Why do intelligent people join?

[Veda]

Burroughs involved for almost ten years.​

 

[programmer_guy]

I think that it is also important to ask "When in their lifetime do most intelligent people join?"
I am assuming that this is not mainly about 2nd gen.

(Interesting topic. )

 

[HelluvaHoax!]

.

I can think of a few reasons that intelligent people might give Scientology a try:

1. Adventure.

2. Escape.

3. Although intelligent they: a) are not street smart and thus make easy marks; or, b) never learned how to do a few hours of due diligence; or, c) believe that they are so intelligent that they can easily detect when a professional con artist is lying to them; or, d) are sure they are brilliant enough to detect when they are lying to themselves.




.

.

 

[JeansAndRice]

tldr; because they have feels, but also there's lots of reasons

Perhaps the psuedo-scientific angle appeals to those of discerning intelligence. And because of the really complicated way in which LRH conveys the ideas, they seem very researched and thought-out, etc. I think that makes it take a while to see the BS, if they do.

And since we all have emotions, things like Scientology use those emotions to ensnare people. I don't see that intelligence is as much of a factor in the choice to be involved, as much as it is something that a portion of members share. Our emotions are usually what get us into sticky situations, y'know?

Also, Scientology does a really good job of playing to, and instilling, the exceptionalism and superiority of intelligence IMO... (which after years of involvement in Scn becomes "intelligence" amirite? lol)

I still ponder, tho.. why do intelligent people join..

 

[He-man]

They don't.

 

[Veda]

.

I can think of a few reasons that intelligent people might give Scientology a try:

1. Adventure.

2. Escape.

3. Although intelligent they: a) are not street smart and thus make easy marks; or, b) never learned how to do a few hours of due diligence; or, c) believe that they are so intelligent that they can easily detect when a professional con artist is lying to them; or, d) are sure they are brilliant enough to detect when they are lying to themselves.




.

.

When I joined Scientology as a "public person" (a customer), in 1970, there was a free six month membership, which resulted in discounts of one kind or another. Finally, I became a "lifetime member" for thirty five dollars. I signed nothing, and it didn't change anything.

I was curious.

But I wasn't swallowed up by Scientology, and I had a life separate from Scientology.

It would be easy to say the smart people were the dabblers and the dilettantes who were exercising their curiosity - the "public" and "customers" - but I knew some highly intelligent people who joined staff and even joined the Sea Org.

Intelligence manifests in many ways.

 

[marra]

I didn't walk into an org and say "I want to join scientology". I went in to get some of the miraculous dianetic auditing I'd read about in DMSMH.

As far as I was concerned I was just paying for a service. What happened after that was a long process of being drip-fed propaganda that slowly persuaded me to stay even though I hadn't got what I'd paid for.

 

[HelluvaHoax!]

I didn't walk into an org and say "I want to join scientology". I went in to get some of the miraculous dianetic auditing I'd read about in DMSMH.As far as I was concerned I was just paying for a service. What happened after that was a long process of being drip-fed propaganda that slowly persuaded me to stay even though I hadn't got what I'd paid for.

.

Yes, that drip-fed propaganda is a huge part of the invisible "force field" jail that Scientologists allow themselves to be incarcerated within. And rhetorical propaganda is just one (1) component of the coercive gaslighting waves the cult engages in that erodes rationality and overwhelms the faithful--eventually delivering them unto altered cognitive states wherein:

1. They don't see things that ARE there, due to metastasizing blind spots. (e.g. they don't see all the lies they are being fed daily about magically miraculous supernatural powers that nobody has)​

​

2. They do see that AREN'T there. (e.g. A Scientologist "under the influence" would happily consent to being run on a process called "Book & Bottle" (i.e. Opening Procedure By Dupliction) for 100 hours, even if there was no book or bottle in the auditing room. Don't believe it? Okay, then answer this---how do Scientologists run themselves on daily OT auditing sessions for 10-20 years where there are no BTs in the auditing room? LOL​

.

 

[HelluvaHoax!]

When I joined Scientology as a "public person" (a customer), in 1970, there was a free six month membership, which resulted in discounts of one kind or another. Finally, I became a "lifetime member" for thirty five dollars. I signed nothing, and it didn't change anything.

