Another in the ever-growing series of essays by Terra Cognita. See earlier posts here: The Reg, The Horrors of Wordclearing, Why Scientologists Don’t FSM, Respect, The Survival Rundown – The Latest Scam, Communication in Scientology… Or Not, Am I Still A Thetan?, To Be Or Not To Be, An Evaluation of Scientology, Fear: That Which Drives Scientology and Justification and Rationalization.
The Almighty Stat
To a Scientologist, nothing is more important than statistics—or “stats” for short. LRH was all about measuring production, and all production can be measured with one stat or another. Having his stats up or down for the week, determines whether a staff member gets a pass or finds himself in deep shit.
The push for stats in Scientology is all consuming. Stats are everything. Witness the opening of every “event,” in which endless stats flaunt incredible expansion by the church. Most of these stats are false and meaningless, but who cares? They’re stats!
Upstats vs Downstats
In Scientology, a person is identified by being “upstat” or “downstat.” An upstat is a person who works long hours, makes lots of money, and contributes to the church. They’re progressing up the bridge at a good clip, donating to the IAS, and making regular advanced payments for their next service.
A downstat is anyone, from a poor Scientologist not making steady progress on his bridge, to an over-worked staff member not producing to the expectations of his senior, to a homeless person begging for spare change on the street.
LRH famously said that when you reward upstats you get upstats, and when you reward downstats you get more downstats. This has been perverted to mean that a Scientologist must never help the needy, indigent, or anyone down on their luck. Scientologists look down their noses at people like this—even people within their own church. Compassion and understanding are foreign concepts to the Scientologist. Exhibiting kindness, sympathy, and concern for the less fortunate simply breeds more downstats. Everyone is responsible for their own condition. Just make it go right.
In Scientology, the very worth of the individual is measured by his production—and by extension, his stats. Little is more important.
Thursday at Two
In order to squeeze more work out of his followers, LRH ended the Scientology work week on Thursdays at 2 PM. He reasoned that if the week ended on Friday, staff would slack-off and play all weekend. And of course, stats would suffer.
Prior to the end of the week, staff rush around frantically, doing anything they can to get their stats up. Every last bit of production must be achieved before Thursday at two. The consequences for down stats are too horrific to confront. I’m sure there’s not a current or past staff member who hasn’t felt this anxiety or who hasn’t been chewed out by a senior for not having their stats up. Or at least made to feel less human.
No doubt, many of you reading this have your own war stories.
The Stat Push
Every staff and student in Scientology has experienced the infamous stat push. Nothing is more important to a staff member than having his stats “up” for the week. Nothing. He will lie, cheat, cut corners, and harangue to make sure the line on his graph points upward and doesn’t dip. Stats must be pushed higher. Anything less is unacceptable.
Seniors fly into tirades and juniors work long into the night to push up their stats. Nothing is more frightening to a staff member on Thursday morning than not knowing how he’s going to get his stat up before two.
Students, too, are susceptible to the stat push—especially as they near the end of their courses when supervisors push and prod them to put in extra time, and rush them through their final drills and “practicals.” Many a supervisor has pulled a student off auditing a twin so that he could get bonus points for a student completion. The majority of supervisors are more concerned with stats than with making sure their students thoroughly get what they’re studying.
Scarcity of new public has forced staff to go to more and more extraordinary lengths to get their stats up. As church membership continues to plummet, stats are harder and hard’er to attain. And thus, staff have been forced to pound the remaining public for more and more of everything: more time on course, greater attendance at events, and of course, more money.
The push for stats is yet another method used by the church to control staff and work them to the bone. The true believers are convinced that the world is going to hell in a handbasket and that nothing less than all-out production will stem the tide of worldwide takeover by the psychs.
Statistic to Graph to Condition
All statistics in Scientology are graphed. The line going up or down determines what “condition” a staff member is in for the week. The “trend” of the line over a number of weeks determines what condition they’re in over that period of time.
Scientologists are expected to apply the correct condition depending on the slant of the lines on their graph. Sometimes this makes sense. Other times not so much.
Per LRH, a person could have stellar, astronomical stats for weeks on end, but if they weren’t trending upward, he would be in a condition of emergency or danger. The Recruitment Officer in an org could hire two or three new staff every week for ten weeks in a row (a phenomenal achievement) and still be placed in a lower condition because his stats were “flat” and not rising. (I speak from personal experience.)
Note: The subject of “conditions” is a huge topic in Scientology—one of which maybe I’ll tackle in the future.
Student Points
Perhaps the most ridiculous and arbitrary stat is “student points.” For every action a student completes on course—everything from clearing a definition of a word to auditing his twin to Nirvana—he’s awarded a set number of points. Dutifully, he adds up all his points at the end of each day and records the total on his graph. Per policy, he’s then supposed to apply the correct condition to his studies the next time he’s on course. Nobody ever does. Ever. In the whole warped history of Scientology, no student has ever paid attention to his student graph. Much less, applied the “correct” condition upon sitting down and opening his course pack. If he truly did, he’d be reading hundreds of thousands of pages a day by the time he got a third of the way up the bridge.
Most supervisors pay no attention to student graphs, either. They’re only interested in the combined total of all student points for the week and the number of students finishing courses before Thursday at two. In fact, they’re so concerned with student points and completions that they will go to bizarre lengths to insure a student finishes a course before the legendary deadline. The closer a student gets to the end, the harder the sups push. That the student understands and can apply what he’s studying is secondary.
The Myth
If conditions were applied “correctly” to all stats and graphs, every single man, woman, and child on planet Earth would be Clear by now (more likely, OT8). Per LRH, by applying the correct condition, stats will rise. And thus, will rise every week into eternity by simply following his formulas. But of course that’s never happened in the whole history of the universe. And yet, staff members go on applying the same old “emergency” and “danger” conditions week after week, month after month, and year after year.
Older staff have written up and applied the same tired formulas hundreds and hundreds of times. Which makes me wonder: what must they think after writing up and applying a particular condition for the two hundredth time? How many times can they apply the same sequence of non-existence, danger, and emergency and see no positive results before their heads finally explode?
A continually rising stat is impossible to attain. Eventually, the constraints of the physical universe will put the kibosh on any further production. A bricklayer can only lay so many bricks per day before there will come a point in his workday when he simply cannot physically lay any more bricks. In Scientology, an auditor can only audit so many hours per day and an MAA can only declare so many people per week. Then what? Assign the bricklayer a “danger” condition? Put the auditor in “emergency?” Drop the MAA down from treason to confusion?
More Lies
Mike, and many others, have reported on Davey Miscavige’s continuous lying regarding stats, including wildly inflated figures on the number of new Scientologists, the number of flourishing and prospering orgs, and the nonstop wins happening worldwide, etc., etc., etc. Pretty much every stat that comes out of the man’s mouth is bogus. And yet, diehard Scientologists hang on his every word, and—as measured by their applause at events—presumably believe every ridiculous number.
