The very wide field of philosophy
We can protest. We can rally against an irrelevant cult. We can debate lots of what-ifs and rail against gun control laws. Or we can do something effective right here and now.
We can start by giving hugs. Lots of hugs. Hug those closest to you. Then some friends. Then some strangers.
Try this: Hug two strangers tomorrow. Let me know how it worked out. I will report back on my hugging adventure. In the meantime:
I planned to write a blog post titled “Why Scientology makes you stupid”, but then one of the contributors on my blog beat me to it. I am honored to be blessed with many very intelligent people commenting here – it makes my job real easy. I was planning to write the blog post and release it today, but Alanzo did a better job at it than I would have done. While I planned to center my post on Scientology, Al broadened the scope to ideologies or belief systems in general:
A “belief system” is a cognitive structure, a way to see the world where your moral choices, your attitudes, and your feelings, are all pre-wired and structured ahead of time for you.
Here’s a made-up example of a belief system I will create for you as an example: “Reaganism”.
The Axioms of “Reaganism”:
So when you adopt Reaganism as your belief system and become a Reaganologist, you look out onto the infinitely big, wide world that actually exists out there, and you have the pre-wiring and the cognitive structures of Reaganism interpret and categorize the infinity of all you see into simple little chunks for you.
Government run road projects are filled with people who just stand around all day and never get any work done. Even though you are driving on a road ( a road built by a government run road project) you never notice that. You sneer and become resentful at all these lazy bums working on this road. Your belief structure has filtered out some things that do not conform to it and accepted others that do conform to it, and given you attitudes and emotions to feel per its dictates.
The Titans of Industry are heros to you, because they embody all the values that you have adopted as a Reaganologist, You swell with pride every time you see a CEO of Goldmann Sachs on TV and you can’t believe that any government bureaucrat at the SEC would ever question his business practices. Government oversight is criminal in your mind, and suppressive to the upstats in society.
As a Reaganologist, you see the world in the way that Reaganism dictates.
The advantage of a belief system, or an ideology, is that it takes the infinite world around you and breaks it up into bite-size chunks, with all of it pre-understood ahead of time. It makes things simpler.
This, once you have adopted a belief system, is also its disadvantage. You don’t see the world as it is any more. You see it only as your ideology dictates that you see it.
No ideology can match the infinity of life, or the infinity of you. The stronger you hold on to an ideology, the smaller, and more fixed, you become.
As more and more of the infinities of life hit you that do not fit into your ideological helmet, the more tightly you pull it down onto your self. Until at last, you become fixed and pinheaded.
This is the problem with belief systems.
I wished I could have summed up my previous post as well as Master Eric. But then again, maybe it comes with the territory of being a master at martial arts. He captured the essence of my post nicely and added his own questions at the end:
“I am a 5th dan in Ryu Kyu Kempo. A form of Martial Arts. In it we have, like all modern martial arts a belt system. White belt and all the way up to Black belt and beyond to the so called secret moves of the upper levels 🙂
Yes, the upper black belt classes were not viewable by anyone under the black belt level. Considered too dangerous for the students who were not ready. Sounds familiar 🙂
Now, in the past, before the 19th century. There were no belt systems in martial arts. You only had a belt to hold your pants up 🙂
The only rule you had was that when you started you were given a very thick and strong white cotton belt that you did not ever wash. The reason for this was so that others knew how long you have been training and so they were careful not to hurt the lower level or inexperience students. The more and longer you trained, the belt will change colour from the sweat and so others will see the time of training you have had and know how skilled you would or should be.
So there were no Levels or grades in the old days. You progressed slowly by learning more and more and being more CLEAR about how to BE a MASTER of the ART.
