them when they become “apostates”.
For example, it seems Al often simply IGNORES the most cogent arguments of others who do not agree with him.
Perhaps it is true, that “You can take the armadillo out of Scientology, but you can’t take the Scientology out of the armadillo”?
The taste for invalidation is hard to shake, once developed.
Don’t know how this post ended up way down here…..
Alanzo’s post seemed accurate to me. I was drilled on these techniques from the lying and steering TR’s to KSW.
I’m not clear if you are complaining about Alanzo’s post or not. You are not disagreeing with the accuracy are you?
I am saying that some people learn to be arrogant and dismissive while they are in Scientology, and they may leave and even become an ‘apostate’ but they retain the arrogance and dismissiveness when they become critics. They then continue to use the same type of DA tactics and arguments they learned while in the Church. Only they now do.
Al admits this, to his credit.
“You can take the Al out of the Church of Scientology, but can you take the Church of Scientology out of the Al”, is my question.
Truncated sentence: Only they now do.(it from the other side. They just change sides, not tactics.)
Yes, I understand. Well this is the nature of GPMs. These can only be overcome in private taking one’s own advice and keeping one’s own counsel and it’s a chore so we should allocate personal time and energy for this work. These will never sort out in a public forum, though we may learn a few tips or get a good idea from a signpost along the way.
The nature of Nature is to bring a little piece of what was done in the past into the fractal computation that brings forth the future.
Talking about and trying to locate oneself in the Present is as uncertain as Heisenberg.
About Peer Review:
It would be nice to have a trail of how a discovery was arrived at. If not then that discovery itself may be treated as a conjecture as part of the scientific method. Please see
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD & HUMANITIES
So, we may treat LRH discoveries as conjectures and put them through the scientific method. That should be acceptable to science.
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MY EVALUATION OF SCIENTOLOGY: I learned before I used Scientology, and then I learned while I used Scientology, and then I’ve still been learning since being out of Scientology. Bottom line is that if I invest myself in knowing things then I begin to know things regardless of the tools. There is no automaticity or MEST mechanism or form which will substitute for my own in-valence intention to “come out of the closet” and BE.
Of course there is help in the form of right indications, but for those of us who think we can hide within our gelatinous wads of meat and say “prove to me I am something more” well, this might take a while.
I believe we experience life as the view-point which we choose to take — that simple. “Be all you can be,” as it is not on anyone else’s back to show us anything nor can they. I observe and what I see is my own perception according to my own personal wave-collapse. If I don’t like what I witness coalescing, then I better get busy coalescing something more pleasing from the wave-function. Peace.
Yup. Peace.
Chris Thompson: “Hey Marildi, You are taking this way too serious. This is a fun exercise and you’ll never get to do something like this hardly at all let alone in a friendly place as this. Like practicing for debate. Take two sides and debate them both for practice. And unearthing fallacious logic does not in itself prove a datum false. It proves it inconsistent or illogical. So no risk there either. This is freedom at its root. To think the thoughts we want. Any thought. It is a grand opportunity to uncover urges! It’s not a contest except with yourself. These are the anchor points. It’s the bird and nest. It’s the old apron strings. And anyway, we’re here for you.”
This is an excellent advice. I hope Marildi does not ignore it.
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Chris Thompson:
Your observations regarding LRH’s 12 anti-social traits are spot on – especially when you say:
“LRH’s article describing the anti-social personality as synonymous with being an anti-Scientologist is itself teeming with anti-social comments according to its own definition.”
That is a clean statement, which you follow up with specific example after specific example, proving your point.
You have given an excellent way of using LRH’s own assumptions to evaluate a part of Scientology technology as developed by him. It highlights the contradictions in Scientology itself.
This is a very productive application of critical thinking skills which is very likely to produce lasting benefits for anyone who has ever been involved in Scientology.
I don’t know about this particular slant – this is from the article on Anti-Social Personality:
“It is therefore even more important to identify the social personality than the antisocial personality. One then avoids shooting the innocent out of mere prejudice or dislike or because of some momentary misconduct.
The social personality can be defined most easily by comparison with his opposite, the antisocial personality.
