This is one of the more egregiously dishonest and distorted promo pieces I have seen from scientology in a while. And that is saying something.
Of course, the first thing to note is that being on staff does absolutely nothing about the future of this planet. It doesn’t even do anything about the future of the neighborhood these orgs are in. Not a thing changes with their presence. Though in many jurisdictions they are a drain on tax revenues that would otherwise generate from the property they occupy. But apart from that, zilch impact.
But then it devolves into absurdity.
Staff is like a “loving family” and you “move in affinity” with each other (whatever that means, I guess it sounds good). The reality is that staff in a scientology organization is a dog-eat-dog world where you are required to report on your fellow staff if they deviate in any way from the rules and regulations of the organization or policy of Hubbard, and where you are only as good as your last week’s stats. Mail out one less letter this week than last and you are a “downstat” not to be afforded any compassion or leeway, and in fact suffer penalties. Little or no thanks for your dedication, working extremely long hours doing often unpleasant tasks, for no money.
What IS true about this is that being on staff does require you to “put aside” the “important callings” of the MEST Universe. Like having enough money to live and eat. Or time with family. Or for leisure or hobbies. It’s a dog’s life on staff in a scientology organization — in many ways worse than being in the Sea Org, where at least you can usually expect a roof over your head and some sort of food to be provided, low quality as it may be.
The final joke: “You may qualify.”
Everyone who is not on psych drugs or a wanted felon WILL “qualify.” Pretty much the ONLY qualification required to joining staff in a scientology org is that you are willing to sign away the rights to your life to the organization for nothing in return except promises that you will be saving mankind and will make tons of money “depending on your production.”
The life of a “sciento0logy staff member (volunteer)” fulfills many of the elements of someone who is a victim of human trafficking.
Say what? Being on staff is the opposite of being in a loving family, there is NO love, there is NO emotional bond, there is NO empathy. Staff members ,like all Scientologists are dehumanized and turned into a STAT! If you are loving and caring on staff and show your emotions you are reprimanded for having “case” on post or screamed at for daring to have H,E and R…..human emotion and reaction!
It’s interesting this came up today, for as I was converting my Relentless, Rescuing My Daughter form Scientology’s Illustrated book into an audio book for Audible, I was challenged how to share the messages from the over 200 images in the book, to paint the pictures of them in words. While doing this I focused on what I now realize is THE most devastating aspect of Scientology, it’s dehumanizing process of what I am calling “Ethics Conditioning.” This process turns every staff member and student into a STAT, a number to be judged weekly by.
I would love to hear feedback on this, but for myself ,it took me 15 years to set this Stat-mania aside to step back and enjoy the moment and “smell the roses” without concern of having to be an Upstat so as not to be treated as a Downstat! More than ever this has motivated me to rescue my grandson from this type of conditioning.
To Brian J. Sheen: I hope the following may be the kind of info you are looking for:
I have no first hand experience with being on staff. But as I understand it, the timing as to when someone gets on staff is only after they have had enough auditing sessions such that the cult knows enough dirt about them, they can be threatened into following orders or their dirty secrets will be used to cause them enormous embarrassment. In other words, they have to worry about extortion.
In this way, once someone joins staff, they can be forced to work long hours for almost no money and they can be forced to do all kinds of back-breaking menial tasks and work hard for maybe 16 hours per day. In addition, they can be made to accept all kinds of humiliating tasks or else the cult will reveal their secrets to cause them great harm. (i.e. extortion)
When I use the word “force”, I don’t mean they will get physically beaten if they don’t obey (although the threat of physical beatings is indeed present). But they will know the threat of disclosure of their worst past conduct will be revealed to the people they most fear would find out.
In my case, during my first auditing session, the auditor asked me to reveal the names of all the drugs I had ever taken. He did this after learning I was working as an executive with a large corporation and we both knew that if that info was ever divulged to my employer, it would cause me terrible problems at work and could easily wind up with me losing my job.
From what I have heard, this is a very common technique used to get new members “in line” and force them to follow the orders of the cult.
