Scientology’s Credo of a True Group Member: Part 3

We’ve been looking at L. Ron Hubbard’s “Credo of a True Group Member,” the policy behind Scientology’s “us vs. them” mentality. Let’s get through the last few points.

“13. On the group member depends the height of the ARC of the group. He must insist upon high-level communication lines and clarity in affinity and reality and know the consequence of not having such conditions. And he must work continually and actively to maintain high ARC in the organization.”

Note: The last sentence is italicized in the original.

This deals with the Scientology concept of ARC (Affinity, Reality, Communication), which LRH said is the key to human communication. (It’s high-falutin’ hogwash, which I picked apart in The BS of ARC). The point of this point is that group members always have to put on a happy face, no matter how bad things are going or how much doubt they have. This is part of the reason you always see videos full of happy, smiling, over-enthusiastic Scientologists (who turn all snarling and nasty when Anonymous turn their own cameras on) – they are being True Group Members! This goes hand in hand with the points I talked about in Part Two, in which group members may not “enturbulate” leaders, and if they do choose to exercise their “right” to object, must do so loudly enough for all the other members to see that they are not going with the program.

“14. A group member has the right of pride in his tasks and a right of judgment and handling in those tasks.”

Another one of my favorites. If you’re given something to do, you have the right to be proud of it. This alleviates the group member from having to make any moral judgement about whether the task the are carrying out is right or wrong in the first place. Don’t judge your own actions, just be proud that you did your job! Same deal with having judgement in how to handle it… what about judgement as to whether you should do that task in the first place? Nope, no need to worry about that. (“Ours is not to wonder why…”) And what makes this latter point all the more poignant is that it contributes to Scientologist’s conception that they are free to act as individuals, when in fact they conform to the thoughts and actions dictated by L. Ron Hubbard.

Not that it matters, because in the “group” of Scientology, this point is routinely ignored. Hubbard wrote policy on how to do everything, from the way questions are worded to how the org is to be cleaned. In a Scientology organization (or an “admin tech” company), one is “hatted” in how to use equipment. Few Scientologists dare exercise their “right” as a group member to try to find a better way.

“15. A group member must recognize that he is, himself, a manager of some section of the group and/or its tasks and that he himself must have both the knowledge and right of management in that sphere for which he is responsible.”

More intelligent-sounding bullshit that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The idea is that you must take ownership of whatever little scrap of responsibility you are given. Take my earlier examples of my old-car group or my monthly poker game. Am I a “manager” of some section? No way. I do nothing to help with organization of the car group and my specialty is playing bad hands of poker, not organizing the games, so how, per LRH, am I a “true” member of the group? Now, I know how a Scientologist would answer this, because I have had similar discussions: They would say that I “manage” my individual hand of cards or the old car that I own. Well, I suppose that’s true – but it has nothing to do with the spirit of the point LRH was making, which is that one must feel one is in a managerial role, even if one is just doing shit work to feed the machine. But Scientologists will go to great lengths to make LRH’s bullshit seem workable and true, even when it isn’t.

“16. The group member should not permit laws to be passed which limit or proscribe the activities of all the members of the group because of the failure of some of the members of the group.”

Man, I love this one. Remember, this was a quarter-century before LRH would go into hiding while his wife and a few other expendable accomplices went to jail for Scientology’s crimes. Reading this, I can’t help but think that even as early as 1951, LRH knew that in order to make his scam succeed, he’d have to skirt the law to get around the objections that Dianetics was already facing. Today, this serves Marty and the Indies well as an argument for prosecuting the practitioners of Scientology policy, without bringing the policies and creeds that led to such activity under the scrutiny of law. This is impossible and illogical, but Hubbard never let reality get in the way of a good con.

“17. The group member should insist on flexible planning and unerring execution of plans.”

In other words, get it done no matter what. Another constant theme in Scientology: “Make it go right.” Doesn’t matter if the plans are flawed, or illegal, or morally wrong, or a PR disaster, as Scientology plans often are; a group member is not to question, but is to simply insist that the plans are executed unerringly. This helps to explain the extraordinarily high number of foot-bullets fired by both the Church and independent Scientologists.