This differentiation is easily done and no test should ever be constructed which isolates only the antisocial. On the same test must appear the upper as well as lower ranges of man’s actions.
A test that declares only antisocial personalities without also being able to identify the social personality would be itself a suppressive test. It would be like answering “Yes” or “No” to the question “Do you still beat your wife?” Anyone who took it could be found guilty. While this mechanism might have suited the times of the Inquisition, it would not suit modern needs.”
Even so, it seems obvious to me that there are individuals who could be run through all 24 traits and could be found have a great preponderance of anti-social traits. This is similar to what psychologists and psychiatrists do to identify sociopaths and psychopaths. And this seems to be borne out by the high number of people in jail or mental institutions.
So good enough – if such a personality is identified, realistically, what do we do with them? I went looking for various remedies and ideas (my own logic 8 on this) and found a most remarkable write-up about Hooponopono, which has been part of the ancient Huna healing tradition for many years. Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len, a psychologist who worked with high risk criminal offenders in a prison in Hawai’i successfully used it in that setting.
The very short version of his story is that he noticed over the years that not much of what he was trained to do in the realm of psychology really had any lasting or long-term effect on the prisoners he worked with.
Dr. Hew Len realized that since he was an in environment where certain things were present and he was aware of those things, that the potential for those things must be present inside him also. began to heal his own soul, spirit, psyche using Ho’oponopono and as he did, he began to notice that the prisoners began to heal, to leave the prison and not to come back.
One of the things this practice teaches is that if you notice something in the world outside yourself, then it is active at some level in your internal world. That is not to say that if you have awareness of a murderer, you are a murderer yourself. It is only to say that the potential exists within you that you could commit murder under certain circumstances. This same thing applies at a much less intense level in all of us. It applies to things like fear, hatred, anger, greed, lust, envy, jealousy and more.
The practice of Hooponopono is very simple. It consists of these steps:
– Bring to mind a subject or situation or negative feeling which you would like to have healed
– Say these 4 statements one after the other:
1 I’m sorry
2 Please forgive me
3 Thank you
4 I love you
-Repeat these statements many times – like a mantra
– Allow your life to move forward and notice what happens
http://www.themanyfacesofgod.com/hooponopono.html
I have come to wonder if most of the craziness that began in or around 1963 isn’t to do with what seems to be the principles behind Hooponopono – i.e. we are creative beings and when we focus on / create these elements of hostility they intensify and activate more and more. And of course we focus on them more and create more and its like a snowball effect.
This is about the only thing I can think of that explains my own reluctance to slam LRH or anybody for that matter and to get into railing against. I often feel like its a really bad direction to go in — and when I found this, I realized that it may well be my reluctance to “impregnate” my own “space” with such horribleness.
Anyone else experience this? Run into similar concepts? Thought in this direction? What do you think?
I’ve also been considering the area of affirmations, which seem to be a type of consideration – i.e. what you say to yourself sticks. It occurred to me that the tone scale, used as it is as a tool to identify low-toned people or to assess a case (as in Science of Survival) could just as easily act as an affirmation. From what I have been reading about affirmations, it doesn’t matter whether your affirmation is positive or negative in nature – it just matters that you give it focus and continuous attention. So now I see someone coming towards me who “looks angry” and I immediately label them angry and now I find they are angry. Now maybe they were angry but then again, what is it in me resonating with angry people? And what if the anger I perceive in them wasn’t anger at all but some kind of mis-perception on my part? Would this not result in an angry situation anyway? Especially if I run around all the time telling people “Joe is such an angry person…” And if I do that do I willy nilly drop myself into the anger band more and more? And if you do this often enough and you talk yourself into this, would you not talk yourself into being very messed up?
THE JOY OF CREATING
Force yourself to smile and you’ll soon stop frowning.
Force yourself to laugh and you’ll soon find
something to laugh about.
Wax enthusiastic and you’ll very soon feel so.
A being causes his own feelings.
The greatest joy there is in life is creating.
Splurge on it!
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That’s the datum of comparable magnitude that came to mind.
Keeping one’s TR’s in is a remedy for this.
Awesome post. Maria.
Very thoughtful and thought-provoking.
Once again.