From my experience I have never seen things happen the way you are imagining. I don’t think there is any type of this kind of coercion to join staff happening with secrets found in session. Instead, I find it usually happens it quite a different fashion. Someone has a big win on a course or in session, and while on the high of their altered state they are convinced only Scientology can accomplish this and others are in desperate need to get this help too and what better purpose in life can there be but helping others achieve this too. It is a hypnotic HIGH, and like a drug, the mind, the brain wants more, more, more. That’s what happened to me after doing TR 0 for two hours
But, Yes, you are right, ones drug use is reviewed in great detail, but I do not believe with the purpose to use this against them to sign up for staff.It WILL be used to help sell lots of auditing or Purif packages and it WILL be used as reason auditing didn’t produce the results you were promised.
Perhaps your drug background might be used against someone if they later get declared an SP and attack COS, but otherwise it just lays dormant in your pc folder.
A very recent video of CCLV evening course time (the busiest time for a Class V org). All but empty parking log. The cross and signage has fallen off the entrance. Only an OSA/Ethics person in view.
https://youtu.be/NNwh2Jky3Wk?t=77
The only family it is similar to is the Manson Family
I was once told by a staff member of a well attended org (I say well attended as the car park is always full when I go past, which is about once a fortnight) that he got paid $450 Aus the week prior to me being there. He said that it was not typical and that some weeks he gets paid less. This figure seems to be a lot higher than people here are quoting. Was the quoted amount a exaggeration to lessen the unfair appearance of being a Scientoliegy staff member or can you actually make a few hundred per week ?
In my experience, if someone makes $450 in a week it’s because someone bought a huge package or someone donated a bunch and that staff member (and not all staff members) reaped some of the benefits. But making $450 in a week is an anomaly.
His response is a way of sugar coating that most weeks he gets paid less than a living wage.
the quoted amount was a lie unless some person donated some money to pay staff that week. Probably no such org makes enough to pay its staff $450 every month much less in one week. You see, all scamology orgs use the same pay system so it is easy for me to make this correct pronouncement.
Caveat: it MIGHT be possible in one week once in a blue moon if the org has only 1-4 employees.
My two kids were on staff at LA Org and they told me that some weeks the staff pay was so low that they would turn their check back in to the org to donate it to the org.
I’ve been out of the cult 10 years now. To this day, whether used as a noun, adjective or verb I cannot hear or read or myself say or write the words “brief”, “briefing” “briefly” or even “briefcase” without a slight clench of the stomach.
YUP.
One of my trigger words is “need.” – as in “I/we ‘need’ you to…(fill in the blank).
Oh, God, yes. That one.
the further away you get, the crazier it seems.
“you need to___________”
it’s this insane universal right, coming across your telephone line from some asshat you’ve not only never met, they just called your name from a list.
The Coffin of Stupid is almost filled to overflowing with idiots.
Being on staff is like being in a lovely family in which all the members have been disconnected from each other and they try to figure out what to do when the house is on fire.
Since each family member is disconnected from all the others, they cannot speak to them to warn them of the fire and tell them to get out of the burning house. In fact, they cannot speak to any of the other family members at all. So they just have to sit there and burn till they are dead.
I admit that is a small sacrifice for the cult. But everyone who dies in the fire will have the eternal knowledge they made the founder happy and proud knowing the super powers they possess enabled them to sit still in a fire and die for the benefit of the cult.
Sure, a “family” which will disconnect from you, instantly and without a word of explanation upon orders to do so from the higher ups in their cult. With “family” like this one is better off as an orphan. What a joke.
For those people who may not know this or may not have seen this, Pope Francis has recently announced a way to end the pandemic.
I am not sure of the details but the headline specifies a month of prayer and I would assume that would also include plenty of fasting as well. Here is the link:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9500115/Pope-announces-marathon-month-prayer-end-Covid-19-pandemic.html
I was thinking …. (always a danger sign and perhaps you might consider just closing this window before things get out of hand) … maybe we could challenge this cult to engage in a one-month fast by all its members.
All they could do during this month would be to drink water and spit it up on Monique YKW. Also, they could do the old stand-by and run around in circles in between drinks of water.