Last one:

“18. The performance of duty at optimum by every member of the group should be understood by the group member to be the best safeguard of his own and the group survival. It is the pertinent business of any member of the group that optimum performance be achieved by any other member of the group, whether chain of command or similarity of activity sphere warrants such supervision or not.”

This is the grand finale, and it’s a good one: Not only must everyone must do their best for the group, but they must insist on similar standards for others. This helps explain the rationale behind “crush regging,” the relentless harranguing for money and the berating of those who don’t give ’till it hurts: Everyone must do what they can for the group. Indies love to blame this behavior on David Miscavige, but there we see it in LRH’s words: It’s part of being a True Group Member.

LRH was right about one thing: This level of commitment is necessary for the survival of the group, or at least the group of Scientology. Unless everyone works together to hold the scam of Scientology together, it’s bound to fall apart… as it already is. People leave Scientology when they see the truth through the cracks.

But Hubbard was wrong when he said that the survival of the individual relies on the survival of the group. If my poker group breaks up, or if Emma closes down ESMB, the individuals who make up those groups will be just fine. And if Scientology comes to an end – all of it, not just the organized Church – I have no doubt that the members of that group will be much, much more able to survive.

ML,
Caliwog

A closer look at an LRH lecture

Shit… interrupted by Rathbun again.

Marty’s recent post, Why Cold Steel and Scientology Don’t Mix (don’t ask me what that means… if I didn’t know how Scientologists abhor drugs, I’d think there was something more wacky than tabbacy in those cigarettes he smokes), Marty quotes from an L. Ron Hubbard lecture called The Fact of Clearing.

LRH recorded countless hours of lectures, about which Scientologists rarely think critically (if they do, they often stop being Scientologists). But I think we protesters don’t look carefully enough at them either. Because as complex, verbose, and overwhelming as LRH’s droning speeches are, they’re about as substantial as an office building made of dryer lint. Let’s take a closer at the speech Marty quoted and see. Heeeeeeeeeere’s Ronnie:

“Man definitely has a right to certain happiness. He isn’t going to experience that right under the circumstances of his own past. He can’t. He’s too wound up in this and that.”

Not even halfway through the first paragraph, and we’re already knee-deep in the bullshit. Man can’t experience happiness? Really, Ron? Sorry, Scientologists, but I’m happy. I have a lovely spouse, a fulfilling job, enough money to pay my bills, and the freedom to write about the causes I care about. And yet here’s Hubbard, the man who says there are no absolutes, saying I can’t experience happiness.

“It’s not the mores of the society that prevent him. It’s all of these delusions about how bad the other fellow is.”

This is typical Hubbard, subtly trying to engender fear of the outside (“Wog”) world. Note the choice of words – not “how bad people are,” but “how bad the other fellow is.” He’s talking about us. (Newcomers might think I’m reading too much into this, but once you read or hear enough Hubbard, you’ll see that this is a frequent tactic – supposed examples of crazy non-Scientology behavior that anyone with half a brain can see are bullshit.)

“You have police because other people are so bad.”

Again with the demonizing of the world! Funny, because Scientology says it believes that man is basically good. In fact, I believe Hubbard said “Man is basically good, but Man can act badly.” But now he’s saying people are bad? Which is it, tubby?

“I investigated police one time. I became a cop. That’s the best way to investigate something — become it for a while, you know? You can go too far with that sort of thing.”

Hubbard? A cop? Yup, it’s true… well, sort of. Hubbard was a rent-a-cop.

Back in the late 40s, the Los Angeles Police Department sometimes sub-contracted security-officer duties to third-party detective agencies. These “Special Officers” had to be licensed by the LAPD, and Hubbard was. They got badge numbers, ID cards (you can see Hubbard’s here; clearer scan at this Church site), and could even carry guns, but had no power to detain beyond a citizen’s arrest. Hubbard’s card, issued in 1948, indicated that he worked for the Metropolitan Detective Agency, not the LAPD, but that doesn’t stop this Church site from claiming, “In 1947-1948 Hubbard served as a Special Police Officer with the L.A. Police Department.” Nor does it stop LRH from claiming that he became a cop. (Marty did say we weren’t supposed to take LRH literally, right?)

