Looking to buy a new car, a house, an HP calculator or a new telescope. Looking for the perfect job? The perfect employee or the perfect girl? Or deciding between a set of possible choices and having a hard time making up your mind?
There is a simple tool that I have used many times when faced with difficult choices (including that of finding the perfect girl). It requires you to simply list all the important items in a requirement specification and giving each item an importance or “weight” (any scale will do). And then as you are faced with each case to evaluate, give that case a score on each item in the list of requirements. A simple example:
If you are to recruiting a new employee, the specification would consist of items such as “relevant knowledge”, “relevant job experience”, “proven production record”, “communication skills” or “empathy”. You would give each item a certain weight where “relevant knowledge” could be given a weight of “4” while “empathy” for this specific job could be given “2” in weight.
When a requirement specification is populated with a list of weighted items, it’s time to pitch a set of cases against the specification. You figure out the scale you want to use and put a score on each item of the requirement specification for the case you evaluate. The scale goes from “0” to any number you set as the maximum score. A candidate for a job could score a “3” on “relevant knowledge” and a “5” on empathy on a scale from “0” to “5”. You then multiply the score with the item’s weight to get the “weighted score”. So even though the candidate receives a maximum score on empathy, she only gets a weighted score of “10” on that item compared to “12” on “relevant knowledge”.
Finally, you sum up all the weighted scores, divide by the sum of the item weights, divide by the maximum score and multiply with 100. Then you have a total percentage score of how well that case fits the requirement specification.
A tool? What do you mean with “a tool”?
You want a tool to help you create a requirement specification with a list of weighted items and then to easily manage and evaluate many cases against it?
Sure, I have that. Do you have an HP-41 calculator?
I know, I know. It’s a stupid question. Of course you have the best calculator ever made sitting right there on the table and in daily use no less.
Then I will supply you with this neat evaluation program utilizing a new trick; dynamic menus.
What’s that? Well, head on over to my calculator’s page and check it out. Choosing the perfect girl is at right your fingertips.
Geir Isene - uncut 
Good system Geir, BUT if one person turns out 100 % the right choice, and hireing that person FEELS wrong. You don’t FEEL like working with that
particular person. Then what?
Per
I was thinking about the same thing – whether or not you should figure in your own personal feelings, assigning numerical weights to them. But maybe this is the main point – to leave “feelings” aside as not doing so may be where the waters get muddied… One old expression for this is “letting your heart rule your mind”. 🙂
Per; Then you should add the item “Feeling like working with the person” and give that a high weight score. Simple.
No Geir, not simple, more complex, and you missed my boat. You want to think out a solution. Think is minus 3 on the expanded tone scale. And you want to do it with mathematics, that’s using symbols for the universe, symbols are minus 4 on the expanded tone scale. You want to apply these low level ways. I want you to apply yourself to the task by LOOKING and KNOWING from a balanced integrity, judgement or evaluation or whichever you want to use. Looking and knowing is PLUS 21 and higher on the expanded tone scale. You see what I mean??
Everlove,
Per
Your first objection was that you didn’t think the system could cater for Feelings. I showed you how it could. You then present an intirely different objection – the objection to using a tool like this in the first place. So, no I did not miss your first boat, the second boat was only now presented – and I will not miss that one either, and here is why:
Any tool for evaluation is just that – a tool. If one was All Knowing and All Mighty, then of course one would not need any tool at all. If you can simply Will your new house into existence, then you obviously don’t need a hammer. If you can simply Know anything, then you don’t need any tool for evaluation (like the one I present here, or the Tone Scale or anything at all). But then most of us are not All Knowing, so tools sometimes prove useful. I have seen hundreds of examples where people made vary bad life choices based on their “gut feeling”. Also, if a decision is to be reached between several parties, you will have to reach some sort of an agreement, and this is where my tool here proves especially useful – because people’s “gut feeling” tend to be quite different and hard to explain and thus creates friction rather than agreement and forward progress.
So, as you said, it is a “good system”.
OK Geir, here is the 3rd boat then…. I just have a protest to work that low on the tone scale if I am able to take it up higher. That’s really all there is to it. But if you HAVE to, then your system or the dynamics approach or any other approach which makes the view SIMPLER is valid of course.
Per
NB: I can change my viewpoint and view as the mails go in and out and the discussion progresses, why else have a discussion?
Of course. It is important to be able to change one’s views.
I see any tool as valuable as it works. This tool has proven useful in many situations.