How many cult members do you think would remain alive if they did not eat anything at all for one month – except drinking water.
Also, I would suggest that if we do this, we should specify the Pope – not the Catholic Pope – I mean the phony Pope – could drink Scotch as well as water. Why? Two reasons. First, I am quite certain he would never go for this unless he could not drink Scotch. And second, I think there is a good chance that fasting for one month with the exception of Scotch would likely kill him.
At least THAT pope won’t claim a magnificent victory no matter which way the statistics go in May/June.
Decades have been talking about changing the future of this planet.
They haven’t changed anything. If the Berlin Wall falls, it was them. If the world gets worse it was because of the psychs.
Selfishly they should start thinking about changing their future as “first dynamic”.
The one obvious way they could make this planet one Hell of a lot better would be to liquidate this cult and take all the money and donate it to charities that will help feed and shelter the homeless.
After all, many people who are now homeless and hungry were put into that state by the avaricious policies of the greedy pigs that run this money-hungry cult.
So, they very well deserve to make restitution by selling off all their ridiculous buildings and giving the proceeds to charities that will use that money to care for the victims this cult created.
“Selfishly”, they should improving THEIR first dynamics, not just Dwarfenführer’s® Without their continued existence, there IS no scientology 3rd dynamic. But of course Davey-Boy doesn’t care. HIS life is well assured to continue in it’s always-excessive way as long as the cash reserves exist and his minions protect him from deserved prosecution. As long as local officials stay bribed and said minions don’t wake up and run away or rebel, he can continue to live better than most kings or dictators. Heaven help him if he suddenly grows a conscience, though. Then the alcohol consumption to forget will go into overdrive, as if it hasn’t been there for a while. It’s tough to run away from yourself Dave. Some might say impossible.
The Executives that slave in the Church of Scientology of St Louis, Missouri have somehow managed to pull off purchasing big homes over the past few years paying. Big price tags with small downpayments, according to an inside mole who knows them all very well. What is going on? Sounds like they flunked on expansion in Saint Louis due to their Ideal Org building being sold now. Are they rewarding their down stats on this failed purpose, this lack of expansion and opening their Ideal Org, with big mesty houses and newer cars ? Some staffers think they inherited the money. Anyone know? How on Xenu’s Smoldering Volcano did the IAS not get their hands on all of that money to buy that mest? It is so out ethics to be on Staff, an Executive in St Louis and PTS to the Middleclass. Shame on them! LOL Honestly, it is nice to see them enjoying some of the pleasures of the Mest Universe like the rest of us. Hope they don’t get finanially ruined soon. Surely, that Ideal Org building they never opened after 11 years needs more fundraising and an Upper Management Scientologist will surely get their ethics in at the Saint Louis Org.
I think Scientology in St. Louis is getting reasonable. A bunch of namby pamby panty waist dilettantes with obviously other fish to fry.
Any St Louis info is appreciated. I drive by their Delmar mission at least once a month and their membership is small and their building has seen better days.
Gordon, thank you for keeping everyone posted about the St Louis Scientology Morgue. Now that Jeanie Sonenfild, Executive Director of Cincinatti Morgue just got Declared SP for financially ruining her members, when is Chad Lane and Matt Hanses going to get their SP Declare? My experience of them: sleazy, slimy manipulators that show up at your door begging for money the day you lose a loved one. These two cons also run marketing services. Based on # of people in St Louis that experienced financial ruin too, trained to scam Scientologists would sell ice to an Eskimo and bankrupt them in the process.
She got declared SP for financially ruining her members? I thought that was expected in Scientology.
The CofS is more like a codependent, dysfunctional and abusive family — reflecting the failings and pathologies of its founder, whose relationships with his own wives and children ended unhappily, and in the cases of his offshpring all too often in the sort of premature deaths that seem to plague CofS staff, too.
How Can We Love an Abuser or Narcissist and Why We Stay
“Don’t judge yourself for loving someone who doesn’t treat you with care and respect, because by the time the relationship turns abusive, we’re attached and want to maintain our connection and love.
