Month July 2013

Did Scientology have a positive impact on their lives?

Geir Isene 283 Comments

“I want to make a story about the successful people in Scientology. Those people who became truly successful as a result of Scientology.”

It was 2005 and I was having a coffee down town with an old school mate of mine that was now a journalist for the national broadcasting corporation of Norway. He looked expectingly at me while I was desperately trying to come up with such people.

I was rummaging my mind while thinking “Crap! I can’t find any 😦 Let me think… let – me – think – – – Damn!“, and then I said “Interesting angle. I’ll think about it and get back to you.”

My friend was serious. He wanted to balance the constant negative press by a surprising angle on Scientology where he would portray the really successful scientologists, of which he apparently thought there were quite a few. I couldn’t think of any in Norway. Or Scandinavia. Or any I personally knew anywhere in the world. Sure, there were some with average success here and there, but no one that stood out as remarkable. None.

I never got back to the guy. Until I left the church in 2009 and told him I had a story for him.

This question about the actual success of Scientology bugged me for quite a while. I wrote a blog post three years ago titled, “Where are the amazing people?“. And the usual discussion ensued including justifications of how that is not a relevant question or what one mean by “amazing” and other nitpicking points. But the main point remains: Scientology does not seem to produce anything out of the ordinary in terms of good life or skills or amazingness.

Today I sat down, took a good hard look at the people I have known in Scientology. I decided to make a list of people I have known well in Scientology and how Scientology has impacted their lives. The first 50 people that popped to my mind, only the people I have known for years and where I could clearly see how Scientology has affected them. They come from all walks of life – from house wives and business people to former drug users and average Joe. I put the names into three categories:

  1. Scientology had a positive impact on their lives
  2. Scientology had no significant positive or negative impact on their lives
  3. Scientology had a negative impact on their lives

I was somewhat surprised when I summarized the results.

Scientology-Impact-on-Life

I then looked at categories 1 and 3 to sift out those who had life-changing gains from Scientology and those who had life-ruining crashes from Scientology. The result was pretty grim.

Scientology-Impact-on-Life-Details

A couple of notes about the above:

  • Of those that have had awesome improvements in their lives, 80% came into Scientology with a life in ruins
  • Of those that had their lives ruined through Scientology, 86% had an average life when they got in

Almost all (90%) of the list of people have lived a somewhat sheltered life on the fringe of the Scientology empire here in the Land of Santa.

From my experience, if you become involved with the Church of Scientology, there are some statistics you should be aware of:

  • There is a 20% chance that Scientology will improve your life overall
  • There is a 64% chance that Scientology will negatively affect your life
  • The chance that Scientology will dramatically improve your life is 10%
  • The chance that Scientology will ruin your life is 14%
  • You a have 40% greater chance of having your life ruined than dramatically improved
  • If your life is not already in shambles, your chance of having your life ruined is much greater than having it greatly improved through Scientology

While I do not know how the statistics are for Scientology delivered outside the Church, I suspect it is better. Simply because one does not have the Nazi regime, the thought police and the incessant craving for your time and money. I would be interested in hearing your own honest statistics, both from people you know having gotten Scientology in the Church and independently.

UZBL: Hardcore Browser

Geir Isene 20 Comments

I finally managed to migrate away from Firefox!

After having tried all the major browsers like Chrome, Konqueror, Opera, and dozens of minor browsers like Midori, Epiphany, Vimprobable(2), Jumanji, Luakit, etc… I found it!

Meet the hard core browser that gives you the ultimate control of your surfin’ experience: UZBL

As Firefox and the other Big browsers got bigger and bigger and steadily requiring more resources and becoming more sluggish, my desire to move away from Firefox increased. Until I decided to make a real effort and a final jump. Although I have tested many browsers over the years, I have only been dead serious about a migration in the past two weeks. Having been accustomed to many neat Firefox plugins, it seemed like a tough challenge to find a browser that could match at least my basic requirements:

  1. It must be fast
  2. VIM-like key bindings. I want my browser to be modal and act like my favorite text editor.
  3. Fully customizable key bindings
  4. Easily configurable and extensible, putting me in the driver’s seat
  5. Ability to edit text fields with VIM – like I do now, writing this blog post
  6. Tab-based
  7. Password manager
  8. Form filler
  9. Ad blocker

…and with UZBL I get this. And much more. It is dead easy to extend and customize almost every aspect of the browser in the config file or via scripts. And I can write scripts in any language and set uzbl to launch a script via a key binding. I can write scripts in Shell, Ruby or even Raven 🙂

Bliss.