How would you propose a NASA mission to Mars without the use of mathematics?
It seems that the Tone Scale here presents you with a preconceived notion or a fixed idea, is that so?
Yes geir, that is so. I do have an idé fixé about the workability of the tone scale and especially on communication plottet on the tone scale which I always use when introducing new clients in their hatting. It always opens doors, on that I am certain by now, and to that degree I have this idé fixé..
So, if you think it is “down toned” to use mathematics to evaluate data, how would you propose we run this world without it?
No, no..I would just always evaluate from the highest eschelon I could find. Wouldn’t You??
Of course. And I use the tools that works, don’t you?
And I agree with you that this system of evaluation is a good one, that’s why I proposed it – as a tool. Just like any mathematics is a tool for evaluation.
I happen to think that mathematics is right up there among the brightest tools available. It is perhaps the tool of Mankind that has proven the most useful in the whole of history. It’s workability is the real test, not a fixed notion on where it happens to be placed by someone on a scale.
Sure Geir, I agree. A stellar example of using feelings is when Einstein postulated the Relativity Theory and just said this is how it feels that it should be He never prooved anything. Scientists took years to prove it with math.
Mathematics is a language which has as a fundamental the capacity to describe immensely complicated workings with extremely precise wording. Einstein did see deeply into the workings of MEST and described its workings with the language of mathematics. His works were first verified using photographic images of a solar eclipse overlaying more images of the same solar eclipse. The proof was visually empirical more than mathematical.
The more I understand mathematics the more friendly it seems to me. It is a tool but of itself has no tone whatever. Beings exhibit tone. I myself have both cheerfully dug a ditch and wished to be somewhere else. The pick and shovel were remarkably unmoved (no pun) by my negative attitude and only seemed impressed into motion by my more positive attitude.
Most of us will never put pencil to this very ingenious tool for statistical decision making as most of us are too impetuous and impulsive to spend the effort. By most of us, I mean me.
Geir touts result oriented management yet might personally be the most methodical person with whom I have ever been acquainted. No wait, that would be my wife and Geir coming in a close second. Both of them strew their days with magnificent products.
Ultimately? The 5 person may be both extremely disciplined and extremely tolerant.
I don’t think it is even a matter of mathematics being low on the scale. Here is Logic 21:
“Mathematics are methods of postulating or resolving real or abstract data in any universe and integrating by symbolization of data, postulates and resolutions.”
The above is easy enough to see, no matter who proposed it.
Very good post Marildi. Deliberately being unbiased seems as good to me as being unbiased. The good things that we learn and practice will stand on their own, and the people responsible for good tools and good thoughts such as LRH, et al, will get plenty of credit in due time. It will all settle out without our effort to make it find equilibrium. I just wanted to notice your good work.
p.s. Per, I was trying to say that logic and mathematics (as defined by Logic 21) do not seem at all to be low on the scale unless there is a confusion between “thought” and “think”
“Analytical thought” is in a band above the emotion band on the wavelength scale (Scn 8-80) ,whereas “think” is below both emotion and effort on the Know–Mystery scale.
On the wavelength scale, analytical thought is in the band from 8.0 to 39.0 – which is, in part, even above Look on the K-M scale and above Postulates on the Tone Scale. I figure Einstein’s brilliant intuition was either at Know (direct looking) or, more likely, at Postulates – i.e. postulates based on Look or analytical thought.
Einstein had what is called insight and it is above math and postulates in my view, as you are looking at the very nature of the things just by intuition. math and logic come after that.
Exactly Rafael !!
Good exchange, everybody. Whether we call the genius of Einstein intuition, insight, or operating at Know, for me it would be saying that he was able to DIRECTLY PERCEIVE certain fundamentals about the nature of the universe. And I realized in this exchange that I had was harboring a consideration that Einstein probably wasn’t operating at a level of direct perception – or he would have been more spiritual than he was. There are quotes of him referring to God but I got that he only did so as a figure of speech, and that spiritual things were for him “spooky”.
My idea has been that, having such an utterly brilliant mind, Einstein probably worked out his theory at the high end of the analytical thought band (8.0–39.0) – and I figured it was probably up around 30.0 Postulates, bearing in mind the definition (of the verb) as “to conclude, decide or resolve a problem”. But now that I’ve spotted the consideration I had, I can easily see that it could have been sheer intuition that Einstein operated on – actually pervading or being “the object”. You all have “convinced” me ;-).
