So much wrong in such a short announcement.
First, “UK’s Latest” is pretty badly behind the times. These Basic books and lectures have been around now for 7 years, I don’t really understand the logic of promoting someone who is not even FINISHED but is “at the tail end.” Don’t have anything else to promote so have to get a “success” out of him before he is done so we can use that.
Second, Thomas Fehn is ex-Sea Org. In fact, I believe he was the CO FOLO UK at one point. This is sort of like using a success story from David Mayo on the Running Program… Poor Thomas, still trying to make up the damage for leaving the SO.
But of course, being an ex-SO “executive” he has the skill of conflating “LRH quotes” into ridiculous conclusions down to a fine art. Somehow, supporting Central Orgs becomes “and this is why I support Ideal Orgs.” Yes, it is true, by definition “ideal orgs” ARE “central orgs.” But “supporting” central orgs never meant “give them all your money to buy and deck out a palace.” This is the same sort of logic that brings us this: “LRH says to follow command intention. COB is command. And that’s why I follow his intention.” Or, “My doctor told me to eat good. Twinkies taste good. So I eat Twinkies 3 meals a day.”
And finally, why don’t they put the DATE next to the mantra they are following to ‘be on Source” — “The first cleared country, it’s within reach.” I am pretty sure its one of the 73/74 quotes when Hubbard sent out RJ’s to all areas basically telling everyone the same thing. That was less than 25 years after the release of Dianetics. It’s been 40 YEARS SINCE then. Where is ANY evidence of this even beginning to be approached? Is it MORE “within reach” now than it was 40 years ago? The population has increased 50% in that time and there is no increase in scientology activity in the UK, in fact, it is less?
But they figure if they just keep saying it, if it is a repeated often enough, it’s going to come true. Because, you know, LRH said it, so it must be true.
In some ways, the blind faith of fundamentalist scientologists is virtually indistinguishable from the bible literalist fundamentalist christian who are sure the earth is 6000 years old “because God says so in the bible.”
This is a very important post Mike. Brilliant and the picture is hilarious. Fundamentalism is the bane of free thinking, sane people everywhere. The obstinately intolerant bigotry that emanates from this, is a truly destructive force. It is astounding to observe, that the promise of as-isness, greater awareness and reaching ones potential, has been reduced to this narrow minded, robotic, forbidden to inspect game. This is a skewed perspective and is not real Scn.
Does anyone have a couple of hours they could spare to go through some financial information that has been sent to me and turn it into a digestible posting? I just have too much stuff. Email me at rindermike@hushmail.com if you would like to help.
Who the hell is this moron?
He doesn’t even know the difference between a Central Org and an Ideal one.
He should go to London Ideal Org and sit outside as I did for few hours. no one ever goes in. Walk in traffic is nothing. The only people in that building are a couple of staff members.
How depressing that is.
“He became a God in his own lifetime”
Interesting analysis Mike.
They are permitting an ex-SO (Sea Org) to have a printed success story. This was not common at one point. Ex-SO were (Degraded beings) DBs and low-lifes.
A friend of a friend was visited in his very successful business, by a senior exec from HGB Building, and told that he is a problem to Int Management. He is ex-SO, and successful. The exec told him that this sends the wrong message to the field. I kid you not, he said this, straight out.
The same successful ex-SO, according to my source, was refused the Chairmanship of the Charter Committee in Europe (A committee within the business association of the church), on the basis the he was ex-SO.
Another friend of this friend, sorry no names yet, was hounded by upper management after he achieved a few very successful impacts in the field. The traffic was heavy and just prior to the awarding of Freedom Medals. This was what he was being proposed for, and the traffic was all the prep work before Gold comes in to video. One answer he gave was, yes, I am ex-SO. The traffic stopped dead in its tracks. Overnight. IAS Admin eventually told the person that absolutely they would not award a Freedom Medal to an ex-SO. It sends the wrong message.
