Scientology?

As I mentioned in my previous post, Amy's grandmother passed away earlier this week and Amy took a flight out to Colorado the following day to be with her family. I, of course, followed suit and arrived here on the 29th after getting everything at home arranged with the dog and cat, and celebrating my birthday with my family.

Whenever I have to take a flight anywhere, it is usually my time to catch up on some reading. I usually don't read much outside of box scores, sports articles, and the occassional blog, so I somewhat look forward to this time. I've been in a rut the last few trips, reading the cop stories of Stuart Woods, which are light and easy to read. I've read about 10 of his books now, and just finished "Reckless Abandon" on the flight over.

Recognizing the impending boredom of my one week stay here in Colorado, I realized a new book (or three) would be needed, so Amy's family was nice enough to drive me to a used book store to locate a few others. I immediately went to my fallback, and grabbed Stuart Woods' "Swimming to Catalina" and then began searching the store for something new and different.

It is at this time that I saw a section labelled "Occult." Well, that sounds like something new and different for sure. Most of the books were about UFOs and Roswell, but then I saw it...the book I had actually been wanting to look into for some time...L. Ron Hubbard's "Scientology: The Fundamentals of Life."

After seeing the South Park episode about Scientology, I have been curious as to what exactly the whole thing was about...it couldn't be about the alien creatures they talk about, right?! Plus, anything that can drive a man like Tom Cruise insane is worth purusing...I mean this is the guy who got over Goose's death to save Iceman from the MIGs, dammit. So, I grabbed the book as well as a book about the power and mystery of Pyramids, and was on my way.

I read pretty quickly, when I actually read, and within a few hours I have completed this piece of garbage, disgusted that I wasted $2.50 on it in the first place. Allow me to enlighten everyone.

To begin with, I was a psychology major in college and have some pretty strong, though very loose (I strongly believe that organized religion and rules are bullshit) beliefs of my own, so I'm likely not L. Ron's target audience for this. Within a few 'chapters', about 30 rules or concepts have been discussed, each one very simplistic in nature, though organized in a way to confuse the reader. Some of the ideas are foundations of psychology, though they are intermingled with completely absurd thoughts as if both are to be considered fact.

Having lied often in my life, especially when dealing with clients, I recognized this technique immediately. Let me explain: Say you want to lie to someone and you want it to seem true or believable. The easiest way to help validate the lie is to encircle it with undeniable truths. To the listener or reader, they hear a bunch of things that they agree with and therefore lump the other crap in with it and take for granted that it must be true as well. Well played, L. Ron, well played. But wait, what else have we here?

He's employing the technique of using the anti-negative. This technique was used by Nazis as well as by George Bush in dealing with the war. For Bush, it was the manner with which to prevent anti-war sentiment. He grouped the troops with the war, and to protest against the war would mean to turn your back on the poor troops. Nobody would do that, right? Well, here's the great one, Scientology puts itself in direct contrast with the destruction of the world using nuclear weapons. WHAT??!!!! I kid you not, listen to this shit,

"The primary race of Earth is not between one nation and another today. The only race that matters at this moment is the one being run between Scientology and the atomic bomb. The history of man, as has been said by well-known authorities (who?), may well depend upon which one wins."

Well, I don't want to continue to bore you with this, but needless to say, there was no talk of aliens as South Park had suggested. They did talk about "thetans" which are the spirits that control our mind and body, and pass from one body to the next following death. I'm not gonna argue with this, because many people believe in this sort of thing, though the necessity to give it a new name is pretty funny. I'm naming my new fantasy baseball team the Thetans by the way...don't try and steal it.

Also, I finally realized why only the filthy rich and celebrities are heard of doing this. In order to be a part of this, you need to be "processed" which appears to be a VERY time consuming (i'm talking 25 hours to complete one task) process of stupid and basic question and answer series. And I'm sure no one will sit there and do this with you for that many hours for free?!!

Well, I've ranted enough about that. I enjoy learning about other people's beliefs and such, but this one just seems a bit too hokie and based off of lies and half-truths. Guess I'm not converting...but maybe I'll want to build myself a pyramid tomb????