I was curious.

But I wasn't swallowed up by Scientology, and I had a life separate from Scientology.

It would be easy to say the smart people were the dabblers and the dilettantes who were exercising their curiosity - the "public" and "customers" - but I knew some highly intelligent people who joined staff and even joined the Sea Org.

Intelligence manifests in many ways.

As you said, "intelligence manifests in many ways". To wit, there are countless and different kinds of "intelligence".

Someone in the mafia could be brilliantly street smart but be dumb enough to murder people and then brag about it to others, which ends them up in a life sentence in the penitentiary.

A world class con man running a Ponzi Scheme could ingeniously fool the smartest financial minds, millionaires, billionaires, lawyers, government regulators, bankers, CPAs and other fiduciaries performing due diligence. Then that "genius" gets caught because they thought that when they pushed "DELETE" on their mobile phones or computers that the incriminating evidence was irretrievably gone forever.

The worlds smartest astrophysicist invents enough technological advances that humans can walk on the moon and then safely return to earth. Yet that same genius goes home every night from work and devoutly follows the "sacred scripture" of a proven criminal and con man, Joseph Smith (Founder of the Church of the Latter Day Saints) who used magical "seer stones" in a black hat that he put is face in, so that he could to peer into the hidden mysteries of life.

There are millions of such examples of extraordinary "intelligence" in one narrow endeavor or discipline that is of no benefit to any of the hundred other decisions/choices an individual makes every day.

I guess the point of this post is that with Scientologists, there is no such thing as labeling them "an intelligent person" without specifying WHAT PRECISELY their intelligence is intelligent about. All the people winning Scientology's jumbo bowling trophies must have, at some level, an intelligence about how to earn or steal money. But they simultaneously would have the IQ of an idiot on the subject of "How not to get conned out of all that money by clowns with clipboards". LOL

.

 

[Harold#1]

Regardless of their intelligence, some people seem to be attracted to obvious con artists and their cons, others are repulsed by them.

 

[I told you I was trouble]

Regardless of their intelligence, some people seem to be attracted to obvious con artists and their cons, others are repulsed by them.

True ... you were/are being conned by certain obvious Political persuasions and techniques, yet you are (apparently) reasonably intelligent.

 

[ILove2Lurk]

LRH, Postmodernism and why I joined
I'm not an expert about philosophy, so take my comments with a grain of salt.

Postmodernism -- and relativism -- were around during Hubbard's early adult life when he
was reading various books about life and the mind. This is the easiest explanation
I could find for postmodernism:

Postmodernism​

Postmodernism is a way of thinking about culture, philosophy, art and many other things. The term has been used in many different ways at different times, but there are some things in common.​

​

Postmodernism says that there is no real truth. It says that knowledge is always made or invented and not discovered. Because knowledge is made by people, a person cannot know something with certainty - all ideas and facts are 'believed' instead of 'known'. People believe that they know what the truth is, but they will think that the truth is something different later. This is the opposite of 'objectivity', which says that the truth is always there and people have to discover it.​

​

Since postmodernism says that the truth is just a thing that people invent, people can believe different things and think it is the truth and all be right. Postmodernism says that one person should not try to make another person believe what he believes, because it means nothing to say that one belief is right and the other is wrong.​

Source: Wikipedia​

Hubbard seemed to have been pushing variations of this concept throughout the early 50's
and it was not a new idea developed by Hubbard. He just had a different twist on it.

LRH 4th ACC Lecture: Evaluation 1954 ​

Fair Use Excerpt​

In essence, what you want somebody to do is to get up to a point where he can make​

a postulate and have that as perfect truth.​

. . .​

They're hounding you back into the corral of agreement. The what happened happened.​

And the only thing that happened was what happened in the physical universe. Well that​

isn't the only thing that happens. All this agreement with the past adds up to, in the common​

definition, truth. Truth is defined in the common definition as agreeing with the past. Of​

saying only what happened in the physical universe as what happened. But you limit​

happenings to those things which happen in the physical universe. That's what truth is​

in the common parlance.​

​

Now this truth has another side. The greatest truth for you is what you say is true.​

Now that's the greatest truth you'll ever have, as far as truth is concerned.​

Now, I'll say that postmodernism has always been an attractive concept for certain academics,
young college students, and as of today, many politicians. Many kinds of "intelligent" folks.

