Another must read for protesters is an article entitled Gullibility Revisited by an anonymous ex-Scientologist who, years after leaving Scientology, discovered a tape of an LRH lecture in his car’s glovebox and decided to give it a listen. He talks about how different his viewpoint was when he was a Scientologist – and his realizations about how Scientology got its hooks into him and others.
The article is very long and divided into two parts. The whole thing is an excellent read, but if you’re pressed for time, I’d recommend going straight to part 2, in which the ex-Scio talks about the factors that get and keep people in. (The links are safe – they are hosted on Professor David Touretsky’s site at Carnegie Mellon University.)
A couple of things stood out that will be of particular interest to regular readers of this blog. One, the author brings up a point similar to one Aaron Saxton has made – that there are unhandled issues that make some people more prone to the lure of Scientology than others.
Another is how Marty Rathbun and his supporters have changed the rhetoric of speaking out against Scientology. This piece has a copyright date of 1997, back when Marty was part of upper management and Heber Jentzsch still held his title of President, CSI.
Back then, anti-Scientology articles cited founder L. Ron Hubbard as the source of Scientology’s harmful practices. Today, we have the Independent movement touching on some of these same issues – but blaming them on David Miscavige.
And instead of delving deep into the long-term mind-fuck that keeps Scientologists believing, paying, and disconnecting – as Gullibility Revisited does – we have people getting up in arms over Scientologists decorating Tom Cruise’s airplane hangar.
In a way, it’s LRH at work: Go into excruciating details about trivial things and keep people distracted from the big picture.
Reading “Gullibility Revisited” reminds me of what the Scientology protest movement is really all about. And I, for one, plan to keep kicking it old-school.
Anyway – read, learn, and enjoy:
ML,
Caliwog
Caliwog's Blog 