seductive writing

[FoTi]

could you please explain a bit more, do you mean it can hook you in without you knowing why?

YEP! You got it.

 

[Idle Morgue]

Hi OSA! Who knew it was you???

Your posting makes perfect sense! It is Wednsday after all!

Don't you have something better to do tonight like CLEAR the PLANET?

You, Misterfabian and herpes69 (something to that effect - got herpes from the position of 69 with DM) are all from OSA and it is obvious to us all.

Have a nice evening and have fun tomorrow getting your STATS together at 2pm. Let us know how we can help you! We love to help!

 

[Ogsonofgroo]

All part and parcel of 'Maybe it ain't as bad as it seems.' blah-blah "I'm so curious..." blah-blah, "this looked intersesting." blah-blather, 'LRon had something of value? How can I find out moar...', and my favorite~ "I'm not a clam BUT....' blither-blather', ~ fuck, it is all so stupid and predictable, and painfully obvious.
True, even some 'in earnest' noobs will start that way, but it is rare.
'Seductive writing.' No shite Sherlock, wtf do you think people are trying to recover from and re-gain their lives and minds?

Derp, someone obviously hasn't read around a whole lot.

Small note to noobs~ If you want to get taken seriously try using the new member introduction thread to start with and introduce yerslef. Otherwise make some frikken sense and get used to going through the 'troll-of-fire' routine, been enough stupids who have trolled (whether OSA, apologists, or idiots-at-large, ), created stories, pleaded for help......

My wee rant du-jour.

 

[StickbyMe]

Small note to noobs~ If you want to get taken seriously try using the new member introduction thread to start with and introduce yerslef. Otherwise make some frikken sense and get used to going through the 'troll-of-fire' routine, been enough stupids who have trolled (whether OSA, apologists, or idiots-at-large, ), created stories, pleaded for help......

Talk about a stat push. Instead of actually infiltrating the site, they just do a couple of half-assed postings. OSA, read the reference on stat pushes again.

 

[freethinker]

This is definitely a key datum to understanding why people find Scientology usefull and why they fall for it. Only Scientology makes Scientology make sense, nothing else does.

Scientology is explained by Scientology and Scientology alone.

 

[Outethicsofficer]

could you please explain a bit more, do you mean it can hook you in without you knowing why?

Yes, that is it exactly...it starts out quite innocently, I didn't even notice it and kept not noticing it for 24 years, and to this day it still has sway with me, less than it did but it is still there, I find still pieces of it will surface and it gets in the way of stuff.

I have to say that my thinking became narrower and restricted along certain lines.

It ends up being a straight-jacket on your mind.

 

[SweetnessandLight]

It's a very strange feeling I got while reading the fundamentals of thought
what hubbard says about the white man purveying attention and only looking for attention from the white as he considers the brown and yellow man's attention as worthless. That to me is razor sharp precise. I am an arab and have often confronted european people's sort of condescendence or arrogance I could never put my finger on what it was that was bothersome in their attitude agaisnt me and their it is: understand me, it is scary, there is something scary about reading this. It's as if hubbard had access to the dna of the world that he is showing me the world naked, and there's this feeling of being indebted to that man, "must i repay for that ultra precise information?"
It doesn't feel granted (I don't necessarily mean money) as if that man had access to information forbidden to man, there's also a rush to read more
has anyone had a similar reaction or impression while first reading hubbard?

Thanks

You MUST be kidding!?!

 

[Outethicsofficer]

You MUST be kidding!?!

Oh! I doubt it

 

[Kutta]

It's a cultural response. Individuals are most interested in things which they see as similar to that which they already familiar with. The more 'foreign' the stimulus the less ability they have to understand and the less interest. Understanding increases with exposure. Interest is lacking in that which seems 'incomprehensible'.
......

Mark A. Baker

I don't believe this is generally true. Individuals are often intensely interested in unfamiliar cultures. Inability to understand frequently increases curiosity and interest.

For centuries, people from Western countries have traveled and written about their odysseys, their quests for understanding, even enlightenment, in the near East, the Far East, the Middle East, Africa, Sth America and so on. Not all, by any means, ventured therein carrying attitudes of superiority.

