In yesterday’s blog post, entitled The only way out is through – Community, Marty talked about “creating Independence communities” (which probably means trying to rope Freezoners into the Church of Rathbunology).
I think the operative word here is “create,” which can mean “to bring into existence” or “to produce through imaginative skill.” For Marty, the latter definition is definitely more appropriate.
For while Marty claims to bring his followers (and the media) the truth, in fact he is creating his own version of the truth, editing events and weeding out comments that disagree with his viewpoint. If you post a reply that agrees with Marty, it will appear. If you post one that presents evidence that DM’s evil deeds are based on LRH policy, it will most likely not pass moderation.
To be fair, this kind of censorship wasn’t Marty’s idea. The Church of Scientology regularly practices censorship and has done since the days of LRH. The idea is to protect Churchgoers from “entheta” – a made-up word that essentially means negative energy. The real reason LRH came up with the concept of entheta is to keep Scientologists isolated from the real world and real truth. (That’s why the Internet has had such a devastating effect on the Church. One wonders what LRH would have written about it. He probably would have said that it was started by psychiatrists.)
One has to ask: Why does Marty feel the need to shield his Independents from the truth? Clearly, now that they are out of the Church, independents can see plenty of entheta. There are lots of great forums, like the Ex-Scientologist Message Board, where Independents and non-believers freely mix.
Does Marty think his followers are not smart enough to handle the truth? Is he afraid that they will figure out that he, like LRH, is not being 100% honest and truthful?
Or is Marty simply following in the footsteps of L. Ron Hubbard and David Miscavige?
Marty ends his blog post with a long LRH quote. I’ll end mine with a short one:
The only way you can control people is to lie to them. When you find an individual is lying to you, you know that the individual is trying to control you. — LRH, Technique 88
Read Marty’s original blog post here.
ML,
Caliwog
Caliwog's Blog 
Damn you, Caliwog!
You keep convincing me that it’s somehow helpful to “lurk” Monsignor Rathbun’s blog. How enturbulating! Everything there is either whining, or love bombing, or bull-baiting! Can’t these people just discuss things like adults? Yet another dinner wasted because MR got to my gag reflex. Oh, well, I am losing weight.
OK. I think that I see your point. MR is so arrogant that he doesn’t care what anyone outside of the hive mind thinks. As long as his collective is large enough and loyal enough, he will have the core of his “church” secure. Whether DM is dethroned and MR’s Freezoners take over the CoS, or if they just remain a vocal splinter group of “heretics”, doesn’t appear to matter much. Either way, MR gets what he wants. He gets to hurt DM, and get rich doing it. Sweet!
I had a cognition tonight. Tell me if I’m full of it. I don’t think it matters to MR if the CoS loses its tax exempt status. As long as he can say, “Hey, WE’RE not the Co$! WE are the “REFORMED Church of Scientological TRUTH” (or some other euphemistic twist). Go after THEM, IRS. We’re the GOOD GUYS!”
I wonder if this is his “fall-back” strategy (I still think that he covets his Triumphal Return to Gold Base, but, even HIS ego may have to admit that there might not be enough left of the Co$ to take over. So, is this a possibility, or have I fallen into the ranks of the conspiracy theorists?
Next Question: I am still amazed at the vicious, knee-jerk reactions of his freezoners to anyone who even dares to ask a question. Where does it come from? Its sheer violence means that it must run very deep, but it doesn’t even take a pin-prick to bring out a geyser of it. It doesn’t even take a threat, just the slightest perception that someone might, possibly be thinking for him/herself, and WHAM! It appears to be paranoid schizophrenic. Where does it come from? Did LRH teach this? Maybe you could blog on this?
I did have one hopeful thought, tonight. For every Freezoner who has braved the scalding rebukes of his fellows, with an honest thought or question, how many more fell before the draconian pen of MR’s censorship? For each of those, how many more have had such “cognitions”, and just haven’t yet voiced them. How many more FreeTHINKERS are out there in the “Zone”, maybe just waiting for our help? Hey, with all of her courage, even Magoo needed a hand. Thank God for Bob Minton, Stacy Brooks, Mark Bunker and the rest of the folks at LMT. May we be as helpful when our time comes.