There may have been hints of abuse at the beginning that we overlooked – abusers are good at seduction and wait until they know the partner is hooked before showing their true colors. By then, love is cemented and doesn’t die easily. It’s difficult to leave an abuser. It’s possible and even probable to know we’re unsafe and still love an abuser. ”
> https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/toxic-relationships/201909/how-can-we-love-abuser-or-narcissist-and-why-we-stay
‘Dog eat dog’ doesn’t quite get the milieu of $cientology correct. I think it more like a school of piranha who float down the river waiting to strip anything with meat down to its bones.
🙂 I’m laughing and shivering at the truth of what you’re saying at the same time.
Zee, you minimize the role piranha play in the ecology. They ensure that dead bodies don’t rot and pollute the waterway. $cientology has no such redeeming value.
Mary,
“How much can you bleed your public?”
Knew a woman who gave EVERYTHING she had to the cult. Took out a 2nd mortgage on her home, maxed out all her credit cards and even “donated” all she had in her retirement and savings accounts. Then she lost her job. Soon the bank foreclosed and all she had left was her car. She lived in it for months until she found an out of state friend to “take her in”. The cult will bleed you dry if it can. They tried with me but were unsuccessful. The stench of the rotting apple kept me alert, awake and safer that many.
Glenn, the woman you describe is the common situation at every Org. Bankruptcy is a big “win” for a Scientologist.
Class V staff is well known for never being paid.
Weeks go by without any pay. Sometimes you get ten bucks in the envelope. Sometimes $80.00, and everyone loses their minds in happiness.
But you’re supposed to survive on staff without a “Wog Job”.
Off and on, there is pressure to get everyone with an outside job to quit it by a certain time frame.
The cardinal rule of being staff is
“DOWN STATS ARE MADE” If stats are down it’s because they’re being HELD DOWN.
Therefore you’re always 100% solely at fault for down stats and thus responsible for your OWN lack of staff pay.
The tek won’t go in if ethics are out.
So you’re out ethics for having down stats, not making money on staff and being at effect.
If your ethics were in you’d all be being paid well and the org would make it.
Overworked, underpaid, hungry, and tired.
I remember the cold comfort of knowing that I was “cause” as a being, by weathering all the hardships.
At times I used to lead the staff rah-rahs at roll calls and events and … things.
Our sufferings earned us badges.
(“ooooh, guess who picked up her Non-Enturb badge this week?”)
…………
scientology is so awful that it tricks you into being proud and willing to be abused and give up everything in life for a packet of lies.
From time to time I get letters from Atlanta I asking me to join staff. Once, just to amuse myself I emailed the contact person identified on the letter in and asked how much the job paid. To my surprise he was honest and wrote back that I would probably have to get another job. He said that a post in a Scientology organization is a crusade and not a job, or something that effect.
Yep.
“low pay, awful hours”
“its a trust and a crusade”
it’s upfront that you won’t get paid much. I’ve recruited many staff.
But you don’t explain the hidden pressures and attitudes about your outside work, nor the history of trying to outlaw it, in cyclic fashion.
So, if I actually had taken a job at the Atlanta org, they would have discouraged me from getting a job that actually paid? Despite having initially told me I would need to get another job?
This is quite fascinating stuff.
If you had a day job/night job when you joined, you would eventually find that the staff demands took precedence and made the job less valuable. You’d’ve been encouraged to quit that job, and ……..
then perhaps steered towards working for a local Scio. One who would be more amenable to All-hands actions that keep you on post for 24 hours straight, or orders to report to CLO/FOLO for an indefinite time/abuse frame
You’d work for that scio woggish type job until the next SO mission came to town and decided those asshats were leeches distracting the staff. Heads on pikes, a few field declares, …
In your off hours you could drive cab, sell stuff, laser prints, rugs, window cleaning, carpet cleaning, roofing, flyer delivery, amway, house painting… grab a few hours work here and there just to scrape by, live communally 3 to a bedroom with other staff…
If you were an auditor in the HGC, you could audit in the day for money from Day org. (NO) (YES) (NOOO) (“AO was doing it!”)
or take your OWN paying PCs at your house (SP! RIp Off!) (great solution, using the tek to flourish and prosper!)
