Being inspired by a discussion on the previous blog post, I came to a realization that I posted as a comment on that discussion thread:
“Way more than 90% of the people can be at the point where they can take independent responsibility in a job. The only reason they do not is because they are in the wrong job or not properly trained. LRH had the wrong solution. He advocated a big front door and a big back door (recruit anyone and test them out, then scrap those who doesn’t work out). It’s very disrespectful IMO. And then he relied on heavy bureaucracy and policy and dictations to “keep people in line”. Because he didn’t trust people with responsibility. He evidently didn’t trust other people (which is seen from his years as an executive as well). Such reliance on commanding people quenches responsibility and initiative. More respectful recruitment, respectful training, trust in other’s intentions and ability to be responsible – THOSE are the ingredients that make for fantastic expansion. And THIS is the reason why the organizations I mentioned above expanded like crazy – much more than any organization relying on LRH Admin Tech could hope to achieve.
I think you have pointed the way to a major reason for me why LRH admin tech is a failure – the inherent distrust of employees. Maybe this is also a problem with the ethics tech? I will have to reflect on that. Thanks for the enlightening discussion.”
And in this I think I have nailed something. LRH didn’t trust people with responsibility. Was this because he regarded his fellow man as “broken”, as someone in need of fixing? And is David Miscavige’s reign in the Church of Scientology simply an extrapolation of this distrust? Is this a root cause somehow?
Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.
(Eric Hoffer)
Geir Isene - uncut 
“…he is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something” – that someONE/THING is ONE/SELF.
Trust : firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing.
Yep. Although I am not sure it is a “trust” factor, probably more along this line:
From HCOPL 21 FEB 1961 Issue II
CHOOSING PE AND REGISTRATION PERSONNEL
“This comes about from the state of ‘self-determinism’ in the society today. What with
advertising and stepped up political and economic controls, the “self determinism” of the
general public is only re-activism.
As any control we exert upon the public brings about a better society, we are entirely
justified in using control.
The best control, for PE and Registration purposes, includes the greater good of the
applicant. Therefore, KNOWINGNESS must be included with Control. One must discover
what is best for the applicant and then control him into obtaining it. Leaving it up to his -‘self-determinism’ is really leaving it up to his reactive mind.”
OMG
I have read that before. But NOW… OMG
Its weird isn’t it, this thing where you just don’t get the significance of something until you have worked with it for a while!
I had this one shoved in my face when I was 24 year old staff member by a very irate middle aged business executive who managed over a 1,000 employees. He told me in no uncertain terms that he’d run my ass and Hubbard’s too so don’t give him this shit that he needed to be controlled for his own good! I’d forgotten about it until you made your post just now.
So was that executive one of the ‘controllers’ rather than one of the ‘controlled’?
I don’t have the reference to hand, but in talking about dissemination Hubbard said there were two kinds of prospects – those who wanted auditng because they felt they needed help, and those who did not feel they needed help, but wanted to learn about scientology because they knew others who needed help.
I think Peter Gilham wrote about this in his little book about dissemination titled “TelI It Like It Is!”
He was neither. He was a very capable guy who came in and bought a lot of auditing and I believe he did most of the bridge over time.
Factually, the way I see it, parents do this with their children as they raise them. They control children for the child’s benefit.
Valkov: Factually, the way I see it, parents do this with their children as they raise them. They control children for the child’s benefit.
Chris: I’d like to let this one slide, it looking so reasonable and benign on the surface; however, there’s not much similarity between any control used by LRH and the control I use while teaching my children. It is a very different flow and attitude. The trust that I instill in my children helps them to choose to be trustworthy, and each one is trustworthy. LRH had trustworthy people make many things about their lives in the SO go right in spite of LRH’s distrust of them.
Yes. I was very trustworthy. In fact, I would have to say that every staff member I ever worked with was worthy of trust. They gave their hearts and they worked as best they could under what were often very trying circumstances. I cannot think of single staff member that I think ill of, mistakes and all.
Geir: “Way more than 90% of the people can be at the point where they can take independent responsibility in a job. The only reason they do not is because they are in the wrong job or not properly trained.”
The key to LRH’s viewpoint, IMO, is in the last three words: “not properly trained”. His whole attempt was to gradiently get people up to understanding and being “trained” in the game of life, and from there they could be independently responsible and self-determined.
You could liken it to parents who don’t “trust” their very young toddlers because the toddlers aren’t yet ready to be “trusted” to act on their own self-determinism, at least not to any significant degree. But good parents guide/control them to the point where they are able to be just that. And that was LRH’s intention too.
Policy is NOT equal to training. That’s where he so abysmally failed.
Agreed, policy is NOT equal to training. Policy was intended to keep things under control and moving forward until the “training” (in life) could occur. Again, I don’t see any difference between that rationale and the one parents operate on.
Granted not all parents exert the right amount of control, some too much and some too little. LRH may indeed have gone too far in the direction of too much control, but I don’t then conclude that he didn’t believe in the basic capabilities and potential of beings any more than I believe that parents (in general) don’t believe in those things. As with parents, LRH only intended to help eliminate the barriers that prevent individuals from being their native best.
I have Very Few policies in my family – and I have three very creative and highly responsible kids (mainly precisely because I have not enforced or relied on policies). Did LRH think he was manning up organizations with robot kids?
I bet you are a great father, Geir.
You are welcome to try it by being a guest kid in my family some time ;-D
You may want to re-think that.
I’m a bit of a problem child
😉
Geir: I have Very Few policies in my family – and I have three very creative and highly responsible kids (mainly precisely because I have not enforced or relied on policies). Did LRH think he was manning up organizations with robot kids?
Chris: Agreed. Same lack of policy and degree of success at my home with 5 kids . . .
