People who go nuts after having been declared a Suppressive Person

Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
"Mark Chambers, the KTL supe at Stevens Creek, who started having bad health problems, ended up in a wheelchair, probably after a double amputation as his circulation was horrible from years of smoking and just bad health habits–perhaps diabetes. He kept on as a staff member, but the ED got him offloaded as the idea of a ‘cripple DB’ in the org on staff was completely out-PR to her. She was pretty brutal about that sort of thing and had made sarcastic comments about fixing the org’s elevator, because only downstats would need it–and that was not worth putting money into. He died after he was kicked off of staff. To make matters worse a few years prior to this, his wife really went off the deep end mentally. Many suicide watches and handlings with the DSA, and last I heard she was still in terrible shape. She also had been a staff member for years."

Yeah, because sympathy is low on the tone scale.
:eyeroll:

Really, if there is can be one single sentence that describes all that is wrong about scn, it is: "Lack of compassion".

It seemed Scientology went nuts at this same time, when a bit of sanity and civility was about to finally usher in. This is the narcissistic rage at the top, when a control structure is threatened or about to come apart.
Both Hubbard and especially Miscavige were paranoid. They always feel threatened, even in situations when they are 100% secure. The ironic fact is: Davey's sadism and paranoia is exactly what might cause people to start turning against him. It obviously caused Mike Rinder to turn against him.

This hurt me, as my husband was on staff, and upon our separation, he quit staff and went to Miami Org to work out of his condition and pay his freeloader debt. His spinal cord was damaged during a robbery at his wog job there, and he was made a quad for 25 yrs. Of course, there was speculating about what he'd done to 'pull it in'. No one would dare risk a transfer of karma by their inuendos though.
That's exactly one of the main reasons I left. These veterans, dedicated members with 20+ years of work for the cult behind their belt... and seeing the cult kick them out like a bag of trash after they become ill/old/had an accident.

The cult has no compassion, no loyalty, no gratitude, no dignity.
 
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Reyne Mayer

Pansexual Revolutionary
I'd seen that happen at Flag and in Miami back in the early 80s with the infamous List One R/Sers. Ron was ferreting out why income was lost.
from what i can tell reading about the whole era, it's seems pretty clear that in the big picture income was being lost because the market was shrinking with the passing of the baby boom counterculture movement. as the number of young people waned, first school districts had closed grade schools starting in the late 60s, and then about 10% of the colleges in the US had closed in the late 70s. and the newer generation of young people wanted to read the Preppy Handbook (published 1980), not Dianetics, or Steal This Book (published in 1971 by Abbie Hoffman, whose fellow Yippie Jerry Rubin had reinvented himself as as a businessman in the 70s and went to work on Wall Street as a stockbroker in 1980). most or all of the groups and cults like scientology that had flourished in that heyday, were losing members and income by then.

Ron was apparently clueless (or at least completely unrealistic) about the big picture of what was really going on in the world and how to respond and adapt, destructively scapegoating people in his own organization instead. i'm sure that at times in some places there were people who weren't even doing as well as they should have with the hand they had been dealt, but he was all but expecting people to make water flow uphill.

oh, and someone here has shared that one of the reasons that they left in the 80s, was that Ron had stopped appearing -- and it was always something of a cult of personality, with him doing various sorts of conferences that produced lots of tapes, but i guess he couldn't take responsibility for his role, surprise, surprise.

anyone else have any insights from the time?
 

onceuponatime

Well-known member
anyone else have any insights from the time?
I think the biggest event of the 80's was the mission holders conference. Things might've been down trending for a bit before then but after that they fell off a cliff. At the same time the actions they took and what they did to missions might've made more money flow up lines in the short term (and that's the only important stat). But destroying missions (and orgs) like they did had obvious consequences. Luckily Scientology has never really given much thought to consequences or the future. They will always push to get the most stats they can now, even if that means destroying any potential for the future (even when the future potential is much greater than whatever stat they are getting this week).

One of the crazy things about Scientology is they expect everything to always go up. And if things aren't going up they then blame one of their own, usually someone fairly dedicated and hard working. It seems obvious but over time this means they are going to lose a lot of people.

