It was never a "clever" con.
uncleverWhat sort of con was it then (assuming you agree that it was/is a con)?
Posts such as the opening one on this thread are really meant for lurkers who still think there's some value in Scientology. A chorus of, "It's all bullshit," etc. will not reach such people.Most of us are still talking about it with each other because we were part of an experience that not many others have shared ... and we also still come here because many of us have become friends and enjoy chatting about things that often have no relation to scientology at all.
So, in answer to your question ... no, there is nothing left that is good in scientology, nothing at all ... there never was anything good about it in the first place.
It's still the same tired but clever old con that it ever was, but now it has a few more bells and whistles due to the wealth accumulated and miscaviges determination.
If you had asked me 20 years ago - I would have written a KR on you and started doing my o/w write up.Posts such as the opening one on this thread are really meant for lurkers who still think there's some value in Scientology. A chorus of, "It's all bullshit," etc. will not reach such people.
Well perhaps you should have made that clear Veda and I wouldn't have bothered posting and I doubt if anyone else would have done either ... which would have just left the opening post for any lurkers to glance at.Posts such as the opening one on this thread are really meant for lurkers who still think there's some value in Scientology. A chorus of, "It's all bullshit," etc. will not reach such people.
Also.Well perhaps you should have made that clear Veda and I wouldn't have bothered posting and I doubt if anyone else would have done either ... which would have just left the opening post for any lurkers to glance at.
I don't think the lurkers are going to be very impressed when they read the title of the thread. There's still time @Veda...Posts such as the opening one on this thread are really meant for lurkers who still think there's some value in Scientology. A chorus of, "It's all bullshit," etc. will not reach such people.
I thought you were Bludbaden?Also.
Who is to say that the Chorus of Scientologys bullshitedness doesn't reach people? I'm a lizard-man and it still reached me even though I have a hard time hearing.
In my opinion, when Hubbard stole concepts from others, he completely ruined those concepts because he had to "improve" everything by reducing everything down to a set procedure, an unvarying process, a code, a scale, a chart.Yes, even I think there are some parts of scientology that are useful. But you have to separate them from the $cientology. And the "ironic" thing is a lot of those parts are other peoples' ideas. Study Tech? Has a usefulness, Charles Berner and wifes' - not Hubbard's idea. etc etc etc. n00b's please read The Sole Source Myth.
And I don't even fault Hubbard for collating workable info... or whatever you want to call what he was doing. But I do have a problem with him appropriating other peoples ideas and calling them his own.
I 100% agree with what you mentioned. World benchmark of a post.Blubbard took the Berner's study tech and made a monster out of it which killed all study in Scientology, what last gasps of breath it had were smothered by DuM DuM.
All study was endlessly Dev-T'd by course sups harassing students over the most miniscule and insignificant word definitions.
I just continued to look up words that were pertinent to my understanding of that which I was seeking to understand and blew off the rest as bs token terminology thrown in merely to impress the student with claimant source's vocabulary when I did my class IV.
Consequently I blew through my training. It really shouldn't take more than a week or two per level of training, including drills if you have a twin. It's only about asking rote questions according to C/S instructions with metering thrown in, why should that be difficult and time consuming to learn as it's all about basics? On each subsequent level, much of what you're reading was just read and checked out on the previous level anyway.
It's only difficult BECAUSE of the bullshit word clearing that constantly breaks one's train of thought to chase down rabbit hole after rabbit hole of unrelated word chains to the subject at hand.
Because of his extremism or as he has put it, "typically overzealous nature", LRH misused word clearing and it ruined study in Scientology.
You do have a point there.It was never a "clever" con.
why did you leave?I think it depends where you start from, and what you lose on the way.
It has been been soul-destroying and life-destroying for many people, and it wasn't unalloyed joy for me either.
However, I wasn't doing well before I started, and so I got quite a lot from the experience.
1. I got a better work ethic.
2. I learned to be wary of drugs.
3. It gave me confidence in my ability to learn and understand things. An overblown confidence, but still helpful.
4. It taught me to turn up on time.
5. It gave me an assortment of tools and bits of knowledge, some of which are either useful or interesting.
6. I met some great people who were trying to save mankind.
7. After leaving, I became allergic to cults and religion.
8. I'm resistant to hard-sell and other sales inducements.
9. Since leaving I've enjoyed being an ex-Scientologist, as I like reading the perspectives I read on the message boards.
10. My experiences in Scientology weren't unusual for ex-Scientologists, but they were different from the ones most people have, and these have altered my perspective.