LRH said that stats don’t lie. What he failed to mention was that the people tabulating and reporting them do.
Still not Declared,
Terra Cognita
I did the PRO TRS course for the second time in 1999 on the Freewinds. BELIEVE ME IT TOUGH TO DO OTTRO WHEN YOU ARE DYING OF AIDS (See other posts of mine). The Chief Officer Bill Bragg was my twin and we were finally getting close to finishing the final video pass and the SSO was pushing for the completion. FINE. When we failed to get the TR4 good enough on Wednesday night we were asked to come in Thursday morning and we did. After more drilling Thursday morning I felt it was still not quite there.I told the SSO we needed more work on it and went to lunch. The next day I received a cram from the Snr C/S for outnesses in the video. THE SSO HAD SENT TO THE SNR CS AS A PASSING VIDEO TO TRY TO GET THE COMPLETION BEFORE 2. I was pissed. Not only was she trying to con the Snr C/S into passing it, had she succeded she would have tried to get me to attest to the course on the meter after I had already told her that it was not a product. I wrote a scathing report on the SSO . She was RPFed a few months later.
Please check out arguably the best example of LRH thought influencing.
“There’s no short stop on the road to truth. That is the only track that you have to go all the way on. Once you have put your feet upon that road, you have to walk to its end. Otherwise, all manners of difficulties and upsets will beset you.”
Well, Ron, I would say that truth is important, but not necessarily your brand.
“NO WAY OUT”
-per LRH, (thank you Mephisto)
“My truth or doom will beset you.”
(same example)
Gasp. What king of leaders is this? oh, sorry, it’s just Old Man Hubbard, that sly dog.
And [few] people wonder why I get so creeped out over “tech”, right?
Can you imagine teaching kids this stuff? No, but then Hubbard didn’t much care for kids,
off his short list of priorities.
Hi Orwell, Good to meet you.You have a spot-on view of Ron and his tricks,traps and trademark tech which he used however he wanted too.The minute I joined SO in 74 I could sense kiddies were not particularly favored.I did not have any but the SO kids then at Asho D&F were last on the list of priorities.Sad all that.xo
We, when declared DANGER, had to be able to recite both Non-Existence and Danger formulas to the letter, after writing them down over and over and…
Of course, there was that threat of being declared even lower than Non-Existence ALWAYS hanging over our heads. [ Liability. Treason. Enemy. ] Help me, Im falling and can’t get up, oh my. It strikes me just now, how it starts with positive motivation (“You can save the planet!), then quickly falls to negative, punishment-oriented motivation, waging even your Eternity to back the impending doom. Hubbard never would let you forget, that there is nothing really worse than a failed scn-gist. Thinking about that was part of the daily regimen.
And, you know, it was for nothing (except to keep the hypnotic policy drilled into my head, me hypnotized) , as, to begin with – my post was just fine! A blurb or whatever gets pointed out and suddenly there I am, in Danger for the third forsaken time. How many times… must a man turn his head…?
The Orwellian irony is that the formulas are pretty well thought out, as a defined sequence to improve the condition of existence. Trouble is, for me? is that I still get creeped out just saying a thing like that.
Please let me out of the closet.
Can’t breathe in this lousy box…
and forgive me,
its just the way i was brought up, is this by chance a confessional? oh, good.
I used to be a scn-gist, and
Hadson Took is a lie.
I never had kids. But, true enough, it is, and they made me think that jumping out of here was suicide!
All kids are like my grandsons now. Daughters.
Mine. To save me they are, and so I must save them. Speak!
I am… mr. doom but you can call me Orwell.
I had an Executive Director that based the decision of whether you got a day off on if your stats were up from the previous week on Friday night. It didn’t matter that you had a screamingly great week before or multiple weeks of upward trending stats. Come Friday nigh, she would compare where you were on the previous Friday and, if you weren’t higher, she would cancel your day off. So it came down to Thursday, 2:01 PM – Friday night’s production. I eventually learned to manage that time period – produce a low level one week, produce slightly higher the next, then slightly higher the following week, and so on, controlling the stats by sandbagging to the next day, if needed. Treat employees poorly and eventually they will find a way.
Here’s a stat they might want to look at to determine the real state of Scn –
Percentage of the population cleared. Doesn’t really matter what the sample is – world, country, city, or for that matter, percentage of people who have bought a book or done any course in Scn (after all, they’re all considered “Scientologists” in their grand total). Even that last one will be rather paltry.
Just to sort of put things in proper perspective.
Measuring production against time has its value when working to keep an organization viable and growing. What is more important however is the quality of the final product. For some jobs like number of floors swept or number of books sold it helps to maintain a certain level to ensure cleanliness and keeping books stocked and paid for.
Ultimately for real successes to occur the quality of the product has to be amazing for more people to want it. Today Scientology is 90% hype and 10% real positive changes for people.
Everything is geared towards making money instead quality lives which might take way to much time to achieve. That’s why the IAS push. Lots of money in for no product out. And it also explains why there are no real artists in Scientology any more. It’s about speed and volume not quality. Real artists are only concerned with the quality of their work which sometimes is a very slow process. That can be perceived as down stat.
How suppressive is that. Hubbard prided himself on is ability to churn out stories. Yes he could do that. He was a pulp fiction writing. A hack. And he built an organization that ultimately could do no better.
Very clear article TC. Thanks
The common denominator–and insanity–of every Ponzi scheme: Everything works fine as long as one gets to assume that infinite growth can be expected, and sustained for an infinite amount of time.
If nothing else, foundational principles of the cult such as this one, and blatant insanity in its teaching and practices–all built in by Hubbard hisself!–make one thing perfectly clear: Getting rid of Miscavige will ultimately change absolutely nothing. Failure is assured!
The irony is that while assuming infinite growth, they haven’t moved off 0, in the big picture. Ever.
When I first got in my sup was thinking I was a dingbat or something and he had me audit six pc’s to complete my dianetics course. One of them went clear. I audited evenings for what felt like months. And finally he let me comp. It wasn’t an internship but I could audit the crap out of it. And I was certain and proud of myself. Then it got updated and I had to go through it all over again. Same sup, made me audit a ton. Finally comped. He then got booted into administration and the new sups comped me with my head spinning and not with that bedrock certainty that I could do this.
Thus began the new era of being pushed along quickly. I don’t know what the big rush was, but so began the decline in the courseroom of the happy, certainty, studying with people I’d gotten through the death of a family member, people I’d helped with their marriages, jobs, friends, parents and other things that auditing can help with.
The long tr’s were gone too.
Stats killed standard tech if you ask me. The jury is out if standard tech is all that helpful. But back in the day I did receive benefits and felt that I had helped others. Later, higher on the bridge I regularly convinced myself that it was good. Not like when my mind was blown lower on the bridge.