Here is a video interviewing Dr. Len and describing Ho’oponopono
Fascinating, the prison story and the whole concept. It seems to be the same principle as power of positive thinking but with the opposite too, power of negative thinking. Or to the law of attraction. Or even postulates. How about Oneness? 🙂
Your reluctance to slam anybody could also be described as a tone level attitude, I would say.
By craziness of 1963, are you referring to Scn events?
It is a tone level attitude – and it is now deliberate, I’ve even cultured it as a habit. I realized about 3 years ago that part of being pro-active as a “citizen of the universe” included taking responsibility for the effect that my day to day attitudes, emotions and behavior have on others. After all the auditing I had, I had no trouble being around people of whatever tone level – didn’t really affect me at all. But I started to notice that if adopted tone levels such as anger or 1.1 or antagonism, the people around me would almost immediately mirror what I was doing and didn’t recover quickly. I even had several people complain that it was really painful when I got angry or sad. This was annoying to me – after all, they freely dramatized most of the time so why be so upset when I did? Then it occurred to me that I was actually triggering the responses in my own environment. Then I realized that if I could have a sloppy habit of letting it all hang out, I could just as easily have a habit of not doing so and instead creating a safe space for people to be in. It brought new meaning to the “power of positive thinking” to me.
As far as oneness goes, I really think it is a multiplicity of oneness however weird that may sound.
1963 was a crazy year for Scientology – FBI raids and the Australian inquiry. But it wasn’t just Scientology having a crazy time – the AMA was out in full force with their quackery committee, going after chiropractors and vitamins and alternative health in general. Khrushchev claimed to have a 100-megaton nuclear bomb, U.S. and France testing nuclear devices throughout the year (finally signed a treaty banning nuclear testing at the end of the year,) desegregation and race riots, Kennedy assassination, CIA’s Domestic Operations Division is created, Martin Luther King speech, anti Vietnam war protests begin. All in all a scary year – I remember as a child being terribly afraid when Kennedy was shot and all the talk of WW3.
Maria: “It is a tone level attitude – and it is now deliberate, I’ve even cultured it as a habit.”
I think it was the same idea you commented on in your other post today too, and I’m still thinking about it! Scn has things like “a being causes his own feelings” as well as the mocking up of tone levels in certain situations, but I don’t know of anything that specifically has a person be “pro-active” as a citizen of the universe or even as a member of a given dynamic(s), at least not in the habitual, general way you describe. Chris has a good point about TR’s – but I think they are a less pro-active approach than what you’re talking about.
Actually, LRH didn’t really have this idea of Oneness, as far as I know – not explicitly so anyway. There’s the axiom about postulates and considerations being senior and that would include senior to the mechanics of emotional tones, but the kind of thing you describe is not something he recommended as a “habit to culture.” I’m thinking it may be one of the spiritual practices that Rafael is saying do not exist in Scientology.
On the “multiplicity” of Oneness you mentioned, that’s something I’ve thought about too. The particular Oneness that “we” all comprise might just be related to this particular game and universe, and other games outside our own (outside our potential perception of them) could very well have their own Onenesses, each playing the game of its own universe – something each of us may graduate to as a Cleared Theta Clear. What was your own idea about a multiplicity?
p.s Maria, I thought of another thing in Scn that I think involves the same principle as what you are practicing, which is granting of beingness.
Yes, this has merit.
There is for practical purposes a real world out there. But our moods and reactions to this “real world” are solely our own. There is nothing in the real world which creates feelings within us. Trigger our own automaticities, yes. Create, no.
The practice of Hooponopono is severely missing in Scientology. Hubbard missed it big time.
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I think that simply spotting illogical fallacies doesn’t go far enough. It is like using a generality. One should go one step further and analyze that illogical fallacy into something meaningful, which brings about a clear understanding.
Many a times I see an illogical fallacy being used like an opinion from a certain viewpoint in such a way that it does not lead to any clear understanding. Marildi seems to use it within the format of a games condition, and not within the format of some cooperative effort.
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Over the years, in communicating to the audiences I have been speaking to, I have found that it was much more important to be persuasive, than it was to be logical. Being logical was a means to an end, not the end in itself.
Ethos, Pathos and Logos are the three component parts to any argument.
