OFF: Scientology!

[M Holmes]

Kevin Sommers writes:

> > Is anyone on this list a member of the Church? :)

I did their personality test during a 2 hour bus waitover as a student.
I was told I lacked "communication abilities" and they recommended a
course and sold me "Dianetics" which I read.  It's basically some
Freudian stuff with some of Hubbard's own ideas thrown in.
Interestingly one of them was recently found to be correct: his idea
that unconcious patients can pick up ("engrams" - Hubbard) what the
surgeons say during an op, even if they don't remember it later.  This
has a statistically significant effect on patient outcome as a study
last year into negative and positive comments during the op showed.

His other bugbears were hypnotism, fetal abuse, and any kind of
psychotherapy. It's yet to be shown that hypnotism exists in any real
sense at all.

What *was* fun was reading some of the debunlking of Scientology. Chris
Evans "Cults of Unreason" was hilarious on the subject. Also the
biography of Hubbard "Bare Faced Messiah" is most interesting. It
indicates that Hubbard was prone to fantasy and may have had some
psychological condition. It also makes a good argument that at some
points he tried to escape the monster he'd created (by theories
bordering on farce). However these were taken as much at face value by
followers as any of the rest of it. Scientology went through most phases
of cults including a repressive phase where transgressors (people who
didn't sell enough courses for example) were turned into slves during
sentence. Whole "orgs" could suffer this fate. Hubbard also at one point
took the whole management to sea in a small fleet he put together. His
needs were administered by teen girls in sailor uniforms as a sort of
personal guard.

Ultimately the monster slew him. If you're prone to fantasy, the last
thing you need is a machine which will, in effect, attempt to make your
fantasies come true. Hubbard, on taking (the probably correct) notion
that US intelligence agencies were against him, decided (as if he were
living one of his stories) to ponder an infiltration and subversion
campaign against them. His dedicated followers did much to make this
come true and caused no end of trouble. They also translated a petty
vengefulness against people who left Scientology and then opposed it
into fully fledged organised and funded ratfuck campaigns against these
people.

The best of us have a dark side to our personalities and couldn't easily
withstand a machine which would in effect amplify this and translate
wishes into reality. Hubbard, with an already doubtful grip on reality,
and a rich fantasy life, was simply destroyed by it.

He built his own "monster of the id" and in the end couldn't control it.
It's more tragedy than farce.

FoFP