Stats also killed the Flag experience. Pushy board I/C’s trying to get you in session after a big win, vulturous IAS reges trawling the waiting room, ruining your high, stressed auditors assessing lists in a freakily robotic way and a hyper vigilant set of course sups that would bust you for two way comming to your twin. No fun, no laughter, if it isn’t pushing you forward with no distractions it’s not worth doing.
Yeah, stats killed scientology. Not that it needed help, it was killing itself in many and sundry ways before the slavish lavishing of sick love on stats.
I remember the help yelling screaming and running Thursdays before 2 pm. Esto had com evs pre typed ready to send if stats were down for a while. Stat push for your life…
Great article that reflects some of the key elements of my Scientology ride.
The obvious failure of LRH’s admin tech centers on stat management. From the mid 70’s to the mid 80’s I watched decency and enlightenment snuffed out with the short-sighted focus on stats. For most of us, condition assignments amplified a frantic, desperate reach to make Scientology work. It was/is a disaster to the COS making life miserable for every staff member.
Hi JustLook!, I think your comment is right on target.Stats and the condition assignments from such became just plain brutal.Always
Re: “Scarcity of new public has forced staff to go to more and more extraordinary lengths to get their stats up. As church membership continues to plummet, stats are harder and harder to attain. And thus, staff have been forced to pound the remaining public for more and more of everything: more time on course, greater attendance at events, and of course, more money.”
Thank you, Terra Cognita. To hear about this from the inside of scientology only goes to validate observations from the outside that things in Hubbardsville have not been going very well for a very long time.
Staff will be getting Shoe patterns very soon.
Hi JennyAtLAX, I echo your post to Terra Cognita.Things in Hubbardsville are rotting beneath the glitter of zero OT9 &10, plus not alot of new sheeple.Actually I hope the big whales keep giving to dm.At some point their money will run dry.Those of us who save for rainy days are far smarter in my view.❤️❤️
The Master was never content, never satisfied.
(But then, can you imagine being both paranoid and content, at the same time?)
He could hijack you mind.
Make you do all those things, for next to nothing, and he could make very sure you think
that that
is just the way you want it. I hope nobody is doubting, here,
that mind-manipulation WORKS.
And then, there were the STATS…
to make sure your enthusiasm for producing your own maximum potential
was kept full-ON…
You know ‘stats’ can land you in Ethics. Unhappy? Oh, well now, that makes you eligible for Liability, man, where job one is producing twice as much as “Normal”. WHACK!…goes the metaphorical whip.
(
Tell me, tell me this cult is not just plain brutal. Heartless, too. Top to Bottom, or at least down to the guy in charge of you. And then you, you had to sell your heart to the devil, too… just exactly at that point in time in which it was your turn, time to tell the guy you are in charge of… hey, buddy, your stats are down, you are demoted to the condition of Danger. Get to it.
It’s not heartless top to bottom. Sorry the cult doesn’t function that way. I’m not an apologist, I’m just trying to be honest and accurate. LRH may have been heartless. DM appears to be very heartless. But most of the Scientologists I dealt with were very caring, heartfull( and delusional) people.
Agree with you. Some of the best people I know are scientologists. They may be deluded, but that does not mean they are mean-spirited or uncaring. It is why I don’t participate in protests/demonstrations in front of orgs. Those staff are generally sacrificing a normal life, pay, comforts and family because they believe what they are doing is good and right.
Just think how much better off they’d be if they worked for or with an organization that actually helped others and was not obsessed with stats and evil psychs.
Hi Mephisto, Thank you,a very good point.xo
yes, on the obsessions. What else? let’s see…
Stats, right.
past lives, check.
Keeping out wogs. All the wogs. Holy mackerel, yes. Even mom and dad.
E-meters.
Word Clearing. o my god.
repeat after me, repeat repeat repeat…
Is it not honest to say that they were obsessive about finking on each other?
no, no no… the Knowledge Reports.
That practice kept the entire org at a certain tone… like ALWAYS.
Hey, did you rat out Charlie yesterday? NO? Why the hell not? I will have to write a report. CHIT.
Yes,
this group should win some kind of Obsession Award, really.
“Man is basically good.” (except for the psychs).
Yes. Most people who got into scamology did so for altruistic reasons. Most stayed that way. A slice got corrupted into heartless a-holes like the founder was. DM being the most well known example.
There is a lot to be said for any person striving for greatness.
I think every solitary scientologist possesses a quality of dedication to being great, believes enough to make a difference, and also that scientology has much such a difference in his life, his own personal evolution.
That scientology was something he could finally, at last, be sure of, with all trust.
That is real belief. Another word for that is heart, like faith.
The leader had some enviable qualities. Passion about his religion, such.
Hell, you could call him nuts on that alone, his obsession. That total confidence.
But, that policy of his, duplicated top to bottom, now THAT was heartless
And then, again by HIS WORD, flawless and perfectly duplicated,
you DO have to pin all the true heartlessness – on him alone.
The entire load.
–
I was a senior, too. I had juniors and I sure had to press their workload, crack the whip no matter how great they did last week, cracking the whip months on end, already.
A “flat graph” is headed for Danger, am I right? Last weeks monumental achievements just are not good enough any more, more, more…
My good night wishes, please… Where’s the heart, in that?
If we are to be of any help at all here,
it is monumentally important to take the scientologist-oriented person first:
as a good and well-intended person.
Forget the a__holes and, really all the horrible experiences, and which is which.
Easily said.
But, what matters now is getting our heads back on straight. We have all come quite a significant ways, despite all the barriers, obstacles and hurdles the “church” has thrown in our collective way.
The mind manipulated needs to step out of itself, take some contemplation on what has happened here and how the situation is presently affecting decisions, how we are thinking and solving problems. We do need to be aware of the sub-conscious level, which does possess reason same as the conscious one. We have to acknowledge that we have been traumatically manipulated for as long as we were “in”. That is a first step. That history has got us locked in to a way of thinking, altering perception and judgement and thoughts and what we say next.
What we say next.
And that brings me back to the guy inside, still being threatened just for the idea of having a critical thought against his creed. He is not allowed to think that ANYthing could possibly be wrong with his wonderful church and/or its creed and daily doings. Ten minutes of thought along those lines of questioning would reveal such huge flaws, but, no, the terminals for communicating and thus solidifying such and similar thoughts have been removed, handily obliterated with all intent.
This is true for each one of us who carries the scientology experience as part of our history.
