Jon Atack and Chris Shelton answer the question: Are cult members stupid? Re: Ira Chalif

mimsey borogrove

Well-known member
I was interested in an author they mentioned - Ira Chalif. Ira is a well respected author ( see cred's below) and I wondered ,is this the same Ira Chalif who was an exec at AOLA back in the 70s? I met him back then and found him likeable. Turns out - he is the very same person.

"Second Friday at the Library Ira Chaleff Friday, Nov 10, 8pm Rappahannock County Library 4 Library Lane, Washington, VA 22747 RAAC's speaker for November is Ira Chaleff, a Rappahannock resident acclaimed for his work on leadership and for highlighting the vital role of followership as well. The title of his talk is "What is Intelligent Disobedience and How Does it Apply to Your Life and Times?" As an executive coach, Chaleff has conducted seminars around the world and to such audiences as NASA and the US Navy. He also gave a much-admired "No Ordinary Person" talk in 2014 about his first-hand experience 35 years ago with Scientology. He won broad notice with a 1995 book titled "The Courageous Follower," which argued that the countless volumes on "leadership" tended to neglect the importance of supportive, independent-minded followers. Chaleff's newest book, "Intelligent Disobedience: Doing Right When What You're Told to Do is Wrong," looks closely at the real-world moral dilemmas we all confront. At times following orders is the right thing to do; but at times one of the most damning sentences imaginable is "I was only following orders." Chaleff will discuss how we can find the wisdom and courage to navigate these murky waters. The book was just published in China, despite initial misgivings of the Chinese authorities.


Ira Chaleff is an author, speaker, workshop presenter and innovative thinker on the beneficial use of power between those who are leading and those who are following in any given situation.

His groundbreaking book, The Courageous Follower: Standing Up To and For Our Leaders, is in its third edition, has been published in multiple languages and is in use in institutions around the globe including educational, corporate, government and military organizations. He is coeditor of The Art of Followership: How Great Followers Make Great Leaders and Organizations, part of the highly regarded Warren Bennis Leadership Series. He has written on the appropriate use of power in non-traditional settings in his creative non-fiction work, The Limits of Violence: Lessons of a Revolutionary Life.

Ira’s latest book, Intelligent Disobedience: Doing Right When What You’re Told To Do Is Wrong, is once again breaking new ground by exploring the deep cultural roots of obedience and how to equip individuals of all ages to resist inappropriate orders and find better ways and ethical means of achieving legitimate goals.

He has recently completed two terms of service as member of the Board of Directos of the International Leadership Association (ILA) and is founder of its Followership Member Community. He is currently mentoring a community of academics and professionals in the field of courageous followers gathered around the Teaching Followers Courage project. Ira is also the founder and president of Executive Coaching & Consulting Associates, which provides coaching, consulting and facilitation to companies, associations and agencies throughout the Washington, DC, area. He is chairman emeritus of the nonpartisan Congressional Management Foundation and has provided facilitation to nearly one hundred congressional offices to improve their service to constituents. Ira is Adjunct Faculty at the Federal Executive Institute where he teaches a week long elective workshop on Courageous Followers, Courageous Leaders, in the Leadership in a Democratic Society program and is a Visiting Leadership Scholar at the University of Cambridge, England.

He holds a degree in Applied Behavioral Science and is a Board Certified Coach from the Center for Credentialing and Education.

Ira has been named one of the “100 best minds on leadership” by Leadership Excellence magazine. He was cited in the Harvard Business Review as one of the three pioneers in the growing field of followership studies. Ira has watched with pride as the concept of followership has moved from one of obscurity into a topic of study in major universities, conferences and leadership development programs.

Author Ira Chaleff lives in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains outside of Washington, DC, where bears frequently disobey the No Trespassing signs on the road and help keep his connection strong with the wonders of nature.


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Jon answers with a historical tour of so-called “cult stupidity,” showcasing the fervent, irrational beliefs of such scientific notables as Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, and Neils Bohr. After a brief but germane detour into the problematic history of drug prohibition, the duo debates whether human society is inherently authoritarian. They then consider the importance of educating children to recognize predatory people and manipulative behaviors: Jon mentions Ira Chaleff’s exciting work on this topic, particularly his “Blink, Think, Choice, Voice” initiative for children, and Chris is kind enough to bring up the helpful information he found in Jon’s “Opening Our Minds.”