We could say that we're currently living in a "cultural revolution" where many traditional truths are
being questioned and up for debate and change. I guess this is where postmodernism in the extreme
ends up in a society. Erase everything and create anew . . . like was attempted in the French Revolution.

You wake up every day and the world is a little different. This changed, that new law, this new social norm.
I just had to stop paying attention to it all.

That said, when I was a college student, I found Hubbard's postmodern twist about reality and truth
an alluring concept. The world was in shambles and I was drifting aimlessly with no good path forward
for my life. (Not uncommon for the early 20's and college.) Hubbard provided hope and a form of "magical
thinking" and escape that was irresistible at the time. If it all worked as advertised.

I too could get to a point where I could decide, decree (postulate) and have my own independent truth and
reality and base my life on that. Sounded good. Sounded great, actually.

If you look around today, you see these same desires to create new truths to replace all the old. To live in the
subjective inner world of the mind with a new and different set of rules based on one's own invention, one's
personal desires, and utopian dreams. And not be shackled by the past or history. Or even the reality out there.
To ignore all history and thousands of years of observing immutable behaviors of human nature and build
a whole new world from the ground up after erasing all the old.

End of rambling for now. Might say more later. This is hard to explain. Just so cerebral.

Just throwing down for viewing and comments by the more intelligent folks here. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Added a summary here.

Spoiler: Ron's latest book on the topic from Target II

 

[Riddick]

This is what enlightened me:

Classical Rhetoric 101: The Three Means of Persuasion

Knowing the three means of persuasion will make you a more persuasive man.

www.artofmanliness.com

"Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself. "

The first was Hubbard's personal character. Before the internet, we didn't really know the character of Hubbard. And many before during the early years didn't know either, they relied on his personal character by words, spoken or written. Little did all these very early people know the facts of Hubbard's life, they were persuaded by his words. He said he was scientists, a philosopher, a engineer, etc.

The second we all know of Hubbard putting the audience into a frame of mind. The first was putting the audience into the frame of mind that one could erase aberrations of the mind, dianetics, the modern science of mental health.

Scientology is a follow up on the soul or spirit and putting one into the frame of mind of OT, operating thetan, or past lives and one could have recall of past lives and also return from death.

The third is the endless success stories given by members and by hubbard in his endless words, these I would classify as apparent proof.

'seeming real or true, but not necessarily so.'

 

[Riddick]

When people leave scientology, they have realized they were in a cave created by Hubbard.

 

[HelluvaHoax!]

LRH, Postmodernism and why I joined
I'm not an expert about philosophy, so take my comments with a grain of salt.

Postmodernism -- and relativism -- were around during Hubbard's early adult life when he
was reading various books about life and the mind. This is the easiest explanation
I could find for postmodernism:

Postmodernism​

Postmodernism is a way of thinking about culture, philosophy, art and many other things. The term has been used in many different ways at different times, but there are some things in common.​

​

Postmodernism says that there is no real truth. It says that knowledge is always made or invented and not discovered. Because knowledge is made by people, a person cannot know something with certainty - all ideas and facts are 'believed' instead of 'known'. People believe that they know what the truth is, but they will think that the truth is something different later. This is the opposite of 'objectivity', which says that the truth is always there and people have to discover it.​

​

Since postmodernism says that the truth is just a thing that people invent, people can believe different things and think it is the truth and all be right. Postmodernism says that one person should not try to make another person believe what he believes, because it means nothing to say that one belief is right and the other is wrong.​

Source: Wikipedia​

Hubbard seemed to have been pushing variations of this concept throughout the early 50's
and it was not a new idea developed by Hubbard. He just had a different twist on it.