We are out. They are in. “Us” is all of us. We have the advantage now, of not being the ones who still have to live with scientology bricks being bounced off our foreheads, imprinting what we have to think, telling us what we have to forget. Meanwhile, we should humbly remember that reality is not reality just because you think so… we at best can only made an imprint in our heads, depicting reality as we perceive it, and it is ALL flawed because we couldn’t possibly sort out the potential information, or be aware of the subconscious – without all those necessary precepts and stereotypes. That is taken as a derogatory term, but how would anyone get past the next person, any person we meet, without pre-conceived ideas, right? We need SOMETHING, after all, to structure reality upon. The point is, there are a whole lot of flaws going on in the process, and humility is in order, especially if we are going to be going around talking as if we know anything.
All this is to press the point, ( I hope somebody gets me ) that we should be humble, that some humility is due, appropriate for us speakers. And that the reason for it is, is that we need to keep this space as inviting as can be graciously allowed. This may be the first stop for more than one wayward insider. More than a good person, or a person who cares, the doubting scientologist is a valuable person who has already oriented him or herself around the importance of dedicating yourself towards becoming more able and making the world a better place. Really, does it get any better than that?
Here we are, in a world of schemas and conceptuals, and in walks the battered scientologist.
One moment-
our beliefs on the characteristics of other people is utterly dependent on stored knowledge and hidden reasoning processes. Thank goodness we can “know” that we can rely on subconscious knowledge to be correct… as long as it hasn’t been altered by somebody with malicious intent. Covertly mess around with the subconscious, did Hubbard ever do that? Did he ever NOT do that?
What to say, what to say.
Let’s hope the man or woman broken free quickly finds it here,
and feels welcome. Yes.
“The doubting scientologist is a valuable person.”
So true, sir bug.
I learned the hard way about not being near the end of a course come Thurs 2pm, over the years I refined my approach to ensure I dragged it out so that I finished easily several days before with out having to stay late. Sups took little to no interest in student graphs, this allowed me to get away with slacking off on a course as I knew it didn’t actually matter if I was down on the previous study session.
Terra is right about the sups being more interested in the stat than the student’s understanding of the material, I well remember being told to study basics books at home, I simply skimmed the pages not really caring what was in there, just so I could report it as done. My approach to ‘learning’ sounds stupid and pointless to me now – why even pretend to study it in the first place? What a waste of time.
Thursday at 2pm worked wonders for me. My wife and I were getting sec checks as part of our “handling” of faking to be Scientologists so we wouldn’t lose our son to disconnection. We had had enough of their bullshit sec-checks. Well, we were near what we thought was the end of the sec-checks and it was Thursday at 1pm and they wanted us as one of their completions. It was great…I was able to lie so much easier and got thru it in time for them to report us as a comp – 2pm. Thanks for the stat-push LRH!
Hi clearlypissedoff, I love your comment.I should have done the same way back when.Hunger made my rational thinking or the shed of it that was left disappear!XO
Like everything else in Scientology, group common sense doesn’t exist and individuals are forced to adopt the extreme & exact interpretation of the God like status of the “tech/policy” via command intention.
Take away the Scientology insanity of statistics and only statistics matter, even beyond the health of its members and it’s not too bad, just as easy as getting town council to change its mind and lowering taxes.
Nothing good comes from being a member of the Cof$.
“Stats theory” as employed by scientology is an embarrassment. Honestly, a child can see it. Since a child can see the absurdity of it and yet it is religiously, SUPERSTITIOUSLY, adhered to it’s obvious there’s an underlying issue. Indeed, people are made frantic and miserable by a system that continually fails to yield the promised results week after week, year after year. Hmmm, what could the problem be?
Do you suppose Hubbard was full of baloney about a few things? Impossible. The man who discovered the fictitious state of ‘clear’ and thereby made possible the salvation of thetans across the galaxies couldn’t have been in error about something so practical. The man who shattered scientific paradigms with his revelation that “energy consists of postulated particles in space” (axiom 5) couldn’t have flubbed the mundane principles of business administration. But still, it kinda makes ya wonder.
Hi roger, Oh yes,makes me wonder indeed.xo
If you, Terra Cognita, ever write about conditions, I’d invite you to mention this one critical point when it comes to ethics and conditions. That is the fact that one’s out-ethics pull in conditions.
It is a core tenant that one’s thetan is more powerful, whether consciously or not, than the physical universe. This gives justification to punish one who was a low stat: no matter what excuse, however agreeable it may be, the person’s thetan could’ve gotten the stat up, yet didn’t due to an out-ethics condition.
Why do those in “The Hole” stay there? They believe that they deserve it; their down stats and “transgressions” against Miscavage prove their guilt, allegedly. However, don’t think that this is a Miscavage-invented thought process; Hubbard clearly made it OK to punish one due solely to their statistical worth over a 7-day frame.
“You pulled in the condition.” What a load of brain-washing bullshit meant to make one second-guess their noble intentions whilst deflecting blame off the Church itself.
Hi Nezquick, Thank you,I like your comment.”You Pulled In The Condition”.Did I hear that one to the front porch of infinity and back again! The only way I would have been totally upstat was to,have dropped the body! Sorry Ron no Target2 for this one! xo
I went to, and eventually “worked” (slaved) at a Narconon, and it was the same thing. One minute a drug user whose life is upside down, the next they’re a graduated “counselor” (no training) totally in charge of getting others off of drugs. The salary was abysmal. $50 for a minimal 96 hour work week. We too had stats, points, etc. It was Scientology. Period. No one forced anyone to remain on as staff but they sure worked hard to manipulate you into thinking you had no other options. But rebuilding a life at $50 per week was tough. About 90% failed and did not make it. The others lied, cheated, and stole their way to faked stats to make extra money, because once in a while you’d get like $25 or $30 bucks for doing this, or doing that, if your stats were up. If they weren’t, you were treated like a second class citizen and were on RPF. The REAL moneymakers were the registrars…THAT was the racket! They made a pretty awesome percentage of the $30,000 Narconon cost. Side note, our registrar was always relapsing…on Mouthwash of all things. She was an alcoholic. See, you cant ever mention alcohol or drugs at a Narconon. They do not want you talking about ti, even as a “student”. Invariably, almost every person who walked in the door complained days later that they were lied to and manipulated into coming by the registrars, promised outlandish things like private rooms, Hours each day to lie on the beach to recover, etc. Yeah RIGHT. The Narconon “line” was that a drug user was allowed and encouraged to be lied to, well, because they were a drug user, “if it meant saving their life”. This caused A LOT of contention, and probably why my counselor “blew” after 3 days of me being there, on a crack binder. That was the tip of the iceberg, though. One story is crazier than the next. What an insane point of my life. 10 years later, I am clean and doing better than well. Because I wanted it.
Good for you! Recovery despite scientology.