Chris, thanks for the nice ack! And I loved your comment that “the people responsible for good tools and good thoughts such as LRH, et al, will get plenty of credit in due time. It will all settle out without our effort.” That is so wise of you, IMO. 🙂
(I still maintain, though, that being passionate about something doesn’t necessarily equate to bias! :-D)
Here’s my sincere ack back to you. Your post about Einstein and mathematics was very well said and I appreciated your knowledge about such. As for Geir’s system for decision making, I think you are right that there will often be no need to put pencil to paper. I think of the principle about organization vs. production – there will undoubtedly be many instances when decisions can be easily done in our heads, i.e. we wouldn’t need that much “organize” to get the product. Nevertheless, I’m glad the “tool” is there to use when I’m having trouble making a decision. (Do I have trouble making decisions, you ask? Well…yes and no – joke! :-))
Note to Geir: Since Chris alluded to your methodical and tolerant nature, I wanted to add that I think this method of allowing the comments to go through without moderation is working out great. Me like. 🙂
Excellent summary.
And yes, I think the no-approval of posts is working.
“…no-approval of posts is working.”
Yay! Looking forward to the next inspired and inspiring blog post. 🙂
Then just don’t employ him and take the one with the second best score.
Since I left scientology, I learned to trust my rather my intuition than any model.
Just like in the condition of doubt, where’s something on the order: “Choose that side which do most good for the biggest number of dynamics.” I believe that the model of dynamics can help you to decide, but why become its slave?
That way I was once made to re-join staff in the Prague mission (the mission stats only were misleadingly verbally interpreted to me). I should have trust my intuition, which shouted: “Fuck them, stay where you are working!!!”
Wow. I get it – how to break down a complex, confusing set of considerations from a blur to a clear decision. Really cool contribution to…what shall we say – the world!
There may be exceptions to the rule but this is one of those things you wonder why no one thought of before – a mathematical Decision Formula. 🙂
In making choices sometimes i will not accept less that 5 ( the maximum value ) and there are aspects wich will never go to 0 ( minimum value ) and there are some characteristics that need to be around a certain range. Example: if i wanna red car for my job then, red needs to be 5, car needs to be up 0 and more or less working good. With a girl it is the same way.
Sure, you could always add in absolutes to a decision before doing calculations on those cases that passes.
Geir, persons are not objects. In doing calculations on objects you should aim the most absolute measurement you can reach, otherwise the space shuttle goes BANG or the H bomb do his work before the estimated time.
As regards persons, I could accept a girl with 3 on sexual promiscuity but only if she has at least 4 in love for me and I will never take a 0 on sexuality.
5’s to the girls who think you are the perfect guy!
My preference go to the girls who would do nonstandard sexual practices with me because then I would know I’ve got a perfect SP match. (only joking)
hehe, me too.
Funny game, use protection please. 🙂
Geir, You have completely missed something here, leaving out the feelings. You have gotten too much Scientology – and in fact you are “PTS” to Scientology weather or not you like my evaluation, we are not in session.
Scientology auditing and training is mainly a masculine affair. You are given a question, in auditing, and then you are supposed to THINK up an answer. Nobody asked you to consult your feelings. This is a very masculine process and the more you do of it, the more polarized you become.
Your polarization is very clear in your very masculine ‘method’ and way to handle that situation, very masculine. Thats why I posed my qurstion to you.
The more you ‘run’ the masculine side the more you get polarized and the more polarized you are, not feeling your feelings, the more you are less being yourself. This means you have used ideas, commands, behavior patterns, fixed ideas etc etc that came from Scientology to make yourself smaller (read: more polarized), and to that degree you are “PTS” to Scientology, still.
That you do not include your feelings means that you are not listening to them eather, and it is your feelings which will tell you what is right or wrong in your life. I am quite sure that you will protest to this as the masculine process worked well on you apparently. Probably so well that you will deny your feelings.
Integrity parts get polarized in life and livingness and extreeme poles are dramatized. Because of this I have, together with a friend, worked out a way to get these integrity parts back in balance by handling the break between the 2 poles. The masculine is always holding the feminine in check with a ser fac. This has to be handled and the break between them too. They have to be gotten back in comm and they have to integrate again when the break has been healed. The masculine has judgements on the feminine, these judgements have to be balanced too in order for them to integrate. In Danish: Den maskuline dømmer den feminine. Dommen er syg. Det ender med sygdom!!! And mass between the 2 poles, actual mass in or around the body.
