Why Crticism Angers| Why Scientologists are so Touchy | | Print | |
| Wednesday, 21 January 2009 13:00 |
|
If you've ever made a negative comment about Scientology to a Scientologist you may have noticed it makes them quite angry. Here's why. Scientologists are in the position of having benefited greatly from the good parts of Scientology and they naturally want to share a good thing. But when they try, they end up sabotaged by their own leadership -- David Miscavige -- the man who has done the most to create Scientology's cult image. Scientologists who try to "spread the news" get hit by the cult-image backlash that Miscavige has created. As a Scientologist, I can tell you it is infuriating to be in that position. There is so much potential good in Scientology, but it is impossible to tell anyone about it because the organization has been transformed into a cult (and people don't trust cults). It is possible for one man to utterly derail, subvert and destroy a group. Take Germany for example. Add Hitler and the result is ruin and death. Similarly with Scientology. Scientology isn't natively a evil cult. It has been made that way by a dictator who took over the organization in the early 1980s. David Miscavige has done for Scientology what many other dictators in the past have done for their groups. The real problem isn't Scientology, it is a money-motivated power-mad and genuinely suppressive dictatorship that has taken over and created an intensely negative public image through the commission of continual illegal acts and through his enforcement of destructive policy. Written by Thoughtful |
"Scientology has been taken over by a self-appointed dictator, David Miscavige, who has turned the Creed of the Church of Scientology, the Code of a Scientologist, and the Credo of a True Group Member on their heads and instituted the virtual practice of Reverse (Black) Dianetics..." 
Comments
That said, I am not a Nazi sympathizer, nor a fan of Miscavige, and you are obviously an intelligent human being, just that you kind of stretched the allusion a little too much to be taken with any credibility. Also; while Miscavige may be the kind to punish dissent, (if not violently, than certainly elaborately), let's leave Hitler out of it until we have a case for genocide on Miscavige's part.
Best wishes.
Now, one man ( DM ) cannot by himself "change" the religion into a cult it takes a teem! and lets not forget that even in the time of LRH there ware lots of oddities and weirdness in the S.O and on the Apollo, the important thing to remember is: the tech works, its a fact, but the organizations are not working so well at this moment, how can we help?
But, I'm NOT comparing the relative destruction. The point was simply that one man can be responsible for destroying the relative sanity of a group. Hitler is the best (worst) example of that that I know of. Using Hitler shows just how far and how insane and how destructive it can go!
No one is contesting that David Miscavige didn't have help. But the team is not the Why because this "team" has consistently changed throughout the years. There is virtually no one who has remained consistent on that team throughout all those years.
Per the Data Series the Why is obtained by tracing where the MAJORITY of outpoints (red flags) come from. Sure many of DM's team members took destruction actions. But if you want to investigate it, I believe you will find that someone ORDERED them to take that destruction action and that person was David Miscavige.
When I announced my resignation in 2004, dingbat Greg Wilhere threatened to "hit me." Beside the fact that I wasn't frightened of him in the slightest, who do you think ordered Greg to threaten me? Miscavige. I've SEEN and HEARD him do it many times. "Go punch him out and if he moves a muscle, or does anything but just stand there and take it, it will be MY turn." "I'm the only one around here who will lift a finger to get in Ethics." "LRH said to get a 9-foot high board fence!"
So the WHY for International Scientology is that it has been taken over by a dictator who subverted the religion (by using the technology in reverse) for his own suppressive purposes.
The WHO is not the team, it is one man: David Miscavige. He has no seniors. He answers to no one. He verbally declares anyone who gets in his way.
He is a merchant of chaos who preaches the dogma of the "Dangerous Environment" to parishioners talking constantly about "our enemies"... what enemies? We don't have any freaking enemies any more. They all died or quit! What we do have is David Miscavige making new enemies as fast as he can so he can wrest more and more donations from parishioners into his IAS "war chest." He HAS to have enemies.
Sure, he is not the only person responsible. But he is the correct WHO.
Furthermore, it is not really possible to weigh losing your existence as a body vs. losing your chance to restore your beingness as a human soul.
Scientology postulates the theory that beings have descended through lifetimes of error and thereby descended into mass, eventually identifying with the mass to the point that today FEW people really think of themselves as a spiritual being. Fewer still operate as a spiritual being. Instead each person lives as though he or she were a physical object.
As a body, one can be murdered. One can fail to get that raise or the nice house or the family one wanted. Or one can achieve those goals.