HiIAmMe, It is good to meet you.Thank you for sharing your experience with Narconon.In Sea Org I really did not come in contact with the group,as I did not write to anyone there,same for prisons.But I sure knew it was Scientology.Congratulations on reclaiming your life.XO
Hi IamMe, thanks for relating your story. It’s great to hear that you were able to overcome those difficulties and have a good life nowadays. You never know how or when your words can help someone else who is struggling, and it gives them hope and inspiration, so thank you for sharing. Best wishes, have a happy week! – T.J. 🙂
The two worse things anybody can do is
1. Apply Power in Emergency
2. Apply Emergency in Power
David Miscaviges operating basis as COB since day one.
Hi Jose Chung, Words from the wise,thank you.XO
Spot on with point 1. Not sure he gets much chance to do 2 though.
I doubt there is more pressure to be “upstat” on any post than the “Reg”. Course Supers for Completions and DofPs for Auditing Hours are probably close seconds. I know this is true for non-SO Orgs perhaps especially. And I’m sure the pressure is on every post in the SO some way, some meaningless stat such as Letters Out, Bulk Mail Out, Inches of Positive Press, Sq Meters of grass mowed, Number of Scotch Drinks poured flawlessly for Miscavige… etc.
Often as a Mission Bookstore Officer (Reg), PES (Div 6 Reg), then Div 2 Reg (the big money man or woman), we would be hammering on some public until 4 or even 6am on Wednesday nights and well into Thursday mornings. No breaks until the money was upstat for the week. Often enough I worked 7 days a week when “stats” – income in a slump.
In ways Orgs and Missions are just as brutal as the SO, perhaps even more so in some ways as you had to buy your own food and pay your own rent, car, clothing, etc etc.
Hi Ronn S,I certainly hear you with your comment.When I was letter reg but especially ASR advance scheduling reg @ Asho F many Weds nights I worked straight through on the phone.Killer and not in a good way.lolXO
This article brings to mind the last encounter I had with stat-driven idiocy. My student points had dipped slightly, and thus I had earned a free trip to the word clearer. She showed me the LRH reference re a student’s statistic going down, even if only slightly. Though I politely informed her that it didn’t make sense to me, she was obligated to apply it, as who was she to go against something carved in stone? Needless to say, she was intent on finding my “MU” so I gave her one to get her off my back. I really had no choice without being threatened with ethics. It was another piece of cognitive dissonance to the already increasing pile. Eventually the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back was added, and it was Sayonara Scientology.
Lil davey has not only false reported many stats for years, he’s also omitted reporting the two key stats that Elron himself explicitly designated as directly measuring $cn’s overall progress in clearing the planet: Number of well done auditing hours and fully trained auditors.
The logic there is really quite simple: Without an increasing number of fully trained auditors working full-time in their profession, auditing hours can not increase and, as a direct and unavoidable consequence, no gathering wave of cleared humans will be set free.
Exactly how so many knowledgeable and committed $cilons have been able to avoid noticing this glaring out point is truly amazing to behold! Are folks so cowed and fear-conditioned that no one even let’s the thought, “Hey, where are all the auditors and preclears!?” come fully to consciousness, even though those stats are exactly the ones that Elron himself chose and which form about as a simple a chain of causal logic as can be? Apparently so.
Stats don’t lie, so, if that dwindling spiral continues unabated, the handwriting is already on the wall: $cn WILL fail in its primary mission of clearing the planet!
Regardless of whether or not you continue to believe that $cn auditing procedures and practices are effective, the fact is that those two key statistics measuring $cn’s progress toward its ultimate goal have been omitted by DM, so no one really knows exactly what condition that DM and all of $cn are in with respect to it. It’s possible that failure to report them is a mere oversight which is not indicative of the fact that they have collapsed world-wide…that is, “possible” in the same way that you’re likely to see a herd of pigs take flight and fly in formation to the next Ideal org’s opening for it’s “christening” 😉
If we assume what is most likely the case here, then given lil davey’s concentration of power unto himself, there is only person at whose feet the responsibility for the world-wide crash of those two key stats can be placed.
To all of those who are working so hard and contributing so much to achieve the “star-high” goal of clearing the planet: How can you “keep Scientology working” if all your efforts have been undermined by an individual who has been at the helm while the number of well done auditing hours and fully trained auditors have completely crashed?
Square footage of Ideal org space and total IAS contributions are not equivalent to well done auditing hours and trained auditor, so no amount of the former, without the addition of the latter, will accomplish the goal that some have spent their entire working lives to achieve…and you deserve better than that!
One of the best comments on this blog that I have ever seen. Says everything in a nutshell and virtually everything in Scientology can be regarded in the light being shined (or not), on these two statistics.
Hi Harpoona, You shine again.A stellar post.XO
Thanks T.C.
No bile.Just what the guy on the ground saw.
If I remember correctly, individual auditors were assigned conditions depending on a preset level of WDAHs, based on policy, which made sense to me, and I could not understand why this standard was not applied across the board to other staff who could only get to a ceiling of production.
Execs who could hire and fire and organize their divs or orgs under them to cater for greater production could have a weekly stat that could increase. These execs would have the benefit of being able to influence other areas that would lead to higher stats for themselves.
I consider this subject to be a major contributor to the downfall of Scientology, in conjunction with the misuse of the lower ethics conditions, and I believe it should be the subject most intensely looked at and studied should the church ever decide to get its ethics in. I always felt that staff were much more upstat than they were treated.
In fact this blog could be used as a sort of survey, within reason, to get no b/s answers to what needs to be improved in the church.
Needless to say, dave has a cushy cumulative stat, based on money in, so the interest the money made would be counted and I would bet that he would include rising real estate prices in that stat as well, if he was even concerned about keeping his own stats anymore.
I was on staff for a number of years and worked an average of 80 hours per week. During this time I was probably assigned lower conditions three times per year. I was not alone. It was routine.
After I left Scn it occurred to me that I was NEVER a liability to the org or Scn. Nor were my fellow staff members.
Think about it, I worked 80+ hours per week, had two weeks vacation in 7 years, many, many weeks got ZERO pay, near perfect attendance, sacrificed my other dynamics to serve the church and left staff in debt. How could I possibly be a liability??
NO, the CHURCH is the one in a lower condition – NOT THE STAFF MEMBER.
If Scientology had actually worked, I’m sure you would have been a billionaire.
During my short time in the Sea Org, I encountered the phenomena of EPFers and SO members getting on post and doing very very little and increasing that production by small increments each week so as to have an up trending stat graph. One of these people worked on an EPF team I was I/C of and I tried to get them disciplined via Ethics review – but was told they had Ethics protection as they were upstat.
As Espiando notes above, Hubbard “borrowed” his management by statistics approach, but misunderstood and misapplied the concept.
As the article points out, you can only do so many things in a given day — the bricklayer was a good example. Scientology fails to “obnose” (observe the obviousness) of that fact, and so pushes people to work harder and faster and longer hours. Those longer hours come out of time for sleep, exercise, personal care, relationship time, etc. And actual accomplishments deteriorate further.
