Rather than a near-instantaneous Jonestown suicide ending, I see Scientology as more like Mary Baker Eddy’s Church of Christ, Scientist. She made a fortune estimated at about $100 million in 2023 dollars, by investing in selling her religion, and in real estate and businesses once the religious money began pouring in. She bought a home for $100,000 in 1907, and it sold years after hear death in 1910 for $13.3 million. She was one of the original multi-level scam artists, and Hubbard possibly followed in her footsteps. She had what Hubbard would have recognized as Missions, selling her ‘teaching’ for the equivalent of four month income of a factory worker, with the intent they would double their income, or much more, within a couple of years, by selling their services as a Christian Science Healer.
Of course, there is much more to the Christian Science story than this tidbit, but in fact there are parallels to Hubbard’s later ‘religion’, in particular Eddy’s being a hardcase about “her” money.
She accepted a stiff fee for teaching her concepts to students, expecting them to go forth and be successful as a Healer, and also required a percentage of their Healer income to be passed upstream to her personally. Sounds almost like MLM to me… She had a reputation for lawsuits against former students who did not remit to her the agreed percentage of their future income from their Christian Science Healer practice.
The public of Mary Baker Eddy’s turn of the century population was not a lot different from the public of Hubbard’s initial Dianetics foray. Antibiotics had been invented and used to good effect in WW II, plus there were many advances in metallurgy, plastics and fabrics made from fossil fuel, warfare, surgery, and such. But the normal American working family often still had iceboxes, and only recently had been converted to the convenience of sliced bread. The great advancement 1950 had over Eddy’s era was radio and distributed electricity, which still needed government intervention to reach rural areas. In 1950 the world had been changed by the aftermath of two world wars, the Great Depression, and the deadly worldwide flu pandemic of 1918, but the much of the American public was still receptive to unproven magical healing such as Eddy and Hubbard promised.
Today the CS Church operates the Christian Science Monitor, and more. Her wealth started something that has lasted well over a century, though I can’t find CS Healers advertised anywhere. I expect Scientology will ‘end’ the same way, with their massive slush fund of real estate sold off over time, funding some sort of Cherch of Scientology for many years to come, well after Miscavige takes off for Target Two, his just reward.
Eddy started a ‘science’ that took issue with the medical profession, though with the state of medicine during her lifetime of 1821 – 1920 it is easier to see how people might mistrust both doctors, dentists, and the many miracle elixirs promoted during her later years.
Altogether, I see many similarities between Eddy and Hubbard, and I think the end of each fake religion will look similar, too, mostly because of the wealth accumulated.
The continuing backlash and push-back on the COS is easy to explain with simple math. Every time someone–be they a Scio in good standing, an ex-Scio, or wog–gets harmed by church abuse, ill treatment, deception, or getting ripped off, it’s never a single event that occurs in a vacuum.
Each victim has friends and family, and those friends, in turn, have other friends and family. The news of the COS’ unethical and criminal acts spreads and expands geometrically like a nuclear chain reaction. And is the case with an avalanche, it’s an event that must run its course.
I began noticing the beginnings of this (not so coincidentally) in the early eighties. I’m sure I’m not alone in this observation. In any case, the COS can huff and puff, and stew in their own bile of righteous indignation all they want. But they can no more deter this phenomenon than they can stop gravity (try as they must). Put simply, it’s a reality that can’t be stopped nor reversed.
I always get a lot of promo, but recently it has ramped up big time. I have my former Senior liking my FB posts a lot, getting hand written letters from my home Org and every other Org I did services in.
It cannot be coincidental. I was nobody as far as rank, I wasn’t on staff that long and it was decades ago. I can’t imagine anyone wasting time reporting me for being on this blog, Aaron’s you tube, or Marc’s Blown for good. I think it is a reach in desperation to (recall) ANYONE that they think they can get back. They are freaking out all the way down the food chain.
Interesting, Ruth. That the cult would actually know that you’re on these blogs yet still be intent on luring you back into the fold – wow! That’s desperation on their part, alright.
My old brainwashed brain reacts as if Miscavige isn’t the end all be all for the future of Scientology.
But it’s Hubbard’s written words, and the lower down staffers and followers who will muddle through despite all the eternal backlash which is Hubbard’s fault when all is said and done.
Scientology is Hubbard’s baby.
Miscavige is just a second gen undereducated Scientologist running things mostly per Hubbard’s nonsense, just as unfortunately whoever comes next, even if they are nicer people than Miscavige, will be forced to run things.
Hubbard wrote the script for official Scientology’s bad game.
The splinter Scientologists, as tiny as they are, have the right idea for how to reform the movement. Just cease the worst nuttiness of Hubbard’s, which also can’t fully be done, but it’s still better than Miscavige and whoever fills Miscavige’s shoes when Miscavige expires from the scene.
Hubbard’s the baddie at the bottom of this mess.
If people have not read this recent book, it is well worth hearing how Hubbard’s sci fi contemporaries thought of him, and lived their lives when some of them were intimately involved with the beginning of Dianetics!