“Ethos” does not mean “ethics”. It means “character”. Specifically who you are in relation to the group you are speaking to. It was never persuasive for me to take up any other ethos than “SP” because given the rest of my communication, that was always going to be the character I would be made into by certain members of my audience. So I used it to the best of my ability to make my points persuasively.
Pathos means “appeal”. It is what ideal, emotion, or value you are using in order to be persuasive to your audience. I often used the appeals that LRH himself used to make my points. If I could surround my arguments with values found in Scientology and expressed by LRH himself, I found that I could be more persuasive to Scientologists.
Logos means “the structure and content of your argument”. These are your premises, your evidence, and your conclusions. They are the facts and figures you give to support it all, and how it is all put together.
Presenting a coherent and satisfying argument is more important than presenting a purely logical argument. Logic is only one of the means to the end of persuasive, satisfying, and effective communication.
And if your main argument is to promote critical thinking, then once your argument persuades your audience, they will apply their own logic and graduate themselves from needing you.
I would like to point out an interesting trait is on evident in this thread:
A person may be stuck in a viewpoint of rightness about a viewpoint, a subject or self. Pointing out that there is something wrong about that viewpoint, subject or self may bring about an almost over-theboard defense. And when pressed, the person will admit, but only in generalities, that the viewpoint or subject is of course not perfect or that self can of course be improved upon. But when asked for specifics; What in the viewpoint or subject can be inproved or how exactly can the person himself improve, then the person is lost for words.
It depends on the environment, Geir.
The Scientology auditing session, where no evaluation or invalidation is allowed, where you are granted beingness and are able to say whatever you need to say – without judgement – is one of the valid parts of Scientology. It is the correct environment for self-improvement and one of the few sacred things that can be found in Scientology.
Whenever that environment has been used to manipulate the pc, or to persuade him into adopting something from others, it is a profane violation of spiritual ideals.
A person may be stuck in a viewpoint of rightness about a viewpoint, a subject or self. Pointing out that there is something wrong about that viewpoint, subject or self may bring about an almost over-theboard defense. And when pressed, the person will admit, but only in generalities, that the viewpoint or subject is of course not perfect or that self can of course be improved upon. But when asked for specifics; What in the viewpoint or subject can be inproved or how exactly can the person himself improve, then the person is lost for words.
I have seen you yourself fit this description in the environment of the Internet.
You are not excluding yourself here in this description, are you?
I am excluding no one. I am pointing out a trait of human nature of which you represent an excellent example.
Yes, I am an excellent example of a human being.
Thank you.
That too.
By the way, that course I recommended from Berkeley on Social Psychology earlier in this thread explains your observation above very well. There are 2 or 3 lectures in there which address this directly.
It falls under the subject of the Fundamental Attribution Error which is in itself a very profound viewpoint on the nature and make-up of human beings when thoroughly understood.
Here is more on the Fundamental Attribution Error.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
I am specifically referring to the actor-observer bias and its structure in my reference to your observation. What you see from the outside looking in, is not necessarily all there is to see about another person.
LRH’s arguments against other human beings tended to rely heavily on the Fundamental Attribution Error, and he even went so far as to try to discredit this concept by oversimplifying it teaching Scientologists “Psychology makes people into victims”, in contradiction to his own technology of the four flows and their use in auditing.
Geir –
You are ignoring points 1 to 3 above and Marildi’s abuse of the logical fallacies in achieving them.
I will show that she doesn’t just point out a logical fallacy and then stick to that one point as being logically fallacious. Her pattern is to ignore any point she can not find a logical fallacy for, and then take one point, or the finite collection of examples she has been able to cut and paste against, and generalize those to overtly state how illogical I am as a “critic”, and all critics are, or as a “person”. This *is* Scientology dead agenting. It is simply using (actually abusing) the logical fallacies in order to achieve 1 through 3 above.
Do you still need me to take the time to quantify and detail the support for my point above, or have I made my point clearly enough for you to be able to see it for yourself?
I have no further interest in this discussion.
hear hear
G wrote:
I have no further interest in this discussion.
Me neither.
One last thing though:
Have you noticed that this OP started out evaluating the subject of Scientology through the use of Logic 8, and it ended up with you trying to make personal changes to the people involved in the discussion?