Now the above is my way of trying to explain the concept of CLEAR. You never become CLEAR. You become CLEARER and CLEARER and CLEARER. Along the way you have AHA moments that help you move a big step forward but you are not CLEAR just CLEARER than before…..There are no states that are the same for everyone. Each will progress and get CLEARER as they work on themselves. There are NO ABSOLUTES…
To me I find the more I work on myself, the LESS MIND I have and more of ME expanded. Difficult to put in to words. I find that this thing called MIND is less and MORE of ME is HERE. But if I let go of my self work and focus on life only, then, I feel this thing called MIND more and more and I feel Less and Less expanded.
So what this thing called is or if it actually IS anything is an interesting subject. Maybe the MIND is the GLUE that holds our attention to this Creation that we apparently agree on altogether. Maybe, no MIND means total freedom… Just sayin 🙂”
I have come to the conclusion – through discussions on this blog and otherwise – that there is no such thing as a “reactive mind“… and that leading people to believe there is such may get them to “create it” it and dramatize it.
WHAT A BOMB SHELL. An OT 8 That Does Not Believe In The Reactive Mind!
I now believe there is an almost infinite gradient of consciousness – from being “in the zone” (as athletes express it) to “everyday life” to “tired” to “drunk” to “sleepy” to “asleep” to “sound asleep” to “unconscious” to “almost dead” to “dead”, etc. And that we create everything we experience at all levels of consciousness. We also create our worries and traumas etc in present time. Some of this can be grouped into a model and be called “a reactive mind” if one likes. But, I hold that this is merely a model and that there is no such “thing”. This opens the door to a gradient handling of a person consciousness rather than attacking a “thing” that doesn’t exist. So, there are no Clears, just “clearer people” who have increased “awakeness”. This would explain the constant trouble in the Church of Scientology regarding Clears – they try to pin down an impossibility. David Mayo described this in the early 90’s.
I see the level of consciousness paralleling the level of free will in a person.
The quest then, is how to increase the consciousness, the free will of the person and the clarity of the mind.
If you are selling products or services that you need to convince the customers to buy, you are doing something wrong. Either sell something else or figure out why the customers aren’t running down your doors to get what you are offering.
Brendan had a week earlier this winter where he didn’t convince anyone about anything. That got me thinking. And I decided to at least stop pushing products or services on people. Market and present, yes. But using effort, no.
I figure it’s much smarter to present something that customers really, really want. And then deliver that better than they expected. Push is a sign of failure.
While there are many valuable definitions and purposes of “Public Relations”, these are the ones I would like to see killed:
“Communication by a person or an organization with the purpose of creating a favorable public image; commonly referred to as PR.” (Wiktionary)
“The business of inducing the public to have understanding for and goodwill toward a person, firm, or institution.” (Mirriam-Webster)
I don’t want others to have any other impression of me than the correct impression of me. Not slanted, not puffed up, not embellished.
I would rather have an honest impression of a company than a PR impression. I want to see honesty and transparency in business, not favorable images.
And I think the best goodwill you can create is the goodwill based on raw honesty.
Here’s another one in the “Fuck it!” series.
My good old friend Mårten Runow (OT 8 still in the Church of Scientology) once said to me: “The good thing about non-scientologists is that they don’t know that they have a reactive mind they can dramatize).“. What got me thinking about that quote was an excellent comment from Spyros:
“I thought it could be useful to have a book or books that contain SCN stuff that don’t require a line of trainning to be applied. I thought stuff like study tech and assist in particular, would match this criteria. And then, I got a cog: Ever since I stopped considering study tech -the misunderstood word(s) phenomena in particular- I stopped having that phenomena. I can read a text and see a word that I don’t quite grasp and continue reading and have no problem with the rest of the text at all! No blankness, no wondering about it, no tendecy to blow etc. I’m sure Ron knew about this. Actually it is mentioned in an instance somewhere in Student Hat. But not much stress is put on it. If I wanted to relay something from SCN to the broad public, that would be something like “if you want to have a problem, consider that it exists –or that it can potentialy exist!”. Want to have a reactive mind? Consider that there is one….then to make it even more real, try to resolve it (counter-create it)”
And I believe there is a great deal of truth to this. Chill.
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)
Geir Isene - uncut 