LRH 4th ACC Lecture: Evaluation 1954 ​

Fair Use Excerpt​

In essence, what you want somebody to do is to get up to a point where he can make​

a postulate and have that as perfect truth.​

. . .​

They're hounding you back into the corral of agreement. The what happened happened.​

And the only thing that happened was what happened in the physical universe. Well that​

isn't the only thing that happens. All this agreement with the past adds up to, in the common​

definition, truth. Truth is defined in the common definition as agreeing with the past. Of​

saying only what happened in the physical universe as what happened. But you limit​

happenings to those things which happen in the physical universe. That's what truth is​

in the common parlance.​

​

Now this truth has another side. The greatest truth for you is what you say is true.​

Now that's the greatest truth you'll ever have, as far as truth is concerned.​

Now, I'll say that postmodernism has always been an attractive concept for certain academics,
young college students, and as of today, many politicians. Many kinds of "intelligent" folks.

We could say that we're currently living in a "cultural revolution" where many traditional truths are
being questioned and up for debate and change. I guess this is where postmodernism in the extreme
ends up in a society. Erase everything and create anew . . . like was attempted in the French Revolution.

You wake up every day and the world is a little different. This changed, that new law, this new social norm.
I just had to stop paying attention to it all.

That said, when I was a college student, I found Hubbard's postmodern twist about reality and truth
an alluring concept. The world was in shambles and I was drifting aimlessly with no good path forward
for my life. (Not uncommon for the early 20's and college.) Hubbard provided hope and a form of "magical
thinking" and escape that was irresistible at the time. If it all worked as advertised.

I too could get to a point where I could decide, decree (postulate) and have my own independent truth and
reality and base my life on that. Sounded good. Sounded great, actually.

If you look around today, you see this same desires to create new truths to replace all the old. To live in the
subjective inner world of the mind with a new and different set of rules based on one's own invention, one's
personal desires, and utopian dreams. And not be shackled by the past or history. Or even the reality out there.
To ignore all history and thousands of years of observing immutable behaviors of human nature and build
a whole new world from the ground up after erasing all the old.

End of rambling for now. Might say more later. This is hard to explain. Just so cerebral.

Just throwing down for viewing and comments by the more intelligent folks here. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Spoiler: Ron's latest book on the topic from Target II

At the risk of oversimplification, the entire concept of postmodernism is a fancy academic philosophical abstraction that no one to date has found any practical use for---with the following exception.

It is used as an influencer gimmick by marketing manipulators, propagandists, gaslighters, lazy/dishonest people seeking a shortcutting cheat, political/religious fund raisers, criminals in need of ready-to-wear justifications, liars, sociopaths and thieves.

"What is real to you is what is real"

"Your truth is the only reality"

It's a cheat system, essentially. Imagine you are playing any card game and in your hand you always had both JOKERS, the "wild cards". They could be any other card you need/want.

Postmodernism is the trojan horse that carried all of the now-viral lying schemes and rackets that infected the Western world over the past few decades. It's the core "tech" of cults, radical leftists, political con artists, media liars and terrorists of all shapes and sizes.

The gimmick of manufacturing one's own truth is so simple to use, even small children do it instinctively when caught doing something naughty. They just make the most honest face they can and in the most honest voice they can muster----they lie. During one of those wacky moments, they often are so good at it that THEY ACTUALLY LOSE SIGHT OF REALITY AND BELIEVE THE LIES THEY ARE PLEADING SO EARNESTLY!

.

.

 

[ExitLeft]

I will say this:
Never Underestimate the Power of a Contradiction!
It's the mother of all traps and "Mans' Greatest Friend" knew this and I didn't.

Hence the never ending number of contradiction within the subject matter.

Reveal one actual fact or thing - then lay in a contradiction and you have the trap sprung.
It's like give and then taking away. It's the making of a roller coaster of a time while in.
There's no money in solving man's ill. The business model is like that of a subscription.

 

[The_Fixer]

Blonde moments.

These do tend to stretch out to extended periods for some.

These become known a "Platinum Blondes".

True, dat.......

 

[Veda]

I will say this:
Never Underestimate the Power of a Contradiction!
It's the mother of all traps and "Mans' Greatest Friend" knew this and I didn't.

Hence the never ending number of contradiction within the subject matter.

Reveal one actual fact or thing - then lay in a contradiction and you have the trap sprung.
It's like give and then taking away. It's the making of a roller coaster of a time while in.
There's no money in solving man's ill. The business model is like that of a subscription.