Someone who left, spoke of internal staff briefings where ex-SO were referred to very derogatorily indeed. The same team killing off the same team.
The number of on-sides players who know their stuff, is reducing. There will be a stream and a scramble for these types of success stories, over the months to come, IMO.
The good guys have departed.
What if someone is ex-SO because they were off-loaded due to advanced age and body problems? Would the DB label still apply? Are SO just supposed to work 80 hours a week, 7 days a week, year in and year out, until one day they drop dead?
Of course. How much more DB can you get than by growing old and unfit?
Aqua ……. Yes.
Interesting post, Conan. LRH pointed out Aristotle’s simplistic, bad or good, black or white philosophy as that employed by all major religions and as being unworkable in the real world, He advocated, of course, infinity valued logic. Today in Miscavige’s cult I see the usage of both, depending upon what expediancy of theirs is being served in any given instance.
He advocated it for 2 minutes before returning to form, ie. peddling a finite state of CLEAR and the attainment of CERTAINTY.
It’s business logic.
The bottom line.
There is no religious or philosophical aspect in McScabbitch’s Church.
If it were just “Davie” (everyone walks) do you think any auditing or training would happen inside those Idle walls?
hmmmm, doubtful, unless it would damage and make a slave out of the pc/student.
Oh, but wait we’re already there!
Davie has completely wiped out the Scientology Religion.
Aquamarine – it’s worse; it is one-valued logic (if you consider Hubbard’s def of logic):
“ 3. primitive logic was one-valued. Everything was assumed to be the product of a divine will, and there was no obligation to decide the rightness or wrongness of anything. Most logic added up merely to the propitiation of the gods.” – (from Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary)
Currently it is the propitiation to the COB – who’s divine will has not to be inspected regarding rightness or wrongness.
You’re right, ka! It is now Corporate Scientology’s 21st century version of Divine Will, i.e., what does Pope PottyMouth want?
Absolutely. That is the mind-set, Primitive Logic wins again! It must suck to be Davie McScabitch lord god almighty of all infinite futures!
The original year of the quote should be on the copyright notice of the promo piece.
So Hubbard was encouraging Scientologists to make the UK a ‘cleared’ country back in the 1970s? And 35 years later official UK government census stats show 2 418 Scientologists in the whole of England and Wales. This must be some new definition of ‘clearing’ of which I was previously unaware.
And of course, in the last 35 years the UK population has increased by considerably more than 2 418, so actually they are going backwards, at a great rate of knots.
By “a cleared country” he obviously meant a country clear of RCoS.
I think that now they are getting new lawsuits faster than they are getting new members.
Well now we know why he is a former CO FLOP (sic) UK. One would think that a CO FOLO would have done his basic books before he even joined staff, never mind after being offloaded a few years (?) later! God help us if the (former) most senior Scientologist in the UK hadn’t even read DMSMH or FOT or whatever. “Cor blimey” as the Brits say. And this dude was in charge of the UK!
And as to FOLOs, I have never encountered a more destructiive management group that follow off-policy orders than them and that invariably, INVARIABLY, ended up unmocking Orgs. I regard FOLOs as a complete bunch of charlatans. We used to groan when we realized that the FOLO were sending a mission as we knew that the Org would be immediately destabilized and torn apart.
Of course that was thier purpose. Harvey Jaques came to London with a monster at his side a very ugly,spindly woman called Challef or was it Sherriff?
I was told these two creeps were totally responsible for the worst time Ldn Staff had had since the Battle of Britain in the 70’s so what did the managment do for Harvey “Fookin” Jaques?
Made him CO FSO You couldn’t make it up son!
“….it is so clear that he had discovered not only the underlying causes of society’s social ills and problems, but also the complete solutions to turning it around…..There really is no other solution”
That is precisely what fundamentalist create, their single viewpoint, total entitlement, black and white solutions ARE the problem.