Nice try. But I wasn’t lookign at changing anyone, just to note and comment on the nature of such discussions, polarized as they are. And that, my friend I find boring.
What I want to see on my blog is evolution. Not preaching, not intellectiual tennis matches, no throwing-it-out-there-for-the-lurkers – but real, sincere evolution of own viewpoints. And fun.
…real, sincere evolution of own viewpoints. And fun.
YES!
😉
Alanzo, I don’t think you need to convince anybody about anything. Just continue on your journey of discovering and pointing out the inconsistencies in Scientology and elsewhere.
And, maybe, check out the inconsistencies in KHTK for me. 🙂
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I am still struggling to overcome the ego that was implanted in me by Scientology.
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I don’t understand why somebody should take the “source” of a subject to be some beingness, such as LRH, and become fixated on it.
A subject, inevitably, has its basis in a principle or some principles. As far as Scientology goes, its basis lies…
(1) In the concept of Static on the philosophy side,
(2) In the concept of Ideal Scene on the Admin side, and
(3) In the concept of Looking on the Tech side.
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It is a problem inherent to religion. There would be many reasons to take a philosophy of the mind out of the public arena and place in the field of religion — economic, avoidance of taxes and peer review, and whatnot. None of these reasons serve to help make the philosophy better.
Whether Scientology is a religion remains controversial. I would argue that Scientology truly IS a religion in the same traditions and practices of the world’s great religions. Scientology has clawed and scratched its way to find its tax-deducted place alongside them and in this I think it has succeeded. However, this statement is not complimentary and is a reason that I think Scientology technology as tabulated may have reached its serviceable end.
Maybe LRH decided to convert Scientology to a religion when he thought the basic philosophy was complete and he wanted to enter an era of application rather than research?
Maybe that’s true. My own problem with believing it is that I’ve developed a bias against LRH and religion. Even if your comment is true it would be hard for me to accept as the well has been poisoned for me regarding LRH because the load of lying he did regarding his personal history. He told lots of lies and he seemed to feel that they were eminently necessary such as constant shore stories and secrecy about spiritual matters which turned out to be bunk. I know why he lied because he described his rationale in MISSION EARTH. He felt that because he was not a degreed person that no one would take him or Scientology seriously. The scientific community might need credentials but the general population does not.
Then there is his lying about the end phenomena of processes on The Bridge to Total Freedom. Both the secrecy and the constantly changing “ability gained” of the OT levels mean either he fabricated these EPs in the first place or else he could not stably create them and so watered them down.
Thus he lied for apparently no good reason for I don’t believe that any Scientologist that I know participated because of LRH’s perceived credentials. Nor do I think people generally get involved in Scientology because it is a religion but rather in spite of it. I know that is true of my original participation for I thought at the beginning that the religion angle was hokey but then I got used to the idea after a while and it stopped bothering me. However, today it bothers me yet again.
In 1954?
Yup.
Geir:
I would like to point out an interesting trait is on evident in this thread:
A person may be stuck in a viewpoint of rightness about a viewpoint, a subject or self. Pointing out that there is something wrong about that viewpoint, subject or self may bring about an almost over-theboard defense. And when pressed, the person will admit, but only in generalities, that the viewpoint or subject is of course not perfect or that self can of course be improved upon. But when asked for specifics; What in the viewpoint or subject can be inproved or how exactly can the person himself improve, then the person is lost for words.
I would never like to be introverted with such questions.
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Yes.
The attempt to introvert.
The attempt to change all that is “wrong” with you.
And then when the person refuses to be introverted, refuses to be browbeaten, or “changed for the better”, you get this “observation” about how wrong people are to not knuckle under and answer the introverting, wrong-item, make-wrong questions “sincerely”.
This is basically how Scientologists have been abused in Scientology. And having been abused this way, they turn around and abuse others in the same way.
It’s all very Scientology.
Who’s gonna break the chain?
I will.
This is why it is important to have one’s objectives flattened and their TR’s in. This is armor for the problem you describe.
Can we get back to the OP now?