Incidentally, according to Russel Miller, author of Bare Faced Messiah (based on documents gathered by Gerry Armstrong while putting together a biography for Hubbard), Elron spent most of 1947 scraping out a living as a sci-fi writer, begging the VA for benefits, and taking classes at the Gellar Theater Workshop (maybe he played a cop?). In 1948, though, he did find himself at a police station… but on the wrong side of the desk. He was charged with petty theft for writing a bad check in San Luis Obispo county, some 200 miles north of Los Angeles.

Question for Ron: When you said “You can go to far with this sort of thing,” did you mean someone who briefly worked as a security guard claiming he was a police officer?

“But where do we have, in essence here, a cave-in of the society? What could cave the society in? Well, all you’d have to do is have a police force and a society would start caving in.”

Got that? Every society with a police force is going to start caving in. Any day now. After all, Hubbard would know, right? He was a cop!

Seriously… I know Scientologists are willing to swallow a lot of bullshit, but how the fuck do they buy into something that is so obviously false?

“Why? The police force constitutes a constant reminder that men are evil, which is a constant reminder that we must agree with these evil men. Do you see how this would work? Neat little trick.”

No, Ron, I don’t see how that would work. Even if I bought the first part about police force reminding us that men are evil, how do you make the leap to “we must agree with these evil men”? There is no logic there. But chances are Hubbard said this in a lecture that stretched on for hours and hours, and no Scientologist, eager to progress up The Bridge to Fund Ron’s New Bluebird Motorhome, is going to stop to pick these little nits.

This is a good time for a quick tangent: What happens if you do stop the tape and ask an instructor how Ron could say something so utterly false? Well, according to The Tech, you must have misunderstood a word. So you’ll be forced to work backwards, get quizzed on your vocabulary, look up stuff in the dictionary, until they find your “M.U.” Maybe some definition of “agree” or “evil” or “with” that will make Ron’s illogical logic make some semblance of sense. The exercise will be long and tortuous enough that you’ll quickly learn not to disagree again.

“Now, that doesn’t say that we are so starry-eyed as to believe that at this time we could dispense with all police. Or could we?”

Uh-oh… I feel a pitch for an all-Scientology world coming on!

“Now, you have to make up your mind which way you’re going to go with a society if you’re thinking about a new society of one kind or the another. And if you say, ‘Well, this society would be totally unregulated,’ then we would be proposing an anarchy. And all the anarchists tell us that the only way a society would work as a total freedom without government would be if everyone in it were perfect.

“All of the anarchists?” Flunk for making a generalization. (Hubbard said that people who speak in generalizations like that are supressive persons. Maybe he was right!)

“Well, I don’t know whether we propose — when we talk about a cleared society — whether we propose or not to have an anarchy. That’s beside the point. That’s up to the people who get cleared.

Translation: “This is a big issue that would require thought and discussion. I don’t want you thinking, because I want to keep your hands in Scientology and my hands in your wallet. And I don’t want to discuss, because that would take me away from my next point, which is…”

But I don’t think you’d wind up with an anarchy. I think you’d wind up with a much finer level of agreement and cooperation because I think you’d then be able to realize the rest of the dynamics.

Translation: The world would work better if everyone was a Scientologist. No more insanity like wogs who can’t be happy because their town has a police force.

“The cops are there only because the rest of the dynamics aren’t there! So, if you put those back into society, then you’d get a society.”

Translation: Buy more Scientology, get others to buy more Scientology, and your problems will go away.

So that’s my take on a segment of an LRH lecture. Now, let’s be frank: There’s nothing I’ve written that you couldn’t have come up with yourself. In fact, I’ve probably wasted your time by making you read my shallow insights. Sorry about that. My point is that this is another way we can communicate with Scientlogists – just get them to look more closely at what LRH says and see how little sense it makes. It’s not easy; the ol’ fraud convinced his customers that he really did all this “research,” and you’ve got people like Marty who take this paper-thin bullshit as gospel.

But if you can get them to examine even one line – maybe that bit about how a society with police will cave in – well, maybe you can put a crack in the facade. Just a little hairline crack, maybe… but we all know where that can lead.