Scientology has never been able to adapt and that is one of their fatal flaws. There is never any thought about context or anything else. It's just do what Ron says. If Ron says put a head on a pike then that's what you do.
 

Reyne Mayer

Pansexual Revolutionary
Scientology has never been able to adapt and that is one of their fatal flaws. There is never any thought about context or anything else. It's just do what Ron says. If Ron says put a head on a pike then that's what you do.
thanks for your perspective. i think that explains a lot of it.

i know that the early 80s were a time of big upheaval, but from what i've heard from old timers various tone-deaf and short-sighted things like Ron's monthly price increases and the 'quickie clear' type messes (temporarily juicing cash flow) had turned a lot of people off and driven them away even before things went down with the missions.
 

mimsey borogrove

Well-known member
i get the impression that evolved over time, that in $cn's heyday at the peak of the counterculture movement they were much less picky if they screened people at all (which was very profitable for LRH, as were gimmicks like 'quickie clears' introduced as the market started to contract). and then i'm guessing that after a bunch of bad outcomes they must have tightened up, just as happened more obviously and more recently with the string of ugly incidents culminating in Lisa McPherson's and Elli Perkins' deaths, followed by DM further restricting 'tech' delivery and even keeping people with any hint of instability off the Flag campus entirely.

if anyone can speak more directly to what went on in the 60s and early 70s, it would be very interesting to hear.

i certainly agree that even apparently mentally stable can go in but end up unstable.
I can't say I agree that they were less picky - I think that they operated on Hubbard's many are called and if they turn out to be flat ball bearings or PTS they would be routed out. Any org relied on a bunch of able people to run the org, to audit and train others and a lot of menial jobs, like central files, so they could rise based on their ability, willingness to make things go right. The Sea Org was a different caliber than the 0-4 orgs, like the one I was on staff at. Mental instability? Well, put it this way - they didn't need or want DBs on staff, however some of the execs were kinda nuts. What exec in his right mind would push the concept of postulate checks? That it a huge disconnect from reality. But it quickly became the rage and then it collapsed.

For the longest time, Hubbard did not want credit cards and when they finally were accepted, and soon they were scamming the credit cards in all manner of deception, which backfired badly on the church.

I think you can successfully argue the insane drive for constant expansion by 2 pm thursday destroyed the orgs as it lead the staff into unethical behavior and practices that clearly resulted in disaster, which Miscavage "solved" by writing the reg contracts so as to prohibit refunds, and shifting to pushing IAS donos. This insanity has resulted in the ideal morgues - vestiges of Hubbard's orgs & missions which drove Scientology's expansion in it's hay days.

It is obvious from the whole 2 pm structure, and Hubbard's policies - he really didn't know how to run a business, and certainly didn't operate on the basis of KSW #1 - having a good workable product to start with.

At the end of the day - Scientology's insanity is rot from the top down - Hubbard and Miscavqage both pushing an unworkable technology in exchange for hard earned cash, the very bottom rung of Hubbard's exchange policy.:duh:

Elli was a friend of mine, and it is a crying shame that her life ended that way. Such a waste.

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Mimsey
 
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Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
One of the crazy things about Scientology is they expect everything to always go up. And if things aren't going up they then blame one of their own, usually someone fairly dedicated and hard working. It seems obvious but over time this means they are going to lose a lot of people.
I just talked yesterday with someone (who was never a scientologist) about this. Basically even from my ethics gator background I spotted two types of problems:
1. Problems caused by actual bad behavior or bad decisions by individuals. Liars, sexual molesters, extreme egoists etc.
2. Systemic problems caused directly or indirectly by the policies or the way the structure is organized and the membership is trained. That credit card fraud with regges that we recently heard about? Systemic issue. Rat culture and people lying in their KRs? Systemic issue.

Heck, even sexual molestation was in some sense a systemic issue, as the hierarchy was structured in a way that allowed easy abuse of positions of power.