 
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Reyne Mayer

Pansexual Revolutionary
thanks for that.

he seems to me to be a classic example of the sort of people $cn attracted in its heyday, but lost and can no longer recruit (much less produce). i was curious about his background and apparently he attended Berkeley for a while, i'm guessing before getting involved, which seems not uncommon for those who go in during the late 60s and early 70s -- but afterwards he got a degree, and became a respected professional.

it also turns out he's now a Unitarian Universalist, which would put him in a group at the top of the following chart. it seems to me that in scientology's heyday they were also more towards the top in terms of who they recruited, but have since slowly slid down due to a bias against 'wog' education that especially affects born-ins; and in the process average IQ has to have dropped, even if it's not a useful generalization to say that they're stupid:

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mimsey borogrove

Well-known member
thanks for that.

he seems to me to be a classic example of the sort of people $cn attracted in its heyday, but lost and can no longer recruit (much less produce). i was curious about his background and apparently he attended Berkeley for a while, i'm guessing before getting involved, which seems not uncommon for those who go in during the late 60s and early 70s -- but afterwards he got a degree, and became a respected professional.

it also turns out he's now a Unitarian Universalist, which would put him in a group at the top of the following chart. it seems to me that in scientology's heyday they were also more towards the top in terms of who they recruited, but have since slowly slid down due to a bias against 'wog' education that especially affects born-ins; and in the process average IQ has to have dropped, even if it's not a useful generalization to say that they're stupid:

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He was in the exec strata at AOLA, I think the Tech Sec or Chief Officer. Do you know much about the history of AOLA when it was on Westlake? The flight to freedom? How they in a few days time flew the crew & all the OT materials from england and set up the AOLA and got it in business, then set up a SH at LAO to get people moving up through power, r6ew etc. so they could get them on to the CC at AO while SH dawdled around back in East Grinstead ? He was a very capable guy.

Miscavage doesn't want people who are capable around him, Hubbard did, but burned through a lot of them.

Mimsey
 

Veda

Well-known member
-snip-

a bias against 'wog' education that especially affects born-ins; and in the process average IQ has to have dropped,

-snip-
Other than STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, the rest of "education" has been debased.

Last time I looked, references to "IQ" are forbidden as signs of racism and white supremacy.
 

Reyne Mayer

Pansexual Revolutionary
He was in the exec strata at AOLA, I think the Tech Sec or Chief Officer. Do you know much about the history of AOLA when it was on Westlake? The flight to freedom? How they in a few days time flew the crew & all the OT materials from england and set up the AOLA and got it in business, then set up a SH at LAO to get people moving up through power, r6ew etc. so they could get them on to the CC at AO while SH dawdled around back in East Grinstead ? He was a very capable guy.

Miscavage doesn't want people who are capable around him, Hubbard did, but burned through a lot of them.
no i'm not familar with those details, i mostly know more general outlines. it paints him as someone very able indeed, though, thanks for that.

it seems to me that later on after he'd burned through (or turned off) a lot of capable people, he started to surround himself with those who were less so -- including of course Miscavige. either way, the net effect is much the same.
 

mimsey borogrove

Well-known member
I think he (Hubbard) wanted off the reservation, what with his myriad of legal woes, declining health, and no longer cared about Scientology's fate. Having Miscavage as a cut out served his purpose, but he trusted the wrong person, and worse, never took the time to scout it out himself to see what was going on. Prior to his going to the mattresses, he was very hands on.

But his paranoia - however justly deserved - lead him to avoid trips afield and he lost touch with his creation as the reigns were taken from his grasp, knowingly or not, by a man who has no compulsions towards honesty. Miscavage, saw the liability inherent in Hubbard's technology - rising refund requests and the like, and proofed himself ( and the organization ) against lawsuits, and weaned the membership of the technology Hubbard had spent a large part of his lifetime creating, and had written many policies to preserve it. Policies are but words on paper, and with no one to enforce them, his creation was doomed. As Hubbard said in his policies on staff work and the conditions - the new broom sweeps clean. I wonder if he ever knew his creation was being swept away?

Oh well.

Mimsey
 
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TheSneakster

Well-known member
Other than STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, the rest of "education" has been debased.

Last time I looked, references to "IQ" are forbidden as signs of racism and white supremacy.
I don't often agree with you, but I reckon this comment is pretty spot-on.
 

Veda

Well-known member
I think he (Hubbard) wanted off the reservation,
In 1938, after having written his unpublished manuscript Excalibur, and also in the early 1970s, Hubbard wrote that he did not want to be regarded as a (pulp) fiction writer.