ML,
Caliwog

Scientology’s Credo of a True Group Member: Part 2

In Part One, we started looking at how LRH used the Credo of a Group Member to keep Scientologists looking inward, never outward. Let’s continue, shall we?

“6. Enturbulence of the affairs of the group by sudden shifts of plans unjustified by circumstances, breakdown of recognized channels or cessation of useful operations in a group must be refused and blocked by the member of a group. He should take care not to enturbulate a manager and thus lower ARC.”

This is an important one. The first sentence basically charges group members with keeping others in line and moving in the same direction – no flying off on tangents. The second sentence, couched in Scientologese, says not to give bad news or negative feedback to the group leader, for fear of reducing Affinity, Reality or Communications (in other words, good feelings. Read more in The BS of ARC). I have learned this one through experience, by the way – being frank with management about problems and obstacles may be welcome in most companies, but it is severely frowned upon in Scientology organizations.

And this plays an important part in the next point:

“7. Failure in planning or failure to recognize goals must be corrected by the group member, for the group, by calling the matter to conference or acting upon his own initiative.”

Okay, got that? If the group isn’t going in the right direction, it’s the responsibility of the group member to do something about it. BUT – what about point #6 which says that a group member “should take care not to enturbulate a manager and thus lower ARC?” So acting upon one’s own initiative and telling the boss where he or she is going wrong violates the Credo, but not doing so also violates the Credo. This is an example of the contradiction that is frequently found in Scientology policy – and I happen to think that Hubbard did it intentionally.

But wait, it’s about to get more convoluted:

“8. A group member must coordinate his initiative with the goals and rationale of the entire group and with other individual members, well publishing his activities and intentions so that all conflicts may be brought forth in advance.”

So wait, if you see something wrong, you’re supposed to take your own initiative… but you must first coordinate it with the group. In fact, you must publish it for the whole group to see.

See what LRH did there?

He started with all this rah-rah shit about how you are a key part of making the group succeed, and if you see the group going wrong, you are obligated to say something. But you have to make sure everyone knows about your disagreement, which gives them the opportunity to decide that you are violating the first point in the Credo by not approximating “the ideal, ethic and rationale of the overall group” or by “enturbulating” the group leadearship. And so the hunter becomes the hunted! When you do see something wrong and point it out, you run the risk of being labeled as “against us” rather than “with us.”

SP declare, anyone?

“9. A group member must insist upon his right to have initiative.”

Except that initiative, as the earlier points make clear, can get you in trouble. On the surface, this sounds like a cry for individual freedom. In practice, it means that if you’re going to put your head up, you must raise it high enough so that when the axe swings, it gets chopped off.

“10. A group member must study and understand and work with the goals, rationale and executions of the group.”

In other words, you must know the reasons why the group does what it does. Fair enough.

“11. A group member must work toward becoming as expert as possible in his specialized technology and skill in the group and must assist other individuals of the group to an understanding of that technology and skill and its place in the organizational necessities of the group.”

This one seems pretty innocuous, but it takes on its own meaning when applied to Scientology. Because, of course, being an expert in the “specialized technology” and “assisting others” means immersing yourself in the religion… and in Scientology, the only way to do that is to spend money or volunteer your time and labor. (And at the time Hubbard wrote this, it was all about money, not labor – the Sea Org was a few years off.) So we can translate: “If you want to be a true member of this group, open your wallet.”

“12. A group member should have a working knowledge of all technologies and skills in the group in order to understand them and their place in the organizational necessities of the group.”

This goes hand-in-hand with #11. The fact is, it’s complete bullshit. Can I be a member of my old car group without an intimate knowledge of my car’s inner workings? Of course I can. Can I be a part of my first-of-the-month poker group without being an expert poker player? Of course I can, and in my case, my fellow group members are all the richer for it.

So why did LRH include this obviously-false point? I would think the answer is just as obvious: As with #11, in order to be part of the Scientology group, you have to spend money on Scientology.

We’ll finish off the last six points of the Credo in our next installment.

ML,
Caliwog

Science catches up to L. Ron Hubbard

When I set out to write my series on the Credo of a True Group Member, I promised myself I would spend a straight week writing about LRH tech and not get distracted by any Marty Rathbun fuckery. But then he posted Life After Death and the Scientology Axioms, and it’s so farging funny that I just… can’t… help… myself!