By Scientology standards, Phelps is probably a downstat swimmer, because he is not continually going faster and faster. In the real world, Phelps is a superstar swimmer because he is faster than probably 99.9% of other humans — that’s what you measure against, not a single person’s trend line when that trend line is topped out due to extraordinary performance.
That’s also why in some organizational improvement approaches, you don’t look internally alone at your KPIs, you look at other similar high-performing organizations — sometimes called aspirational peers. You find someone who is doing your kind of work and is doing it more successfully, and you find out why and emulate that. You cannot do this sort of comparison in Scientology though, because Hubbard is the sole and final word on everything and his word is perfect — so it would anathema to look at some other organization to see what tools, procedures, training, technology, etc. they were using that helped them outperform you.
By carving Hubbard’s words in stone, all Scientology has ultimately done is make the headstone for their increasingly atavistic, moribund organization.
And as to stats in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics
Not quite true what you say as there is the policy (forget it’s long title now) of how you assign Affluence and Power and how one can see or view that statistically. Basically the swimmer guy above would be in a condition of Power, a very high long term albeit unchanging (downward at least) statistic, whatever the statistic is. I think the HCO Policy Letter is around 1983, so it is a late comer in the Conditions set of policies.
And also when I was on post yes, it is correct that there is only a certain amount personally that one can produce but then to maintain my stats I recruited several other people for my department and the stats rose as they would then contribute to my division’s stats etc. When the stats hit a high ceiling and they carry on maintaining that high ceiling that is Power. So whilst much of what the author of this article states is correct a lot of people commenting on here are assuming falsely that “you can only produce a certain amount before hitting a ceiling so it’s all nonsense.” No, it’s not, it’s just that some people don’t know that policy on Affluence/Power (which even I seem to have forgotten the name of! Ha! (But I have it conceptually is my excuse!))
As is my wont, the policy is HCO PL 27 AUGUST 1982 VITAL DATA: POWER AND AFFLUENCE CONDITIONS in (the newer) OEC Basic Staff Volume page 493. But staff would probably not know this data now and thus pass it on (excuse me – refer it) to students/public as the OEC Volumes in Orgs “have been rounded up and sent to the furnaces” by you know who!
YEs, this is correct for an auditor or a letter registrar (about the only two posts in an org like this).
The problem is that it does NOT apply for a regular registrar. Or a Director of Processing (who is the senior of the auditors). Or the Letter Reg IC. All of those are expected to generate “unlimited expansion” by recruiting more staff or suckers. But that doesnt happen so the pressure is put on their juniors.
If you will note, there is no organization ever in history that has been able to use statistics and conditions formulas to generate constant expansion. It is a system that has not proven workable.
Fool, reread that PL. There is a little part at the end of that states that no matter HOW high the person’s production, through various machinations he can get out a little more each week.
You should “word clear) LMAO – that PL as you forgot that part.
The policy is not valid.
The policy is invalid.
The tech is misrepresented so as to appear as something it is not.
The tech has a hidden agenda.
The creed was originated for the primary purpose of creating a false perception, of itself, of the self, AND the world.
The creed had the secondary purpose of altering the decisions and thought processes of the perceiver, unbeknownst to him.
This “church” is ALL about manipulation, and removing control from the self to the controller, a person or entity other that the self.
Scientology, as a whole, is a complete and provable fraud, same as it ever was.
I don’t know what you two Mikes are on about. The policy is quite straightforward and to say as Mike 1 says “But that doesn’t happen…” is not because the Policy is incorrect it is because people don’t do the actions required, i.e. they don’t apply the formulas. As LRH states he had St. Hill in Power and FSO when at Daytona. I personally have had several posts in Power and many, many people in Scientology history have as well, in fact probably thousands of people have done so over the years.
As for Mike 2 I don’t find this little gem you post from the policy but if the snippet exists and if you think your rather unimportant statement invalidates the policy as a whole I pity you in your urge and compulsion to find something (what you consider) detrimental and that proves your totally petty point. When compared to the quite outstanding useful information it presents such would be laughable, so I am LMAO at your pettiness and urge to invalidate anything LRH that you seem to possess. Sorry to piss on your petty made-up bonfire (not really). Is it because you see the name “Foolproof” and feel compelled to find something/anything (that you think) can be use to invalidate what I write?
I think if people who are reading this would take the time and trouble to read to actually read the (rather long) Policy through (I haven’t again I must admit but…), they would see that what I said above even from reading the salient points of the policy, is quite correct. Again, (not) sorry to piss on someone’s bonfires. Most of what the original article states is more or less true and I don’t have any argument against it but where parts of it aren’t then surely these can be discussed without bending the facts to suit one’s own agenda. Or perhaps this “little point” (?) about people being expected to raise stats to the stars when it is obvious that they cannot do so personally was a key aspect of the article for some, and presented as being an LRH nonsense, but lo and behold, once you read the (LRH) policy you find out that that is not the case – and people haven’t understood it (or have never read it) and assume something else and rail against “LRH nonsense”. I rest my case.
Are you really so gullible still?
If someone invented a machine guaranteed to make you rich, but it was so complicated nobody could use it, would you say the people were flawed or the inventor? And was the claim that it was guaranteed to make you money true or false?
I was at Daytona. Power? Hardly… It happened to be the first time public in the US could get “FCCI auditing” in the US. Prior to that there were about 6 people who had been FCCI’s on the Apolloa. I can almost name each of them. No more than 2 at a time (there was no space for them).
And SH was the ONLY place where you could get Power, SHSBC and Clearing Course in the world. By 1967 it had fallen apart (I am sure you are familiar with all the policies in OEC Volume 7 about the failures of Exec Council SH and ECWW).
LRH also said Boston made it to SH size in a few weeks in the early 70’s. Do you believe this is true too?
And if all these people have had posts in power, why is scientology disappearing down the drain?
Oh, it’s because it is perfect but there isn’t anyone on earth that can properly apply it, right?
I cannot make you see. Only point out things and hope you will open your eyes. As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
Once again I thank you Fool for showing the world what a mind on Scamology looks/thinks like. 🙂
If you find out the REAL conditions of staff members and public – you will find the carnage of being involved in L Ron Hubbard’s “Stat Driven Life” – bankruptcy, financial ruin and foreclosures are the EEE PEE of living the Stat Driven Life.
Scientologist’s hurting Scientologist’s is the End Product of the Stat Driven Life.
I heard that phrase”Stat Driven Life” on several Ex Scientology Blogs. I believe a book should be written on that type of life within Scientology and what it really creates.
“Scientologists hurting Scientologists is the End Product of the stat driven life.” Whew! What a brutal scene! How can anyone be happy in this situation? Trust no one, I guess…
In fact, there is no “trusting” between one scientologist and another, as reporting each other for ANY flaw or deviation from policy IS POLICY. [re: Knowledge Reports] This has a powerful effect on your selection of thought, and also your mindset when it comes to addressing and assessing the unseen characteristics of your fellows, not to mention the rest of creation.