“Policy” is NOT “control”. “Policy” is an admission that control has failed or is not immediately available. It is an attempt at ‘control in absentia’, and is often based on the failure to control one single individual, as I believe Hubbard stated. I have seen this in action in my local City government, where they have spent up to two years researching and brainstorming new City ordinances which impinge a lot of people, written especially as a result of one individual’s overly aggressive actions.
Marildi: You could liken it to parents who don’t “trust” their very young toddlers because the toddlers aren’t yet ready to be “trusted” to act on their own self-determinism, at least not to any significant degree. But good parents guide/control them to the point where they are able to be just that. And that was LRH’s intention too.
Chris: I don’t remember this one. Reference?
“Man can not be trusted with justice.” LRH
And what is the alternative? If not Man, then… Squirrels?
No silly! Homo novis!
It’s a pretty sweeping generalization if you ask me.
Especially if you consider that the only justice that has ever been created – all the justice that has ever been created at all – has been created by Man.
Alanzo
If you want to know about justice visit Change.org
Did anyone ever consider that LRH was trying to ARCX you with:
1. Yourself
2. Your family
3. Your nation
4. Your species
5. Your body (as an animal)
6. MEST
7. All spiritual endeavors (besides Scientology)
8. And God?
I have.
The question is, WHY?
There you will have a key to what LRH was actually up to.
Alanzo
Money, gemstones ?
Yes I have considered this question and this is my answer from studying hundreds of tomes on mind, spirit, philosophy, religion, psychology. I don’t need to look at this one individual’s personal intentions to see how this plays out.
Any time an individual steps outside of the mainstream ideologies or paradigms, they are “arc broken” with everyone else that subscribes to those views.
In the sciences, we get the old guard hanging on to their treasured theories, with the new guard out of agreement with them and not able to get any real traction until the old guard finally dies off. The classic is the rejection of Semmelweis who proposed washing hands before working on patients. The so-called Semmelweis reflex — a metaphor for a certain type of human behaviour characterized by reflex-like rejection of new knowledge because it contradicts entrenched norms, beliefs or paradigms — is named after Semmelweis, whose perfectly reasonable hand-washing suggestions were ridiculed and rejected by his contemporaries.
In religion we get a new paradigm being hounded and harassed by the proponents of the old until they reach a critical mass of mainstream agreement. As an example, take Buddhism. It hit at the core of the caste system, and was out of agreement for a very long time. I don’t think it hit mainstream in India until Gandhi put the caste system into its final death throes. With Christianity we get the Christians being thrown to the lions, and later the non-Christians being persecuted.
Then we have the “alien” point of view of the human spirit being separate from the rest of the world and above it. Hard to say where this started, but the idea is that this spirit of man came from God, and at death separates from mere flesh and returns to God. Kind of like a visitor in a strange land. This is very common point of view in the West, and it alienates people from nature, other living things, the tick tock world of time and space, and so on.
I suggest that people in the west are already out of arc with the rest of world because this has been a prevailing point of view throughout written history. You don’t cooperate with nature, you dominate it. You have been given dominion over the physical world by God as a separate phenomena that is yours to do with as you will, according to God’s will.
Is there a single intention behind all of this?
Everybody wants to rule the world.
Maria
“Any time an individual steps outside of the main ideologies or paradigms, they are ‘arc broken’ with everyone else that subscribes to those views”. Yes, and here I propose a positive definition of ARCX. If there is no agreement to R (seeing it as-it-is as if separately and not fuelling its survival-existence with more energy to get it even more soild), we still have communication that is by being present and expanding this presence like “flowing” further and further without any other “message” than the flow itself (here communication = pervading and perceiving without any resistance). So, when R gets out of the way and there is still AC, we get Change.
The prerequisite is that there is No Fixed Viewpoint (or no viewpoint at all, just a fluid flow), which tends to “know” what the next “action” is…..there is still the body, there can be thoughts too, but the action arises from the flow (not from the thought or personal will so as to “gain” anything in return). As I find it, in this “state” ” I am ” in more harmony with other people than ever before….with no mind, or not listening to /following a thought when it arises, the words that I use, the actions I do seem to be proper in answer to the created-in-the-moment stimuli and by a kind of letting them be, they as-is not only “for me” but “for the other person” too. And he/she changes e.g. viewpoints, energy level. This change is less and less solidity, with different behavioural phenomena…..I put here a video (a little long though in which Adya speaks about the very core of any “search, system, ideology etc.) with the relevant question : What do you really want? (you = the person). This proportion of personal will (there is a person) and free will (no person) question is the most interesting one for me now. As I see it, those big companies Geir mentions are operated by very little personal will (personal interest,very little R) and a lot of free will (AC)…still, the question remains “what does one really want”?
Also this. (Earlier I posted The Gift of Wanting. Any of you interested can google the full version. These three, as a package and experience “explain” a lot about the nondual nature of Truth). Spiritual and MEST (manifested/ practical) are two sides of the same coin in my reality, life.
Maria
The most fascinating part of the first video is when the “conversation” starts at 0:52. It may ring many bells in you or in Rafael, Marildi….I wonder if I am right in it….the second one also has a conversation part…
Thanks for posting these videos, Marianne. I plan to watch them when I have a chunk of time to do so. Adyashanti has already rung bells in me from some of the earlier videos you posted – and through you. 🙂
Btw, I think it’s good when you post the short videos that say some of the key things in a short period of time. You’ll get more people watching them that way, I think. 😉
Marildi
True! I hesitated for a second because of that! But these two cover e.g. purpose and a lot of things which we have been discussing these days….actually, what I have posted so far is enough to get……hm. …….”native state, true nature, ego, mind, self”…..won’t go on….pretty much.
Who thinks that the meteorite that exploded in the sky over Russia on Feb 15th was a second and miscellaneous meteorite and not the predicted meteorite which was predicted to miss Earth by thousands of miles?