Excellent writer, just an outstanding book.
Alec Nevala-Lee,
“Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction”
I obtained the Alec Nevala-Lee book some time ago but haven’t got around to reading it yet. It’s on my phone awaiting its turn in the rotation.
I just finished the amazing SF book by Adrian Tchaikovsky called “Children of Time,” winner of the 2016 Arthur C. Clarke Award. Wow. What a ride that book was, just wonderful science fiction on a grand scale. Like the best SF, much of the science is just a bit out of reach, but not impossible – no wormholes, no FTL space armadas, just generation ships built to last, genetic engineering, viruses, lasers, and advanced chemistry. Though seemingly impossible today, the ‘cold storage’ used to hold the human cargo in stasis for centuries is at least not obviously barred by the laws of physics.
Just now I discovered this is a series, with two more books to go. Oboy, oboy, oboy.
Whoever thought Hubbard was a “writer” must never have read the work of real writers.
We can only imagine what is really happening behind the closed gates at SMP. They sure aren’t putting out much content. Probably a few people editing the same promotional videos in 17 languages. Some fake documentaries of people jumping up and down in the sunlight. Smear videos for Stand League. The idea of such a mind controlling cult allowing news reports or talk shows is of course absurd.
I am so fortunate to have taken part in the “Call Me” protests with Phil and Willie Jones in Los Angeles in the mid-2010s.
One such protest in particular stands out: the Grand Opening of the Scientology Media Productions on Sunset. Blvd., so close to PAC Base, scientology’s West Coast headquarters.
What more is there to be said? We (who never even met her) are sad for her and her family. The DM twins are probably having a celebratory party. Scientology bleaches all humanity away.
Very likely what they’re telling the sheeple that because she left the cult she went off the rails and became severely PTS, etc., which condition in turn caused whatever physical condition she apparently had that in turn caused her sudden death.
Of course when longstanding faithful die-hard sheeple who have never left die suddenly and before their time, the cult needs to cook up another excuse.
Funny how so much winning always attracts the critics
Rather than a near-instantaneous Jonestown suicide ending, I see Scientology as more like Mary Baker Eddy’s Church of Christ, Scientist. She made a fortune estimated at about $100 million in 2023 dollars, by investing in selling her religion, and in real estate and businesses once the religious money began pouring in. She bought a home for $100,000 in 1907, and it sold years after hear death in 1910 for $13.3 million. She was one of the original multi-level scam artists, and Hubbard possibly followed in her footsteps. She had what Hubbard would have recognized as Missions, selling her ‘teaching’ for the equivalent of four month income of a factory worker, with the intent they would double their income, or much more, within a couple of years, by selling their services as a Christian Science Healer.
Of course, there is much more to the Christian Science story than this tidbit, but in fact there are parallels to Hubbard’s later ‘religion’, in particular Eddy’s being a hardcase about “her” money.
She accepted a stiff fee for teaching her concepts to students, expecting them to go forth and be successful as a Healer, and also required a percentage of their Healer income to be passed upstream to her personally. Sounds almost like MLM to me… She had a reputation for lawsuits against former students who did not remit to her the agreed percentage of their future income from their Christian Science Healer practice.
The public of Mary Baker Eddy’s turn of the century population was not a lot different from the public of Hubbard’s initial Dianetics foray. Antibiotics had been invented and used to good effect in WW II, plus there were many advances in metallurgy, plastics and fabrics made from fossil fuel, warfare, surgery, and such. But the normal American working family often still had iceboxes, and only recently had been converted to the convenience of sliced bread. The great advancement 1950 had over Eddy’s era was radio and distributed electricity, which still needed government intervention to reach rural areas. In 1950 the world had been changed by the aftermath of two world wars, the Great Depression, and the deadly worldwide flu pandemic of 1918, but the much of the American public was still receptive to unproven magical healing such as Eddy and Hubbard promised.
Today the CS Church operates the Christian Science Monitor, and more. Her wealth started something that has lasted well over a century, though I can’t find CS Healers advertised anywhere. I expect Scientology will ‘end’ the same way, with their massive slush fund of real estate sold off over time, funding some sort of Cherch of Scientology for many years to come, well after Miscavige takes off for Target Two, his just reward.
Eddy started a ‘science’ that took issue with the medical profession, though with the state of medicine during her lifetime of 1821 – 1920 it is easier to see how people might mistrust both doctors, dentists, and the many miracle elixirs promoted during her later years.
Altogether, I see many similarities between Eddy and Hubbard, and I think the end of each fake religion will look similar, too, mostly because of the wealth accumulated.
Insightful. Thank you.
DM should curse.
I think he did.
The continuing backlash and push-back on the COS is easy to explain with simple math. Every time someone–be they a Scio in good standing, an ex-Scio, or wog–gets harmed by church abuse, ill treatment, deception, or getting ripped off, it’s never a single event that occurs in a vacuum.