Contradictions -

This sort of thing was commented upon as early as October 1950, in the book, A Doctor's Report on Dianetics, by Joseph Winter, who had written the introduction for Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health:

"There was a difference in the ideals inherent in the Dianetic hypothesis and the actions of the Foundation in its ostensible efforts to carry out those ideals... as I saw them, included non-authoritarianism and flexibility of approach... These ideals... continued to be given lip-service, but I could see a definite disparity between ideals and actualities..."

Scientologists might say this was simply the result of working in an imperfect environment, where "We build a world with broken straws," etc., but, in 1954, Volney Mathison - whose electropyschometer, based on the much earlier Wheatstone bridge of the 1800s, and popularized, to some extent, by Carl Jung in the early 1900s - made this observation:

_________________________________Begin quote________________________________​

In the paragraph above, a certain type of sick patient is referred to as being vampire-like in behavior. But such a patient is not really aware of why he acts as he does, a far more despicable vampire-like personality is that of a vicious type of fraudulent cult therapist who operates in the two following phases:

First, he denounces or "exposes"... Then he USES THE VERY POWER HE HAS DENOUNCED [sic]... but the techniques he employs are of a covert type, unknown to the general public...

The victim is caught completely off guard. He has just heard all about the evils... so he believes that here is this kind and honest person whom one can TRUST...

_________________________________End quote________________________________

A virtual compendium of ideas and methods used by Hubbard on others, including his own followers, can be compiled by listing the things he denounced, or about which he warned.

Next, there is a quote from Hubbard, in his hoax "Russian" manual of 1955 - which depicted Dianetics, and, in a 1968 printing, "the Church of Scientology," as under attack by communists - about the counter-playing of opposites. Quoting from Brainwashing Manual Parallels of 2001.

___________________________Begin quote____________________________

​

Playing one thing off another or "counter-playing"

The Brainwashing Manual:

"A continuous hope for prosperity [Any 'ideal scene' including 'Total Freedom'] must be indoctrinated into the masses [Scientologists] with many dreams and visions of glut of commodity, and this hope must be counter-played against the actuality of privation [privation of intellectual freedom and, in the Sea Org, material privation] and the continuous threat of loss of all economic factors ['lose your Bridge to freedom', be sentenced to slave-labor-level 'rehabilitation', etc.] in case of disloyalty to the State [Scientology]..."

Besides "hope" counter-played against "actuality," there is the counter-playing of dissimilar or contrary ideas or practices. These are to be seen as completely compatible.

Scientology publicly emphasizes communication and then inhibits communication and imposes censorship. While describing the membership as "the free people," and posting signs atop some of its "Orgs" that proclaim, "Think for yourself," Scientology is run as a totalitarian state, complete with "thought crime," with members expected to cheerfully censor their own thoughts. (It should be noted that Scientology's show biz celebrities, with their luxurious perks and pampered status, are least affected by restrictions on basic freedoms...

___________________________End of quote___________________________

The original manual

Remarkably, this booklet was spotted as the "blueprint" for the Scientology movement as early as 1965

​

 

[This is NOT OK !!!!]

Social scientists (you can decide for yourself if Sociology is a science) studied cult recruiting methods in San Francisco in the late 60's including Scientology and Moonies and suggested that people join groups like that when they are mentally vulnerable and distanced from family, elders, community members. This happens to travelers, students attending schools away from home, run-aways, and the like.

They found when people are alone in unfamiliar surrounds and getting love-bombed, they are more susceptible to persuasions.

 

[ILove2Lurk]

Might say more later. This is hard to explain. Just so cerebral.

Summarizing what I was thinking, when I look around the world today, and especially
at the last five years, I'm seeing all the idiotic and silly ideas "intelligent people" are
buying into. I mean just batshit crazy after batshit crazy. It's all over the place on TV.
It's too obvious to even comment on any more.

Perhaps this thread could be better named: "Why do intelligent people buy into
batshit crazy ideas?

Instead of: "Why do intelligent people join?"

Seems like a very common human frailty now and throughout history. Unavoidable.

As veterans of the scientology experience, we've all become inoculated to most
of the "mental viruses" that are circulating throughout society. We're all older, wiser,
and have better rear-view mirrors to see our past errors in thinking and believing. With
age comes a wisdom that's hard to come by otherwise. Just the way life seems to work.

I was young and stupid. I'm wiser now. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