Thing is: Scientology ethics and its justice system are all geared towards resolving problems caused by individuals. Not only didn't we have the tools to adress systemic issue, that was actively discouraged and people were afraid of being called "off-purpose", "out-ethics" or "counter-intention" if anyone raised a systemic problem as an issue that needs to be solved.
 

Hatshepsut

Well-known member
I had been involved with old timers since the original charter in Phoenix. What I saw happening between 82-83, was almost other wordly. It was an attack from the nether realms as far as I could discern. Cruelty without reason or measure.

At first I chalked it up to the hormones of the new 'young rulers' who had been sold the operation so Ron could hide out. Then, I started to really feel the evil which I had, up to that point, doubted even existed. I never believed the balderdash about SPs on staff etc. But, what I began to feel in 1982-83 was a different kind of suppression. To me, it was almost as if I had contracted to operate as an extended viewpoint of dimension here, and then, cancelled the agreement, reclaiming sovereignty. It seemed myself, along with others, had gone outside the matrix temporarily, where design engineers reside. I thought the crap running downhill, might be consequential punishment. To my mind, at the time, everything boiled down to a flow 0.

Or maybe, like Alan Walter said, we experience Ascension crashes. This matrix might be organized place holders..... with a place for everything......and everything in its place.
 

Enthetan

Veteran of the Psychic Wars
Thing is: Scientology ethics and its justice system are all geared towards resolving problems caused by individuals. Not only didn't we have the tools to adress systemic issue, that was actively discouraged and people were afraid of being called "off-purpose", "out-ethics" or "counter-intention" if anyone raised a systemic problem as an issue that needs to be solved
A "systemic issue" would be regarded as a failure of Ron's Management Tech, and would be treated as blasphemy.

Yes, you could delicately mention that you observed that policy X was generating Bad Incentive Y resulting in Bad Condition Z, send it up lines, and hope for the best, but that's it.
 

Reyne Mayer

Pansexual Revolutionary
At the end of the day - Scientology's insanity is rot from the top down - Hubbard and Miscavqage both pushing an unworkable technology in exchange for hard earned cash, the very bottom rung of Hubbard's exchange policy.:duh:

Elli was a friend of mine, and it is a crying shame that her life ended that way. Such a waste.
as i see it the organization is very much a reflection of LRH, acting out his pathological dysfunctions and dramas -- and as others have pointed out, even trying to imprint his personality on those in it.

and sorry to hear about your friend. i think it's it's easy to read the story and see her as a sort of perpetrator for denying her son the medical/psychiatric care he needed, but in the dysfunctional abusive environment of the co$ she was also a victim of the insanity of pushing unworkable (and even dangerous) 'technology'.
 

Reyne Mayer

Pansexual Revolutionary
At first I chalked it up to the hormones of the new 'young rulers' who had been sold the operation so Ron could hide out. Then, I started to really feel the evil which I had, up to that point, doubted even existed.
as i see it, at that point LRH had built the sea org up to where he could finally exert totalitarian control and impose KSW, the sort of fascist tendencies that concerned his sci fi contemporaries back in the old days, in a way he hadn't been able to when it was expanding wildly at the peak of the baby boomer counterculture movement and flower children could make the orgs and missions into their ideal of what they thought scientology should be -- which was not necessarily Ron's conception (hence KSW) but made the experience back then something that people are nostalgic for to this day.

could that evil be something like the percolating down of Hubbard's attitude of pathological disregard for others, to the extent of even justifying doing harm to them?

one aspect of that which perhaps ties into the topic here, is that it appears to me that LRH considered it justifiable to break a certain number of people (viewed as weak or flawed) in the process of 'making the able more able'.
 

Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
A "systemic issue" would be regarded as a failure of Ron's Management Tech, and would be treated as blasphemy.

Yes, you could delicately mention that you observed that policy X was generating Bad Incentive Y resulting in Bad Condition Z, send it up lines, and hope for the best, but that's it.
Well, yes that's how it was often interpreted.

Thing is: It didn't have to be. Ron pushed it in that direction with KSW and "sole source" and all that nonsense, but
even with that there was the underlying stability of the structure and the willingness, dedication and hard work of its members. If someone at the top would have given a green light to pragmatism and "continuous improvement", things would have been much better.