Here is something from a different perspective:
http://www.theendofsuffering.org/end-of-suffering-preface.html
“The hidden craziness underlying the conditioned behavior that makes us suffer is the dualistic, “either/or” mode of thinking we have been immersed in since childhood. And its all Aristotle’s influence. Aristotle defined a profoundly dualistic system that he called the “law of the excluded middle”–which asserts that everything in the world is either black, or it’s not black, excluding any other possibilities. This kind of dualistic thinking is what makes political propagandists such as President Bush, say things like “those who are not with us are with the terrorists”–ignoring the huge majority of the world that sees other possibilities. The goal, of course, is to make us feel fearful. With a yellow alert we are told to feel pretty fearful, and with an orange alert we should feel very fearful, while always watching out for “doomsday red.” But, there is an important middle ground of vigilance between fearfulness and complacency. The middle ground we seek is not a case of either/or, this or that. Given the choice, our goal is to choose fearlessness and freedom every time.
Most things we read or encounter in life are neither true, nor not true. For example, physicists know it is true that the light we see is neither a wave nor a particle, but can manifest as either. Also, who we truly are as conscious beings is neither physical, nor not physical. The so-called wave-particle paradox and the famous mind-body duality are both examples of incorrectly posed questions, confusingly masquerading as dichotomies. Think of the well-known “glass half-full or half-empty” metaphor … What if it’s neither?”
Conan, if you read Science of Survival LRH of 1951 mentions “Infinity Valued Logic” which more than adequately explains the theory above.
Yes, I’m aware of what LRH said. It is not about what he or anybody else said, it is about understanding the above and applying it in real life.
It is clear by now that Hubbard could not practice what he preached, and that Scientology has gone the way of other messianic cults.
The above quotes are grounded on Nagarjuna’s Tetralema, which is a highly sophisticated logic system from Buddhism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catu%E1%B9%A3ko%E1%B9%ADi#Nagarjuna.27s_Diamond_Slivers
It is badly missing in Scientology. Hubbard threw away any “Infinity Valued Logic” out the window, when he set out to build this cult.
What a load of utter twaddle Conan,
What an earth are you doing in this blog if you have an interest in Buddhism.
instead of moaning about Scientology go and practice Buddhism for 50 years and see if it handles PTS’ness.
I will wait for you on the other side of the NOTS case.
See Ya
I think your response is an indication that what he said about fundamentalism is true. There is no rule that because someone has an interest in buddhism they are not welcome here?? Hell, I have an interest in buddhism, should I not be here? And your comment “I will wait for you on the other side of the NOTS case” is really kind of bizarre and condescending. Chill out dude. If scientology is your thing, that’s totally OK. Others having differing views is just as OK.
How goes Thomas Fehn from the Basic Books to Ideal Orgs ..
Irrelevance and non-sequiter are acceptable if you follow the party line.
“… the blind faith of fundamentalist scientologists is virtually indistinguishable from the bible literalist fundamentalist christian…”
From my view the Scnist is worse off than the bible-thumping, born-again christian. At least the christian will openly, and honestly, admit that they believe in the bible as the word of God, and have faith in Jesus, and such things cannot be proven.
Believe and Faith are dirty words to the DMSMH-thumping Scnist, who prefers to know. However, in reality, the vast majority of Scn “scripture” cannot be proven to be true, and requires an element of faith to bring about the apparency of workability.
So, really they are far, far worse off than christians. Scnists have confused delusion with knowingness.
Hmmmmm…When the shite happens and you back out of the body at the end of your life, you take with, what you know. If there is a heaven and hell, well okay. That’s easy. If you live again, you do so in the shape you are in, with the foreknowledge and skill you have. You are aware of what’s up, or not.
If you have studied this interesting area for decades, you may well have a chance to figure things out, at that point..
I would back the scnists chances of surviving better, in your example.