Here’s the gist of the post: Marty starts off with a few of LRH’s “Axioms” – I’ll get to those in a minute – and then cites a pair of articles by Robert Lanza as evidence that LRH was right. Robert Lanza is an acclaimed doctor who has made great strides in the field of stem cell research. He is also a proponent of “biocentrism,” the theory that biology is the highest of the sciences and that the presence of life is what brought the universe into existence, and not the other way around. It’s a belief that loosely aligns with LRH’s idea that “thetans” (spirits) “postulate” the universe into existence.

Marty links to two of Lanza’s articles, Does the Soul Exist? Evidence Says Yes and Is Death An Illusion? Evidence Suggests Death Isn’t The End. (If Dr. Lanza owned L. Ron Hubbard’s album The Road To Freedom, he’d know that “Death is only an invention.”) Here’s the over-simplified version: Since what we experience of the world around us (sights, sounds, smells, etc.) is actually our brain’s interpretation of stimuli, and since experiments seem to indicate that the act of observing an experiment affects the outcome, then the universe around us is actually our own creation; and since fields like quantum physics have shown that many of our scientific theories break down at a certain level, science is wrong about the nature of life and all bets are off. Dr. Lanza’s opinions have met with mixed reactions; personally, I think they’re a bit too simplistic, indicative of the human need to come to firm conclusions rather than accepting that there are things we can’t quite understand. (It’s the same phenomenon that leads to our belief in God.)

Anyway, back to Marty, who uses these two controversial articles as proof that science is finally catching up to Hubbard. Wait, let me use his own words, because the jab at the organized Church makes them even funnier:

“Is it not a travesty that corporate Scientologists would be burned at the stake (figuratively) if they were to dare to even take a peek at such a magazine? Is it not a travesty that Scientology Inc is busy using the billions you have donated to them to stage public demonstrations of their flat earth mentality while science catches up with L Ron Hubbard?”

Lesson learned: Do not drink soda while reading Marty’s blog. My nostrils still hurt.

(Marty’s “burned at the stake” comment stems from the fact that the articles appeared in Psychology Today, which Scientologists are about as likely to read as Pedophelia Today. Shame, though, since Scientologists usually grab right onto anything that purports to prove Hubbard right. That said, given the scientific community’s mixed reactions to Lanza’s biocentrist theories, the Church might be smart enough to think twice about casting their lot with him.)

Marty’s evidence is the first ten of Hubbard’s “Axioms” (if you don’t want to read them on Marty’s site or a Church site, here they are in PDF). The Co$ says the Axioms are “truths which are proven by all of life and which represent the most succinct distillation of wisdom regarding the nature of the human spirit.”

In fact, they are made-up baloney that rely on a) careful redefinition of words and b) the utter certainty that Hubbard knew what he was talking about, and wasn’t just a blowhard who couldn’t tell an ion from an eon.

Let’s look at a couple of examples:

“AXIOM 1. LIFE IS BASICALLY A STATIC. Definition: a Life Static has no mass, no motion, no wavelength, no location in space or in time. It has the ability to postulate and to perceive.”

One could spend hours arguing the intellectual merit of this. (A jellyfish has no brain; it can perceive but probably not postulate. So does it lack a life spirit? Or is each jellyfish inhabited by the spirit of some poor fucknob who meant to inhabit the body of a dolphin, but missed?) However, to accept this as a “truth” is completely and totally absurd. There is no proof and no way to prove it. But that doesn’t matter to Scientologists, who accept what Hubbard says as fact.

“AXIOM 4. SPACE IS A VIEWPOINT OF DIMENSION.”

Not according to Webster’s dictionary it isn’t. It amazes me how a man so obsessed with dictionary definitions was so willing to abandon them when it suited his purposes to do so. Scientologists do the same thing; tell them LRH was a fraud, and they’ll whip out their dictionary, look up “fraud,” and explain why, even if Scn is a scam, LRH isn’t, by definition, a fraud. But give them something ridiculous like “Space is a viewpoint of dimension” and they’ll buy it without question. Unfuckingbelievable.

