Oh, Oh, The Feral Cat is Set Among the Pigeons!
I've been wanting to challenge a mind set here for a while among Scientologists, heretical scientologists, FZers and fence sitters. The odd thing is this applies to me a bit as well. Mostly as I left the Church.
Well Kevin Bloody Mackey, challenge “the mind set” you did . . . and along with some other bloody aspects of the board’s equilibrium as well! You’ve set a Feral cat among the pigeons!
So here it is, if this Scientology is the tech of life and all that it is said to be how come the church itself hasn't prospered ? The staff and SO don't do well, the public don't show any real positive difference from their peers in the world at large. In fact if you take a real hard look you will even find the opposite.
There is a lot of discussion on the board based on the assumption that the tech is great and management is not and it is or has gone bad. That explains everything of course, all of the outnesses right down to the lack of the state of OT as a result from the OT levels, the abuse, secrecy and lack of expansion and popularity of the church.
Actually I’m giving your leg a well deserved pulling, as your post is a classic of well written; well reasoned, argued and propositioned ponderings.
But it does remind me of the debating society fraternity wherein individuals can take on, or propose, positions they don’t actually believe in, all for the sake of a debate or argument.
For me, I will not take the bait of the “either/or” proposition as I see it as fallacious as such usually are.
In my view the proposition of your piece’s second and third paragraphs, and its subject header “Tech Good, Management Bad?” contain some false and/or limited premises. Though, this of course, is the stuff of “propositions for the sake of argument.”
In reading the responses so far, I can’t help being reminded of LRH’s musings on the subject of problems, which I shall paraphrase from memory: “A problem is two or more opposing forces or intentions considered to be of equal magnitude.” And, of course, it’s this appearance of equal magnitude of the options that hangs an area up as unresolved.
It’s not what is in the Tech Dictionary, but it’s my expression of what I remember from his old tapes. (And I think my statement is more elegant than his!!)
I am reminded of this because this thread has revealed degrees of difficulty for some folks in “letting go” of and/or resolving some aspects of their involvement with the scene we refer to as Scio, which difficulty appears, from what has been revealed, to stem from not yet fully recognizing or assigning relative importances to each of the pieces of the puzzle; and so, all thus having equal weight, the area hangs up.
This hang up being evinced by such statements as, “Difficult time sorting out”; or “I think it’s both . . .” etc.
Well, “it” is not both. Some parts of “it” work, and some parts do not. Some parts may well have been honest endeavor to help, and other parts are obviously efforts at deceit. That the management and conduct of “its” affairs is now criminal is beyond question—this might have affected “its” success in attaining any promised results with the upper level tech had that tech ever been able to achieve the promise; but that tech never did, nor was it ever able to and nor can it.
Every now and then DM announces a magic bullet to remedy this, a piece of tech that will fix everything something that has been corrected from management created alterations, something wonderful. With each 'magic bullet' the church sells it's faithful they appear to go further down the road to the inevitable exposure that the tech does not and will not produce what was implied.
By magic bullet I'm talking about; KTL, LOC, Grades for OTs, New NOTS, GAT, GAK, Advanced pgms, new PTS SP courses and new books, ad-infinitum, each new re-release and sometimes re-re-release explaining away and remedying the failures of the past, which for those brief windows of convenience appear to be acknowledged.
The result? Inevitably more abuse, greater expense and tighter 'ethics' and control for and of the public and those 'out ethics' staff.
I can hear the FZers say; "exactly, it's the bad and suppressive management". Proves it doesn't it?
So, how good is this tech?
The first thing I did when I eventually realized that the “church” had gone bad and was not going to ever be gotten honest and straight such that its workable tech would be honestly and helpfully applied (and I refer mainly to the management, ethics and admin tech of that time here); I did a tour around the US investigating who and what was available to continue what I considered to be a worthwhile endeavor of recovering and restoring my true full spiritual powers with.
This also caused me to do a complete evaluation of all the techs available along with a comparable evaluation of Scio tech itself. I ended up with items, individual items, that were seen to be either definitely workable and worthwhile, some that were questionable, and some that were absolute crap and destructive falsehood or otherwise evil practices.
I then embraced the workable and worthwhile, absolutely discarded totally the crap, and held the questionable at a safe distance for further analysis. This included such items, even, as the Axioms — I find there is both erroneous and questionable material in them along with some worthwhile stuff.
This action removed, for me, any doubt situations I had. It gave me a certainty on what I had such that I could move forward.
So, to answer your question: “So, how good is this tech?”
My first response is: Which tech? Which part or piece of the tech?
Of the processing tech, some of it is very good and highly workable. Some is absolute crap and actually dangerous to the extent that some has even produced damaging outcomes.
Overall, “the tech” is superficial with much incomplete as to depth of needed research and development, and some is now seen as observably erroneous. These judgments and evaluations, of course, could only be done once one had studied the material in question.
A review of the actual history of the development of the management tech from reading the reports of those who worked with LRH while it was being developed reveals it was actually developed as a control mechanism rather than it being the “management tech” it is purported to be. The ethics tech similarly was developed as a subjugation and domination tool not as the ostensible rehabilitation and helpful restoration tool if was positioned as. “Management staff” actually only dramatize the abusive ethics tech practices on their charges as was practiced on them — so we actually have a bad tech-bad people situation on that point.
So, to all you FZers and others; I propose that this result is the inevitable result of an unworkable body of technology developed as bait to lure people in to agreement and alliance with Hubbard and his game of dominance over the minds of men. Hubbard's paranoia has mirrored itself like a cancer in his admin tech with classic creations like the RPF, Scientology justice, fair game, The elite SO, OSAs dirty tricks and many more.
I would change the wording of this paragraph even if I agreed the thrust of its main point on Hubbard’s intentions — and there is persuasive evidence that the whole thing was the implementation of a mad, evil scheme right from its inception!
This phrase is incorrect: “I propose that this result is the inevitable result of an unworkable body of technology developed as bait to lure people in”
A more correct statement would be: This outcome is the inevitable result of a body of technology which has as its early and introductory levels some highly workable and beneficial materials that are used as bait to lure people into the higher levels where increased control and domination is practiced and which ultimately are not only not workable in delivering what is promised, but are in fact detrimental and dangerous.
Now before every one thinks I've joined the "it's all dreck" club and that I think none of it works. I'll say, like many here I had a lot of gain here and there from auditing and training. But I proppose those wins and pieces of workability were bits of bait laid along the trail called the bridge to keep us shelling out and to convince us that it WAS the carefully laid path out of here to OT god like abilities and states that have been alluded to since the PDC days yet have never manifest themselves.
What do you' techies' and ' Ronnites' not agree with here? .
The big question I still have, is: did Hubbard begin this as a con job? Was it all deceit and a fraud from the very beginning?
That I do not know.
It is possible he was irresponsibly “flamboyant” and insouciant in the beginning, then it got out of his control and he turned to the evil, dark side to cover his goofs and irresponsible statements. Eventually the dark side took over, and the exercise became one of more and more deceit when he could not admit any errors and his lies, such as his phony PhD, were exposed. Evidence indicates he turned paranoid in about 1961, and flipped to the dark side more and more beginning about 1964.
RogerB
(Opter's husband)
Some great points, well made. Thanks for posting, Rog. 
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