Log Rolling.
It was constant log rolling.
But, because Scn is just so damn cool, you’ll be running a lot of this stuff on yourself as your world devolves into one imperative
show up and clear the planet or die trying.
——
Happy Friday.
Chips and cheese as I please.
That sounds enticing, sign me up now.
Coming across the word “crusade” in the staff contract caused me to not sign it. I was close to doing so. I felt I SHOULD. I didn’t WANT to at all, really, but I felt that I should, that I owed something to Scientology. But then I saw that word in the staff contract. What I recall is “…not a job, but a trust and a crusade.” Well, I LOATHE the Crusades – for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which was brutal murder and theft in the name of Jesus Christ. I hate the Crusades and I hate the word “crusade”. Reading it in the staff contract caused an alarm bell to go off in me. I told them I’d changed my mind. I didn’t say why. I didn’t want to give voice to the reason. There was this voice inside me saying, “No, no, don’t do it!” All triggered by that word. Silly, right? A little thing like that! Just a word, and I knew what it meant as it applied to Scientology. I had no MU. But I couldn’t shake that feeling, this voice inside me saying…”Don’t do it. Don’t sign.” And I didn’t. Simple twist of fate. I forget what excuse I told them. Fobbed them off with something. But it was that word that was the reason
There were those public I could never get.
Later….
I became one.
<3
That was wonderful Aqua! You had some kind of power in your psyche that warned you and protected you from signing that horrible document.
If you had signed it, your life would have unfolded in a very different way. It would have unfolded in a most terrible and most ugly way.
Just being a member for as long as you were, was bad enough. Had you signed that document, the result may well have been the end of your life – or at least a life so horrible and painful that you would have wished for it to end.
I am very extremely happy you refused to sign. Good on you, Lady!
Thank you, Skyler 🙂
So the result of all that is that staff are abused as a matter of course, and it just means more and nastier ‘ethics’ are applied as income naturally drops, going into a complete crash at a certain point. That’s the way the ‘game’ is structured.
Those who are strong/rich enough to survive naturally feel slightly superior. The rest are discarded with last week’s trash.
Great post Rip!
I really appreciated your post!
People won’t go in and stay in until Scientology has their ethics in.
Scientology aka David Miscavige will NEVER get their ethics in
It is like the politicians running our Country now
Too much corruption and damage done
They can’t see the truth and what is opposite of good becomes truth
The entire Organziation has people in a state of total and utter confusion about Scientology. Same thing with the political party.
They spin around and then land on some “datum” that will stabilize them only temporarily due to Hubbard’s Laws of Confusion and Chaos: “for every piece of tech and policy there is an equal and opposite policy to always justify WHY Scientology does not work” LRH
They feel good until L R H technology reveals another contradictory piece of tech that destabilizes them
Then, the solution for Scientologists is MORE Scientology so up the Bridge they go to levels of confusion never experienced in any religion before.
“…what is the most important thing to be doing right now and right here? Once you look at that, there is no doubt as to the path you will take.”
That kind of “suggestive” speech is very culty – and reminds me of the struggle I had with leaving a Catholic religious order before making my perpetual vows. Although not nearly as extreme as the psychological pressure, say, a SO or staff member endures when they want to leave, there was always the idea that I was opting for a lower road by leaving.
Right, Francis. I even felt momentary guilt as I rode home through the rain after I was tossed out of Flag for being, AFAICT, too incapable to hold any position they had. I wasn’t even a good enough RPF inmate.
(further) As I rode up through the Delmarva peninsula in that rainstorm on my motorcycle with just about everything I owned lashed onboard, I felt guilty that it was all my fault that I was in that position: freezing & sopping wet. I hadn’t worked hard enough, I let my “case” overpower me when I honestly looked at my future prospects at Flag: horrible on all fronts. scientology is set up as a game that all lose. No matter how fantastic you were last week, it’s not enough. You MUST do better next week or you’re a downstat and you get the punishment you “deserve”; or maybe you give yourself the punishment. I learned in the RPF that if you don’t *accept* the insults they’re throwing at you and just go with the flow, it’s survivable if not precisely enjoyable. Ignore the turkeys who try to make too much of a big thing out of ‘stuff’.