Not to make less of people but to put existence as an object into perspective, in the PDC lectures LRH explains that to a human soul, who is fully restored to their spiritual abilities, losing a body is about as serious as losing a credit card. In other words, it is possible in Scientology to break the endless cycle of life and death, at which point losing a body is not a big deal. Again, this is not to diminish the pain and suffering that people go through, it is to point out the IMPORTANCE OF HAVING AN ESCAPE HATCH or a route by which people (who want to) can escape that endless torment of life and death.
That is what Scientology is. So in that light, destroying the whole shebang is a pretty serious offense in my book. Because it means there is NO ESCAPE for the human race as a whole.
I know a lot of people who have spent MOST of their entire life -- 25 or 35 years -- working their guts out to expand Scientology. Strangely, that's not even what they are MOST upset about. They are MOST upset that all that work didn't create the positive effect they envisioned. Their efforts were supposed to mean something in terms of opening up the Bridge to OT for many other people.
So I've known a lot of people who were willing to sacrifice one lifetime for the sake of a greater good.
It comes down to the question of what you believe. Either mankind is a race of spiritual beings entrapped into a physical existence or they are a race of physical objects
hoping if they are good, some big daddy in the sky is going to wave a magic wand and poof, they will have eternal life on a limited basis meaning they are required to worship big daddy 24/7 on a cloud in heaven.
Physical objects can always be victimized by other physical objects. Physical object are at risk and are always going to be at risk because physical objects die, get sick, get in car wrecks, get in wars. The soul has more choices and infinitely more power.
But the soul can get into a state where if forgets who it is, forgets who it was, forgets what abilities it has, starts to think of itself as a physical object and finally goes out the bottom, dead asleep. Scientology is a method used to wake people up and restore their abilities.
So it's pretty criminal to destroy Scientology. And one could say that action is therefore comparable to what Hitler did.
Yet all this is beside the point: Can anyone actually compare losing their goals for one life vs. losing the goals that many human souls have sought across millennia?
Concerning DM, I have met him personally and he acted very nice like a warm person, but I have also read and seem testimonials concerning his temper and I do see a bad change in scientology organizations. i.e the "ideal org" and invalidations on the state of people's cases and so on, to tell you the truth I am confused, the technology has rehabilitated me in so many levels and over 400 hours of auditing have made me a much happier freer person, I can write here 10 pages of how wonderful LRH's tech is and it is all true, if there is a problem in scientology today then there must be some lie somewhere
Maybe the idea that absolutes exist, we all know they don’t, maybe it’s the stupid PR line that not even scientologists believe, maybe it’s the high prices for freedom, money and spirituality don’t mix well, maybe it’s the out realty high ethic standard staff and S.O need to live by, maybe its brakes in ARC when you cant find a comm line to communicate about all the above.
When I think of a world without scientology it makes me very sad, sure management needs to loosen the fuck up, remember the joy of creation and let orgs manage themselves and not be such control freaks by bypassing every single being in every single org! that’s just out
Is David an SP? I don’t know, I cant say for sure but I sure hope not for if he is we are in deep shit
Why don't you read some more of the articles on this website. The ones by T Paine for example. Read the LRH references in the Knowledge Center. Then maybe you won't be so confused. Read the stuff and then we'll see where you're at.
The only one working for a world without Scientology is David Miscavige. The rest of us are working hard to make sure Scientology is still around.
Miscavige most certain IS an SP. That's the problem. Scientology IS in deep shit with real crimes that a FELONIES. We are here to bring transparency and accountability. If some people go to jail... well, there are consequences for breaking the law. Plenty of evidence is accumulating.
LRH said LOOK don't THINK. The purpose of this site is to persuade people to LOOK instead of listening or thinking.
Are you basing this misconception on some fantasy of L. Ron Hubbard? If so, what is the reference? HCO/PL or whatever? Either way, it's nonsense.
Wow. I think the problem is we have different standards by which we judge. Somehow, living in a place where the smoke from millions of murdered humans being burned in ovens drifting over the peaceful landscape... somehow that doesn't strike me as a "hopeful" place at all. Nor would I even use the word prosperous.
I'd call that "false hope" and "false prosperity." Maybe that's where you and I differ.
The first years of the Hitler government were not tainted by millions of murdered people's gasses, but did help Germany get back on their feet, both in the economic and military fields. He improved the school system (at first it didn't include the anti-semitic propaganda), built autobahns and gave a people whose pride was hurt something to believe in.
That's not false prosperity, that's real hope. It's one of the reasons few complained or even noticed the insidious changes that culminated as the horrible events we all know too well.