“AXIOM 9. CHANGE IS THE PRIMARY MANIFESTATION OF TIME.”

Sounds legitimate and defensible. But there are a host of other theories about time, and ironically, both of the Lanza articles Marty mentions cite an argument, based on an experiment, that time is more liquid than we thought, and that change can occur irrespective of time. But I don’t want to get into an intellectual debate, because that is another Scientology tactic: Argue the minutiae of something until your audience’s brain turns to mush and they just accept it, assuming that the reason Hubbard’s arguments make no sense is because Hubbard is smart and they are stupid. (Considering they’ve probably just paid $1,000 for a “course” that involves screaming at ashtrays, they might be right.)

“AXIOM 10. THE HIGHEST PURPOSE IN THIS UNIVERSE IS THE CREATION OF AN EFFECT.”

I love this one, because after nine axioms that can be explained away, Hubbard drops in this non-sequitor. I’m tempted to say that I could just as easily claim that “THE HIGHEST PURPOSE IN THIS UNIVERSE IS THE CREATION OF A PEANUT BUTTER AND JELLY SANDWICH,” but Hubbard apologists will dismiss that as a “glib” non-argument. Fair point, so let’s try this:

I would argue that since Hubbard’s axioms say that change is the primary manifestation of time, and a change in relative position of particles is a natural occurrence, then the creation of an effect is not the highest purpose, since effects are a by-product of the passage of time. A higher purpose would be to impose one’s own order on the universe – to stop the effects of time. So I would say that the highest purpose in the universe is the cessation of an effect.

That makes sense, right?

Of course it fucking doesn’t. I made it up without the slightest bit of thought. But because I can talk my way around it, it seems to make sense. I always talk about Scientologists mistaking verbosity for intelligence. There we are, I’ve just made it work for myself. (Give me a grand and I’ll give you an ashtray to scream at.)

Let’s get back to Marty’s premise: The fact that someone wrote an article in 2011 that happens to correspond with some of Hubbard’s writings does not lend even the slightest shred of legitimacy to his theories, let alone prove the absurd idea that science is “catching up” to L. Ron Hubbard. Both Lanza’s and Hubbard’s theories are questionable, and Hubbard wasn’t the first one to think of them, although he would like his followers to think he was.

That said, I will accept that science is catching up to L. Ron Hubbard when they prove the following theories, which you can hear in Hubbard’s own words:

• Space is warm, not cold
• Lung cancer is caused by not smoking enough
• There is intelligent life on Venus
• There are freight trains on Venus
• Blindness is caused by guilt, and sight can be “turned back on” with auditing

ML,
Caliwog

Read more about Hubbard taking legitimate concepts and completely fucking them up in Positioning, Misunderstanding Of.

Scientology’s Credo of a True Group Member: Part 1

I’ve talked a lot about Scientology’s “us vs. them” mentality. Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard realized early on that in order to keep people in the scam, he had to keep them facing inwards and give them a way to reject outside influences. Hence the Credo of a True Group Member, which he wrote in 1951, shortly after the establishment of Dianetics. (Marty Rathbun and other independent Scientologists also believe in the Credo.)

Scientologists unquestioningly accept the Credo as gospel — but let’s go through it point-by-point and see what it really says. (You can read the original at this Church of Scientology site.)

“1. The successful participant of a group is that participant who closely approximates, in his own activities, the ideal, ethic and rationale of the overall group.”

In other words: Conformity is paramount. In order to be a member of the group, you must mold yourself into the group ideal. This is one reason so many Scientologists sound alike, and often (subconsciosly?) mimic the behaviors of LRH – they emulate his writing style, use the same phrases he wrote into policy (Marty does this all the time), and even disregard the dangers of smoking cigarettes.

“2. The responsibility of the individual for the group as a whole should not be less than the responsibility of the group for the individual.”