Who thinks the State lied?
oops, I meant to leave a link for that meteorific event.
Ok, that was lame but on topic about trust.
I totally agree about what you say, and more you are up on the bridge and less the church trusts you. In the admin there are some good points, but what is missing is the ingredient of Scientology “granting beingness” they want to BENT YOUR BEINGNESS to total conformity and obedience. They want to make a robot out of anybody and this is against Scientology. Help button is gone totally crazy in this organization and is now betrayal in the name of help.
Wow, not trusting reminds me of the first day in an org in ’71. I came interested, looked and was willing, very agreeable, happy and wanted their suggested course. Then came the money which I hadn’t planned on. Not a problem, but didn’t have enough that day in my checking. I was amazed at the mistrust that I would be back as stated, since I had gi’s and was an honest person. The reg made me write a bank note to hold until I put the money in account. I, in turn stayed away a week or so longer for that reason. Btw they supposedly stopped doing that I’m told, but I never forgot it. Absolutely no trust and it was first bad impression with a reg.
I’ve seen it since also, when you say you will do something and they just won’t believe you! Dang, one main fault with me anyway.
Later, to survive I learned to lie in ’84, my first to them, when they wouldn’t believe me for a major step. It was the only way out for me, after 2 weeks of hassle.
Now I don’t know policy but surely there must be one that covers this major outpoint. It certainly invalidate’s the sh-t out of one. To their loss, I now know.
Great observation! I think LRH became more distrustful and more distainful of people as time went on. The Key to Life course, for example, makes the basic assumption that just about everyone, while they may be able to go through the motions of reading, cannot understand anything. It was a sweeping generality about how incompetent all people were. Every student enrolled on KTL is required to go through the course in the exact order, clearing up basic words and then on to the “new grammar”. To get through the course you just have to agree to walk that path and not take it personally.
Interestingly, this idea that LRH put forth that all people are either incompetent, PTS in some way, or completely reactive is one that David Miscavige has adopted wholeheartedly. I am convinced Miscavage learned this by watching LRH go on and on about it to his messengers.
John Doe: I am convinced Miscavage learned this by watching LRH go on and on about it to his messengers.
Chris: I quite agree with you John Doe. The Key to Life Course was purported to be LRH’s solution to his “World Out of Comm Eval.” I would like very much to post up a copy of that here as it dovetails with your eval of Hubbard. I wonder if anyone out there has a copy of it who might post it up here?
To me, any blog and its comments is a pretty good example of “the world out of comm”. And that doesn’t even count the many different languages spoken on the planet.
But I do agree that LRH went downhill in some ways after the mid-1960s, inhis attitutdes towards people.
Valkov: To me, any blog and its comments is a pretty good example of “the world out of comm”. And that doesn’t even count the many different languages spoken on the planet.
Chris: So you have read it?
Have I read what? The world out of comm thing, no. Back in the day, I was very interested in the Primary Rundown I think it was called. Then along came KTL andLOC, then it all got confused an nobody seemed to know anymore what was up and who was on first.
Perhaps I should clarify where I’m coming from.
Many people grow up embedded in a language and culture, and grow up in that ‘bubble’, which is usually largely local and regional at most, in fact often narrowly familial.
Imagine instead growing up in countries in which you cannot understand the language(s) spoken around you. Can you get the isolation?
Imagine at an early age, but past the ‘threshold age’ at which one must acquire his first language, learning a new language of a new country and gradually letting your first language fade into disuse.
You will start to get a small idea of what it means to be “out of comm”.
The difference is, growing up like that I was aware of being ‘out of comm’, and aware of many of the problems caused by such a condition.
People growing up in their comfortable little cultural/linguistic bubbles often take for granted that they ‘know what they are talking about’, and that what they are saying is perfectly clear to everyone else, and that if someone fails to understand them, it is that other one’s fault. After all, “I’m saying it in plain English, what’s wrong with him, that he doesn’t understand? He must be stupid, or perversely motivated.”
It never occurs to most people, that they each have at best, a slightly idiosyncratic version, call it a ‘dialect’, of the common language being used. Many countries have adopted a ‘standard’ version of their language for this very reason.
It’s to solve what I call the ‘Tower of Babel’ problem. Hubbard called it ‘the world out of comm’. The Bible refers to it in the Tower of Babel story, which is very old I believe. So it’s not a new problem. Will humanity ever solve it? Who knows?
So when I heard about ‘study tech’ and ‘word clearing’, and ‘primary rundowns’ etc I got quite excited. But it seems ‘people’ have largely botched it anyway. SNAFU, FUBAR, whatever you want to call it, it’s what humanity seems best at in many ways.
I don’t know if ‘mankind’ can be trusted with ‘justice’. I do see that the majority seems to be ‘fighting for justice’ through sites like Change.org, of which there are an increasing number. Many of those petitions are directed to the Justice Department, Immigration, etc, type agencies. Huh? What’s up with that, that agencies supposedly entrusted to provide justice, need to be petitioned to do so? Why are they failing to provide ‘justice’ on an ongoing basis, as a matter of course?
So is it in fact the situation, that there is a suppression of ‘justice’ on a continuing basis, on this planet?
Did Hubbard actually go PTS and buy into an ‘enemy line’, that people ‘cannot be trusted with justice”? What did he actually experience, that led him towards that conclusion?
Those are the kind of things I wonder about, and would like to know more about.
Valkov: Those are the kind of things I wonder about, and would like to know more about.
Chris: Thank you, I get what you are saying. I’ve been immersed in a foreign language and felt that isolation so I get the significance of what you say. I understand the KTL concept. But I don’t know that I agree with the World Out Of Comm Eval in total. Even in the 1950s there was good communication in the world. I think that other factors are more important to the problems in the world than communication or even as Marildi might put it “true-communication.” Economic reasons rooted in world banking and military industrial profits to begin with.