Below are excerpts from a write-up entitled “The Fair Game Law – a Detailed Study”
http://www.wiseoldgoat.com/papers-scientology/hubbard_policy-letter_history_fair-game.html
FOREWORD:
Surely this thing ‘The Fair Game Law’ is quite a charged subject. The Church of Scientology has been accused of still exercising any such practices till this day. My little write up is not aiming at defying that or justifying any of that. I forward no opinion about if this may be true or not true. It is not that which motivated me to compile this information! In all these matters regarding Fair Game however it has been seriously neglected to find out what the Scientology published writings actually say about these things. Or how did it come into being. Various things are just being assumed, too much has been assumed. Purposely also improper interpretations have been drawn which can not actually be defended when we check up on what the writings actually say and when we view its track in Scientology history. Not any of these things can be properly adjudicated if one has not properly studied and consulted these writings.
There is also the matter of even if it may be true that Fair Game in some form still would be exercised, then why would this be like that? Is it advocated by Scientology writings? Has a trick been played as some claim? Or is it just plain misunderstanding of some person(s) within the Scientology organization? On this page I have attempted to collect various. I have tried to objectively force some logic on to these matters. You however have to decide for yourself what to think of all this.
EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE TERM COMING INTO BEING:
The early 60’s were turbulent years. Apparently various were creating troubles on the lines. Further there were indications of various security risks. Various of these things are related in detail in the periodical Ability. E-Meters were being confiscated. Unfavourable propaganda about Scientology hit the media…
“… the United States government and the efforts of that government since 1955, stepped up since 1963, to seize Scientology rather than forbid or stop it … LRH (from HCO PL 14 Jun 65 Issue III “Politics, Freedom from”)
Yes I get your point. Those Judahs were quite a thorn in the side of the Nazis, just as those SP’s were a thorn in the side of the Scientologists. Both needed to be isolated and dealt with.
Marildi: “Unfavourable propaganda about Scientology hit the media…” . . . “I have tried to objectively force some logic on to these matters.”
Chris: Or was there “journalism and reporting” and what you’re writing is propaganda? “Objectively forcing logic” reads like an oxymoron to me.
Chris, sorry it wasn’t clear – these posts on fair game are all excerpts from the wiseoldgoat write-up! (noted at top)
I hoped we could look at the data itself that wiseoldgoat collected, not necessarily his opinions about it.
A critical examination of WiseOldGoat’s write up on Fair Game, as supplied by Marildi:
FOREWORD:
Surely this thing ‘The Fair Game Law’ is quite a charged subject. The Church of Scientology has been accused of still exercising any such practices till this day. My little write up is not aiming at defying that or justifying any of that. I forward no opinion about if this may be true or not true. It is not that which motivated me to compile this information!
Why not?
If a Scientologist is for human rights, and for “the betterment of Man”, then when his own church contains writings in it with the purpose to “destroy people utterly”, then why not be motivated to write about it because it is such a complete outpoint to what Scientology was professed to be about?
In all these matters regarding Fair Game however it has been seriously neglected to find out what the Scientology published writings actually say about these things.
But Scientology is not ONLY its published writings. It is also its unpublished writings, its confidential issues – such as the Network Orders and LRH Advices – and many others, as well as its verbal orders given so that no trace could be made.
Click to access viewer
Scientology is also made up of its cultural norms, such as the “now I’m supposed to’s” that Scientologists enforce on each other on a daily basis.
So looking at only the published writings, on the subject of Fair Game especially, is beginning this treatment with a fatal flaw – only a small part of the data is being presented for your consideration. And the data being considered is the group of data only meant for public consumption.
Do not allow yourself to be fooled by this.
Various things are just being assumed, too much has been assumed.
Like what? Show an example of an assumption, or how “too much is being assumed”. The lack of even an example for this conclusion is incomplete reasoning – even for a “FOREWARD”.
This could be dismissed as just a disagreement in style, but the style is throughout WOG’s writings. It is meant as an “apology” (defense) for Scientologists to absorb and assume without digging or thinking too deeply about this subject, or by asking their own questions.
Purposely also improper interpretations have been drawn which can not actually be defended when we check up on what the writings actually say and when we view its track in Scientology history.
See my point above. The writings being used are not going to say what the actual Fair Game orders say. Because the actual Fair Game Order do not exist in the group of writings that WOG is presenting for his treatise.