Eldon was pretty rude, but he's right. Hitler was an asshole, but people should stop depicting him as a batshit drooling diabolical maniac, lest we forget he was a human being. These are the ones we should watch for instead of expecting demons and monsters to commit atrocities.
No group exists apart from it's members. The organization is basically as good as it's members are good. The problem is that humans have a weakness that can be exploited. Most people are good enough to resist exploiting the weakness of others. A few are not good enough to refrain from exploiting others. One such individual can do a great deal of harm if unchecked, or allowed to rise to power.
Hitler has been mentioned, but my history goes back to Russia, and I would rate Stalin as worse than Hitler. He preyed on the weakness of people to the degree that he subverted and heavily suppressed an entire country, much less a relatively small church organization!
If you want to see some real evil mind control, take a look at the North Korean "brainwashing" technique. Have you have ever seen photos of North Korean faces? Scowling with hatred at foreign visitors? This is an example of a vicious few ruining the lives and spirits of the ordinarily decent many.
Saddam Hussein was touted as an evil dictator, but he also improved schools and the infrastructure of the country, and was generous to his own loyalists - as long as they did not disagree with him!
Columbian drug lords are popular in their native areas because they raised the standard of living in the villages....
There is a qualitative difference between the 2 kinds of people - those who exploit others to their detriment, and those who try not to exploit others but to genuinely enhance the lives of others.
LRH was human. He no doubt wished at times to strike back at those who sometimes bedeviled him for no apparent reason. But there is no doubt in my mind that the current leadership of the CoS has been acting against the actual organizational policies as set down by LRH. This is what has been so damaging to the CoS. It is contrary to the spirit and the letter of LRH policies.
No organization is basically good or bad. It is simply a way of, well, organizing things. The goodness or badness depends on who is allowed to have a dominant influence.
The Tech is basically good, in my experience. I am not particularly fond of organizations in general, they go off the rails very easily, (have you ever been to a city council meeting?), but some degree of organization is necessary, or we would be starving in caves, or completely extinct by now.
LRH was human. He no doubt wished at times to strike back at those who sometimes bedeviled him for no apparent reason.
[...]
The Tech is basically good, in my experience.
Why don't you tell this to Paulette Cooper? She was born in the Auschwitz concentration camp and later on in her life exposed questionable practices of the Scientology-Organization in her book "The Scandal of Scientology", from 1971. It is available online in full length here:
http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/tsos/sos.html
Family disconnection, unaffordably high prices, cult-like behaviour, these allegations are not new and they certainly existed since long before Miscavige even took power. You're saying "disconnection was cancelled by Hubbard later on while Miscavige reinstituted it". But the Fair Game order was cancelled by Hubbard, too and de facto is still in effect until today as many of you reading this can certainly attest to.
With his behaviour, Miscavige only accelerated the realization that the Scientology-Organization is a suppressive organization, curtailing your basic human rights in almost every imaginable aspect. But is this solely due to Miscavige? Due to the fact, that the organization was involved in Operation Snowwhite, Clambake, Freakout, etc... added to that the testimonials from followers available from the 60ies and 70ies raising startingly similar accusations you hear today, I must think otherwise.
You're free to refuse to as-is this data predating Miscavige by saying "oh the tech must be good because I had so many gains from it". But you will keep doing the same thing many Scientologists in good standing are still doing today when brushing aside all criticism about the Scientology organisation as it exists today.
Whereas in Miscavige you have a common criminal who does exactly that: stands firmly on LRH policy as the justification for any sort of crime he wants to commit freely.
I read Paulette's book. And she made a big mistake. She generalized and attacked the entire religion (in a country founded on freedom of religion) instead of simply attacking the criminality which would have been the correct target.
Operation Freakout was vile and the perpetrators should have gone to jail for it. Unfortunately, it's too late for them. But it's not too late for the current *mis*leader. We need to hold him solely and completely RESPONSIBLE for his actions.
Everyone knows the tech is not perfect. Neither is the Bible. Neither is the Torah. Neither is the Koran. Nothing anywhere in any direction is perfect. Yet religions have a right to exist.
Above I mentioned that laws trumph policy. Laws also trump the Bible and 99% of Christians know that; they know that unlike Abraham, if they murder their son, it's at least life in prison.
But some Scientologists think policy trumps law. Well, there's a simple solution for that: let them rot in jail. Once the bars close on their sorry asses, I think they will have time to figure out it.
"Family disconnection, unaffordably high prices, cult-like behaviour, these allegations are not new and they certainly existed since long before Miscavige even took power. You're saying "disconnection was cancelled by Hubbard later on while Miscavige reinstituted it". But the Fair Game order was cancelled by Hubbard, too and de facto is still in effect until today as many of you reading this can certainly attest to."
