Blog: Scientology And Saving The World - 2012-08-24
Scientology And Saving The World August 24, 2012,
In 1950 L. Ron Hubbard burst onto the scene tackling the attainment of the ends of Eastern spiritualism with the practicality mindset of Western materialism. He developed two related subjects toward that end, Dianetics, and its outgrowth, Scientology. Within two to three years he had described in pratical English terms having seen the universal truths as outlined in the Vedas and in the Tao Te Ching. He also described modern exercises that he discovered and developed to bring others to that experience. He spent the rest of his life attempting to undercut the route so that virtually anyone from any station in life or of whatever educational background could traverse it. In that effort to reach and effect all, matters eventually became complicated. An insidious parallel to helping and saving all peoples of earth evolved throughout Scientology writings. That is, the stress became not so much to make Scientology accessible to everybody as much as to make Scientology mandatory for everyone. This approach led to a type of dual personality for the subject. On the one hand it intended to release an individual from the restraints of life and to restore freedom of choice. On the other hand, it usurped freedom of choice and imposed restraints in the attempt to get every person there.
Control and restraint themes developed throughout Scientology writings. It was justified by the repeated idea that Dianetics and Scientology contain the answers to every problem and every question that every person ever faced; with the repeated emphatic idea that no one else has anything of use to contribute to those answers. The theme was evident in a substantial body of proselytization and ethics policy that justified any means necessary to leading the clueless to the only show in town. These policies dedicatedly applied wound up appealing to a broad spectrum of people as intended. That included people who wanted to communicate better, to find their sanity, to improve memory, to sell more, to be more successful, to have more meaningful relationships, to make more money, to dominate and control others, to reach higher states of spiritual awareness, to be more powerful, to get off drugs, to learn how to study, and even to reach immortality. In promoting to all those looking for these answers and more, and representing to those publics that those wants were all that Scientology was interested in helping them with, all the while intending and organizing to direct such people toward ultimately making Scientology the answer to everything weaved a strain of fraud into the woof and warp of its organizations.
Fraud requires as its central element the making of a misrepresentation that the communicator knows is false. In the case of Scientology, the recurrent, systemic knowing lie has nothing to do with the lack of efficacy of Scientology itself. When a Scientologist tells somebody that Scientology contains the answer to his problem, as well as every answer to every problem that person will ever face, that Scientologist believes that representation implicitly. The knowing misrepresentation that virtually every Scientologist is guilty of making over and over again is that whatever particular problem a seeker wants solved is the only problem the Scientology organization is interested in solving. In fact, Scientology scripture very methodically details how to use the solving of a particular problem as the bait to be switched toward creating a new bigger problem for the bait biter to pursue. Scientologists will vehemently protest my use of words such as "misrepresentation" and "fraud." But, the fact of the matter is that many of the significant problems that have nagged or lessened the reach of Scientology organizations stemmed from this inculcated lie.