RB
PS. Your ending quote was wonderful. It reminded me so much of what Mirna said a couple of nights ago, that I HAVE to put them here, together. Their juxtaposition is just magical! Thanks, you two.
The only way you can control people is to lie to them. When you find an individual is lying to you, you know that the individual is trying to control you. — LRH, Technique 88
“It’s so ironic that Scientologists think they are getting the truth from a documented compulsive liar and con artist. I’ll never wrap my head around that one.” Mirna Minkoff 06/15/2010
Robert, i agree with you 100%. MRs blog started out ok, but now its creepy…reminds me about “Children of the corn” 🙂
RB,
I would guess that Marty’s viewpoint is “Of course Scientology should be tax exempt. It’s a religion.” If the Co$ were to lose its tax-exempt status, and if the Co$ were to fall, and if the CoR were to rise (and I think all three things happening is very, very unlikely), I think he’s pursue a very similar strategy to what you see now: Blame the problems on the current Co$ management and show how *true* Scientology is a *true* religion.
That, of course, wouldn’t work either, because most people who aren’t part of the “hive mind” (good description, by the way, I’m going to start using that!) see right through LRH’s bullshit. But then again, many people just don’t have the time to comb through multiple sources. Which is why I write this blog – because one more voice for the truth can only help.
Why do Scientologists react the way they do? Much for the same reason that some born-again Christians will insist on telling you that you have to accept Jesus as your savior. Because *they* *know* *they* *are* *right* and they feel it is their duty to help.
Now, the difference is that Christians tend not to get nasty. Scientologists do, for a couple of reasons. One, LRH could get pretty nasty, and Scientologists emulate the behavior of leadership. Two is something called the Emotional Tone Scale, which you can see in this Wikipedia article. LRH taught that you evaluate someone’s tone, and then communicate on a level slightly higher. So if you think someone is being angry, you respond by being antagonistic. If they sound like they are in fear, you respond by being hostile. If they show mild interest, you respond with cheerfulness. I know, it makes very little sense whatsoever, but when you’ve paid hundreds of dollars for the How To Evaluate and Predict Human Behavior* Course and looked up every single word on the Tone Scale in a dictionary, your mind finds a way to make sense of it.
* Should be titled “How to predict a Scientologists’ behavior.” Once you learn the patterns, it’s extraordinarily easy. Marty follows the pattern just like everyone else.
By the way, the more protesters that read Marty’s blog, the better, because bullshit is bullshit is bullshit, and people can see that. Note that I often post links to his blog, and he *never* posts links to other blogs, especially protesters. Who is more afraid of their readers seeing opposite opinions?
ML.
Caliwog
Caliwog, those sentiments are exactly what I have been trying to capture when explaining why they believe the crap they do. The other piece being that most people that get into Scientology are looking for some way to add meaning to their life. When a person is in this position, being exposed to something that at the time feels like a big “win”, cements in their mind that this “Scientology” is the reason why.
I have had a similar things happen to me when I took Landmark Educations Forum. It was a 3 day intensive that cost a couple of buck and was an enlightening exercise. Then went on to do the Advance Forum. After that I decided to “volunteer” at a Forum. I was all jazzed up from my previous work within Landmark Education. It was quite the intense situation, helping and dealing with the Forum Leader. These Forum Leaders were quite revered and I had a few run ins with the Leader that that were not entirely positive. After finishing the volunteer stint I took time to reflect and came to the conclusion that while this technology is helpful, and the Leaders help, neither of the two are the be all and end all in life, and ultimately you are the one that can make thing better for yourselves and no one should be put above another.
So short story short, people looking for meaning are vulnerable and Scientology knows how to hook a person in and try and keep them there.
I still cannot figure out how they can operate as a religion when they charge for enlightenment. The only thing that seems to ring true is Scientology shows the nature of the capitalist society combined with the land of the free mentality that is prevalent in the US. People will pay for anything.
Rambling.
-me
Dear Caliwog,
Whew! Lots there to digest. Thanks.