Click for full-size image

Click for full-size image

My system is now finally lean & mean with Ubuntu Linux as the OS, i3 as the Window Manager (no Gnome or KDE), Conky as a notifier, Mutt as my mail client, Newsbeuter as RSS reader, VIM for any and all text editing, LaTeX for writing books and articles, ZSH in urxvt, and now UZBL for surfing the Internetz. My perfect setup.

I had to tweak and squeeze the browser to make it behave just like I want it to – small stuff such as hitting “ogs” and then some search words to make the browser open up Google with the search results, or hit “tbi” to open up my blog in a new tab. And more involved stuff like restoring a closed tab by simply hitting “u”.

Firstly, I run “uzbl-tabbed” with this config and this follow-links-style. I changed the undo-tab scripts to this and this (so as to make it run on the latest uzbl version). If you want to try this browser, make sure to check out my config file – it includes some nifty stuff.

Enjoy (as long as you run Linux/*BSD/Unix/Mac OSX)

Scientology End Phenomena

Geir Isene 84 Comments

Scientology offers a huge breadth of tools, processes and levels aimed at increasing a person’s awareness of himself and his environment.

For every process or level, there is an “End Phenomena” (EP) that defines what that action is supposed to achieve.

The person (“pc” = “pre-clear” = a person on his way up the levels to “Clear”) will exhibit some evidence that the EP has been reached. This is accompanied by some specific reactions on the “E-meter” (the device used to measure the body’s electrical resistance).

END PHENOMENA is defined as “those indicators in the pc and meter which show that a chain or process is ended”.(L. Ron Hubbard)

Most of the EPs in Scientology is fairly easy, subjective and “feel-good”. Others are more “hard core” and objectively verifiable.

These “objective EPs” can be rather tough to verify. Some are plain impossible. Still we see people attest to having achieved these impossible EPs every day – even though the person must know they cannot have achieved such a state. One may wonder why, and this is up for discussion here.

Let us take but a few examples.

PTS Rundown: The EP is a PC who is getting and keeping case gains and never again rollercoasters.

“Case gains” means positive progress in Scientology. “Rollercoaster” means to vacillate in mood, being happy, then sad, etc for no obvious reason. If the above EP was in fact true, it would have cured mankind of one of the most common mental ills forever by the use of that small Scientology action (perhaps 10-50 hours of auditing/processing).

Or how about the EP of “Grade 0, “Communications release”:

Ability to communicate freely with anyone on any subject.

Or how about the professional communications course (the Pro TRs, “TRs” = “Training Routines”):

The PRIMARY VALUABLE FINAL PRODUCT of TRs is:
A Professional auditor who with comm handling alone can keep a pc interested in his own case and willing to talk to the auditor.

The SECONDARY VALUABLE FINAL PRODUCT of TRs is:
A person with the session and social presence of a professional auditor and that presence can be summed up as a being who can handle anyone with communication alone and whose communication can stand up faultlessly to any session or social situation no matter how rough.

The END PHENOMENON of TRs is:
A being who knows he can achieve both of the above flawlessly and from here on out.

I invite here to a discussion of the validity of the above End Phenomena, other similar objective claims in Scientology, and of why people would attest to something that is impossible to honestly claim to have achieved.

Hope

Geir Isene 188 Comments

Why does the Scientology mindfuck go so deep?

I believe it is due to the hope that Scientology instills.

A person enters Scientology with a hope of achieving something. For himself or perhaps even for the world.

Scientology promises the person will attain that goal, because there is nothing Scientology cannot ultimately handle according to Hubbard.

With the help of Scientology, the person achieves some gains letting the person believe his goal can be reached with Scientology.

Some more gains are had in the direction of his goal. Hope that Scientology can ultimately deliver his goal is reinforced.

Even if Scientology has not delivered or even cannot deliver on its promise, the person still has a powerful hope that Scientology will deliver his goal, any goal.

This hope can make the person do almost anything to protect Scientology. He may lie, deceive, betray his family, steal, commit fraud or worse. Perhaps much worse.

His hope will make him blind to any fault in Scientology. His hope will make him resort to any and all mental tricks to avoid his hope being blunted. Because losing hope is perhaps the most painful of all.

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper. (Francis Bacon)

Interestingly, I notice that some of the most fanatical Scientologists I have met are the one’s with little training and/or auditing. Those who have not yet understood that Scientology habitually oversells and underdelivers.

Project management, “Å style”

Geir Isene 4 Comments

The short and sweet way of doing project management is covered at the end of our new article on PRINCE2.

