S.O. Uniforms
Dear old Ron had some really wierd ideas about what his staff should wear. The deescent downhill matched his growing paranoia, delusions and drug insanity.
The very first insignia we wore was in the Sea Project. Our "uniform" was a boiler suit.
Our first few officers had a cap badge was an "O" with a "T" inside it.
When Hubbard set out from Gibraltar, back to the UK to collect the Royal Scotsman, he has his accompanying squad all wear "sailor boy" outfits, complete with "pork pie" hat. Some of those poor sods still cringe with embarrasment when they think about having to be dressed like that. Thank God no one they knew ever saw them passing by!!
The Sea Org badge was a star enclosed by two laurel branches. We wore naval type uniforms with black rank badges in order not to contravene the law about falsely wearing militiary or naval insignia (a point that seems to have been forgotten)
On the ship we wore (usually) light blue shirts and blue trousers. Rank was a peaked cap for officers and a yellow lanyard. For lower ranks it was a piece of brass toilet chain worn in a similar manner.
So far, so good. Nothing too contentious. nothing too outlandish.
In late 1968, the Class 8 course students were made to wear bright green boiler suits, open toed brown sandals and a rope noose around their necks.
At Edinburgh the AO crew wore (at least supposed to) white turtle jumpers, white trousers or skirts, white berets, white belts, silver buckles and silver painted boots.
When Bill Robertson took half the staff off to LA to set up the AOLA, his crew had to wear white overalls, white painted German helmets and white belts.
Later on he brought in the idea of staff wearing military style decorative ribbons as symbols of missions etc. These, of course, closely resembled normal military decorations. It is illegal to falsely wear a military decoration unless you have been officially awarded it.
I remember seeing some of Hubbard's CMO teenage girls wearing more ribbons and medals than Idi Amin ever wore!
Hubbard was really into some serious delusions and nuttiness with this stuff.
He was clearly quite PTS, bordering on type 3. What this sort of activity did was to call his mental state into question. Once you question that, you now have to question the content of what he wrote and lectured on.
A lot of what he wrote about has value. He was smart enough to draw on many sources for his materials (and then claimed copyright). the trouble was that the continuing drug and alcohol abuse finally took it's toll.
He went from a virtually omnipotent position in the early 1960's to a delusional, drugged fugitive hiding in North California when he finally died.
What does that say about his technology?
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Originally Posted by DartSmohen