This is a common problem among Scientology apologists. Jim Logan does this as well. No critical thinking skills, and only looking at LRH published writings and ignoring all other sources of information.
Do not be fooled by these tactics!
Not any of these things can be properly adjudicated if one has not properly studied and consulted these writings.
These things can not be properly adjudicated unless you study the writings which actually implement Fair Game, which WOG is not doing, or allowing others to do in this write up.
There is also the matter of even if it may be true that Fair Game in some form still would be exercised, then why would this be like that? Is it advocated by Scientology writings?
Yes.
Has a trick been played as some claim?
What trick?
Who claims?
Or is it just plain misunderstanding of some person(s) within the Scientology organization? On this page I have attempted to collect various. ….what? Words seem to be missing here.
I have tried to objectively force some logic on to these matters. You however have to decide for yourself what to think of all this.
Thanks.
If Fair game has been implemented against Scientology’s “enemies” in all locations and all times since its creation by L Ron Hubbard, then this “misunderstanding” is pretty widespread. In order to create such widespread “misunderstanding” by so many individuals across so much time and space – individuals who in most cases have no or little personal contact with one another – then some other common denominator among them should be looked for.
A common denominator is LRH writings – both published and unpublished – all the tapes and all the cultural “now I’m supposed tos” that the GO and OSA have run on since the 1960’s. It’s all still Scientology, even if it isn’t written.
“If it isn’t written, it isn’t true” is false.
If it is done, it is still done – even if it isn’t written.
EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE TERM COMING INTO BEING:
The early 60′s were turbulent years.
Added inapplicable generalization.
Apparently various were creating troubles on the lines.
The subject of this sentence is missing. Various *what?* were creating trouble on *what* “lines”?
Further there were indications of various security risks. Various of these things are related in detail in the periodical Ability. E-Meters were being confiscated. Unfavourable propaganda about Scientology hit the media…
Again, WOG uses the Scientology sales magazine “Ability” for his source of information and his evidence to back up his characterization and justifications for LRH developing Fair Game, even when he says earlier he is not going to justify anything.
E-Meters were being confiscated by the FDA for false and fraudulent claims of curing illness such as leukemia and arthritis and other diseases which sent Scientology to court for many years and forced LRH to stop making fraudulent claims to cure illness in order to sell his Scientology auditing.
That Wise Old Goat does not mention the FDA and just lists these events as “security risks” is downright deceptive. It also carefully keeps the Scientologist locked into his little pen of approved evidence, and does not let them out.
“… the United States government and the efforts of that government since 1955, stepped up since 1963, to seize Scientology rather than forbid or stop it … LRH (from HCO PL 14 Jun 65 Issue III “Politics, Freedom from”)
And here his evidence is an LRH HCOPL, as if L Ron Hubbard is a credible source to use, with no verification from any other source, for the history of Scientology. Think about it – is LRH an unbiased, factual source of information with “no justifications” as WOG claims?
This exercise of a critical examination of this short passage of WOG’s writing is meant as a springboard for others to read this stuff with a critical eye.
ASK QUESTIONS OF A TEXT WHEN YOU READ IT.
DO NOT JUST ABSORB THE INFORMATION LIKE A SPONGE.
I’m not going to continue because to me, this is a total waste of time. Yes, a lot of Scientologists are allowing themselves to be fooled by it, but I believe it is so obviously flawed that theirs is a self-deception based on a deep emotional need that only they themselves can actually overcome.
It’s a waste of time for me to keep going.
So, over to you Scientologist reader.
Don’t just look for “MUs” when you read.
Also please ask questions of a text while you read it.
Dang it! Sorry for the screwed up italics I hope this doesn’t make my post unreadable.
I have to leave.
Oh well – over to you, Scientologists.
Allow yourself to be fooled or don’t.
I’ve done what I can.
Well Al, I’m happy to know at last, thanks to your enlightened comm, what I really am.
As the saying goes, “You can lead a fool to your superior conclusions, but you can’t fool him into agreeing with you.”
See me genuflecting before you? I am so humbled by the awesomeness of you.
You have to go? Will you ever condescend to be with us again?