This may sound noble, but in fact it’s one of the most dangerous aspects of the Scientology mindset. People ask how well-meaning Scientologists could lock Lisa McPherson in a room and allow her to starve to death. Well, here’s their excuse: The group was “taking responsibility” for the individual. Rather than turn her over to the “evil psychs” who could have helped her, the Scns administered Hubbard’s Introspection Rundown. Hubbard famously said “We’d rather have you dead than incapable.” That’s exactly what happened to Lisa McPherson, thanks to a group of Scientologists following Hubbard’s Credo of a True Group Member and “taking responsibility” for Lisa.

“3. The group member has, as part of his responsibility, the smooth operation of the entire group.”

Again, the idea here is that if one is a member of a group, one must be fully committed to it. This sounds noble, but it just isn’t true. Example: I own an old car. I belong to a few online owner’s groups for that car. I do nothing to contribute to the “smooth operation.” I don’t help run the board. I can’t contribute much knowledge. I just stop in once in a while and ask questions like “How the fuck do you loosen the fucking power steering pump when the fucking bolts are hidden by the fucking air conditioning compressor? Fuck!” (If anything, I’m sowing discord!) Does that mean I’m not a member of the owner’s group? According to LRH, I’m not!

“4. A group member must exert and insist upon his rights and prerogatives as a group member and insist upon the rights and prerogatives of the group as a group and let not these rights be diminished in any way or degree for any excuse or claimed expeditiousness.”

I love this point, because it shows LRH at his most devous. He starts out talking about the group member’s rights, but that’s not really the point he’s making – this is really about the good of the group. The meat in this sammy is that every member must fight for the rights of their group, which Scientologists do with vigor. (Funny that LRH wrote this so early in Scn’s history — he must have known how much controversy his then-fledgeling con was going to cause.) But it’s that first innocent-sounding bit – actually, just the fact that it’s there – that gives us some clue to LRH’s thought process, that he was even then trying to hide his true motivations from his own followers. Sneaky little fucker, wasn’t he?

“5. The member of a true group must exert and practice his right to contribute to the group. And he must insist upon the right of the group to contribute to him. He should recognize that a myriad of group failures will result when either of these contributions is denied as a right. (A welfare state being that state in which the member is not permitted to contribute to the state, but must take contribution from the state.)”

Okay, first, he’s wrong about a welfare state – as far as I know, there is nothing in the welfare system of any country that prohibits members from contributing, or requires them to take benfits. Even the most right-wing conservative knows that, and yet Hubbard spouts off this wee bit of bullshit, and his followers just buy it. Remember when Debbie Cook said she was ignorant of her legal rights until she hired a lawyer? Well, this is why – she just blindly believed in what LRH and Scientology told her.

As for the rest… “exert and practice his right to contribute to the group”??? Fuck me. What LRH is saying is that working for the group is a right that might be denied or taken away if not constantly used. Well, yeah – if you have a job at a company and you don’t do it, you get fired. But that’s not about rights, its about responsibilities – and LRH seems to be trying to get his followers to confuse the two. This is just another way of getting Scientologists to feel obligated to contribute – if they don’t, they’re not exercising their rights! (What a fucking load, but you have admire the genius, or at least the tenacity, of a con artist who could come up with this shit.)

I’m going to stop here, because this article has gone on long enough, and the next to points of the Credo are closely entwined. Tune in tomorrow to see more of how LRH uses the group credo to enforce conformity and supress bad news.

ML,
Caliwog

Picking Apart the 31 Factors: Part 3

I’ve been writing a series of articles on Thirty-One Factors for Scientologists to Consider, Marty Rathbun’s attempt to define the Independent Scientology movement, which itself is full of lies and half-truths. (Part 1, Part 2.) Let’s continue, shall we?

Six: Miscavige has persuaded those at the top of the Scientology organization that to disclose the secrets of his unconscionable acts would harm the religion and violate “the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics.” Thus, the truth of what goes on behind the façade of false PR that Miscavige creates is hidden from the vast majority of Scientologists and the general public.

Yes this is happening, and – credit where credit is due – thanks to people like Marty, we know about some of Miscavige’s “unconscionable acts.” But we also know the exact same thing is true of Marty’s hero, L. Ron Hubbard. LRH’s screaming fits, his temper tantrums, the abuse of staff that he ordered (overboaring, locking children in the ship’s chain lockers, etc.) were all supposed to be hidden from the public behind a “façade of false PR.” Like Miscavige, Hubbard was unable to hide all this from the public (thank you Paulette Cooper, Bent Corydon, L, Ron Hubbard Jr., Russel Miller, Jon Atack, and many others. You can even watch LRH lie about his marital history). And yet Hubbard apparently was able to hide this from Scientologists, even people like Marty, who still appear believe that this scheming shitbag was a kindly old man who just wanted to help mankind.