I wish that I could lay claim to the term “hive mind”, but I picked it up from someone else. I think it was Scam Shamalam over at WBM’s site. It just seemed appropriate to use it in this discussion.
Dear Anders B,
“Creepy” is certainly the word for it!
Ooohhh, b^ob!
The memories that you have brought back to me!
I fell-in (briefly) with a predecessor of Landmark.
Be here now.
Was there then.
Paid 300 bucks,
Got recycled Zen!
I got suckered into volunteering, too. “It will assist you in your growth and help you to complete your seminar experience.” Well, I certainly didn’t want any “incomplete cycles”, since they rob you of your power! So, I volunteered to help out at a seminar, and for a day at the est office, even though I was not happy with the seminar that I had attended. I was just stupid enough to think that, “Maybe I missed something in the seminar, probably while I was concentrating on not peeing all over myself.”
My BS detector was going off, trying to tell me that I had bought “a pig in a poke”, and now they were doing a masterful job of trying to sell me on the idea that it was my responsibility that the bag was empty. I knew that I hadn’t “Got IT’, but I was going to give it one more try! After all, all of my friends “Got IT”, so, what’s wrong with one more try? Stupid! Stupid! STUPID! Look up “gullible” in Webster’s. That’s MY picture, right after the equal sign!
Volunteering was certainly enlightening. The more senior “esties” (Werner Wannabees) were marching about snapping orders at all of us junior “erks”, who dutifully replied “Thank you” to each demand. This had to be done in the proper tone scale also, although est didn’t refer to it as such.
The micro-managing supes were CLEARLY feeling their oats, until it became obvious that some of the “erks” had received directly contradictory orders. That’s when the excrement impacted the rotary impeller. Have you ever seen two martinets go after each other ? And, boy, I mean in PUBLIC! It really is entertaining. Two red-faced assholes doing their best to maintain their little fiefdoms while trying not to scream and come to blows! It would have been hilarious, if it hadn’t been so embarrassing.
In est “culture”, the winner is the one who is the LAST to say, “Well, WERNER says…”, and then, can actually repeat something that WERNER really said! NONE of them THOUGHT. They had surrendered thought unto WERNER, and they were content merely to parrot him. Talk about creepy!
By then, my BS detector was going off like a battle klaxon in THX Surround Sound! I finally listened and “blew”. Thank God that it was only est, and not Co$! All I had to put up with was a couple of months of phone calls and a year of junk mail.
Whew! That felt really good! Hey, b^ob, Caliwog, I just had a WIN! Sign me up for the next course on the bridge!
RB
i read marty’s blog because it helps me to understand some of the lingo and mentality without reading boringly through any scientology bullshit “scripture” and its more entertaining when it comes in the form of a story like someones escape! or experience if i didn’t know so much about scientology abuses that ive learned over the last 3 years i could kinda see why they like it…. the verbage and they all have amazing grammer lol
Dear ohbuddy,
Deciphering their terminology is actually the hardest part for me. Every time that I find an apparently coherent, cogent passage, they lapse into Sci-speak and lose me. I think that they do it just to reinforce each other, and to protect their illogic from logical inspection.
I need an English-Scilon, Scilon-English Dictionary. I just don’t WANT one!
I find it interesting that LRH wants a dictionary on every student’s desk. Why? He redefined so many important terms in such oblique and perversly twisted ways that a standard dictionary is useless! Maybe he was going to come out with the New Merriam Webster Dictionary as revised by LRH. Ooooo! Another best seller!
Have a great weekend, “buddy”.
RB
There actually is such a dictionary – its called the Technical Dictionary, I believe. In a Scientology courseroom, they have lots of regular dictionaries and tech dictionaries. There may also be a card file full of words that aren’t in either. You are not allowed to go past a word you don’t understand. Once I tied up the whole works for half a day when I asked for a definition of one particular made-up slang word that wasn’t in either the dictionaries or the card file. Great fun.
Caliwog
Caliwog,
Oh, my God!
I was afraid that you were going to say that!
I should have known after your post about “Propaganda by Redefinition of Terms!”
RB