Also, as you know, there is no discussing your experience on The Bridge. Policy dictates that you remain strangers in that regard as well.
And so, just as you say, there is no happy. No peace of mind, either. Rather, always driven, and always alone. Isolated being a better word. Net result of this situation: opportunity for contemplative thought has been pretty much taken – out – of the picture. By the time time rolls around, you most likely have had far too much anxiety swarming around the brain to conduct constructive criticism or rationalism, anyway. Your inner voice falls asleep before you do, if you drive yourself that hard. Truly horrible. But, the path to happiness? Well, as hazy as the final destination may appear, however near or distant that horizon… the first step towards contentment has to be…OUT, clearly outside the bubble.
I read a paper the other day, said something that stuck in my mind:
You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
Well, if like me you can accept that as even partly true… my hope is that none of those five people are scientologists.
Damn, and I thought they were the authorities on the mind. ?
For the sake of happy I would hang with you anytime, Mephisto.
Thanks Orwell.
One needs to look no further than China’s infamous Great Leap Forward to see how easy it is to falsify statistics and the repercussions that go with it. From Wikipedia: “… local officials, under tremendous pressure from central authorities to report record harvests in response to the innovations, competed with each other to announce increasingly exaggerated results. These were used as a basis for determining the amount of grain to be taken by the State to supply the towns and cities, and to export. This left barely enough for the peasants, and in some areas, starvation set in.”
Sound familiar? It’s an endless cycle of increasingly dubious statistics to better the week prior. I witnessed this first hand during my time at E.I. DuPont with equally dire results. Hit the magic 85% productivity metric – a bizarre monthly formula that management devised and no one truly understood – and you damn sure better hit that mark the following month or endure endless “quality task force” meetings to improve your “empowerment”.
I’m curious, does any other church use such meaningless stats? “Father get with the program! You’re down 11% on your Hail Mary penance and your Our Fathers are down as well”.
I’m curious about how people creatively reported stats. There’s that perhaps apocryphal story about the Russian commune charged with producing nails. As pressure to increase their stats was brought to bear, they increased their production by making smaller and smaller nails, until they were producing pins– lots of them. An inspector visited the village, discovered what they were doing, and changed the statistic to “pounds of nails produced.” And so, the next year they produced a single, huge nail.
There’s got to be some stories like this.
Nice story, you nailed it.
One of the more creative stat fudges I saw was FESing, and then call it auditing. I was even told how it gave the PC case gain, by the CS no less. Even if there was no sign of a PC, they blew years ago and there was half an hour left on account – FES the folder for half an hour and up go the WDAHs.
Or many and long touch assists on staff members for internship hours. Ah… honesty and Scientology’s pressure for statistics, not good friends at all!
Good morning Dave,
You are assigned the condition of being an EVIL ASSHOLE.
There is only one step to this condition. It is:
LEAVE AND NEVER COME BACK.
All of the standards that I audit companies on have a requirement for a Continuous Improvement Program. The way these operate is through a selected set of Key Performance Indicators. KPIs are designed to spot potential weaknesses. They are not an indicator of systemic failure. There are no punishments meted out if KPIs are trending down, there is only a program to find the root cause of the downtrend and to apply solutions based on the root cause. Stats are not the be-all and end-all of an organization. Not everything has a KPI applied to it.
What Hubbard did was base his organization on a misinterpretation of Quality Management from the 1930s, when it became trendy to base an organization on statistics. Back in the 1930s, manufacturers took the lessons of Deming and Shewhart and ended up misapplying them. Every step of a process, it seemed, had a statistical process control chart. Companies became obsessed by them, and it threw those companies in the toilet. Statistical process control ended up becoming demonized in the US for over forty years. It took the Japanese, who applied the lessons correctly, and the success of new forms of process control like Six Sigma to rehabilitate the concept. Companies today are using tools for continuous improvement correctly.
Scientology is not. They’re stuck because Hubbard, like those companies in the 1930s, became obsessed with numbers.
If I ran into a Continuous Improvement Program like the Data Series being applied at a company that I’m auditing, I’d put in a non-compliance in that section. The Data Series is not a method for continuous improvement.
Good data, Espiando. And you are correct to point out that Scn’s use of statistics has not been allowed to evolve, all based on the “extensive research” conducted by Hubbard.
As a side note, a number of years ago the NHS in England introduced KPIs and they invariably found that normally decent, honest employees would ultimately falsify their statistics. This led to a refinement of how KPIs are measured and used within the NHS. This is something obviously missed by Hubbard, and ever since its introduction, has been the elephant in the room.
ALL Scn org stats are false to a greater or lesser degree. They are dealing with an impossible situation. How to get the stats up EVERY week, without restructuring of the organization, changing policy, additional manpower, or additional funding. In short, it’s a fucking nightmare.
The only winners in this game is Scn Sea Org management, who simply yell and scream at Class V org staff to get their stats up, and if it results in increased income…well, job well done. Most will comply and put in extra hours, and in some cases spend their own money to get their stats up.
Good points. Here’s something about KPIs that I should have mentioned in my original post: the time period in which KPIs are compiled and assessed is based on importance, relevance, and quantity of data obtained. Some KPIs are important enough and enough data is generated by the organization to be assessed on a weekly basis, but not all of them. Customer complaint data is one of the usual KPIs in my bailiwick of food safety and quality, and most companies trend them on a monthly basis, very often in a form of customer complaint per unit measure.
The point here is that it is utter insanity to measure and assess every single KPI on a weekly basis, and that all must trend upward or there’s trouble. No sane quality management system would do that. None. The Data Series is, in Scientology terms, a Third Dynamic engram induced by Hubbard. Scientology, as an organization, is insane and doesn’t wish to seek treatment because they believe their actions are the sanest possible way to run a company.
“In order to squeeze more work out of his followers, LRH ended the Scientology work week on Thursdays at 2 PM.”
According to El Con the week ended at 2 p.m. on Thursday so that all stats could be collected, sent to management so that management could examine and act on them by the end of the week on Friday. Or, an approximation of what I just wrote. there was even a PL on the subject.
Correct Mike. Friday was reserved for planning for the upcoming week. And I believed allowed Treasure to do necessary banking, etc.
That’s correct Mike &Statpush, The FP was supposed to be used to make more money/production within the new week. For years I used to get the FP sum on the following Wed nite. I had to work my ass off to activate the FP thur mornings. I’m soooo glad I’m not part of that insanity any longer 🙂
But wasn’t if fun dealing with an FBO who could barely understand English and would fly into a rage due to insane demands from the FBO N/W and other Int Mgmnt idiots?
All LRH simple axioms are ignored and replaced with lies.