CoS would still be a totalitarian structure, but it would have been much more stable and "pro-survival" for a lack of a better term.

I can make an analogy to China. After the insanity of the cultural revolution, China needed a cold, down-to-earth pragmatist like Deng Xiaoping. After the insanity of Hubbard's last years, CoS also needed a Deng Xiaoping figure, but instead we got a Stalin figure more ruthless and more narrow-minded than Ron was.

as i see it the organization is very much a reflection of LRH, acting out his pathological dysfunctions and dramas -- and as others have pointed out, even trying to imprint his personality on those in it.
It is, but I'd say by the 2000s it was far more Davey's boat than Ronnie's boat.
 

onceuponatime

Well-known member
as i see it, at that point LRH had built the sea org up to where he could finally exert totalitarian control and impose KSW, the sort of fascist tendencies that concerned his sci fi contemporaries back in the old days, in a way he hadn't been able to when it was expanding wildly at the peak of the baby boomer counterculture movement and flower children could make the orgs and missions into their ideal of what they thought scientology should be -- which was not necessarily Ron's conception (hence KSW) but made the experience back then something that people are nostalgic for to this day.

could that evil be something like the percolating down of Hubbard's attitude of pathological disregard for others, to the extent of even justifying doing harm to them?

one aspect of that which perhaps ties into the topic here, is that it appears to me that LRH considered it justifiable to break a certain number of people (viewed as weak or flawed) in the process of 'making the able more able'.
Yeah, I agree with your post but I don't think it was part of any real plan. When I look at LRH and Scientology I don't really see long term plans, it's all just reactionary.

I think it's as simple as he saw missions doing well, making money, being popular, etc. and that's obviously a crime. Only LRH is supposed to profit, etc. from Scientology. So then they stepped in and exerted control. Of course the SO had to be big enough to do this.

I don't think LRH was concerned about making the able more able. Maybe later on in his life he started to drink his own kool-aid but for most of it I think he just wanted money and power.
 

Lee #28

Well-known member
Yeah, I agree with your post but I don't think it was part of any real plan. When I look at LRH and Scientology I don't really see long term plans, it's all just reactionary.

I think it's as simple as he saw missions doing well, making money, being popular, etc. and that's obviously a crime. Only LRH is supposed to profit, etc. from Scientology. So then they stepped in and exerted control. Of course the SO had to be big enough to do this.

I don't think LRH was concerned about making the able more able. Maybe later on in his life he started to drink his own kool-aid but for most of it I think he just wanted money and power.

And LRH's vanity.... a huge amount of vanity....

What is really weird to me....especially now, looking back....was LRH writing those Science Fiction books in the 1990s

Mission Earth and Battlefield Earth. ( and Revolt in the Stars....)

Not going into the content of the books...but his "disconnecting from Scientology" to write some fiction books...

He really fucked up on, as stated in the above quote from @onceuponatime ....."no long term plans."

Why did he disconnect from Scientology....and get into writing Science Fiction again....and not lay out long term plans for the Cult?

Why was he so vain as to have his books bought by Cult Members.....soaking them for $10 or $20 dollars? And wanting his name on Best Seller lists.....? And those god awful "art prints" that went along with all that marketing show? ( at that time in the Cults time line...)

He was continually promoting and bragging about "his self" and not taking care of others..... ( as he claimed his technology could....)
 

Enthetan

Veteran of the Psychic Wars
as i see it, at that point LRH had built the sea org up to where he could finally exert totalitarian control and impose KSW, the sort of fascist tendencies that concerned his sci fi contemporaries back in the old days, in a way he hadn't been able to when it was expanding wildly at the peak of the baby boomer counterculture movement and flower children could make the orgs and missions into their ideal of what they thought scientology should be -- which was not necessarily Ron's conception (hence KSW) but made the experience back then something that people are nostalgic for to this day.
It was the combination of the confidential "OT" levels, plus the Sea Org (which controlled access to those levels) which allowed totalitarian control.