The process of getting the integrity parts back in balance we call Balancing. We have written a whole book about the background for this. When my clients, who has been in Scientology start getting back in balance and start listening to their feeling you get very very strong and whole people who would NOT be in doubt about who to hire etc. just by evaluating the situation in a balanced way having their thoughts and feelings work together as one whole.
The way we arrived at this, was by asking ourselves what is a common denominator for all philosophies, religions, psychologies etc etc.. We found it, and so did Ron Hubbard. We found it in Taoism, the oldest known religion on this planet, and so did he:The dual principle of existance. He worked with it in the GPM-handling, but he left it again when he found parts of it: The Ser Fac’s..
We do balancing. The dual principle tells you that if you consider “good”, you, at the same time, created the idea or feeling of “bad”. “Black” and “white”. “Think” versus “Feel”. “Masculine” and “feminine”. Yin and yang. This principle we found in all existing philosophies, religions, psychologies etc etc.. on this planet.
I wanted to post an illustration here, but I do not see this possibility, so I’ll mail it to you and you can upload it here if you like.
Everlove,
Per
You completely missed the point. Just enter feelings into the evaluation scheme, or gut feeling or “Intangible unknown somethingness” and give it the proper weight. It’s the way you evaluate anyway, so why not make it a bit clearer?
No, Geir, Per is right. What you propose is just taking the feelings and limiting them by the indigenous limits of your model. In other words and Per’s terminology, you would handle the “feminine” aspect by your “masculine” method and thus degrade it.
Great Profant (whoever you are). Not great because you agree with me, but great because it seems that YOU understood what I said. I love to be duplicated.
Everlove,
Per
This is me one and half a year ago: http://profant.wordpress.com/o-mne/ 🙂
Thanks for your picture. I don’t think we ever met until now.
Everove
Per
No, we haven’t. But I know a little about you from the IVy pages on handling the PTS condition. I loved the theory on “capaciousness”.
Good, thank you…
Profant, Hi, so you are from the Velvet revolution and independence place, you are welcome.
Thanks Rafael for picture and long description which I can’t read. Do you have it in another language like English or German or French or any Scandinavean lingua…??
Love,
Per
Hi Rafael, you’re right. Thank you.
Per Schiøttz, you say ” Thanks Rafael for picture and long description which I can’t read “, may be you are refering to the profant wordpress blog info about him. My recommendation is to use ” google translate “.
Per, you said, “You are given a question, in auditing, and then you are supposed to THINK up an answer.”
My understanding is almost the opposite – that you are explicitly NOT supposed to “think up an answer.” You are supposed to LOOK at what is there in response to the question, whether it is thoughts, feelings, pains – whatever is there
As for “the dual principle of existence”, this is an interesting point. I see what you mean about GPM handlings including that principle and I gather your point about Ser Fac handlings is that they do not include that principle. I know that all four flows are run on them, but this may not cover what you mean…
I did not mean think up an answer as in MOCK up an answer. A PC is always in some more or less balanced or unbalanced state in his attitude to your auditing question, you never know where, and if he was at lookingness which is 16 – 21 on the expanded tone scale, well he wouldn’t need auditing, would he?
No, I didn’t think you meant to mock up an answer – rather, to figure-figure on one – that type of “think”. However, the references do state that the pc is to “look” to the bank.
You seem to be saying that before a pc (or anyone) can look, they have to be at 16-20 on the tone scale and I suppose that is because of where it is positioned against the Tone Scale in Full.
But there is another scale in the new Scn 0-8 (p.281), called the Tone Plotting Scale, where all the tone levels are plotted vertically and the Know to Mystery Scale is plotted against each of them – horizontally. In other words, it seems to me to be a recursive, fractal type of thing.
Be that as it may, I unfortunately don’t know of a better reference at the moment, but what I am saying is that I don’t think one has to be at that high tone level of 16 or 20 before being able to simply look. Actually, looking is described by LRH at times simply as “perceiving.” Geir’s system, though it uses symbols to stand for concepts, it does involve “looking” at various concepts – not figure-figure type of “think” about them. Even words are symbols but we also use them to express things we have LOOKed at.
I understand what you say. If you can KNOW BY LOOKING (which is what that level of the tone scale talks about) then you do not need any mathematics or symbols or any other crutch in order to know. You just LOOK and then you know.
I am very suspicious of thet new issue of 0 – 8. I do NOT believe thet scale you talk about was made by Ron, but then again – I havn’t seen it. Could you mail it to me on per1909@gmail.com, would be great.