That's my point exactly, in fact the point of this website. Those things are suppressive perversions of LRH's intent. They are anti-Tech, anti-Life,and contra-survival. And expressly against LRH's stated wishes and directives.
The things the current leadership has been doing are against the Tech. They are not the Tech.
You might try reading the articles/posts on this site before you come charging in on a crusade.
Let me point out that they are all agreeing with you - the actions you point out as suppressive ARE suppressive, and the church, which should have been a blessing to all by this time, has been turned into a suppressive organization. All the original benign leaders have been purged over the years and the Church has been degraded. It is not now what it was intended to be by LRH and the many good people who helped found it.
That is what this website is all about. There is nothing wrong with the Tech itself. It can make anyone who actually uses it happier, brighter, more able and more social. But, there is a great deal wrong with the current church organization itself, as you correctly point out.
The current leadership is actually preventing the Tech from being taught and used. That's the problem.
Please read the articles on this website, and you will have a better understanding of what the issues here are.
Quote:Let me quote there, what Hubbard said in the lecture "Future Org Trends" from January 9th 1962:
"You want to know what happens when you clear
everybody in that neighbourhood, the only thing that center can become used for is a political center. Because by the time you've done all this, you are the government.
[...]
Once the world is Clear - a nation, a state, a city or a village - the Scientology-organization in the area becomes its government! And once this has taken place the only policy accepted as valid is Scientology policy."
You say law trumps policy, but this is only valid as long as Scientology is not the law. The policy does not permit free discourse about the workability and validity of the tech. There is no free scientific discourse permitted as to the tech. The tech must be unchanged, and adhered to 100% as is mandated by the KSW series.
However, that very same tech did permit a cruel leader taking power of Scientology. That very same tech permitted excesses like Operation Freakout to occur. That very same tech produced defectors with many of the same allegations you hear today.
"As a comparative, look at the Bible. There are justifications for everything in there: murder, incest, stoning women, slavery, you name it. But I don't see any Christian leaders standing on the Bible and going ahead to break any and all laws because 'the Bible says so'!"
Yes that is true, and that is also a very good point that you are making here. It boils down to this: Any dogma, of any kind, is bad. I give you the pope as an example. He is not preaching that people should write knowledge reports on each other or that the only ethical being is the upstat being. But the dogma is creating much suffering in other ways: The catholic prohibition of contraceptives is one of the main causes for child prostitution and poverty in the Philippines and other 3rd world countries.
"Everyone knows the tech is not perfect. Neither is the Bible. Neither is the Torah. Neither is the Koran. Nothing anywhere in any direction is perfect. Yet religions have a right to exist."
You are doing the very same thing here you were charging me with in the first place: In fact, the bold statement is not even true. I think, a whole lot of Scientologists would disagree about the tech not being perfect.
I have no problem with a Scientology that does not hold the tech as written by Hubbard letter for letter perfect and the truth, or a Scientology that does not try to force its beliefs on others. I have a problem with Scientology as it currently exists with its human rights abuse and its dogmatic belief in Hubbard policies.
Personally, I don't think very high of the contents of Dianetics. That is my personal choice, I have read it and I have found the contents of the book incompatible with the current scientific data that I have collected through my college years as well as my personal experience. Regarding the human rights campaign as launched by CSI itself, I am free to state this belief. I am not free forcing this belief on others, and that is a good thing.
I would lose that freedom if Scientology took power over the world. The goal, "a cleared planet", where only the unaberrated (which is a Scientology-definition and belief, a belief that I choose not to share) should be able to attain to the rights and benefits of citizenship is diametrically opposed to the human rights, is opposed to my freedom to not believe in the Scientology religion as I would directly experience disadvantages.
I have recently posted on Marty's blog under the name of Valkov, and I believe I will use that name here, too.
Thanks again for the validation.
You make excellent points. However, criticism of Scientology was no different when LRH was around. Long before DM became COB. Psychiatry and the media started calling it a cult way back in the 70's. YES, DM has made it worse...no question about that.
So really, the problem is as old as Scientology. However, to be fair, the situation was utterly and completely different in the '50s, '60s, '70s and even in the early '80s. The CoS and LRH were under severe and real attack by the government and this has been documented. Surely LRH could have handled it better. But is there anything any of us could not have handled better in one way or another?
LRH was arrested. There were threats on his life. It's hard to be magnanimous when powerful organizations are trying to kill you and bury the tech.
