Scientology

From: bob@minton.org (Bob Minton)
Subject: Friendly fire, or clams in disguise?
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 17:21:55 GMT

Despite the grumbling on ARS, Scientology isn't going to be unraveled with only objective means... This is the simple message Dorian is delivering to ARS.

What he says is that Scientology is an artistic creation from the ground up. Artistic creations have been challenged with objective means since time immemorial and yet very few have yielded. Science has pieced together an objective story of the universe, but that hasn't stopped a majority of the world's population from believing in God.

Dorian will not offer an objective solution to dissolving Scientology and we can only speculate as to why not. All I can tell you is what he says -- that were he to acquiesce to what he sees as the shortsighted demands of ARS critics to take the opportunity to challenge Art with Art, the chance might be lost for a very long time indeed. Instead of wheeling out more evidence for the objective argument, only later to be disappointed by the fact that most Scientologists ignored it, Dorian will offer instead a unique way to deal with the Scientology problem.

My question is this: hasn't anyone on ARS woken up to the fact that objective arguments of the evils of Scientology have had only modest effects? The absurd details of its upper level scriptures have been disseminated all over the internet, yet Scientology still lives, albeit with fewer members than 10 or 20 years ago. But Scientology has more money, more power, more influence, less scruples and less tolerance for its enemies than ever. All the parodies, all the name calling, all the picketing will not work on its own. I think this is because Scientology is designed to handle objective and contrary evidence. It's built to handle counter-attestation --- even those made by qualified analysts.

I think Dorian wants to come forward with an artful solution because our conventional, instinctually agreeable strategies have so far been running up against a brick wall. If you deny this, you're living in flattering fantasy. If it weren't so, there would have been no one who needed any help from me, I wouldn't have been put on the pedestal I seem to have been put on by many of the people who are now trashing me so relentlessly at the moment, nor would you care if I abandoned you or lost my credibility. Like it or not, ARS is largely sound and fury preaching to the converted.

There is now an opening for a new perspective. If one can appreciate the disciplined and laborious thinking that went into crafting the implied messages within Scientology, it's painfully obvious that the consensus view involving a single, well-read, super-talented philosopher and author is incorrect. It takes an enormous amount of work to put together a performance like Hubbard's. Dorian is suggesting, as some already know, that there was far too much for one human being to have thought out, especially while Hubbard was in the midst of his performance.

Those that haven't seen the messages implicit in the work will naively accept the performer at face value. They'll buy into the illusion of a peculiar individual with a couple of hundred hours in each of our 24 hour days. But the true skeptic will wonder.

How did those implied messages get there, and supposedly without the help of allies? He must have done it all himself, because he sure didn't have the help of followers --- they're not even aware the messages are there. So who thought these messages out, beforehand, then translated them into an effective performance --- a very, very difficult and time-consuming thing to do? And why are these messages controlling the Scientologist's behavior?

Is it just coincidence? For the few that are willing to allow themselves to ask these questions, Dorian offers an expanded view of the consensus reality.

Dorian has said before that Scientology is evil, and yet he also does not believe life can be fulfilling without Art. Tracing a path through these contradictory statements requires a high level of sophistication. There is good and evil art, and it all depends on original intent and result. Scientology was designed to be particularly good at manipulating its followers' recognition of both of these abstract quantities. It makes followers think it's the ultimate in goodness, while it makes unsophisticated observers think that anything that even slightly resembles it, that could mount an effective challenge to it, must be bad. Both conclusions are wrong. In this arena, it requires a very finely tuned sensitivity to correctly separate the good from the bad. The requirement pushes at the envelope of what Dorian calls human value recognition capacity. Most people in the Scientology conflict, excepting just a handful, are unsophisticated and nowhere near their limiting envelope.

Anyone that objects to an artful approach to the problem of Scientology is welcome to leave the theater--you know how to operate a newsreader. But if you stay, please don't spoil the show with catcalls and rudeness. The curtain goes up, and what happens? The objectively minded spoilsports in the audience stand up and vehemently demand to inspect our props. What's clear is that while these critics of Scientology would make for excellent guardians of the consensus, many are pitifully unable to accurately assess intent. Dorian related that in wartime no doubt we would find them recklessly mowing down their own artfully disguised allies with "friendly fire", mistaking them for the enemy.

What the Scientology management would most like is an object, a real person, or an attestation they can attack with their standard methods of credibility and character assassination. But this time, despite the assistance they've been getting from some of their more clueless allies on ARS, they're not going to get any of these things.

Bob Minton