Scientology as a pressure cooker

[Karakorum]

Scientology as a systemic pressure cooker

Scientology does not generate an environment of fear, pressure and paranoia because such an environment is healthy or organizationally effective. It does so simply because this is the environment in which the scientology system already learned to survive.

CoS is optimized for vigilance, urgency, rapid response under tight constraints. Yet this optimization comes at a cost. A system designed to operate under constant pressure cannot safely decompress. This actually hides underlying fragility, the pressure masks the inherent instability of the system.

Hierarchy, KRs, sec-checks and ethics in general stop being tools of gathering information. Instead, they become the system's core infrastructure. Heavy ethics, conditions, RPF... these are not forms of punishment, they are forms of maintenance. All the pieces interlock and strengthen one another. Control enhances surveillance. Surveillance enhances loyalty. Loyalty enhances authority. Authority enhances control. The cycle ends, yet repeats itself. Yet... remove one piece and the whole thing collapses like a house of cards.

The system doesn't bend, but it brakes apart under strain. Scientology is designed and operated with the assumption that pressure will never cease and that a single point of weakness can collapse the whole system.

Thus scientology evolved towards certainty and self-control. Once that shift occurred, reversing it became very dangerous. The system had learned, by experience, that relaxation invites disintegration. So the behavior of Davey and the management is shaped less by strategic or financial considerations and more by institutional memory. They remember what happens when control loosens.

Scientology clings to total control of its members, even when the costs are enormously high. Every decision, every reaction and every miscalculation has that in the background.

This is why internal reform attempts fail and people behind them get declared. This is why liberalization efforts are brief and end in failure. Because for scientologists, fulfillment means dissolution of the scientology system.

Once Miscavige's power based stabilized and the great exodus of 2007-2011 happened, the big question was no longer how scientology should be governed, but whether it would survive.

I hope it does not.

 

[PirateAndBum]

Who is going to keep us surviving for the next trillenia then? You future depends on clearing this mudball and freeing all the people of earth to live in peace and harmony. Everyone needs their IAS patron pin or above to make it. It's a shoulder to shoulder effort. Twenty thousand will take on the 8 billion. I see the math and it is good.

 

[onceuponatime]

I don't think Scientology will survive, it's just a question of how long. Like you said, maintaining control is really at the core of what Scientology is these days. If you stay compliant, do what you're told, and think what you're supposed to think then you are in-ethics. If you start to deviate at all then you will be "handled" until you get with the program. It's all about control.

 

[I M Dex]

"Scientology does not generate an environment of fear, pressure and paranoia because such an environment is healthy or organizationally effective. It does so simply because this is the environment in which the scientology system already learned to survive."

I would say it is because that was the mindset of its creator. One's mindset defines the whole of one's perceived world, and for L Ron Hubbard, the definition of "the world" is that there is no inherent safety, trustworthiness or security in life, and that safety and security must be constantly fought for, through unrelenting monitoring, persuasion, enforcement and/or exclusion. That is/was the world of L Ron Hubbard.

 

[Isaac]

Who is going to keep us surviving for the next trillenia then? You future depends on clearing this mudball and freeing all the people of earth to live in peace and harmony. Everyone needs their IAS patron pin or above to make it. It's a shoulder to shoulder effort. Twenty thousand will take on the 8 billion. I see the math and it is good.

Oh yes!! “Trust the Science”