The same holds true today and did during Hubbard's early life, although notions of white intellectual and moral superiority was particularly virulent at that time in the American South, where I think he spent his childhood.

Even so, I can't recall writings by any of his contemporaries that display such nasty, bigotted white arrogance.

 

[GreyLensman]

It's a cultural response. Individuals are most interested in things which they see as similar to that which they already familiar with. The more 'foreign' the stimulus the less ability they have to understand and the less interest. Understanding increases with exposure. Interest is lacking in that which seems 'incomprehensible'.

The rule of thumb of hubbard's which you cite was his way of explaining the racist tendencies which are an outgrowth of the western world's traditional cultural & technological dominance. As with much of hubbard's musings, it's not a matter of 'truth' so much as it represents popular attitudes arising from the presumption of cultural superiority of western ways.

It should be born in mind that Hubbard's early life and attitudes were formed in a culture (early 20th century u.s.) where white superiority, open expression of racism, & cultural dominance of the west were taken as being completely natural aspects of worldly existence. His lifelong attitudes as expressed in his lectures & writing reflected the racist & behavioral beliefs adopted from this his native culture.


Mark A. Baker

It's a cultural response from a specific period in time - but others from that same generation, growing up with those same prejudgments, moved beyond them, especially in the fifties and sixties. I'm thinking of Robert Heinlein in particular.

Hubbard was trapped in his own world in many ways, and Scio was his invitation to join it. And a part of that world was a basic racism that went beyond race to us versus them...

 

[GreyLensman]

It's a very strange feeling I got while reading the fundamentals of thought
what hubbard says about the white man purveying attention and only looking for attention from the white as he considers the brown and yellow man's attention as worthless. That to me is razor sharp precise. I am an arab and have often confronted european people's sort of condescendence or arrogance I could never put my finger on what it was that was bothersome in their attitude agaisnt me and their it is: understand me, it is scary, there is something scary about reading this. It's as if hubbard had access to the dna of the world that he is showing me the world naked, and there's this feeling of being indebted to that man, "must i repay for that ultra precise information?"
It doesn't feel granted (I don't necessarily mean money) as if that man had access to information forbidden to man, there's also a rush to read more
has anyone had a similar reaction or impression while first reading hubbard?

Thanks

Nope. That's the short answer.

Of course there's truth in Hubbard's writings - they would have been lightly dismissed without it, many of us would never have stepped into his nightmare for the world without that kernel of ethics and honesty and truth.

Hubbard had an occasional turn of phrase - he was a writer and storyteller by purpose, eventually he had to hit it right. Stephen King does it more consistently - there can be a beauty and an elegance in rhythm and phrasing to language.

Hubbard saw the world through a limited lens. He watched the attention inflow and outflow and commented on it from within his own insular point of view - but what he doesn't tell you is that if you aren't kowtowing and bowing and scraping before him as a greeeeeatttt man, your attention is worthless, regardless of race color or creed.

The man was an equal opportunity asshole.

 

[Freeminds]

The man was an equal opportunity asshole.

 

[Gadfly]

The man was an equal opportunity asshole.

Ha-ha-ha!!!!! I just LOVE that description of Hubbard - it is so perfectly apt.

 

[Claire Swazey]

I don't believe this is generally true. Individuals are often intensely interested in unfamiliar cultures. Inability to understand frequently increases curiosity and interest.

For centuries, people from Western countries have traveled and written about their odysseys, their quests for understanding, even enlightenment, in the near East, the Far East, the Middle East, Africa, Sth America and so on. Not all, by any means, ventured therein carrying attitudes of superiority.

The same holds true today and did during Hubbard's early life, although notions of white intellectual and moral superiority was particularly virulent at that time in the American South, where I think he spent his childhood.

Even so, I can't recall writings by any of his contemporaries that display such nasty, bigotted white arrogance.

I bet I could find some. He was Edwardian era. Yes, there were plenty of people back then who weren't racist, but it was far less rare than now and a lot more accepted. It's lovely that we've moved through the times, but if anyone's telling me that Hubbard was alone amongst his contemporaries in his views of women and other races, I'm not gonna agree.

 

[olska]

I bet I could find some. He was Edwardian era. Yes, there were plenty of people back then who weren't racist, but it was far less rare than now and a lot more accepted. It's lovely that we've moved through the times, but if anyone's telling me that Hubbard was alone amongst his contemporaries in his views of women and other races, I'm not gonna agree.