Love
Per
Per, this scale is pretty intricate to email, but the reference given for it in Scn 0-8 is lecture of 5 June 1955, “Knowingness and Unknowingness. That’s from the series, Anatomy of the Spirit of Man Congress, which I happen to have – here are a couple of paragraphs from the transcript:
“Now let’s look at the side scale, and we find what we’ve called for a long time the Know to Mystery Scale at right angles to the Tone Scale proper. Now, actually these two scales are not an exact mesh, and they are somewhat duplicative. But they become very easy to plot. And you can plot your preclear there.
“He refuses to know anything about hiding – negative knowingness about hiding. He doesn’t want to know a thing about hiding. And that would be way over here to the left bottom corner: negative knowingness about hiding. Then negative lookingness about hiding.”
.
Unfortunately, the only examples given in the lecture are for the negative K-M scale, which is plotted along half of the bottom, with the positive K-M scale plotted next to that along the other half. Hope that gives you a picture.
Yea.. great thanks a lot. I even think I have that lecture somewhere, I’ll
dig it out and listen to it. I would still love to see the scale (graph) if it ever becomes feasable to mail a scanned copy.
Love,
Per
Not exactly. When I am at lookingness, I am prepared to audit. Before this? I might want to run an objective process such as havingness.
Per, is that book available in English or in Danish only?
It’s redily awailably in English and Danish. I have all the materials in Norwegean, Swedish and German too but need to work a bit on the layout to have those ready. I do not have any hard copies left, only digital issues (around 65 MB).
Per
Lovely. When I have more free time, I’ll send you an e-mail.
I should add a general comment about the Total percentage score for a case against the requirement specification; If it is below 50%, I drop that case. If it is 75% or above, I take that case (or the highest among those who score that high). If it is between 50% and 75%, I try to get more data, use more items to evaluate against. Although I don’t rotely follow the result I get, it serves as a clarification of my thoughts about a decision to make.
Yes, that’s the thing I see about it – clarification. I makes for a closer look at all the significant factors, including both thoughts and feelings.
The only hitch about feelings is that they are often reactive, and in that case the mathematically correct decision may actually be a bad one. At first I thought you might be intentionally avoiding that pitfall by leaving feelings out of the formula – but that won’t do either as real feelings are important. Actually, even with some types of specifications to be considered, there is a fair bit of subjective evaluation.
What might be good would be to first weigh everything out as objectively as possible and leave aside one’s personal feelings altogether (as much as possible) and then consider the results of that. It might act to sort of naturally sway the personal feelings in a more rational direction, to some degree at least. That’s the only thing I can think of as regards this point of reactive thought or feelings, which may not be a small one.
BTW, I noticed as I read the post article that it made the subject of your calculator a more real and interesting one than it has been. Good promotional piece! 🙂
Typo on first line – should read: It makes for a closer look… (not: I makes…)
This is a really nice, practical approach to an ever existing problem, how to do a quantified evaluation of quality-based problem.
Well, you quantify as much as you can and eg. steal a bit from say from fuzzy logic by defining a quality which is not exact but only so, so … … which in many cases is more than good enough. Eg sufficient education, which is not the same as one or more specific education(s) …
Next you figure how important these qualities are for you and there you go …
And a tool, well …, I think I know which HP calculator Geir would use 😀 , personally I’d spend a fraction of minute to hack it into a spreadsheet, …
There are many LARGE consultants companies using the same approach on a much larger scale, Balanced Scorecard is one formalized variety, …
There are also a bunch of ways to improve this f\urther, some want methods to check if your selection of criterias are sufficient, not overlapping, yada, yada …
And on top, Geir formulates this into words and share it with others … 🙂
Hi Tor Ivar,
I was thinking along the same lines. A decision for a large company about what to automate, for example, needs a consultant who has that “specific education” as you say. And smaller companies or individuals could simply use a calculator, or just make a spreadsheet (good idea). But for some of us the simple-words description here is sufficient. Great point you make about checking if your selection of criteria is sufficient. That’s important too, even a whole subject in itself for some things.
You are pretty logical for a musician (good new avatar, btw :-)). But I remember your comments about being intuitive also. I have different ideas about what people (not necessarily you) consider to be intuition. Maybe it’s the mind doing a lightening-fast calculation of all pertinent stored data – essentially like the process Geir describes here but done so fast that you don’t even realize a calculation has “subconsciously” occurred. This is a great ability, I would say – except when the calculation is based on stored data that is false. That can get the person in trouble.