It deserves its own blog post so as not to drown in the PRINCE2 primer. Here goes:

The company “Å” (Brendan and me) is truly a “cut the crap”-company. We inspire and enthuse people and help them realize their potential. We help people take 100% responsibility and to excel in their communication with others. This is why we try to keep formal structures at a minimum. This is why we see methodologies such as PRINCE2 as a casual toolbox and not as an end-all. And without further ado, here is how we practice project management, regardless of the size of the project. Here’s a short HyperList showing just how we do it:

Project Management, Å-style
      START PROJECT
            Supplier and the Customer agree on the Project
                  Measurable Project Product(s)
                  Resources needed
            People with 100% reponibilities are appointed
            [?] Documents
      PROJECT
            Project is delivered
                  Work is assigned, executed and approved
            [? issues arise] Parties agree on issue handling or to stop the project
      CLOSE PROJECT
            Benefits Review
            [?] Project report; CONTAINS:
                  Project Product(s)
                  Project Benefits
                  Lessons Learned
                  Recommended actions after Project

BBC: How Scientology changed the Internet

Geir Isene 7 Comments

Interesting overview of the history of Scientology vs. the Internet over at BBC Technology.

The Internet may be the one factor in society where Scientology has had the biggest negative impact. The church is busy moving the arena of free speech into a tightly regulated and controlled venue, smacking of 1984.

Read the BBC article here.

The video that helped spark BBC’s interest:
Church of Scientology and their Internet war

Video on the Wikipedia ban:
Video: Scientology and Wikipedia (Internet war)

What are you doing about it?

Geir Isene 101 Comments

We’re not playing some minor game in Scientology. It isn’t cute or something to do for lack of something better.

The whole agonized future of this planet, every man, woman and child on it, and your own destiny for the next endless trillions of years depend on what you do here and now with and in Scientology.

This is a deadly serious activity. And if we miss getting out of the trap now, we may never again have another chance.

Remember, this is our first chance to do so in all the endless trillions of years of the past. (L. Ron Hubbard, “Keeping Scientology Working”)

If you are a Scientologist in the Church of Scientology, you most probably see the above as true and believe that David Miscavige is doing all that he possibly can to lead the Church and save the universe. If this is the case, you have not seen or ignored the evidence that he is not delivering expansion for Scientology.

If you are an Independent Scientologist, you most probably see the above as true and believe that David Miscavige is the reason why Scientology is not saving the universe. If this is the case, then all that stands in the way of saving the universe is one single man. If you believe this, then you are obviously working day and night to get this one man removed as he is blocking the salvation for eternity for you, for your family, people you love, for mankind and every living organism in the entire universe. Because nothing could be more important in the whole universe than removing this sole block on the ultimate path to freedom. Then what the heck are you doing about it right now? This very minute? Why are you wasting our precious time reading this blog? You should get your ass in gear and ensure Miscavige is removed from power. Because that is more important than your day job, your hobbies, your immediate life.

If none of the two options above applies to you, then lean back, relax and enjoy the discussions.

Thanks Brendan for another interesting angle to the world of Scientology.

“Why don’t you focus on the GOOD in Scientology?”

Geir Isene 61 Comments

That is a question I have been asked several times the past year.

When I was in the Church of Scientology I never allowed myself to look at the negative aspects of Scientology. I did read a lot of criticism on the Net as I was working for OSA (the church’s KGB). But I was quick to dismiss, play down, justify or explain away any negative viewpoints on Scientology, Hubbard and even the church.

In 2007, when I started my two-year research that led to my official resignation, I allowed myself to take a good hard look at what was wrong with the church. But I still did not dare to really look at what could be wrong with the Scientology philosophy or with Hubbard.

After I left and started blogging in late 2009, I criticized openly the church, but defended the philosophy and dismissed criticism of Hubbard as “Argumentum ad Hominem” and “irrelevant”.

After blogging and discussing and allowing myself to freely look at every viewpoint on the church, Scientology and Hubbard, I stopped defending, justifying and dismissing criticism.

During the past year I have allowed myself to also take a good hard look at what is wrong with Scientology itself and with Hubbard. After not letting myself honestly look at these for almost 30 years, I had a lot of catching up to do. I can finally look at and criticize Scientology without any knee-jerk reaction prompting me to defend or explain away shit. I am freeing my viewpoint on the whole thing.

It is a process. I am as usual following what tickles my fancy. And these days I am looking closely at what the root causes of the detrimental sides of Scientology really is. And that is what I am posting. How long with that last? Who knows.

I blog not to teach or convert. I blog to free and evolve my own views on various things in life. I appreciate that people follow me on my path to be free of Scientology. I appreciate all the comments by all the participants on this blog. I read the comments, even when it gets really busy here with more than 100 comments per day. I may not answer all the questions that I should. Because I also have a life outside the blog. A life I enjoy immensely these days.