That shifted somewhat as he wrote Revolt in the Stars, (as personal therapy) in the (early) wake of the July 1977 FBI raids, and in the wake of the release of the successful movie Star Wars.

Revolt in the Stars was an unsuccessful film treatment which featured some details of Hubbard's "Incident 2" (Xenu etc.) with the idea being to re-stimulate the audience, just enough, to place them in a compliant state of mind, where they, then, could "be driven through their orgs."

The Sea Org symbol would be prominently displayed.



It's perhaps noteworthy that Hubbard's reaction to two episodes of crisis, depression, and humiliation, first after having been unceremoniously booted from Rhodesia (where he had confidently envisioned himself as the re-incarnation of Cecil Rhodes, and as "Mr. Big") during 1966 and, then, his reaction to the 1977 FBI raids, was to create the same story of a super engram involving tax collectors and interplanetary warfare, etc., which was his explanation for why people ("wogs"), in effect, "laughed when he sat down t the piano." (The explanation was that the "wogs" were not recognizing his greatness, and obeying his wishes, because they were insane - non sane - as the result of a super traumatic event that occurred 75 million years ago.)

Hubbard appears to have never fully recovered from the second great upset of 1977 (perhaps the third if one counts the divorce from Sara in 1951), and soon abandoned Revolt in the Stars, and started writing actual pulp science fiction (as therapy for himself).

(Hubbard obviously believed in some things in Scientology, but not in other things. He believed in the hypnotic power of certain images and symbols, such as the "implanted R 6 bank," as evidenced by his secretly ordering, in 1968, that those images be displayed on Scientology book covers, so as to make people more suggestible to Scientology. Yet, in 1973, in the confidential missive Intelligence, Its Role, he ridiculed the idea of using psychic ("OT") powers in his spying network, and no where in thousands of pages of - later exposed - cloak & dagger documents is there any mention of using "OTs" for spying, etc. But I digress.)

Then, rather than downplaying his connection to pulp fiction, he was to be honored for it.

He seems to have "erased" third wife Mary Sue from his life, and regressed to the time before Mary Sue, when he was writing pulp fiction - An earlier time which included Dianetics being all the rage, when "Dianetics made Clears."

Mary Sue came along as Hubbard was abandoning Dianetics (which he had lost in bankruptcy court - long story).

Mary Sue in 1952

"This is a cold blooded and factual account of your last sixty trillion years."
Mmmm... I think I'll marry this man.

Anyway, low and behold, during 1978, Hubbard became obsessed with the idea that Dianetics be regarded as routinely "making Clears," and this coupled nicely with his desire to loot his franchise (mission) system and its often affluent mission holders - and their properties - who he viewed with envy and distrust, as they led the good life (as he hid out), and as they enjoyed spending money he saw as rightfully his.

The mission holders (and others) had become aware, after the 1979 court ordered release of previously secret Scientology cloak & dagger documentation, that Scientology had engaged in disreputable and illegal activity, and most denounced that activity, not realizing that it was Hubbard who had secretly ordered the disreputable and illegal activity.

Al these things created tensions that would, ultimately, lead to the 1982 "Mission Holder's Massacre."

Four years before the "Massacre," and soon after the 1977 FBI raids, Hubbard had butchered the Scientology "Grade Chart." Contradicting everything he had written and stated for the previous twenty five years, he announced to the often hypnotically compliant (to him) Scientology membership, that Dianetics made Clears! and lots and lots of them!

Sleep deprived tech aides frantically revised his old Standard Dianetics bulletins in an attempt to make it appear to make some kind of sense.

It was messy.

Senior tech person, David Mayo, attempted to reduce confusion (particularly the confusion of some other senior tech people, and some "public" - who were not completely hypnotized) by writing "The Harmonics of Clear," which sent Hubbard into a rage, as "degrees of Clear," was not what Hubbard wanted.

Six years later, after having departed the Scientology organization, Mayo would write that it was PR (appearances and ego) and marketing ($$$) considerations that motivated Hubbard to invent Dianetic Clear and butcher the Grade Chart.

And part of the butchering of the Grade Chart was the removal of the old (recycled Rosicrucianism) upper OT levels and their replacement with (very expensive) NOTs (New Era Dianetics for OTs) which addressed Hubbard's re-kindled preoccupation with what he saw as a universe "crawling" the invisible "fleas."

what with his myriad of legal woes, declining health, and no longer cared about Scientology's fate. Having Miscavage as a cut out served his purpose, but he trusted the wrong person, and worse, never took the time to scout it out himself to see what was going on. Prior to his going to the mattresses, he was very hands on.