Or maybe intuition is actually a higher ability than calculation – i.e. “knowing” something or the answer to something by “going there” or as LRH puts it “being the object”. (I’m giving you some more indoctrination now, ha ha :-D) This type of thing would be more like the dictionary definition: “direct perception of truth, independent of any reasoning process”. My take is that such a thing would be at Know, at the top of the scale, and at the next rung down, Look, would be where one reasons with logic or induction/deduction.
I guess people use the word in different ways. Some might even think that it is intuition when they have some reactive impulse.
(Well, that was more long-winded than I intended. Thanks for listening – you seem to be a natural auditor ;-).)
Ah, if you only knew how logical music is … 😀
Reserach show a high level of correlation between skills in maths, languages and music …
… though I actually think it is really the perfect combination of logic and how to say, non-logic …
To play something, you can learn it by logic but if ONLY by logic then it will tend to sound mechanical … … the clue is to “hear” music in your head, I guess like a painter sees a motive and puts it down on paper …
And so, a composer quite often finds the logic in the music a limitation to expressing what he/she hears …
I’ve always been fond of music ever since I as a child heard my sisters’ records, you know Beatles, Beach Boys, … (the list might be looooong here). I could then hear those songs in my head later …
But actually has been my way in to playing. I was given a classical guitar and started playing with chords and so gained quite an understanding of musical theory, like keys, scales, beat patterns etc. …
The skills though, actually playing an instrument is practice, practice, practice, … Now, in my senior years, I’m as good as I pbbly should have been at around 25 … 😛
I understand what you mean about the different intuitions and also the false stored data thing, keyword – self-esteem …
I think it really can be three different things, whereas two them I will categorize as intuition. First it’s the unconscious analysis, then it’s the unconscious recognition of a pattern. They’re not sooo different, but in the first there is thought process giving a solution and in the other it’s a retrieve process picking up the previous solution that worked in the same kind of setting …
The other kind, where you just “know”, “realize”, etc. are more like epiphanies or revelations and to me they are more rare. To me they only appear when I eg see those pregnant womens’ eyes or recognize something that I have been dreaming … They say this is the kind of feeling epileptics experience when they’re having their attacks …
I used to interpret and analyze most social relations intuitively, with a bad self-esteem (or is low more correct ?), and the outcome could be …. well … 😦 Trouble is a suitable word …
I am so much better at that now, due to a diff self-esteem, and thus also I can recognize those times and keep them apart from others.
Auditor, hmmm, welll I actually considered Auditor-education once, but ahh, you’re NOT talking about accounts and finance …
To this auditing mentioned around sounds very much like managment training I was part of once, where the point at of the sessions was giving and talking personal feedback alll people in the group … – old-fashioned sensitivity training as a sociologist once descibed it to me …
… but it worked, amazingly well … 😀
Tor Ivar, that was just a frivolous comment on my part about musicians not being logical. My older son is a very good musician and pretty darn logical too. He plays guitar professionally and at the same time has his own business of building amps – an artistic mind and also an engineering mind, I guess I would call it. But music has always been his real love, since he was about 10 and got his first guitar – an acoustic with a beautiful sound. And, like you, it was practice, practice, practice – a labor of love.
I always enjoy your comments about intuition. And this subject of self-esteem is not only interesting but one of the most important, IMO. What you refer to as operating from low self-esteem sounds like what I meant about operating reactively from false data in your own mind.
That’s cool about the management training working well. There was a time, not that long ago, when I didn’t much appreciate anything that wasn’t Scientology, but other posters (and Geir especially) have helped me a lot to get away from a biased and fixed viewpoint.
Don’t tell anybody here ;-), but I can now even believe that LRH (Hubbard) went off the rails badly in various ways, and that Scientology itself probably has definite imperfections too – and that’s coming a long ways from where I once was.
But don’t get me wrong, it’s still a fabulous philosophy and practice – and you’re not getting off the hook as regards your indoctrination. 😀
mouth zipped (- – – – – – – – -)
uh…jus’ bait and switch (shhhhhh) 😀
Chris, I’ve been trying to remember an LRH quote about making mistakes – which ends with something like “as long as you don’t make any big ones.” Maybe you know it?
To clarify, I still don’t see LRH as having changed his purposes from what they always were. But he likely and quite misguidedly changed his “means to the end” under the pressures of the day. He after all was just a man and not perfect (like anyone) and said so many times in many ways. And even if Scientology itself had the tools that could have won over (which it may very well have), he wasn’t quite up to the task. Probably no one else would have been either. The time hadn’t come, I suppose.