That’s if you believe in reincarnation, whichever version of it, of course. Not everyone does. Some think they’ll decompose into the earth and that’s it. Others believe there’s a heaven and they’ll join their loved ones, or become part of a good spirit force on earth. An angel. Whatever. My bets are on whatever the person himself believes or knows what’s going to happen once his body dies. It’s his life and his belief, whether he’s been studying Scientology for decades or not.
On a side note, I just gotta say that one thing I can’t stand is when I’m told by some “knowing” Scientologist that I’d better continue with my OT levels because if I die with my “OTV case”, I could “wake up” as a female in India or Afghanistan. Or the very serious: “You have to do everything you can now, so you’re in the best shape possible so you don’t come back to some bad condition” My personal favorite: “You can choose your family and not be given psych drugs as a kid”. I have been told stuff like this at times, by different sorts of people in the CoS. This is a form of domination and is used by fundamentalists to control a free-thinking spirit. Thanks, but honestly, I look at this thinking as the same as being told I’ll go to hell if I do this or that. Same mechanism.
Subreption –
The major problem to be solved in looking at Scientology is what you mention. The subject is not “new” in the sense that there is no precedent search for answers. As Hubbard said, it is based on very old wisdom. It is simply a resolution. The difficulty is that it covers so much ground in the midst of such massive unknowns about life (I don’t think even Hubbard ever said he knew everything), as well the confusions generated by the reactive mind, that it is extremely difficult to assimilate in practical and workable terms. It is apparently tough for an individual to conceive that his life and living are in his control, and are his responsibility. Turns out we were right when we were kids – there is something under the bed, and there is something in the closet. In fact, they’re walking around in real life every day. We all have to grow up and learn to deal with them, not run away.
Subreption,
The thrust of my post was not whether Scn is preferable or more valid than Christianity, but more that they both relied on the element of faith.
But since you bring up “life after death” as an example… LRH has spoken and written much about the subject, and Scnists consider themselves to be experts on the matter. I believe much of this comes about from personal experiences in auditing sessions. In other words, these are subjective “truths” adopted by the individual, and to a great extent by the group.
As with much of Scn theology, objective analysis and inspection is discouraged. I know of no documented case which gives credence to the idea that Scn training and processing breaks the age-old birth/death cycle, or that beingness and knowingness survives the transition.
Case in point – LRH himself. Few Scnists would disagree, that if any Clear or OT could survive death with their identity intact, it would be LRH. Yet, when you read Sarge’s account of LRH’s last days, any hopes of that occurring are pretty much dashed. And I have to ask – WHERE IS LRH? Why hasn’t he returned? Was he not a Sea Org member? Easy to say “We come back”, much harder to actually do it.
If Scn actually did have the solutions to this area, why not lift the veil and reveal it to world? With fully documented, indisputable evidence? People would flock to orgs. If you want to clear a planet, that’s a big step in the right direction.
They don’t do it because they don’t have any evidence to back it up. Like the 85% success rate Narconon claims – they just made it up.
We’re a bit far afield from the original posting. But, I wanted to illustrate the fact that Scn truly is based on FAITH and BELIEF, no matter how hard they assert otherwise.
If the future lives are real, then there’s apparantly going to be quite a lot of them, not only here on earth, but elsewhere, and that “knowingness” (of the “tech” urging of LRH’s in the Briefing Course tech film “Why TRs”) is indeed what you take with you, so you can like the kid in that tech film, when you find yourself on some distant decayed civilization planet, you can start and run a TRs Course from memory, like the narrator of that film, Isaac Hayes, tells you (per the LRH script).
Then there is that loose comment somewhere in 8-8008 or 8-80, LRH saying fear of the future is basically absurd, we will live through it all, in the long future anyways, so the fear of complete of destruction is nothing to fear!
It’s all unproven, it’s all subjective, this future lives, past lives “knowingness” or acquired “certainty”.
The selling of all these ideas, all these ideas can be gotten for free with some study, and even just someone going through all the various Scientology chat sites, freezone discussions, laying out the “cream” of LRH’s ideas for free, is about all that should be done, and let outsiders wanting to know the Hubbard theoretical shebang, just read the simple summary for free.