But his paranoia - however justly deserved - lead him to avoid trips afield and he lost touch with his creation as the reigns were taken from his grasp, knowingly or not, by a man who has no compulsions towards honesty.
Let's not forget Pat Broeker who was his number one assistant during his last years.

Pat Broeker lived with L. Ron Hubbard for years.
Here he holds up a big date to impress the Scientologists who have just been told that Hubbard causatively discarded his healthy body
(a nice way of saying he committed suicide). The Scientologists applauded and cheered.



How did Miscavige become - in effect - the general manager of Scientology?, with Hubbard's apparent blessings (According to Mike Rinder, Hubbard had an affectionate nickname for Miscavige, calling him "Misc.")


From a 1985 interview of Martin Samuels, Mission Holder who also started the Delphian School in Oregon:

_________________________Begin quote_________________________


Hubbard operated according to a couple of key patterns...

The first pattern involved basically decent well intentioned people... no one was able to rise in the organization to a point of any real proximity to him, without being attacked and vilified...

The next pattern: It's reap and rape. Hubbard would let the reins loose. He'd let people believe they really could get on with it... He's let people believe they really could prosper to the full extent of their own ability, and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

And, with that kind of freedom, prosperity does occur; inevitably, though, he'd come along and rape and pillage and rip off and take what had been produced. The most dramatic example of this was '82, '83, when he "raped" his most decent people in management along with the mission holders, and looted the entire mission network.

And look at this pattern... He surrounded himself with absolute hooligans as "managers"; guys who beat the shit out of people. This man, who "is this OT, author of Science of Survival, completely able to predict human behavior," surrounded himself with ruthless people - like Miscavige - who got there because they emulated Hubbard's savagery. They emulated his total willingness to completely break, use, and discard another person.

And then after their hands were so bloody - and the only reason their hands were bloody was that they were doing what Hubbard wanted - when it finally started to get to the point where it couldn't be tolerated by people anymore, Hubbard wiped them out. Then he said, "My God! I didn't know!" Scapegoat. He even did that to his own wife, who went to jail in his place...



_____________________________________End quote_____________________________________


Miscavage, saw the liability inherent in Hubbard's technology - rising refund requests and the like, and proofed himself ( and the organization ) against lawsuits, and weaned the membership of the technology Hubbard had spent a large part of his lifetime creating, and had written many policies to preserve it. Policies are but words on paper, and with no one to enforce them, his creation was doomed. As Hubbard said in his policies on staff work and the conditions - the new broom sweeps clean. I wonder if he ever knew his creation was being swept away?

Oh well.

Mimsey
Was it swept away?

An argument could be made that the most important and "real" part continues.

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 had made SURVIVE! the central pillar of his proposed psychological-political movement in 1938. "Not for what but just to survive." Very Darwinian.

He also made himself the center of this proposed movement and was determined to "smash [his] name into history." According to him, that was his "real goal."

Years later he wrote in Axiom Ten that, "The highest purpose in the universe is the creation of effect."

Any effect was better than no effect.

This was reinforced by convincing people that their futures for the next "endless trillions" depended on him or his surrogates.

Hubbard's base motivations are woven into Scientology.



Author William Burroughs remained a proponent of many aspects of Scientology auditing, while recognizing that Hubbard had created Scientology, "fundamentally as an ersatz immorality" for himself. Burroughs' book, Naked Scientology, was published in the early 1970s.

In 1986, David Mayo, who had lived with Hubbard, and been his counselor, described his motivation: "He told me he had an insatiable lust for power and money. He stated that very emphatically. He thought it wasn't possible to get enough. He didn't see it as if it was a fault, just that he couldn't get enough."

A few years after that, in an article published in an Independent auditor magazine, David Mayo, while still advocating "Clearing" (as a verb) through auditing, described Hubbard's reason for downgrading and redefining (the noun) "Clear" (in 1978) as "PR and marketing" motivated.

In 1938, Hubbard had written:

"I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it it will take a legendary form...
That goal is the real goal as far as I am concerned.
Things which stand too consistently in my way make me nervous.
It's a pretty big job.
In a hundred years Roosevelt will have been forgotten - which gives some idea of the magnitude of my attempt.

And all this boils and froths inside my head."


Scientologists give a standing ovation to the giant L. Ron Hubbard signature.