But the tools of Scientology to my mind are still truly awesome, even if they aren’t perfect, and my sense of it is still the same – that it will yet do great good, in one form or another. 😉
He said you don’t have to be right all the time, just right more than half the time and don’t mess up anything big.
I use this attitude when dealing with employees, friends, falily, and just about everybody else as well.
I feel as you. Scientology has been a big big part of my life and I don’t foresee that ending. I am happy to say today that I have moved on from my upsets with the experience and am left with a useful working knowledge and can totally think with the subject. It remains with me as a tool but no longer a religion.
And for your well expressed reasons, I am no longer angry with LRH.
I am not angry with lrh either, and some parts of scientology remains with me as a tool but no longer as a religion too. The optimal solution formula is a cynical way of handling religion belief and it can´t be changed ever per ksw # 1.
If being angry was productive, I would get busy being real angry. In any area of life.
well said
“And for your well expressed reasons, I am no longer angry with LRH.”
Chris, you warmed the cockles of my heart (and there’s an old phrase that came out of no where, LOL). But I mean it, I loved the above and your other comment about Scientology, so much. It made me feel even more Free than I already did. It’s good when your friends are free too ;).
You expressed something well yourself, recently – the comment you made about Geir through his blog “making portholes” for us to see into things. And then you made a funny joke about not meaning to start a cult – but it has actually helped proof us against cults, as I’m sure you would agee. 🙂
On that LRH quote about not messing up big, or too often –that was exactly the concept. Thanks. It came to mind in thinking about LRH himself – he made some bad choices as it turned out.
Anyway, you, Geir and Rafael, all three of you with your comments really made my day! Additional closure for me – I just now looked it up and here’s the definition: “a sense of certainty or completeness” 🙂
🙂 back atcha!
I’m happy for your warm and friendly feelings. No regrets here. It might be self-fulfilling nonsense but I am happy in my life and where I am today. It would be impossible for me to correctly second-guess my life and come up with another better path than the one that I’ve walked. My life has been full of rich adventure and learning and love and family and friends like the ones I’ve made here with you guys. I don’t know if I would have had it any other way, but the way it is has been a very good life, full of choices. Maybe that’s what we originally wished for – lots of choices.
Hear hear!
I sometimes look at things just the same way, and it’s good. Once in a while I ponder on how I would have done this, that and the other thing differently – I work it all out. And it’s realistic but as good as any fantasy can be. Fun, actually. Seriously, I think there’s even a Scn process where all you do is just imagine the life you would like to have – same kind of thing, except “would like to have had” 😀
“Lives You Wished To Lead But Never Dared” — LRH compilation of his short stories…remember that one?
p.s. Btw, Chris, it has occurred to me more than once that your experience in the SO (rougher than mine, from what I’ve gathered) might have been a factor in your ability to persevere, be inventive – “make it go right”. Like with your thought experiments, for example. 😉
I’d say that experience was both a curse and a boon. But Nietzche may have been right: “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
There is that for sure. We also call it training.
On the other hand, we could make an argument for “weaker and stronger” personalities but would need to define what we meant by weaker and stronger.
But on the other hand, there are choices and more choices. Simple forks in the road. My oldest daughter’s mother is still in the SO and hasn’t spoken with my daughter in this year makes 20. Is this because her mother is weaker or stronger? Did I leave the SO because I was weaker or stronger?
Weaker and stronger implies more than strength, it also implies a moral quality. My daughter’s grandparents view her mother’s decisions to have been weaker and mine to be stronger. While in the SO, my decisions are regarded as weaker while my ex-wife’s are considered stronger. Who became weaker and who became stronger as a result of our experiences? And what is experience anyway? Truly, what is it? Subject for another thread. I know what Theta-Mest Theory says. And I know that in work one can quip, “20 years experience or 1 years experience 20 times?” This doesn’t seem to be nailed down either.
“Lives You Wished To Lead But Never Dared”
Oh wow, I vaguely remember the title only – never read it. But, yes, that would be another angle. Myself, I write my own book 😉
“And what is experience anyway?”
You are right, subject for another thread.
Btw, Chris, I noticed that you manage to get your comment to be posted right under the one you’re replying to even when there’s no reply button for it – and even when there is already another comment (or more) under it. How do you do that?
Glad you asked because I’ve been meaning to share this:
If you push “Reply” from your email box (not from within the blog) your reply will post precisely under the comment.