The power of the Sea Org came from the effective monopoly on access to the OT levels.
 

Reyne Mayer

Pansexual Revolutionary
Yeah, I agree with your post but I don't think it was part of any real plan. When I look at LRH and Scientology I don't really see long term plans, it's all just reactionary.

I think it's as simple as he saw missions doing well, making money, being popular, etc. and that's obviously a crime. Only LRH is supposed to profit, etc. from Scientology. So then they stepped in and exerted control. Of course the SO had to be big enough to do this.

I don't think LRH was concerned about making the able more able. Maybe later on in his life he started to drink his own kool-aid but for most of it I think he just wanted money and power.
i'm not implying a plan there, just personality characteristics playing out over time leading in a particular direction.

also, i think there was a sort of dysfunctional dynamic in which LRH for example started finding ways to bleed more and more money from the missions because he thought he wasn't getting his due, and then some did start keeping two sets of books to hide money from his unreasonable demands, which when uncovered served to confirm his paranoia that he mission holders had been stealing from him all along.

and i suspect that early on when he had more collaborators, he had a vision in part inspired by Crowley of a circle or society of 'big beings', though i know that is subject to interpretation.
 

Karakorum

Ron is the source that will lead you to grief
It was the combination of the confidential "OT" levels, plus the Sea Org (which controlled access to those levels) which allowed totalitarian control.

The power of the Sea Org came from the effective monopoly on access to the OT levels.
True, but I think the key factor was the "militarization" of the Sea Org. Communal living, uniforms, the "gung-ho" spirit - things that make things like the US Marines or the GRU such cohesive formations. The same spirit keeps the Sea Org what it is.
Unfortunately, this tool is used for ill goals. Pity, such a waste of so many hard working, dedicated people.

i think there was a sort of dysfunctional dynamic in which LRH for example started finding ways to bleed more and more money from the missions because he thought he wasn't getting his due, and then some did start keeping two sets of books to hide money from his unreasonable demands, which when uncovered served to confirm his paranoia that he mission holders had been stealing from him all along.
Absolutely! The same circle of insanity was going on strong in my day as well. People kept being given unreasonable goals, too little resources and the orders from int management were often coming from people entirely removed from reality who had no idea how things work "down on the ground".

So the only way to achieve the impossible was to cheat. Keep double books. Falsify stats, juggle numbers, steal money from the public, make staff pay for courses for nonexistent new members etc.
And then we at inv were given the task to uncover all these "nefarious lies and sabotage". Which we in fact did. But even if we found the accountable unit and took him/her down in the best gator "bite and hold" manner, the problem didn't go away. Why? Because it was not just one or two bad apples, the lies and deceit was created because of systemic problems that lie at the foundations of the management tech.
 
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Enthetan

Veteran of the Psychic Wars
True, but I think the key factor was the "militarization" of the Sea Org. Communal living, uniforms, the "gung-ho" spirit - things that make things like the US Marines or the GRU such cohesive formations. The same spirit keeps the Sea Org what it is.
Unfortunately, this tool is used for ill goals. Pity, such a waste of so many hard working, dedicated people.
Still, without the ability to deny people access to the "Upper Bridge", there would be the chance that a SO mission walking into an Org and being abusive might find themselves beaten up and tossed back into the street. Fancy uniforms or not.
 

ILove2Lurk

AI Chatbot
as i see it, at that point LRH had built the sea org up to where he could finally exert totalitarian control and impose KSW, the sort of fascist tendencies that concerned his sci fi contemporaries back in the old days, in a way he hadn't been able to when it was expanding wildly at the peak of the baby boomer counterculture movement and flower children could make the orgs and missions into their ideal of what they thought scientology should be -- which was not necessarily Ron's conception (hence KSW) but made the experience back then something that people are nostalgic for to this day.
Imposing control and KSW
Don't forget LRH at several points in time conceived of his creation as a SCIENCE that only
worked with an exactitude and "precision of application" not ever found in the field of mainstream
humanities. Hence, he demanded total unwavering control over how it was applied -- missions
and orgs -- or else it wouldn't work. I'm convinced that's what he believed, right or wrong,
successes or failures. It all went in with tremendous force during Class 8 in 1968 or so.