I thought my own Method 1 word clearing was life changing but one of the reasons that it was life changing was it gave me a certificate which allowed me to study unhindered by untrusting and overzealous course supervisors.
Hubbard wrote about his distrust of people especially the mental health and AMA to find his work “acceptable.” He wrote tomes about it in MISSION EARTH. Therefore he felt obliged to lie about his qualifications and to make up certifications and doctor’s degrees in Scientology thereby verifying the academic community’s reasons to distrust him. He didn’t see the “Information Age” coming — a time when all the inconsistencies of his life’s story would simply float up and show his charlatanism. He really made in his own words a dog’s breakfast of it. Now any good work that he ever did is sifted through this sieve of bullshit that he created and is so tinged with untrustworthiness and lost to serious consideration.
Chris, my take on some of that stuff of Hubbard’s is different from yours. There is a big difference between the1940s-1950s and the 1980s, when he wrote Mission Earth. Granted, he always thought Western ‘academia’ was ‘woggy’. And like it or not, to some extent it is and always was. Hubbard was not the first nor the last to comment on it.
At best I see you arguing that the glass is half full, while Hubbard argued it was half empty. The truth is somewhere in the middle. The occassional stuffy pretentiousness of ‘the academic world’ is no secret.
By the way, if you want a really good learning aid for any language, try the Pimsleur CDs. I have used their Basic packages to introduce myself to other languages. The system excels at teaching the basic structure of a language in a natural way, by listening and repeating and building on what comes before. There is no book or written material at all, it’s al listen and say.
My daughter whois intelligent but has no aptitude for languages, learned a remarkable amount of Russian using the first 8-10 lessons. Teaching pronunciation and intonation is where Pimsleur excels.
Valkov: Pimsleur CDs.
Chris: Good tip, thank you. I will look into those. Good timing.
Valkov: Chris, my take on some of that stuff of Hubbard’s is different from yours.
Chris: I know that I’ve been on a tear about Hubbard for quite a while. I also know that because I’ve devoted a large chunk of my adult lifetime to Hubbard’s religious methods that mentally I am forever inextricably linked to those methods. The nomenclature is indelibly etched in my brain. I find myself deliberately translating to plain English and then choosing words which don’t make my Western accent sound Scientologese. Yet it’s there and the natural tendency to use what I know is strong and so I find myself measuring and calculating whether to trust my next move. Is this movement I want to make or is this next movement kneejerk assumptive Scientology? But lately I trust myself more — again. Yeah, I do Scientology things and I don’t abhor it but I try to be mindful of it because I know to what degree I let my own will be usurped by my relationship with LRH and the Sea Org. Rambling on . . . if a Scientology principle promotes a good and decent thing, then I uphold that and don’t reject it simply because it is Scientology, but I also don’t uphold any principle because of it being Scientology.
I can go a level deeper into what I think I understand about Hubbard’s megalomania and how he was a lonely and abused child but will save it for now. I don’t hate Hubbard, I just want to be careful of him and of the next Messiah as well. All this to say that maybe we aren’t so very far apart.
Chris, your post just reminded me that I never saw the opposition of ‘religion vs. science’ as being valid. As though everything which exists has to fit into one bin or the other.
I think a more valid distinction is between “science” and “the humanities”. That’s how it is broken down in most Universities.
Philosophy is in the “Humanities”. Scientology is to me, an exercise in the Humanities. Some ‘soft sciences’ are also considered to be in the Humanities. Sociology, psychology, anthropology etc.
Val: I never saw the opposition of ‘religion vs. science’ as being valid.
Chris: I am only making a distinction between the closed belief system of religion and the supposedly or mostly open systems of science… So I’m not posing them off against one another. Not intentionally anyway.
That’s just my point. Is ‘philosophy’ a ‘closed belief system’?
Valkov: That’s just my point. Is ‘philosophy’ a ‘closed belief system’?
Chris: Oh! I see. Yes, only that dead-end branch of philosophy known as religion is a closed belief system. Religion is the failure of philosophy. (opinion)
Yes, Chris, that’s a good way to put it. I would modify it a little as below. It is as much a question of humanity failing philosophy, as one of philosophy itself failing. But that’s a judgement call.
I haven’t done so, but I believe ‘religion’ can be plotted somewhere (rather low) on some scale similar to the Know to Mystery Scale. Some older teachings refer to this, and even advise compressing basic teachings into symbols and rituals to be used in the “exoteric” (outer) form or shell of a religion. This is for the majority of people who for one reason or another are not going to pursue the enlightenment, knowledge or the teachings in any depth. Nonetheless it is believed they will still benefit from the presence of the symbols and rituals in their lives. This kind of set-up is/was very evident in Tibet and India.
Also Chris, how much would you trust ‘professionals’ whose modus operandi was to sedate, electroshock to the brain, and lobotomize many of those who came or were sent to them for ‘help’?
Like you think that really wasn’t the case back then?
But do your own research; I’ve posted enough about it that in the past and some people never get it, no matter how many posts they see about it.
I would not classify Scientoogy as a philosophy, for I have read Plato, and Scientology can not even come close to that.
I would not classify Scientology as a religion, because I do not believe that religions would be built on outright lies, as Scientology is.
I would classify Scientology as a political ideology which uses a highly developed form of hypnotherapy to implant its beliefs deep into the minds of its adherents, creating some loopy and fanatical ideologues with derailed lives and broken dreams. Some people, however, do make it through Scientology without getting so fanatical and loopy that they destroy themselves.
That’s how I classify Scientology.
Alanzo
Well OK, but any political ideology has a philosophical basis too. Communism, Republicanism, Capitalism, whatever. Scientology belongs in the study of the Humanities. And many ideologies have ‘religious’ elements in terms of the fervent faith and belief some people place in them.