( Enter your own Horror story here)
When I was at the Sandcastle courseroom once, the supervisor for some reason decided to show me how most students UNDER reported their stats by on average 25%. He showed me their reported stats compared to what they’d actually done on course. It must have been some justification, I thought, for his own inflating of stats. Later, I was in charge of tabulating the stats of my OTC and I did a number of things: I counted stats of people who hadn’t reported in (on the ‘assumption’ they’d done something reportable; on top of that I added on the 25%. Even after all that, at the end of the year Flag would instruct us that our reported stats weren’t high enough and we had to’find’ more. For two people I was already claiming more volunteer hours each day than hours in the day existed – and that still had to be increased! When I asked the OTC chairman about where to find the required stats, I was tersely told, ‘they’re there – just find them’. Ahhh! Good times! One of the last MV events I attended, when I heard the total hours reported for my continent (Africa), based on my org’s OTC production they were impossibly high even by the standards of the inflated weekly stats I used to report. It’s all just crap.
Ah Stats, the backbone of Hubbard’s “advanced” management system. There is probably nothing more destructive to the health of an org than the operation of statistics. Couple that with WEEKLY intervals and you’ve got a neurotic (and at times psychotic), desperate group that cannot see, plan or execute anything past Thursday at 2:00. This means virtually all of their actions are short-term, designed to increase a statistic now or within a couple of days.
Operating this way, work NEVER gets easier, and is guaranteed to get HARDER as time goes by. Staff will get into the vicious cycle of push, push, push, then lie, lie, lie, then crash, crash, crash. And staff will ALWAYS blame themselves. They will feel they are not good enough, not smart enough, not clever enough, not skilled enough. No, it’s none of those things; it’s that Hubbard was dumb enough to use statistics.
TC thanks for taking the time, and effort required to write these articles. I feel like each one is a very coherent and concise hammer chipping away at the layers of control Scientology exerts over it’s members.
I can’t call them parishioners because it isn’t a church. Everyone that I met in Scientology knew it wasn’t a religion. We all knew the religious angle was so that we could claim tax deductions on any money “donated” to Scientology.
The course that teaches you all about stats and analyzing trends is the “Hubbard Data Series Evaluator Course” where you study the full Data Series. The data makes full sense, of course, yet as I was doing the course (The last major course I did in the Church before getting booted) I was wondering how comes this too is inapplicable to the scene in the church.
It was obvious their stats are actually plummeting as DM is shamelessly lying at events and wildly hallucinating “straight up & vertical”. And not one person knows the true scene and nowhere are true data available.
The answer came towards the end of the course, one of the last Policy Letters of the Data Series. In this article Ron says, (sorry, I’m not quoting, will take me too long to look for it) that where there are no stats (i.e., no data, no real published numbers) you know there is an SP in control.
This was a major jolt for me and one more LRH datum telling us who DM is. And more encouragement to jump ship. And it validated me for the way I’ve always run Dror Center, where all the figures are always made open to all staff and public.
Full, accurate data can be looked at and you know where you and the organization are.
Only criminals act in hiding, their only stat is destruction, lost lives, destroyed families and bankrupt clients.
“In this article Ron says, (sorry, I’m not quoting, will take me too long to look for it) ….”
This is my favorite line in your post. Your detour into apologizing for not finding the exact LRH quote (which I suspect was tongue-in-cheek) illustrated yet another of the control mechanisms that LRH devised in order to avoid the dreaded LOWERS. They are degrading and many times they are used to degrade and make an example of the victim of Lowers and are not used for any therapeutic reasons. In the early days, the grey arm rags tipped off that one had done something “bad.” Having to get signatures to be accepted back into the group always turned my stomach – on every flow. If it weren’t for the dreaded SP declare and Disconnection policy and the control the church had over me and my psyche, my greatest desire was to tell some MAA to take his fucking Lowers and shove ’em.
Nice post, Dani. Your summation is perfect.
Thank you Dani. Excellent comment Dani and McCarran. I think that is a workable truth that when you have no stats to view, it is an indictor of an SP at work. I’m with you in that if I’d read that policy letter and seen that I would have cognited it was David Miscavige hot allowing the OIC Board or stats to be viewed, and having people go on whatever HE said the stats were. I would have walked out sooner had I seen that reference you gave. Back in the day the OIC Board was available for ALL to see, even the public. Nowadays they hide it from public and when I asked to see it said it is not for public to see. I wonder if even the staff get to see it now? You’re right that only criminals act in hiding.
Dani, great post. Quite unintentionally on my part, being a Data Series completion turned to be what got me out of the cult. Whoo boy, did I ever start observing outpoints in my org. And mentioning them. Oh, and this was just soooo “entheta”, and “enemy line”, and “what are your overts that you’re being so critical?” Hogwash. There was off-policy and out-tech. I called ithem like I saw them and I saw them like the Data Series taught me to see them, and I KR’d them as I was taught, with no opinions, only direct observations. They couldn’t confront me or my observations despite being written up with total correctness. It was sad, kind of. For them. Embarrassing for me, because for their sake I would cringe a little as they squirmed to explain, twisting and turning, not wanting to themselves see what was right in front of their faces. I liked them and pitied them while at the same time being annoyed, exasperated. I’m not surprised that this course is no longer offered. Its dangerous!
Hi, Dani! Always great to see you posting here! How’s the cult org doing? Are they in Haifa?
Spot on – the religious scriptures about statistics have led to examples described by you.
It also invited miscavige to declare nobody was clear and, even OTs, received a Clear handling. Why? RTC Stats (Advance Course/Auditing) were plummeting and someone had to be abused to get them up.
The more degrading use was to be upstate one week and, oh god, you were a good girl. But next week one met a danger or lower statistic and you were the worst staff ever seen.
A bunch of arbitrariness invented and all with the covert intent to use stats to control others.
Now, if they were really followed, miscavige will be the more downstate leader in scientology history.
I have the impression that LRH couldn’t run a candy on a slow day in Minnesota. Hell, I couldn’t run a candy shop, but I know it.
And your impression is correct. I mean, we are talking about a guy who, while in charge of a U.S. Navy ship during WWII, dropped depth charges on an underwater magnetic anomaly thinking that it was a Japanese submarine and then *accidentally* fired upon a Mexican island causing the Navy to say:
“We consider this officer lacking in the essential qualities of judgment, leadership and cooperation. He acts without forethought as to probable results. He is believed to have been sincere in his efforts to make his ship efficient and ready. Not considered qualified for command or promotion at this time. Recommend duty on a large vessel where he can be properly supervised”.
They very well could have said this same thing about Hubbard regarding his position in Scientology! LOL
LRH declared War on Mexico and lost.
So Sad.
The reason I could never apply the conditions formulas was because often I had no idea what LRH was talking about. Often, the way in which the formulas were worded was confusing.
And,no, clearing MUs didn’t help.