On the heels of a very hot war where millions of people were murdered, the cultural cold war was in full restim: it was a different world then. If you evaluate the current situation, you will find handlings which were somewhat appropriate -- or at least understandable in the past -- now being used in a situation that no longer demands that kind of treatment. As well, the world itself has changed. So what you really have is an organization that is utterly and totally out of PT, stuck in their own past engram and dramatizing LRH's mistakes continuously.
It's like the TRs. When someone can't understand the simplicity of the TRs, what do they do? Mimic what they have seen other people do, which LRH says are invariably incorrect applications. What are they not doing? Being there comfortably and confronting.
The Church is like that today. They don't understand one ounce of real Scientology; the fundamentals of the philosophy — how to apply ARC or the 8 dynamics or anything else. So what DO they do? They mimic executive actions LRH took in years gone by which may or may not have even been appropriate then! This is the idiocy we have today: someone in charge -- David Miscavige -- who is not himself a Scientologist, who cannot think for himself, who has no viewpoint on what Scientology, the philosophy, is all about. The TOTALITY of what he does -- honestly -- is look back on anything LRH ever did and mimic LRH on the basis of "if LRH did it = it must be okay." A = A = A.
On that basis, David Miscavige could start wetting his pants because when LRH was 2 years old, I'm sure he did that too.
You have a psychotic sociopath running Scientology. He's not thinking with the subject or applying principles. Actually he's applying only a single "principle" if you can call it that: unthinking robotic mimicry. And he's suppressing the living hell out of everyone.
Count, can you imagine if, with no evaluation of importance, I simply started mimicking anything you had ever done in your whole life and forcing everyone to do that throughout the Church?
I can't speak for you, but I've done plenty of stupid things in my life. Haven't we all?
We could assume DM is just a total idiot, but in another sense, he's not. I believe he knows exactly what he's doing. He knows it is easier to suppress people if you can justify your actions with something LRH did in the past. If you do that, then all the robots who have no integrity accept your actions and even stand up and applaud wildly. So that's what's really going on. We have an impostor pretending to apply LRH, when actually he's just finding justifications that support his designs to suppress the Church.
And not particularly in defense of LRH, the truth is if one evaluates the whole scene, as I did in 2008, which included going back into the church as a Scientology public to see what it was like, you will find the majority of illogics (outpoints) fall to David Miscavige. Not LRH. Therefore DM is the area of the Why, okay. That's why myself and others are focused on David Miscavige.
LRH had his faults. He made mistakes. He was human -- just like you and me and everyone else. The miraculous thing is he developed auditing technology and so much more -- workable technology that addresses and handles things nothing else can fix. LRH had his faults -- I grant that. But he also had pluspoints. And the pluspoints FAR outweigh the bad.
Being able to confront the duel nature of the universe is part and parcel of being able to confront life as it is. There is good and bad in everything. You like kittens? They eat birds. You like birds? They eat their young. When one looks around everything in this universe is a mixture of good and bad qualities. You like the sun? It causes cancer. You like LRH? Well, he had his faults too, just like you and me.
But LRH was not a sociopath.
Anyway I wanted to acknowledge what you wrote, because it is correct but also I wanted to add some context.
LRH stomped out anyone criticizing Scientology back then because there was a real war going on and Scientology was struggling for survival. LRH viewed criticism as an enemy act. Perhaps that was right; perhaps that was wrong. But regardless, times have changed!
If you listen to lectures from the 1950s, they are full of names of people who were later branded "squirrels." Wing and Smokey Angle, the Parkhouses, etc. Who were all these people? I don't know. Perhaps some of them were mislabeled. Times were a bit tougher then, and the organization was under real attack with real lies being published it.
Yet the Church today is a stranger to PT (present time); they are firmly stuck in the past fighting the same old battle. Today, criticism is healthy. And it would be healthy for the Church if only they could stop acting psychotic and come up to PT and take a look at their actions.
That's my opinion. Thanks for your comment.
I'm not a member and I despise that David Whatchamacallit. I went to the website and found that their beliefs and practices are better left to be a help organisation. To be honest, their teachings about resolving conflict, improving marriages, etc, etc, is common sense - at least that's what I think. Some of the stuff they say in the videos are primary points just putting it out there. Some people may need to learn it, but for it to be a 'religion' is a bit over the top.
I don't think the members are all bad - some are very kind I think. But that leader has to go. Numerous fraud, the whole Ponzi scheme thing - ugh. Now THEY'RE people who need to learn what's right and wrong.
It's ironic that he teaches human rights, but he doesn't follow his own rules. Pathetic.
RSS feed for comments to this post