Each victim has friends and family, and those friends, in turn, have other friends and family. The news of the COS’ unethical and criminal acts spreads and expands geometrically like a nuclear chain reaction. And is the case with an avalanche, it’s an event that must run its course.
I began noticing the beginnings of this (not so coincidentally) in the early eighties. I’m sure I’m not alone in this observation. In any case, the COS can huff and puff, and stew in their own bile of righteous indignation all they want. But they can no more deter this phenomenon than they can stop gravity (try as they must). Put simply, it’s a reality that can’t be stopped nor reversed.
It’s a media scientology shit-storm.
It’s been rolling in for years and they’ve failed to make the 10,000 OT7s needed to make a difference.
Oh well, truth rules OSA. You knew it would eventually 😏
Thank you to so many that are speaking out. I can feel the pressure blowing off.
Thanks RB for hitting it spot-on.
I always get a lot of promo, but recently it has ramped up big time. I have my former Senior liking my FB posts a lot, getting hand written letters from my home Org and every other Org I did services in.
It cannot be coincidental. I was nobody as far as rank, I wasn’t on staff that long and it was decades ago. I can’t imagine anyone wasting time reporting me for being on this blog, Aaron’s you tube, or Marc’s Blown for good. I think it is a reach in desperation to (recall) ANYONE that they think they can get back. They are freaking out all the way down the food chain.
It’s only a matter of time before there’s a Jonestown Org.
🤫 you got it.
It’s just not me ,but others are also reading what’s written on the wall.😉
Interesting, Ruth. That the cult would actually know that you’re on these blogs yet still be intent on luring you back into the fold – wow! That’s desperation on their part, alright.
Thanks Ruth,
The increasing signs of desperation grow, and grow….
I would feel sad but for the fact that what the cult is now is nothing like it was in the 1960’s.
My old brainwashed brain reacts as if Miscavige isn’t the end all be all for the future of Scientology.
But it’s Hubbard’s written words, and the lower down staffers and followers who will muddle through despite all the eternal backlash which is Hubbard’s fault when all is said and done.
Scientology is Hubbard’s baby.
Miscavige is just a second gen undereducated Scientologist running things mostly per Hubbard’s nonsense, just as unfortunately whoever comes next, even if they are nicer people than Miscavige, will be forced to run things.
Hubbard wrote the script for official Scientology’s bad game.
The splinter Scientologists, as tiny as they are, have the right idea for how to reform the movement. Just cease the worst nuttiness of Hubbard’s, which also can’t fully be done, but it’s still better than Miscavige and whoever fills Miscavige’s shoes when Miscavige expires from the scene.
Hubbard’s the baddie at the bottom of this mess.
If people have not read this recent book, it is well worth hearing how Hubbard’s sci fi contemporaries thought of him, and lived their lives when some of them were intimately involved with the beginning of Dianetics!
Excellent writer, just an outstanding book.
Alec Nevala-Lee,
“Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction”
There’s a reason Hubbard wasn’t one of the Big Three (Sci-Fi writers).
I obtained the Alec Nevala-Lee book some time ago but haven’t got around to reading it yet. It’s on my phone awaiting its turn in the rotation.
I just finished the amazing SF book by Adrian Tchaikovsky called “Children of Time,” winner of the 2016 Arthur C. Clarke Award. Wow. What a ride that book was, just wonderful science fiction on a grand scale. Like the best SF, much of the science is just a bit out of reach, but not impossible – no wormholes, no FTL space armadas, just generation ships built to last, genetic engineering, viruses, lasers, and advanced chemistry. Though seemingly impossible today, the ‘cold storage’ used to hold the human cargo in stasis for centuries is at least not obviously barred by the laws of physics.
Just now I discovered this is a series, with two more books to go. Oboy, oboy, oboy.
Whoever thought Hubbard was a “writer” must never have read the work of real writers.
We can only imagine what is really happening behind the closed gates at SMP. They sure aren’t putting out much content. Probably a few people editing the same promotional videos in 17 languages. Some fake documentaries of people jumping up and down in the sunlight. Smear videos for Stand League. The idea of such a mind controlling cult allowing news reports or talk shows is of course absurd.
!!!!! PERFECT !!!!!!
A CLASSIC RB! Bravo.
If there ever was a PR operation that was built to piss into the wind, it is $cieno TV.
I am so fortunate to have taken part in the “Call Me” protests with Phil and Willie Jones in Los Angeles in the mid-2010s.
One such protest in particular stands out: the Grand Opening of the Scientology Media Productions on Sunset. Blvd., so close to PAC Base, scientology’s West Coast headquarters.
I should say something about Lisa Marie Presley.
What more is there to be said? We (who never even met her) are sad for her and her family. The DM twins are probably having a celebratory party. Scientology bleaches all humanity away.
Edit; the DM twins = Dave and Danny
Very likely what they’re telling the sheeple that because she left the cult she went off the rails and became severely PTS, etc., which condition in turn caused whatever physical condition she apparently had that in turn caused her sudden death.
Of course when longstanding faithful die-hard sheeple who have never left die suddenly and before their time, the cult needs to cook up another excuse.