You are 16 years older than I am, Ivan Petrovia Valkovich, and I’m sure it chaps your ass every time I am right.
But such is life.
And then we die.
отдавать!!
Alanzo: “Show an example of an assumption, or how ‘too much is being assumed.’ The lack of even an example for this conclusion is incomplete reasoning – even for a ‘FOREWARD.’”
The foreword just introduces what is to be taken up, with specifics given in the remainder of the write-up. You need to read the whole thing, because I think he does answer all the questions you’ve brought up, with verified references for any conclusions he makes. Not that you’ll necessarily change your mind overall, but you might have a different way of looking at some aspects as a result of getting data you didn’t have.
By the way, do you have any sources for your data that also cite documentation? If so, you may want to compare.
Note: wiseoldgoat’s native language isn’t English and he uses the word “various” quite a bit as a noun, meaning “various things” or “various people,” apparently (I’m applying the tech of what to do if no suitable definition can be found).
Marildi asked:
By the way, do you have any sources for your data that also cite documentation? If so, you may want to compare.
I put a link in the post above which contains some documentation that WOG ignores.
Here it is again:
Click to access viewer
This is the hat pack which OSA operatives are trained on to apply Fair Game, and it contains many non-public and confidential issues by LRH.
Marty knows all about these, and so does Mike Rinder – they know as well about the confidential LRH Advices.
I believe that it is an outpoint of magnitude that rank and file Independent Scientologists have not been briefed by Mike and Marty on these confidential LRH issues which most of INT runs on, and which they personally used to run the Church from their posts for almost 30 years.
I really think Marty and Mike are leaving Independents “holding the bag” on the Internet when they leave them ignorant of these confidential LRH issues. In my opinion, they are continuing the deception that David Miscavige runs on Scientologists in the Church, and they are not leveling with Independents with the full picture on Scientology – so that Independents can make informed decisions about their own involvement.
Good to see you talking to me again, Marildi.
Have you ever seen “The Devil’s Advocate”?
Am I Al Pacino, or Keanu Reeves in this relationship? (:>)
Shoot!
I missed a an italics end tag!
WOG: Purposely also improper interpretations have been drawn which can not actually be defended when we check up on what the writings actually say and when we view its track in Scientology history.
ALANZO: See my point above. The writings being used are not going to say what the actual Fair Game orders say. Because the actual Fair Game Order do not exist in the group of writings that WOG is presenting for his treatise.
This is a common problem among Scientology apologists. Jim Logan does this as well. No critical thinking skills, and only looking at LRH published writings and ignoring all other sources of information.
Do not be fooled by these tactics!
‘FAIR GAME’ DEFINED AND CLARIFIED:
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HCO PL 1 Mar 65 “Suppressive Acts – Suppression of Scientology and Scientologists – The Fair Game Law” says:
“By FAIR GAME is meant, without rights for self, possession or position, and no Scientologist may be brought for a Committee of Evidence or punished for any action taken against a Suppressive Person or Group during the period that person or group is ‘fair game’.” LRH
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In the revision 10 months later (issued as HCO PL 23 Dec 65 “same title”) the latter sentence changed to the more realistic and neutral:
“A Suppressive Person or Group becomes ‘fair game’. By FAIR GAME is meant, may not be further protected by the codes and disciplines or the rights of a Scientologist.” LRH
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Additional explanation of this you will find in HCO PL 17 Mar 65 Issue II “Fair Game Law – Organizational Suppressive Acts – The Source of the Fair Game Law”:
“When a person announces he is no longer part of a group, he has rejected the group. He has also rejected its codes and rules. Of course he has also rejected the protection to which he was entitled as a group member.
“It does not make sense to extend the protection of the group to the person seeking to destroy the group. That’s like encouraging a disease.
“Hence we have a Fair Game Law.” LRH
(for more quotations from this HCO PL please click here (link will open as a pop-up window))
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An often on the Internet quoted reference is HCO PL 18 Oct 67 Issue IV “Penalties for Lower Conditions”. It says:
“ENEMY — SP Order. Fair game. May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.” LRH
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http://www.wiseoldgoat.com/papers-scientology/hubbard_policy-letter_history_fair-game.html