Jere, I think that feeling of being a failure is in the DNA of many religions. It is apparently taken to the extreme in Scientology. I hope you’ve had some joyful, sunny rides in the Delmarva since then, as a free person.
Scientology staff and Sea Org are run ragged, getting less than normal hours of sleep on a regular basis. I just saw a report about how severe and chronic sleep deprivation can be a precursor to dementia later in life. Oh boy – dementia. That’ll test the bonds of that “loving family” that “moves in affinity.” More likely it will get a demented staff member a one-way ticket to wherever they off-load the elderly and infirm.
Some “family.”
Don’t forget – they signed up for it, pure and simple, and Scilon lawyers can produce the signed and witnessed contracts giving the Cherch the right to pull a Lisa McPherson on any member. The member’s family, long tossed aside as SPs, will be unable to move their loved one to the care of anybody with the genuine expertise to treat dementia – because someone in the treatment team might be a ‘psyche.’
Scientology is always worse than you thought.
Always worse, yet people re-new their staff contracts? Why, why, oh why…
AA, sleep deprivation also produces a state equivalent to being impaired by alcohol. Plus here are indications it increases suggestibility, and hypnotic susceptibility – which would apply to Scientology processes and techniques, including auditing sessions.
“Studies have shown that going too long without sleep can impair your ability to drive the same way as drinking too much alcohol.
Being awake for at least 18 hours is the same as someone having a blood content (BAC) of 0.05%.10-12
Being awake for at least 24 hours is equal to having a blood alcohol content of 0.10%. This is higher than the legal limit (0.08% BAC) in all states.12-13”
> https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/about_sleep/drowsy_driving.html
Alcohol increases hypnotic susceptibility
> http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/home/Zoltan_Dienes/Semmens-Wheeler%20Dienes%20&%20Duka%20in%20press%20hypnosis%20and%20alcohol.pdf
O/T. Two academic papers from the same Journal discuss Scientology and the LGBTQ community. The first paper cites Mike’s article Scientology Homophobia and Leah Remini’s book Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology. Both papers cite Kate Bornstein’s book A Queer and Pleasant Danger.
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First:
The Dangerous Discourse of Dianetics: Linguistic Manifestations of Violence Toward Queerness in the Canonical Religious Philosophy of Scientology (2017), by Francesca Retana.
46 pages
https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/relics/vol2/iss2/4/
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Abstract
At present, there is a groundswell of public sensational interest in the subject of Scientology; and, in fact, in the time since I began this research paper, a nine-episode documentary series has premiered and reached finale on A&E titled “Scientology and the Aftermath”— a personal project hosted by sitcom celebrity, ex-Scientologist, and author of Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology, Leah Remini.[1] I could not begin to enumerate the myriad exposés/memoirs of ex-Scientologists that have been published in recent years nor could I emphasize enough the rampant conspiracy theories that are at the disposal of any curious mind on what many have termed “the cult” of Scientology. Be forewarned that a simple internet search of “Scientology” plus “Violence” will surely coax one down the rabbit hole of research. I anticipate, however, that a conjunction of the terms “Scientology” and “Homophobia” might prove exceedingly enlightening.
[1] Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath. “Disconnection.” Episode 1. Produced by Leah Remini, Eli Holzman, Aaron Saidman, Alex Weresow. A&E, Nov 29, 2016-Jan 17, 2017 ; Remini, Leah, and Paley, Rebecca. Troublemaker : Surviving Hollywood and Scientology. First ed. New York: Ballantine Books, 2015.
Subject
Religions; Religions — Philosophy; Religions — History
Journal
Relics, Remnants, and Religion: an Undergraduate Journal in Religious Studies
Publication Date
5-5-2017
Language
English
Publication Place
Tacoma, Washington
Publisher
The University of Puget Sound
Type
article
Recommended Citation
Retana, Francesca (2017) “The Dangerous Discourse of Dianetics: Linguistic Manifestations of Violence Toward Queerness in the Canonical Religious Philosophy of Scientology,” Relics, Remnants, and Religion: An Undergraduate Journal in Religious Studies: Vol. 2 : Iss. 2 , Article 4.