Seven: Miscavige uses confessions of Scientology managers to invalidate, castigate, and embarrass them into acquiescence and silence.

We know that the Church does this, and it brings up an interesting point: Priest-pennitent confidentiality. Scientology routinely breaks this in order to “ruin utterly” (LRH’s choice of words) apostates. Is this yet not more proof that Scientology is not a proper religion? Oops, wait a minute, Marty, better not go down that road – it might get the government looking at Scientology’s tax-exempt status, no doubt one of the Church’s biggest crimes. And if they do that, Marty, you might have to start paying taxes yourself.

Eight: Sea Org members who voice or even hint at any hesitation to carrying on with his tyranny or supporting his actions, are routinely physically beaten by Miscavige.

I refer you to chapter 17 of Bare Faced Messiah. Scroll down to the photo of a Scientologist being tossed over the side of the Apollo. The photo was a set-up and the caption (supposedly) a joke, but as it happens, it wasn’t — search the text for “thrown overboard” and “overboarding” and you’ll see that the legacy of physical abuse originated with LRH. The only difference is that Miscavige at least has the balls to do some of his own abuse. Hubbard, the cowardly fat fuck, had his goons do it for him.

(Incidentally, things like this contribute to my belief that Hubbard was a sociopath. Same thing when he let his wife go to jail while he fucked off and hid out without her – LRH seemed to put himself in situations where he could not be affected by the negative consequences of his own acts.)

Nine: Those Sea Org members who have attempted to correct Miscavige’s off-policy and out-tech actions have been subjected to belittlement, invalidation and false propaganda. They have been silenced through imprisonment and mental and physical duress.

This one is purely a matter of semantics. Anyone who is familiar with LRH’s “tech” – especially the admin tech, the bizarre set of policies by which the Church and other Scientology businesses are run – know that LRH often contradicted himself. If Hubbard changed his mind, it didn’t matter – whatever LRH wrote was “tech” and “on policy,” and any attempt to contradict or (God forbid!) correct them resulted in the same shit-storm. Miscavige does the same thing, but since he is not “source,” his actions can be considered “off policy” or “out tech.” (In truth, I think Miscavige is grasping at straws to make a non-workable way of doing things somehow work. Frankly, with Hubbard dead and no new policy, I’m amazed Miscavige has kept the whole scam going this long, and not surprised that it’s falling down all around him.)

And because of the contradictions that LRH wrote into the policy (and spoke in lectures, the content of which form part of Scientology gospel), it’s pretty easy to prove that any action is both on-policy and off-policy. (Take it from someone who frequently made use of these contradictions to get what he wanted!) Witness the “Ideal Org” strategy that is draining the Church of money. Independants say it’s off policy, Church-goers say it’s on-policy. Who is right? Well, according to LRH policy, both of them!

Ten: Miscavige’s abuse of Scientology executives and staff became so extreme and continuous, he resorted to locking all of CMO INT and Exec Strata into a building and called the prison “the Hole.” RTC, CMO/WDC, Gold, IAS, CST, OSA Int and ASI executives and staff have regularly been deposited in the Hole and subjected to Reverse Dianetics, including physical beatings and severe mental abuse for months or even years at a time.

No argument here, but there’s an important fact that Independent Scientologists never talk about, and Marty always glosses over: Who came up with the idea of an in-house prison camp? That would be L. Ron Hubbard, who established the Rehabilitation Project Force in 1974. The RPF did get worse under Miscavige, but it was LRH who originated the idea of segregating those who didn’t do what they were supposed to do and limit their freedoms, activities, and even contact with their spouses and children. Read all about the true origins of the RPF in The ABCs of the RPF.

Okay, wogs, I think that’s enough truth for now! More on Marty’s 31 Factors when I get around to it.

ML,
Caliwog