As for religions not being built on lies, who is to say. “God gave His only begotten Son, (a virgin birth yet), mother made by the Holy Ghost presumably….. in order that we may all be magically delivered from our sins…..”
Nothing there anyone could consider to be a ‘lie”, right? It’s all the God’s Factual Truth, right?
Gimme a break!
“ScienTOOGY”
I like that.
“Stoogy” for short. “Are you now or have you ever been a Stoogist?”
Leaving it up to his -’self-determinism’ is really leaving it up to his reactive mind.”
smartass Hubbard is invalidating just everybody on this planet.
Its dastardly.
That mindset stinks out of every org and around the planet
They should not wonder, when orgs become empty.
The word “trust” has a bit of a problem with the definition–one either does or does not trust someone or something. It’s all or none. But most “trust” actually is some high percent, for example, a B+ student in auto repair is worth trusting to fix your car about 85% of the time, nearly 100% with routine matters and much less than 85% with anything they haven’t done before. And you wouldn’t trust this person at all to fix your computer; their skill level is completely unknown. Distrust is the reverse. One of my ex-girlfriends could rather reliably return 0.03 cents on $10.00 “invested” in business ventures, a loss factor of -99.97%, nearly perfect performance.
Similarly, LRH didn’t trust anybody else, period. Policy references include Keeping Scientology Working, references to the “bank dominated mob,” frequent cancellations of technical bulletins that he entrusted to be written by others, etc. Once again, when we start looking at how many people got into Scientology versus how many aren’t in it now, it’s about 34,000 current members (my guess) versus 10,000,000 claimed members, which includes people like us. That’s -99.66%.
Statistically speaking, these numbers, -99.97% and -99.66% are virtual certainties, numbers almost too perfect for this universe, and human behavior.
Important question: With all we know about the times that L Ron Hubbard lied about Dianetics and Scientology – Can you trust L Ron Hubbard with your mind?
Why not? LRon apparently didn’t do your mind any harm…….
Read this article:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/brainwashing.htm
Do you really believe that elaborate series of constructs in that article? It is totally full of ‘unfalsifiable’ statements; I do note that your goal on these blogs is exactly to act as an ‘agent’ in Lifton’s sense of the word, and to ‘breakdown’ the
sense of ‘self’ that anyone has, who feels positively about any aspect of Scientology or L Ron Hubbard..
I would therefore be justified in saying you are trying to ‘brainwash’ others, wouldn’t I?
It sounds like, had you been a POW in North Korea, you might have been one of those who ‘converted’ to Communism, and thereafter tried to ‘convert’ others.
Is it possible for you to post more than 2 posts in a row that are not adhom, Valkov?
Can you do it?
Alanzo
I don’t know, is it? Here, I’ll repost the non-adhom part-
“Do you really believe that elaborate series of constructs in that article? It is totally full of ‘unfalsifiable’ statements……”
Yes, I do believe that there is a technology to brainwashing, and it is clear to me that LRH put as many pieces of it that are laid out in this article as he could that were avialable to him after around 1962-1963. I listened to him prepare some of it on the BC, as I have written about regarding “SOP Goals”.
And in another lecture, at a public congress, LRH says that he has “discovered” GPMs and that they contain the exact make up of the personality.
Hubbard was working on the very things that are laid out in this article on brainwashing. And if you look into the brainwashing techniques in thought reform camps in Maoist China, you will also see those used in Scientology.
So to answer your question, al9ng with the caveats that are raised in the article, not only do I believe that this technology exists, I believe that LRH studied and used it on Scientologists to gain as much money and free labor from them as he possibly could.
Did it work every time? NO.
That what he had PTS/SP, ethics officers, black dianetics and Fair game for.
Hubbard LOVED constructions, as you should, by now, know, Valkov. They, nor their logically fallacious nature, would not have been a barrier to LRH lapping up this technology up for his use on Scientologists.
If you want to get into the specific brainwashing technology that LRH put into Scientology, we can.
Do you want to do that?
If we do, can you control yourself without resorting to apoplectic adhoms?
Alanzo
The flaw in your ointment, Al, is that as early as the early 1950s, Hubbard was disclosing exactly how all that stuff worked.
The book Dianetics 55 begins with Hubbard listing some of the major reasons WHY any person, every person, should know as much as possible about his own mind – because the more s/he knew, the more difficult it would be for others to trick and control him.
I found that valid when I first read it, and I find it valid now. It is because a person does not understand his own mind, that he can be manipulated by the media, by politicians, by salespeople, etc etc.
You may disagree with the specific details of the constructs of the mind that Hubbard put forward, but I have not seen you come forward with anything better or more accurate.
Yet you post a link to an article that uses the word ‘mind’ without defining what is meant by it at all. Does anything called ‘mind’ actually exist? Is it a valid construct? Some modern neuropsychologists say ‘no’, it is all chemical activity within the brain and nerves.
Do you wonder that I don’t give you much credibility? If you want to crticize some constructs, realize that when you post, you are posting constructs as well,and that it is always the case that “the map is not the territory”, and your constructs may not be any better than anyone else’s.
Perhaps we could have a motto – “The unexamined construct is not worth posting.”
Val: “The book Dianetics 55 begins with Hubbard listing some of the major reasons WHY any person, every person, should know as much as possible about his own
mind – because the more s/he knew, the more difficult it would be for others to trick and control him.”
In light of that, what do you make then of the confidential OT levels?
“Confidential” is not the same as “inaccessible”. Not having done all that, I have no opinion about it, but the question strikes me as out of left field, because it’s elements are out of sequence.
I suppose what Hubbard wrote and believed in the 1950s may have been modified by data he discovered what – 15 years later?. What he wrote in 1967 sheds light on what he wrote in 1955, not the other way around.
Is there a conclusion I am supposed to jump to beyond that? An inference I am supposed to make? Is Hubbard not supposed to EVER change his mind, or add a qualification? He did not in fact ‘change his mind’ as he did not cancel anything he said or wrote before.