Won’t tell noooobody (Hey folks, listen to wh … 🙂 ) ….Hehe
… and frivolous, weeeeell, I guess some of mine too has been cloooose to that (or more … 😀 )
But then you already know all about the logical and illogical sides of musicians … May I ask if he’s a renowned artist or jus’ a local ‘ero ?
As for the trainings, I think often the hardest part is to find WHAT actually works of what you are doing …
Will write more a bit later … 😀
Well, let’s hope Geir doesn’t mind our not only being off topic but pretty much just chatting. 😀
Anyway, my son is definitely a local ‘ero, and his band is pretty well known. It has been around a good while, since well before his time, actually, but they lost their guitarist and he got the job. He and an old school friend of his (who tipped him off about the opening) are sort of the “babies” of the band.
I guess I won’t tell you more than that for now. I still have friends connected to Scientology (the Church itself) and I’m cautious about making myself “known” as it would cause some trouble. (I’m assuming you know something about all the commotion going on.)
Okay. You said, “As for the trainings, I think often the hardest part is to find WHAT actually works of what you are doing.” Yes, and there was a blog post on this subject – don’t know if you saw it.
Later then… 🙂
I don’t mind 🙂
Oh, good! But we’re all still looking forward to more food for thought – as in another blog post ;). And while I’m thinking of it, could you please put back the search bar that I think got lost on the last theme change.
Btw Geir, how was your speech today ? 🙂 (It was today, wasn’t it ? )
It went really well. I will post an update on it as well as posting my presentation soon.
No prob Marildi
I don’t want people to do what they’re not comfortable with …
… and yeah I remember that post on what worked or not in Scn, to me that post was somewhat “out of reach”, not knowing enough of the terms and lingo …
What little know of Scn here from Norway is not at all really good PR … … and religious cults and sects in general tend to have nasty hold on their current and previous members. I was friends with some pentecostals for a while and it was kind of weird to see …
… but again, Geir have obviously gained from some or more of it … It’s strange to sse, because there is obvoiusly some kind of influence and/or training that cause a person to grow his/her self-esteem, sense of self-criticism etc., (in general making a person more adult and mature). At the same time it seems quite obvious that these things also are related to certain hormon-levels in one’s body.
Thus, I’d say that these levels again must be a product of how a person has been treated, upbringing, personal feedback etc. etc. … … unless maybe for some inborn defects some people do have …
This I find really interesting …
Else, if you’d like to, I’m sure Geir will pass onto you my mail address, I’m not much for displaying that in the open, but generally I have very little to hide ANYMORE … 😀
Okay. I’ll ask Geir for your email address. My son has a couple of websites, one for his music and one for the amp business, with a forum you might find interesting. 🙂
Well, it’s not just Norway where Scn has bad PR, that’s for sure. But don’t go by what is going on nowadays – over the years it has veered off from the original philosophy and practice. And, yes, there are some great gains that can be had (Geir isn’t the only one). Your phrase “more adult and mature” says it pretty well, IMO.
The basic principles don’t discount things like hormone levels and other physical factors – which, as you say, are sometimes related to how the person has been treated, and even the “inborn defects” idea has truth to it. (Didn’t I say you’re a natural? ;-))
You said “very little to hide ANYMORE”. 😀 Funny. But I’ll say too that this is a very, very good thing, from what I know.
Well, that’s always the problem once there more than five people involved AND money can be earned … 😦 Then things tends to drift off into politics and power struggles …
From what I have read from Geir, it seems to me that some of the donation stuff he descibes are things also found in christian sects and in freemasons lodges as well …
… and, hierarchical structures have it’s weaknesses … 😦
… and me, a Natural, well, not necessarily, knowledge comes from struggles, and I’ve had mine …
A Natural knowledge comes from struggles, this is a good one.
Tor Ivar: “Knowledge comes from struggles, and I’ve had mine…”
Sounds like the lyrics of a song, doesn’t it? 🙂 Or maybe the title and subtitle of a good book. Or just a good quote – Rafael is quoting you already :D.
Kidding aside, you are right – the “school of hard knocks” is the time-tested way to gain knowledge. And it’s good that you are aware of the way groups can “drift”. Some of us had to learn that the hard way – school of hard knocks 😉
This is called a “Weighted Ranking” in “The Thinker’s Toolkit” by Morgan Jones.
http://www.amazon.com/Thinkers-Toolkit-Powerful-Techniques-Problem/dp/0812928083
It’s a great book.
Ah. Neat.