Author Geir Isene
Fuck it!
Sitting back here in the sofa looking at this calmly… you know what? I am not even interested in salvaging Scientology per se.
I am actually only interested in helping people reach their goals. Read “U-ology”. That’s the only interest. To help people reach their goals.
I don’t want Scientology, Psychology, NLP, crapology, or anything else.
No salvaging of any Scientology needed. As it stands it is a trap and I don’t think it is salvageable.
What is possible, on the other hand is to start, without prejudice (at ALL) to collect all kinds of tools for all kinds of possible goals and wishes (starting with the guy’s you have in front of you) and piece together the tool set that is demonstrably working.
Doing that, and as long as the practitioner really, truly helps people reach their goals, it behooves him well to get those tools tested in order to reach the mainstream and thusly reach the broad general public… so that they too can avail themselves of the tools needed to reach Their goals.
Fuck it.
I want to help PEOPLE. Not Scientology.
(Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere, I’m just done with worshiping of methodologies.)
500px
Anette pointed me to a fantastic site for photographers and artists; 500px
ANd so I took my art to my own account there.
I added some new art. Feel free to check it out.
Improving upon Scientology
I have had this idea that it should be possible to improve Scientology through public discussions. That discussions on this blog could be used to sift the good from the bad until we end up with elements that are worth proper testing.
But my idea was misguided – as evident from recent discussions.
There is no hope for improving Scientology through public discussion. The only hope there can ever be for Scientology as a subject is via strict scientific testing. Because discussions in the presence of beliefs break the hope for rational outcomes.
For Scientology to survive as a positive contribution to Man, it needs its valuable parts properly validated. There is now 63 years since Hubbard got the show on the road. And today the number of Scientologists worldwide is less than 40000. It is an abysmal state for this body of knowledge. One may argue that the Church of Scientology is all bad and has done nothing but destroying any chance for expansion of this subject. But there has always been splinter groups that could have expanded outside of the church. And especially in the last decade since the church has stopped bothering those who practice it freely. And even the free use of Scientology does not invoke any visible expansion.
Something serious needs to be done to salvage the good in Scientology – the good that I personally have experienced in so many ways. I have a lot to thank Scientology for, and I would like others to have similar gains as mine. But at the rate we are seeing today, the vast majority of people on this planet will never have a chance to experience it. Not until the subject wanders off into oblivion.
Instead of playing this minor game where everyone looses – I believe proper scientific testing is the only way to ensure all those who can benefit from Scientology may have a chance to do so.
And so this blog returns to a place for interesting discussions with no overall purpose and a safe sounding board for many, at least until I change my mind about that too.
In support of Libre Knowledge
Several people in history have contributed to the ant hill of human knowledge. Some stand out as supporters of Libre Knowledge.
Nikola Tesla was one remarkable person.
The danger of inspiring others
There is a liability in inspiring other people, to sell them an idea or work them up to do something. The liability is that the will of the person suddenly has an external motivator supplanting the intrinsic motivation of the person. Such an extrinsic motivator inherits the responsibility for the outcome of the person’s actions. If the person fails to, let’s say stop smoking, the person could blame the external motivator for the failure.
Brendan has accused me of being a fantastic motivator for people who later deflates when I am not around. This is a valid and good point.
It is better to help the person find his own inspiration, his own intrinsic motivation. Work with the person rather than perhaps unconsciously supplanting that motivation with your extrinsic motivating.
(Hugh at Gapingvoid.com)
Inspiration for my book
As you may know, I have have had a book project for a while. My auto-biography is on it’s final leg, and I am currently writing a chapter on the inner secrets of Scientology. The book covers my whole life, but with emphasis on my journey into and out of Scientology.
I have covered a lot in the book, but I may still have missed an angle. To complete the work, I would like to harvest ideas from you guys.
What would you like to read about in the book when it enter the stands later this year? Pitch in by adding you comments.
Scrap the SLA (Service Level Agreement)
According to Wikipedia, an SLA is:
“A service-level agreement is a negotiated agreement between two parties, where one is the customer and the other is the service provider. This can be a legally binding formal or an informal “contract” (for example, internal department relationships).“.