And, what do you think?
Should NOTs be run before Grades? After Grades but before clearing? Should OTIII be run after Life Repair? Before or after New Era Dianetics?
Is there any reason to have gradients at all?
These are the kind of questions that spring to my mind.
Valkov –
Are you sore because there was no “PAIN DRUG HYNOSIS” in that article about brainwashing?
Because PDH is a total red herring/decoy/distraction that Hubbard created to hide what he was really doing.
The tech of brainwashing can be found in Soviet Russia, Maoist China, North Korea, Guantanamo Bay, and the Church of Scientology.
Have you read BBC reporter John Sweeney’s book called The Church of Fear?
http://www.amazon.com/The-Church-Fear-Inside-Scientology/dp/1909269034/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363054544&sr=8-1
He lays out very clearly the brainwashing technology in Scientology. And I can add to it, right here in this thread.
How come you don’t want me to put up or shut up?
Alanzo
Al, I don’t need to read those books. My family lived much of that.Hereis a post I first made on Marty’s blog, and possibly here or on Geir’sForum, 3 years ago and have reposted a couple of times since. Several other posters confirmed that this mirrored their experience in the CoS:
“Some readers of theis blog, especially newer readers, may question why it is said that the “Cos is dead”, that it cannot be redeemed simply by replacing Miscavige and his enablers. In the interests of making this
clear, I’d like to repost part of an article about what researchers learned from the North Korean treatment of American POWs in the 1950s. What is striking is that many, perhaps most of the returned POWs never did “decompress” from the “brainwashing” experience to which they had been subjected. Essentially, their ability to live, to “flourish and prosper”, had been thoroughly nullified.
Much of the information here I took from the introduction to an audiobook called “How Full Is Your Bucket?”
by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton PhD., the founders of a school of Positive Psychology.
“North Korean Brainwashing is based completely on denying the target prisoners all positive emotional support, and exposing them to an all negative emotional atmosphere, and actually rewarding them when they acted to destroy their own ideals and emotional capacity, and relationships.
The North Korean brainwashing camps were unique in that the prisoners were relatively well-treated in the physical sense. They had adequate food, shelter, and water, and were not physically tortured. In fact, their captors were careful not to make them angry, as this could have provided them with motivation to
oppose the brainwashing process.
A study done after the Korean War, of 1,000 returned prisoners of war who had been “brainwashed”, found the majority never got back in touch with old friends and family. They were found to be in a condition described as in “mental solitary confinmement”. All their bonds of affinity and relationship with others
had been broken, and apparently they had lost their capacity to have positive relationships.
The camps they had been in had no barbed wire surrounding them, and very few guards, yet escape attempts were very rare.
At the same time,it was found that something like 28% of the prisoners had died in these camps, essentially by giving up their will to live.
These camps had the highest death rates of any camps anywhere, ever recorded.
Many of the prisoners just went to their quarters one day, sat in a corner covering themselves with a blanket, and died, often within two days. Usually no-one of the other prisoners tried to help them, because the bonds of relationship between them had already been broken.
The researchers concluded these men had died of “extreme hopelessness”.”
The situation in the CoS is similar to what exists in North Korea today, save that it is not yet as longstanding. North Korea is now on it’s 3rd generation of a DM-like dynasty of leadership, and it’s population has been indoctrinated now, for several generations.
A simple change of leadership will not “save” the country and turn it around. It will take several generations of “decompression” to bring to country toanything resembling a social normalcy. This was learned already by the experience of Germany trying to integrate East and West after the fallof the Berlin Wall. Knowledgeable people estimated it would take 3 generations (50-60 years) for the suppressive influences to dissipate.
Given the availability of trained auditors in the Independent field, it is likely the de-PTSing of the CoS staff and public can proceed faster and more effectively, but these people still need to be contacted and gotten into comm before they can be salvaged. So the establishment of a flourishing Independent field is
a prime necessity for a good outcome.
“The goal of this kind of brainwashing is basically to completely ARC break (destroy the positive emotion in their lives) the prisoners with themselves, with their fellows, with their leaders, their country, and with life, and eventually their will to live.
Some of the prisoners essentially became like their captors, and became apologists for the North Koreans. Most did not, but were severely emotionally damaged.”
Valkov: “They were found to be in a condition described as in “mental solitary confinement”. All their bonds of affinity and relationship with others had been broken, and apparently they had lost their capacity to have positive relationships.”
Chris: Wow. I’ve only just seen this for the first time. What a cogent description, I got prickly skin just reading it. Personally, I partitioned off that part of my life that was Scientology for a full 15 years after leaving. One reason I did that was so that I wouldn’t make any mistakes like giving away secret locations or divulging confidential information and so forever after have the door permanently shut to my OT levels and hence the door shut on my spiritual eternity. I am not being overdramatic, that’s how I was. And my personal relationships? Aberrated. I have come out of that dark place through a combination of many factors including desires on my part to improve, to help my family, through blogging, auditing and solo-auditing, personal study, and most importantly because of a supportive and loving wife and family who have literally granted me years to process my experiences and to come out of the cave and into the light. (Having that detached and floating sensation right now.)
No need to take off like a rocket, Val. I was just asking your take on it.
And this article was linked to in that one about brainwashing:
http://people.howstuffworks.com/cult.htm
It’s how a Totalist Cult works.
Get that word “Totalist”, Valkov.
It’s important. Because as the only route to TOTAL FREEDOM, the sun never sets on Scientology, and it will take you to states of beingness where NOTHING can strike you down, but only if you use 100% STANDARD TECH.
Right?
Alanzo
Al, I guess I posted an abbreviated version of my ‘North Korean brainwashing’ post – so here it is with some details of how the process actually worked:
NEGATIVITY KILLS
The concept of “North Korean Brainwashing” has been bandied about in various threads, so I though it would
be good to inform readers of what this actually is and how it is done.