Hubbard was BORN in 1912 -- near the END of the "Edwardian era," which means he would have been an infant in that era.

The cultural influences on him in his formative years (teens, twenties, early 30s) were much later. Those cultural influences would be more accurately described as Roaring Twenties and Depression era, and would include Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, the push for women's suffrage, prohibition, the widespread poverty of the Depression, the leadership of Franklin D Roosevelt, events leading up to WWII (he was 30 in 1942), early 20th century writings on civil rights, etc.

Hubbard's attitudes regarding eugenics, and toward those of other races and cultures were reactionary and "backward" even in his time, and there's no evidence that he changed those attitudes as the world around him changed after the war and in the late 1950s and 1960s civil and women's rights movements.

His ideas are an homage to the past even in 1950. Hardly a man with what you'd call "vision."

 

[Dulloldfart]

His ideas are an homage to the past even in 1950. Hardly a man with what you'd call "vision."

Maybe they reflect all the time he spent looking in a mirror (and taking those adoring photographs of himself).

Paul

 

[Claire Swazey]

Hubbard was BORN in 1912 -- near the END of the "Edwardian era," which means he would have been an infant in that era.

The cultural influences on him in his formative years (teens, twenties, early 30s) were much later. Those cultural influences would be more accurately described as Roaring Twenties and Depression era, and would include Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, the push for women's suffrage, prohibition, the widespread poverty of the Depression, the leadership of Franklin D Roosevelt, events leading up to WWII (he was 30 in 1942), early 20th century writings on civil rights, etc.

Hubbard's attitudes regarding eugenics, and toward those of other races and cultures were reactionary and "backward" even in his time, and there's no evidence that he changed those attitudes as the world around him changed after the war and in the late 1950s and 1960s civil and women's rights movements.

His ideas are an homage to the past even in 1950. Hardly a man with what you'd call "vision."

His formative years were a long time ago. Before women had the vote, some of the time was before WWI, even.

Of course there were many enlightened non bigoted people then, but far less than now. In fact, political correctness didn't even take hold til about the 1990s.

Hubbard was certainly older than my folks and they've told me much about their generation. Wasn't uncommon to have all kinds of views that today would be considered at best, naive, and at worst, dangerously bigoted.

In fact, when German National Socialism was on the rise, it was precisely during Hubbard's generation and there were a LOT of Americans (Like Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh) who were proponents of that and of EUGENICS.

 

[Mark A. Baker]

I bet I could find some. He was Edwardian era. Yes, there were plenty of people back then who weren't racist, ...

Yeah? Where?

Racism is just another expression of 'fear of other', a trait common to all cultures at all times. What differs are the local definitions of 'other' and the degree to which the expression of fear is manifested.

In the late 19th & early 20th century west the concept of white superiority as well as the concept of male superiority was ubiquitous. The progressives of the time were those who advocated extension of rights to minority groups. Those who actually believed in full equality were so rare as to be essentially non-existent. As examples of the times, both Mark Twain & H. L. Mencken were prominent americans notable for their advancement of minority interests and considered quite 'progressive' in their views at the time but whose works are replete with that which the modern world considers openly racist.

The fact is that the times were different and so too were the community standards.


Mark A. Baker

 

[Gadfly]

Ooops . . . wrong thread . . . . .

 

[Kutta]

I do agree with what is being expressed here, in its generality. I do note though that, understandably, Americans tend to come to these issues of racism, which has been extreme and entrenched in the US, and male gender superiority, from the context of their own history and authors.

That context does not hold true universally in all aspects. For example, women achieved the vote in NZ in 1893.

I am certainly not saying there was no gender inequality or racism in NZ; there was, and there is. Yet a broad brush statement of western perspective does not reflect the complexity or variety across times and between places. Nor does it acknowledge those who did hold views of equality among people.

Einstein, for example, was an outspoken, passionate, committed anti-racist.

I cannot excuse Hubbard's xenophobia because of the milieux of his early years. It's the nastiness, arrogance, and contempt he adds to views that were generally held, the offensive manner in which he expresses them, and his abject failure, as Olska says, to move beyond them as attitudes changed.