Happy Hubbard fan(atic) club members gather beneath the giant LRH monogram.


A while back I received a letter from Galaxy Press (Author Services) imploring me to buy a gold leatherette bound copy of Buckskin Brigades, a pulp fiction novel, first published in 1937:




The letter explained that, by purchasing and possessing a copy of Buckskin Brigades, I would be helping to ensure the popularity of L. Ron Hubbard, and thus the preservation and use of the tech, and thus the survival and well being of the human race.

Years earlier, in the Scientology Hotline newsletter, it was announced:

"...the PR positioning of L. Ron Hubbard has been established. 'One of the Most Acclaimed and Widely Read Authors of All Time.' For it is LRH's image on which all the rest of our expansion depends. To the degree that LRH is made the stable terminal in society, people will reach for his books and services and we can get them on the Bridge to Total Freedom."

_______________________



A little more from the 1938 Skipper letter:

_____________________Begin quote_____________________​

Living is a pretty grim joke but a joke just the same. The entire function of man is to survive. Not for 'what' but just to survive... I turned the thing up so it's up to me to survive in a big way. Personal immortality is is only to be gained through printed word, barred note or painted canvas or hard granite.

I seem to have a sort of personal awareness which only begins to come alive when I begin to believe in a destiny. And a strange force stirs in me and I seem to be completely aloof and invincible...

Psychiatrists, reaching the high of the dusty desk, tell us that Alexander and Genghis Khan and Napoleon were madmen. I know they're maligning some very intelligent gentlemen...

It's a big joke, this living. God was feeling sardonic the day He created the Universe. So it's rather up to at least one man every few centuries to pop up and come just as close to making him swallow his laughter as possible...


_________________________End quote________________________






:scratch:
 

Reyne Mayer

Pansexual Revolutionary
Other than STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, the rest of "education" has been debased.

Last time I looked, references to "IQ" are forbidden as signs of racism and white supremacy.
IQ is problematic, particularly when it comes to the individual level -- and the general term 'stupid' is even less useful. but i think IQ can have some usefulness in the broader perspective, which is why i referenced it.

and when was it that you think the educational system wasn't debased? would that be the mid-century system, based on indoctrinating kids in nationalist ideology (like George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, fake news that never happened) and focused on rote learning and the discouragement of critical thinking in service of corporate and religious interests (which wanted industrial worker bees, not those able to form questions like why if god is good bad things happen to good people), that produced a self-indulgent generation that protested, dropped out and burned things (plus blew up buildings and robbed banks) -- and fell for all sorts of cults, or fried their brains on drugs? if you want to generalize, and stereotype....
 
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Reyne Mayer

Pansexual Revolutionary
Hubbard had made SURVIVE! the central pillar of his proposed psychological-political movement in 1938. "Not for what but just to survive." Very Darwinian.
i would add to that, that it also seems to me very might-makes-right -- hence 'Bolivar' (apparently a DM fave), etc.

and i'm fascinated to see what follows that often-quote line about smashing his name into history:

"In a hundred years Roosevelt will have been forgotten - which gives some idea of the magnitude of my attempt.
And all this boils and froths inside my head."

i think that shows just how poor a judge he was of the arc of history, and how irrationally optimistic he was about his own prospects.

thanks for all that.
 

Veda

Well-known member
IQ is problematic, particularly when it comes to the individual level -- and the general term 'stupid' is even less useful. but i think IQ can have some usefulness in the broader perspective, which is why i referenced it.

and when was it that you think the educational system wasn't debased? would that be the mid-century system, based on indoctrinating kids in nationalist ideology (like George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, fake news that never happened) and focused on rote learning and the discouragement of critical thinking in service of corporate and religious interests (which wanted industrial worker bees, not those able to form questions like why if god is good bad things happen to good people), that produced a self-indulgent generation that protested, dropped out and burned things (plus blew up buildings and robbed banks) -- and fell for all sorts of cults, or fried their brains on drugs? if you want to generalize, and stereotype....
When I was in sixth grade, during the Cuban missile crisis, our teacher handed out metal dog tags to the boys to be worn around their necks, and metal dog tag bracelets for the girls to wear on their wrists. This, we were told, would allow us to be identified in the event of a nuclear war, and we were incinerated in the nuclear blast. Somehow the flimsy dog tags would survive with our names and dates of birth stamped on them.

There was always madness and foolishness, and encouraged conformity, but nothing like today.

There must be threads in the members only area about this.
 
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