The long term effect of Thursday mornings

[La La Lou Lou]

I was looking over stress, you might remember Thursdays, well actually the whole week in Scientology. The sleepless nights, the constant barrage of stress. The separation from loved ones, the cadet orgs the no breaks. Must have up stats. I need auditing but can't have it till my stats are up. Must finish my full hat. Can't see parents at Christmas. Want to leave but can't tell anyone I will be declared. I hate this place. No libs etc etc.

Here's the end product...

[Lurker5]

Thank you, LLLL . This is important info to know.

[GoNuclear]

I was looking over stress, you might remember Thursdays, well actually the whole week in Scientology. The sleepless nights, the constant barrage of stress. The separation from loved ones, the cadet orgs the no breaks. Must have up stats. I need auditing but can't have it till my stats are up. Must finish my full hat. Can't see parents at Christmas. Want to leave but can't tell anyone I will be declared. I hate this place. No libs etc etc.

Don't worry. La La ... all you need is a cigarette and a cup of hot black coffee and you will be just fine. Ooops, break is over, back to class, you have to get your stats up!

Pete

[La La Lou Lou]

I don't have any cigarettes but I have some cigarette papers, I'll go around the ashtrays, should be able to collect some dog ends before I'm missed off my post. Have to dash!

Coffee? no way, I spent all my pay on cigarette papers!

Have to go out now, my senior's just gone for product conference. This is my chance.

[GoNuclear]

I don't have any cigarettes but I have some cigarette papers, I'll go around the ashtrays, should be able to collect some dog ends before I'm missed off my post. Have to dash!

Coffee? no way, I spent all my pay on cigarette papers!

Have to go out now, my senior's just gone for product conference. This is my chance.

I had no idea it got THAT bad!!!!!!! Rolling from stale, stinky, extinguished butts in ashtrays ... eeeeeeeeeewwwwwwww! I was never staff, but, if it were me, I would have bummed my smokes from public pukes. And no coffee? By contrast, my down and out broke days were a snap compared to that ... working fone room sales jobs, if I had no money in my pocket, there was always free coffee and doughnuts and all I had to do was have a good day, write lots of deals, and I would have maybe 10 or 15 bux in bonus cash, which was enough for 3 cheap restaurant meals back in those days (1983)

Pete

[Lurker5]

GoNuc/Pete - public pukes? ????

That is quite revealing . . .

Edit: GoNuc PM'd me with explanation - calling people pukes is a navy term - for everyone who was a newbie - and it lappped over into his scno days.

Thanks for the clarification, Pete

[Voltaire's Child]

But...but...I thought Scn'ists could get their necessity level up over all this body stuff...

[Petey C]

I was looking over stress, you might remember Thursdays, well actually the whole week in Scientology. The sleepless nights, the constant barrage of stress. The separation from loved ones, the cadet orgs the no breaks. Must have up stats. I need auditing but can't have it till my stats are up. Must finish my full hat. Can't see parents at Christmas. Want to leave but can't tell anyone I will be declared. I hate this place. No libs etc etc.

Here's the end product...

... and all for nothing, too, eh! It's not like you're stressed because there's been a flood or earthquake or fire, but just so you can collect a measly bunch of meaningless figures that don't amount to a pile of shit! I hear you, LLLL.

For me in the SO at Flag, Thursdays started at 9am and was relatively placid till 7pm when the international stats would start coming in. We did all the analysis by continent, dealt with the WDC analyses, and basically stayed up till first light. On good days we would have breakfast before sleep. Then back on the job at noon. One time I spent two whole days without sleep because, once this shit was over, we got a telex from Hubbard saying we were late with organising the Christmas marketing (it was July). We had to do all the planning etc in 24 hours. What a bunch of crap that was. And like I said, it was all for nothing. No reason at all except plain and simple cruelty and idiocy.

[Leon]

The main mental-conditioninging reason for the weekly stat engram was that by keeping staff-members' attention rigidly fixed onto a short time-span you disempower any tendency for them to plan or prepare for any long term future and you thereby keep them that much more trapped in the present.

[Freeminds]

This description of Scientology's decline, and the decline that can be observed among its victims, made me think of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.



At the foundation of the hierarchy comes the physiological, including food and drink. Safety is next, then love and belonging, esteem, and finally "self-actualization". In a theory originally published in 1943, Maslow suggests that the basic needs (the ones lower down on the hierarchy) must be met before a person will worry about the things listed in the higher levels. Thus, you can't expect a person to really respect others if they're constantly worrying about where their next meal is coming from, and so on.

An obvious exception to the Maslovian hierarchy is seen when an emergency happens. The heroic rescuers who worked in the aftermath of the Christchurch Earthquake will not have stopped simply because they were hungry, or because they hadn't had any sex for a while. When an emergency happens, mankind (perhaps with the exception of Vulture Ministers) rises to meet the challenge, and delivers its best efforts.

Sometimes, we call this operating on a war footing. For a short period of time, we can set aside our other worries and concentrate on nothing but the emergency. Great things are done in this way. If you try to operate on a war footing for long periods of time, however, you actually achieve far less than a well-motivated but practical individual who takes adequate time to rest and to attend to their own needs in full. This includes leisure, sleep, hygiene and so on.

To my mind, Scientology appears to have been on a constant war footing for at least three decades now; maybe longer. This may have begun because of LRH's sociopathic disorder, in that he simply couldn't see other people as actually being people. ("All men are your slaves...") If nobody is 'real people' except Ron, what does it matter if they endure discomfort, fear, ill health, poverty, hunger...? In his exposure to the US Navy, undistinguished though his own career was, Hubbard may have picked up on the idea of ordering and motivating underlings to win battles; he does not appear to have understood the 'big picture' of winning wars.

Thus, in his pseudomilitary, Sea Org members are tired and hungry. In terms of man hours obtained per dollar spent on them, the SO is very efficient. If we look at what actually happens within those hours, we see that the SO are not even remotely effective.

We cannot expect the educationally subnormal David Miscavige, cult victim since the age of eleven, to change this. He won't make things go any better, and in fact seems to have made them worse by adding physical violence to the mix. As the old joke goes, "beatings will continue until morale improves." This merely adds a second tier of things that the SO members lack in the Maslovian hierarchy, since their safety is at risk as well.

Scientology was doomed as soon as it adopted this short-termist stance. It's sad to see the remaining victims in constant poor health, but their decline is at least matched and in many places exceeded by the decline in the cult as a whole.

Sooner or later, they'll wise up, get out and move on up the hierarchy towards family, self-esteem and morality.