Available at: https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/relics/vol2/iss2/4
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Direct link to PDF paper:
http://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=relics
* * * BEGIN EXCERPT OF PDF PAPER * * *
I will argue that the expression of sexuality is violently repressed by the deployment and manipulation of discriminatory language included in Scientology’s canonical texts that introduced the technological philosophy of Dianetics. L.Ron Hubbard’s outlined path to spiritual superiority in his invented, new and alternative religious movement is enduringly plagued by prejudice. The narratives and testimonies of queer and ally defectors/apostates from the institutionalized Church of Scientology include their understanding of the Second Dynamic (or Sex Dynamic) and the ways in which a Dianetic framework of human existence is brimming with unbridled bigotry with the intent to indoctrinate. I will seek to prove that L.Ron Hubbard has equipped Scientology with normalized master tools of manipulation that champion compulsive heteronormativity and in turn diminish, if not erase, autonomy and agency as they relate to the expression of sexuality and gender nonconformity.
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Second:
How the Church of Scientology Lures in Closeted Individuals (2018), by McKenna Cole
7 pages
https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/relics/vol3/iss1/1/
* * * * * BEGIN EXCERPT * * * * *
Abstract
Using Kate Bornstein’s memoir, Queer and Present Danger, as a primary source, HBO’s Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief and several other articles and interview; I will be analyzing the manner in which the Church of Scientology provided closeted homosexual and other ‘sexual deviants’ a false sense of hope. This is done through the promise of a structured community and the possibility of ridding individuals of their homosexual tendencies, which during this time was seen as a mental and physical illness.
Subject
Religions; Religions — Philosophy; Religions — History
Journal
Relics, Remnants, and Religion: an Undergraduate Journal in Religious Studies
Publication Date
1-31-2018
Language
English
Publication Place
Tacoma, Washington
Publisher
The University of Puget Sound
Type
article
Recommended Citation
Cole, McKenna (2018) “How the Church of Scientology Lures in Closeted Individuals,” Relics, Remnants, and Religion: An Undergraduate Journal in Religious Studies: Vol. 3 : Iss. 1 , Article 1.
Available at: https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/relics/vol3/iss1/1
Download
1,200 DOWNLOADS
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Direct link to the PDF paper:
https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1035&context=relics
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Both papers memorialized with screenshots on ESMBR at:
https://exscn2.net/threads/academic-paper-how-the-church-of-scientology-lures-in-closeted-individuals-by-mckenna-cole.3041/
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“Some sort of food” – classic. I suspect the slop served to many Sea Org members barely qualifies as food, but at least it IS something…
Sometimes I think and in some ways (since so many books, documentaries, blogs, etc) it may be true that recently “things” might be better within the church of scientology. My final five years were horrific and that was as a public – forced hours-long reg cycles, forced and mentally abusive sec checks, extortions, forced book and lectures sales (filled my garage), terrorized into participations and contributions. I don’t think a lot of these things go on any more – I mean how much can you bleed your public.
When I see this lying promo above, there is no way that being on staff can be anything but brutal. Even if you “pay” your staff and give them 3-weeks vacation, stats stats stats are brutal.
Reading your comment reminds me of the cycle I observed while in and since leaving. The church always took the abuse to the furthest point they could get away with, members became quietly disaffected and only then would the church change course and pretend to be more civilized. Over and over and over….
When the money stops coming in and the narcissist supply is cut off, the narcissistic manipulators go back to “love bombing” to being nice until they can start being abusive again. It’s a textbook pattern that should be taught in school so the unsuspecting aren’t baffled by the BS. There’s nothing original here. It’s all extremely predictable. Anyone with a dysfunctional family member can benefit from leaning about the personality of a narcissist. It’s about learning how to take care of yourself first so the narcissist doesn’t get the upper hand