And decide to go the freezone route of far cheaper auditing and/or training if they want to become auditors.
Completely right, the herds of sheep haven’t heard anything else but ‘organizational structure’ for years and, as obedient followers, they just comply with what they have been told. Absolute obedience – not even faith- just a blind pursue of what a mad leader tells them to do. Forfeiting your freedom of choice is proof that your willingness to create your own life has died long, long ago. Inanimate beings, solid like a rock…yes, is very sad indeed.
Silvia,
Perhaps bringing up “organizational structure” is another way to shift focus off Miscavige himself since he’s getting so much unwanted attention from outside the bubble. “Command Intention” has also been overly used and Miscavige and Co. is creative with the use of language to sell (or just brainwash) the Captain of the Sea Org’s schemes.
I noticed this with Claire and Buz Taylor’s mega-status, brown-nosing Success Story about the IAS making them Big Beings. They really had nothing specific to say about the IAS and the only real point of the success story was to say that “management is brilliant”. No mention of COB or Command Intention there. This is just a new trend I’ve been observing. Miscagive is withdrawing even more and doesn’t want his identify out there too much.
Interesting observation indeed, Pepper
It has always amazed me how people come away
from doing these “Basics”. What percentage of
time and data does LRH spend talking about making
auditors in these basics?
Thomas is unknowingly correct in that the basics do
give solutions to turning things around. This would
indicate to me that people finishing the basics are in
a state of knowingness that yet creates unknowingness
because they have no idea how to apply this data to the
actual doingness of turning things around. So let’s support
orgs….that should work.
A strong organization is great but what does it support
when those in that organization “know” but sadly don’t
know?
If one wants to dig a large hole in a short amount of time
do they use a shovel or a backhoe? This group seems to
know best and of course that would be to use the very
best and never before known or understood technique
of digging a hole with other people’s money and never
once getting one’s hands dirty.
“Doing the Basics”, for years, was touted as the solution to everything. Financial woes – do the Basics. 2D Problems – do the Basics. Not happy with Bridge progress – do the Basics.
Since, then I have known at least a half dozen veteran Scnists who have completed the Basics and who have gone onto the Golden Age of Knowledge, and their situation in life has not changed one iota. Nothing, zip, nada. Same problems that have always been there. Yet every single one of them have written rave success stories about how the Basics changed their life.
All it changed was the idea they’ve held between their two ears. But, all the cogs and epiphanies never manage to influence or manifest in the real world.
I’m pretty sure the “status” of SUPPORTER is comparatively very low, like $1000 or $5000 tops. No super humanitarians to crow about? They should have a status of Martyr, as many might qualify for that.
So much of their promo violates the data series. Here we have dropped out time, altered-importance, falsehood and probably a host of others. I believe “delusional” should be added to the official list of outpoints.
Other than my noted issues, I am very happy for him.
From the movie “Grease” –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVs6ZJ9832M&feature=kp
Martyr Meritorious!! Lol!!
JPC, you speak truth!
Change and the ability to change is the only guarantee of an organizations survival.
+1
And, as LRH said in the early days, sanity is the ability to change one’s mind.
Tail end? As in, he’s just started or as in “We’re exhausted!”?
This is a pretty sad state of affairs, which you expose brilliantly, Mike.
“Fundamentalist Scientology” suffers from the same basic inherent flaw as all other fundamentalist religions. There’s only one solution to any problem with the faith: “If something doesn’t work, do more of it.”
Over time, this has the pleasant (for opponents, anyway) side effect of changing the focus of organizational management from expanding the “religion” to keeping it pure. And the more purity you enforce, the smaller your membership pool becomes. That’s exactly what’s happening inside the corporate Church of Scientology today.
‘And the more purity you enforce, the smaller your membership pool becomes.”
Implosion comes to mind John.