This way readers can identify it when some critic tries to use any of the techniques on them. There are a few who do.
North Korean Brainwashing is based completely on denying the target prisoners all positive emotional support, and exposing them to an all negative emotional atmosphere, and actually rewarding them when they acted to destroy their own ideals and emotional capacity, and relationships.
The North Korean brainwashing camps were unique in that the prisoners were relatively well-treated in the
physical sense. They had adequate food, shelter, and water, and were not physically tortured. In fact,
their captors were careful not to make them angry, as this could have provided them with motivation to
oppose the brainwashing process.
A study done after the Korean War, of 1,000 returned prisoners of war who had been “brainwashed”, found
the majority never got back in touch with old friends and family. They were found to be in a condition
described as in “mental solitary confinmement”. All their bonds of affinity and relationship with others
had been broken, and apparently they had lost their capacity to have positive relationships.
The camps they had been in had no barbed wire surrounding them, and very few guards, yet escape attempts
were very rare.
At the same time,it was found that something like 28% of the prisoners had died in these camps, essentially
by giving up their will to live.
These camps had the highest death rates of any camps anywhere, ever recorded.
Many of the prisoners just went to theirquarters one day, sat in a corner covering themselves with a
blanket, and died, often within two days. Usually no-one of the other prisoners tried to help them,
because the bonds of relationship between them had already been broken.
The researchers concluded these men had died of “extreme hopelessness”.
Here is how it was done:
1. Group members are all channeled into informing on each other. Informers are given rewards. This breaks
the trust between the group members and isolates each person from the others. No-one can be trusted,
because anyone might be or become an informer at anytime.
Interestingly enough, no-one was punished for anything they had reportedly done. That was not the
objective. The objective was to destroy the trust and emotionally supportive relationships the group
members had with each other.
2. Prisoners are organized into smaller groups of 10 or 12, and required to confess bad things they have
done, and also to confessing good things they failed to do. They did not confess to their captors, but to
each other, the other group members. This is a “reverse group therapy” process. This gradually eroded the
caring, trust, and respect the men had for each other.
3. Efforts are made to destroy loyalty to leadership and their country, and their own ideals.
4. All positive support is withheld. For example, all supportive mail from home with any good news or
encouragement was withheld. All mail with bad news was delivered – news of death, pending divorce, dunning
letters for unpaid bills, etc were all promptly delivered.
The goal of this kind of brainwashing is basically to completely ARC break (destroy the positive emotion in
their lives) the prisoners with themselves, with their fellows, with their leaders, their country, and with
life, and eventually their will to live.
Some of the prisoners essentially became like their captors, and became apologists for the North Koreans.
Most did not, but were severely emotionally damaged.
Much of the information here I took from an audiobook called “How Full Is Your Bucket?” by Tom Rath and
Donald O. Clifton PhD.
They are founders of the field of “Positive Psychology”, which they promoted to businesses, but which has
application to all people.
Positive Psychology has to do with the study and implementation of methods for reinforcing and increasing
mental health in any setting, instead of focusing on the sick, disordered, or pathological.
It does reveal how positive or negative interactions between people strongly affect their “mental health”.
Valkov wrote:
Al, I don’t need to read those books. My family lived much of that.
Valkov, please understand that I am not attacking you or trying to make you wrong when I ask of you the following:
If it is the case that you don’t need to read these books because your family lived through much of the brainwashing in the soviet union, then why am I the one writing about totalitarian brainwashing techniques in Scientology, and not you?
This has really perplexed me since the first time I found out about your family history.
Why do you oppose me so much, and so viciously sometimes, when all I am trying to do is raise awareness of totalitarian brainwashing techniques used in Scientology? I would think that you would be all for this, given your family history.
Sincerely asked, truly.
Alanzo
Al, I’m sorry, but why do you post such bullshit addressed to me? I have posted several times about “North Korean brainwashing” on various sites. In fact, I believe I was the first one to do so, and to relate that experience to the CoS experience. So if you want to post stuff about ‘brainwashing’ to inform the ‘general public’ about the parallels between North Korea (or China currently, or the Soveit Union in the past), please do so. But don’t address me as if I was somehow stupidly overlooking all that.
You read about this stuff in books and get all excited ; the only people who care about it are ex-staff who suffered from it, and I have posted it for them in places. Some of them have thanked me for it because it helped them understand what had been done to them. Nobody else cares.
You just throw intellectual shit at walls and hope some of it sticks somewhere. If you would relate some of it to what you yourself actually experienced, it could do you some good.
Val, you don’t know how many LOL’s you get from me that I don’t monotonously post. 😀
Al, why are you the one (endlessly) writing about brainwashing? I call that ‘perseveration’. You have been trotting out the same ‘party line’ for 3 years at least – that marks you as a ‘propagandist’ in my book. I’ve heard it so many times from you and I’m tired of hearing the same old-same old, year after year. I’m sure everybody knows by now, your ‘opinion’ of LRH and Scientology. It’s nothing but a ‘blame game’ from you, with nary a constructive idea, ever.
Perhaps you are one of those poor brainwashed people who never actually successfully decompress and ‘move on’. I hope not. That would be tragic. But at he same time,listening or reading the same thing over and over is really tiresome. What are you trying to do, brainwash me through sheer numbing repetition?
OK, Valkov.
So the answer to my question is that you actually think I am brainwashing people, right?
And that only by pointing out the brainwashing and the lies in Scientology, that this is all the North Koreans did to brainwash their captives.
That’s it, right?
What about every brainwashing cult book since the 1960’s which has a chapter on Scientology?
Surely you don’t think I wrote those, too, do you?
Or are they brainwashing people, too? And we just happen to be.. what? Connected somehow?