SLAs is a hot item in IT, and is given much weight in the organizational framework called ITIL.
Almost all IT directors I talk to rely heavily on SLAs or blame the lack of proper SLAs for lack of success.
But seriously, do you have an SLA with Google? With Facebook, Twitter or the scores of Internet services that you use personally? No – and if you are unhappy, you simply find another solution or service provider.
An IT service provider would be wise to simply scrap the SLA or any contract that seeks to bind the customer. Instead, let the customer be free to choose and move to another vendor if they feel like it. In that way, the service provider will have to be constantly performing better than the competition. And that is the best solution to keep the customers.
Instead of locking the customer with contracts, service the customer like no one else.
No contracts, no lock-in and you have no choice but to become and be the best.
Without even intellectual property protection, you would have to rely on pure and excellent service to retain your customers.
Customer lock-in mechanisms makes for laziness, dwindling creativity and thus ironically opens the door to better service providers.
SLAs are only warranted where the customer are not free to choose another provider, such as when the business strategy dictates the business units to only use the internal IT department.
Evaluating Scientology: Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation
The emotional Tone Scale is a central concept in Scientology. The main application of this scale is presented as the Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation in the book, “Science of Survival” from 1951. Here Hubbard goes into details of how a person operates based on where he is to be found on the Tone Scale.
Hubbard presents 44 different columns/scales in his chart corresponding to the various Tone Levels and describes what each level means in terms of a person’s behavior. The book, “Self Analysis” is a distilled and simpler book where the chart is presented with 24 columns, as in the link provided above.
Much of Scientology is based on the Emotional Tone Scale and the Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation. In the discussions on Scientology on this blog I believe this part of the philosophy itself warrants serious evaluation. Let’s find out if this chart is true, valuable and useful. If there are errors or faults in it, then lets find them. Let’s salvage what is useful and conclude with something better if possible.
Hubbard makes some important statements about this scale that is worth scrutinizing:
- You can examine the chart and you will find in the boxes as you go across it, the various characteristics of people at these levels. Horribly enough these characteristics have been found to be constant. If you have a 3.0 as your rating, then you will carry across the whole chart at 3.0.
- This scale has a chronic or an acute aspect. A person can be brought down the tone scale to a low level for ten minutes and then go back up, or he can be brought down it for ten years and not go back up. A man who has suffered too many losses, too much pain, tends to become fixed at some lower level of the scale and, with only slight fluctuations, stay there. Then his general and common behavior will be at that level of the tone scale.
- The only mistake you can make in evaluating somebody else on this tone scale is to assume that he departs from it somewhere and is higher in one department than he is in another. The characteristic may be masked to which you object—but it is there.
- Of course, as good news and bad, happy days and sad ones strike a person, there are momentary raises and lowerings on this tone scale. But there is a chronic level, an average behavior for each individual.
- The position of an individual on this Tone Scale varies through the day and throughout the years but is fairly stable for given periods. One’s position on the chart will rise on receipt of good news, sink with bad news. This is the usual give and take with life. Everyone however has a chronic position on the chart which is unalterable save for processing.
- s tone scale is also valid for groups. A business or a nation can be examined as to its various standard reactions and these can be plotted. This will give the survival potential of a business or a nation.
- This chart can also be used in employing people or in choosing partners. It is an accurate index of what to expect and gives you a chance to predict what people will do before you have any great experience with them.
Why are critics of Scientology so vehement?
Because die hard proponents are so blind.
It goes like this:
- Hubbard makes outlandish claims of Scientology’s perfection, infallibility and being the Only True Path.
- Someone counters the claims by finding errors in the work
- Hubbard and the church goes defensive by attacking
- The critic tries to enforce the criticism
As long as there are proponents of Scientology that refuses to see its obvious faults, there will be vehement critics.
If Scientologists would instead openly admit faults in Scientology, the polarization would subside and more constructive discussions on the subject may ensue.
There is less polarization where there is more chill. Witness Islam vs. Buddhism.
Geir Isene - uncut 