This type of exactitude is typically not found in other mental fields like psychology and
psychiatry, which are rather "loosey goosey" or excessively relaxed and produce questionable,
poor, or no results. One can disagree with me on this point, but I'm just not seeing any visible
cures across the world of man's mental maladies or "aberrations."

I've lived long enough to see no one really "cured" of much of anything. It's more like this:

Screenshot from 2021-12-02 13-52-02.png
:hysterical:

Not to berate these mental healing fields, but just to comment on what I've seen and what
I see. If there was a surefire cure, we'd all know about it. I know both a practicing psychiatrist
and a psychology therapist and have gently quizzed them a bit. Much hit and miss, mostly
miss.

That said, LRH really believed he was driving the first mental science of upmost exactitude,
hence the need for the militaristic controls. He was trying to reign in a free and "anything
goes" youth culture into a "scientific" mindset. At best, it was all in his imagination and the
imaginations of people who decided to agree with him.

I don't know what he believed at the very end of his life. He seemed to have suffered from an early
case of old age dementia. Who knows what was going on inside his head. I think that the
chronicles of ESMB's "cowboy," which I posted earlier, paint the most accurate picture of the
man in his failing years.


PS: I was very highly trained in his auditing tech and a stone cold believer at one time, so I
know what I'm talking about . . . a little bit. Oh, well. Fun while it lasted, I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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Veda

Well-known member
1970 Dianetics promised a well and happy human being.

That would surpass the highest results promised by psychoanalysis.

But, of course, that well and happy human being was still a heavily R6 bank implanted composite being, infested with invisible fleas.

He was also being subjected to an array of control mechanisms from Scientology..

Did Hubbard have a plan? It looks, to me, as though he did, but, as the plan manifested, the long envisioned plan was modified by happenstance. It becomes confusing to some because they still assumed Hubbard primarily wanted to help others, that he was trying to rescue humanity from the dwindling spiral sucking them into the black abyss.

In 1938, Hubbard wrote about his real goal and it had nothing to do with helping people. In 1955, he wrote about using mental healing (which, at first, would seem like "helping") to assert and maintain dominion.

From Hubbard's late 1946/early 1947 Admissions/Affirmations

"Your psychology is advanced and true and wonderful. It hypnotizes people.
It predicts their emotions, for you are their ruler."




Hubbard wanted to keep Scientology working but to what end?
 

Reyne Mayer

Pansexual Revolutionary
This type of exactitude is typically not found in other mental fields like psychology and
psychiatry, which are rather "loosey goosey" or excessively relaxed and produce questionable,
poor, or no results. One can disagree with me on this point, but I'm just not seeing any visible
cures across the world of man's mental maladies or "aberrations."
i'd say Hubbard's was a false attempt at exactitude -- but that was also sort of its lure, claiming to make the complex and ambiguous 'certain'.

and Woody Allen was a fan of old-fashioned Freudian analysis, a recognized ineffective and long-discredited modality, but one of the things that Hubbard both criticized (it was popular in the 40s and 50s, and is thus what much of his ire at psychiatric counseling, and envy over what they charged for doing little, was aimed at) and ended emulating -- pointless rehashing of childhood and earlier events, based on off the cuff theories formed by the originators' personal preoccupations including sexuality as much as anything, to no lasting effect but at inordinately high hourly rates.

and as i said before, mental health is still about as much art as science (quack attempts such as Hubbard's are much more fallacy than science) though the science is improving, particularly in specific areas. anxiety disorders are particularly treatable, in part because medications are so effective, with common depression next; and bipolar for example is trickier, because it involves swings between two such extremes.

i think Hubbard ended up engaging in what could be described as much as anything as magical thinking -- not at all surprising given his background and his subject's roots in ceremonial magick such as the Thelma of Aleister Crowley, who said 'Our Method is Science, Our Aim is Religion.'

and as is the discussion here, Hubbard's results were all too often destructive and tragic.
 
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