Serious and sincere questions here, Valkov. I can see how it would have to be something like this idea in you. You would truly have to believe and be convinced that I am an evil brainwasher in order for you to act to me the way you have over these last few years.
So can you point out some specific brainwashing techniques that I have used?
There should be plenty of examples for you to point out if that is what I am doing, and it would all be on the internet for you to show. And these should line up with the technology of brainwashing which you have published here.
So let’s see it, Valkov.
Let’s see specific examples of Alanzo brainwashing people on the internet.
Alanzo
Al, I reposted the complete article so the details of the Korean process were included. Look at your own posts and see for yourself, if you use any of the same tactics the Koreans used on the POWs.
A couple of examples do come to mind – 1. your apparently pervasive negativity towards the totality of Scientology. Quote: “Scientology is a cesspool of spiritual deception”. That reads like a blanket denial of anything good or decent about Scientology or coming out of Scientology, and by implication, LRH. This ignores completely, for example, Geir’s statement that he got something positive out of every single step of the Bridge. That ‘falsifies’ your global denunciation right there, but somehow you fail to notice that, or perhaps just intentionally ignore it as it does not serve your purpose or agenda.
Positive statements from anyone are never acknowledged, much less passed along by you, just as as the Korean captors never passed any positive, encouraging mail through to their captives. But discouraging, emotionally destructive mail was always passed along. This is a tactic you frequently use.
I think #4 of the specific techniques listed is the one you use the most. I think #3 is also a big target for you – to drive a wedge between a person and his ideals specifically. Very few people ever got into Scientology with the purpose of brainwashing,scamming, and defrauding people. Yet you make them guilty by association. Perhaps you should read “How to win friends and influence people”. I haven’t read it myself, but just by the title it sounds like something you could use a little knowledge of.
OK Valkov –
I just got a flash of insight here on you.
I get it now.
I’m not your problem, Valkov.
Nor is any critic of Scientology.
The truth is that you yourself should have become a critic of Scientology and warned people away from it a long time ago, and you didn’t.
And now all these years later, you’re stuck. You are stuck with a lifetime of overts of omission against the very type of totalitarian regime that your family fled Russia to avoid.
And you spent all those years, doing whatever you did, in support of a totalitarian cult and now you are humiliated to the core by your own actions.
I remind you of your own failure to recognize and defend others against a totalitarian ideology. So you rage against me in an attempt to keep from looking at your own failed responsibility to others.
Oh well, Valkov.
Today is a new day.
Alanzo’s Critic Enterprises is always on the lookout for sharp new recruits like you.
So pick up a stack of pamphlets and let’s get to work, shall we?
Alanzo
From Valkov’s brainwashing technology:
Ever read the “Staff Member Reports” HCOPL, by L Ron Hubbard, Valkov?
Alanzo didn’t write that, nor does he have the power to encourage anyone to inform on anyone.
Ever read “OW Write Ups” and heard of the sec checking technology that L Ron Hubbard developed and implemented on Scientologists, Valkov?
Alanzo has forced no one to confess anything on the internet, Valkov.
Al, did you actually read my posts? In the first, abbreviated version, I specifically stated I was posting it to explain why some of us were saying “the CoS is dead.” It died because of using those tactics and methods, whoever authored them. By the way, you do know that org policies were written for org staff, not for public, right?
As for my supposed ‘overts’ against anyone, they are no doubt far fewer than yours, because I never ‘brought anyone in’ after about 1978, because I never was on staff nor even an FSM.
However your reference to any possible ‘overts’ I might have and your push for me to acknowledge them, smacks of the point #2 used by the Koreans – to get the prisoners to ‘confess’ to ‘bad’ things they have done, and ‘good’ things they failed to do.
Do you really think you will win many ‘converts’ by using the same tactics that brainwashers use?
By the way, I have a ‘via’ that might work well for you. Find a church in your area that practices Confessionals. like a Catholic or Orthodox Church perhaps, (or Lutheran?), and use their confessional facilities to get off your conscience the times you helped entrap anyone into the CoS.
These kind of confessionals are in fact confidential and non-evaluative, so they are safe, and can provide relief and forgiveness.
I believe this might provide a way for you to leave that baggage behind and enable you to move on.
Well the point here is, Al, that those issues don’t now, nor did they ever, apply to me or most of the people I knew, because neither I nor they were on staff. And I don’t think that at the time, even staff were subjected to that kind of thing much if at all, in the Class IV orgs. And people were off-loaded from the Sea Org pretty quickly if they did not fit in. It was pretty plainly pointed out to potential recruits that Sea Org required a lot of dedication.
The fact that Hubbard copied military style security procedures for the Sea Org doesn’t surprise me, but I think it failed as a strategy for long-term survival of the CoS orgs in terms of preserving and perpetuating the spirit of Scientology philosophy.
Hubbard didn’t institute anything the military and intelligence branches of the government haven’t been doing all along.
Valkov –
You didn’t bring anyone in to an org until after 1978 because you realized that Scientology was a totalitarian brainwashing cult, and here in 2013, you still go around defending Scientology to people?
This doesn’t compute, Valkov.
Neither does much of what you say when a person really looks at it.
Like you’re this staunch Scientologist and yet you’ve done none of the Bridge, and you worked with psychs for 13 years.
Again. This doesn’t make any sense.
But tell ya what. Thanks for the discussion.
Always so refreshing to talk to you.
Alanzo
What doesn’t compute, Al, is that you can hear/read me say that I think the “CoS is dead” but that somehow fails to register with you, and you proceed to state that I “defend Scientology”.
So, is Geir ‘defending scientology’ when he posts that he got something positive out of every single level he did as he went ALL THE WAY up the Bridge?
Think, man, think! You can do it! (I think, maybe, you can do it? Although you haven’t, in the past 3-4 years……)