by Haydn James
A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year and worshipped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived
Thomas Paine
Common Sense, 1776
In addition to Miscavige’s lengthening list of crimes, let’s take a look at a subject that has received too little attention over the years, which contributed to his rise to power in the first place: namely Scientology’s lack of a correct form of government or constitution.
In his text on the subject entitled Common Sense, back in 1776, Englishman Thomas Paine took less than thirty pages to utterly obliterate any arguments in favor of a group of people ever using a system of monarchs or supreme rulers to lord over them. Even some staunch royalists read those few pages at the time and thought “well, that’s it then, never again will I allow royalty to rule over me. How stupid to let yourself be ruled by someone about whom you have no say and on whom you can have no effect. How silly to give total power to someone to make whatever far reaching decisions they want whenever they want and there is nothing that can be done, no impeachment, no removal, no ousting from office, nothing, ever.”
Paine pointed out that other than an all too brief period during which a people might be lucky enough to be ruled by a benign monarch (with no means of controlling succession), putting oneself at total effect by investing all privileges, powers and rights in someone who enriches themselves while demanding unrelenting worship into the bargain was a ridiculous state of affairs.
Such forceful arguments plus Paine’s proposals for a viable alternative — a correct form of government containing necessary checks and balances — sparked a successful revolution against the British and the creation of the United States of America. And make no mistake, the American Revolution reverberated around the globe and changed its political landscape forever, finally killing off the last remnants of the western world’s longstanding feudal system. And if Paine had had his way the American Revolution would have killed off all other forms of slavery too but Washington didn’t keep his end of the bargain.
A One Horse Race
Now, let’s look at what we’ve had in Scientology for the past twenty odd years:
Miscavige has been anything but benign, and from the moment he rigged the race and became the supreme head of Scientology he’s had more relative power than the President of the United States because he’s had total control of Scientology’s executive (management), its legislative machinery (policy and decision making) and its judiciary (Scientology’s ethics and justice system) which made it impossible for anyone to ever question or countermand his orders, or pass any Scientology law prohibiting his actions, or impeach him for improper conduct, abuse of power or any other type of violation.
Despite glaring lessons from history, Scientology has had and still has a dictator with supreme power that no one can question because he is the head of all things.
This has resulted in a total lack of checks and balances in the governing of Scientology.
And, a lack of functioning organizations managing it. So is it any wonder we also have:
1. Widespread perversions of tech and alterations of policy.
2. Numerous injustices, abuse of individuals and families.
3. Dwindling orgs and numbers of Scientologists.
4. harassed public required to fund out of their own pockets the supreme ruler’s unchecked and uncontrolled penchant for unusual solutions and strange projects which make a tax on tea look like chump change.
And make no mistake Miscavige has and does enrich himself at Scientology’s expense, a process that began the moment he had unassailable power and which has continued to gather pace. And the fact that no one within the Church of Scientology has ever dared to ask him how much he has taken proves my point entirely.
Miscavige’s Wrong Target Defense
For self protection against the growing disquiet in the field, Miscavige tries to run the mis-director, the deflecting line that potent objections to his misrule are attempts to attack the church and tear it down. One of the most common lines coming from OSA these days is: “Yes, some things are wrong within the Church of Scientology, but that’s no reason to tear it down” – an accusation repeatedly leveled at the Independents by OSA in their attempts to split my eldest daughter from her fiancé.
Some things wrong? Well, I guess they are correct if by some things wrong they mean planet wide out-tech, a lack of management, widespread injustice, failing orgs, a steeply worsening global image, a strange obsessing about buildings when Scientology was only ever about and only ever will be about people, and a lengthening list of the outraged and the abused who swell the ranks of the Independents.
[As a side note, I do wonder how Scientologists justify getting involved and caught up in this fixation with buildings while people go begging, ignored if not also abused. I imagine that they must tell themselves that they will eventually get to help people way, way, way, way down the line after they have helped Miscavige build his pipe dream of a bricks-and-mortar-audio-visual system that will somehow automatically handle all the people they’ve neglected in the meantime. A dream that will never be realized and shame on them anyway because LRH always said that people can only be helped by “you and me with our sleeves rolled up” and “one at a time”.]
The sad thing is that Scientology is being torn down, but not by Independents, the demolition job is being done by Miscavige and those remaining who bow down before him, fawn all over him and those that propitiate or try to appease him.
If Independents wanted to see the destruction of Scientology all they would have to do is stay silent, sit back and watch.
Another line Miscavige uses is that because Scientology is such a powerful cure for man’s ills that the end justifies his means. Well, quite apart from the fact that his means are destructive and a total failure, I say that it is because he has had Scientology tech at his disposal all these years that his means (abuse of Scientology and abuses perpetrated in the name of Scientology) have been all the more unnecessary and inexcusable.
As part of this he continues to use statements of justification such as “to clear a planet you sometimes have to get rough.” Really? If that were true auditors would slap their PCs while yelling for them to have a cognition. And they are certainly heading in that direction under Miscavige.
No, I say that if Scientology is ever going to help this planet, if it is ever going to be taken seriously then it must act in a manner befitting its technology — its people must use and demonstrate the highest levels of understanding. We must be and should be the greatest proponents of the universal solvent this planet has ever seen. Frankly, the many great men that have gone before us are going to be an awfully tough act to follow in this regard but we do have the technology so we are just going to have to suck it up.
Just think about it, as we stand, how could anyone possibly reconcile Miscavige’s homophobia, enforced divorces, coerced abortions, and his lack of care for staff, children and families, his completely over the top rapacious collection of money and his ridiculously tough stance in the media with the greatest movement on earth? Well, they can’t.
But the most insidious play in Miscavige’s wrong target defense playbook is the fact that he holds over us and would have us accept that exposing his crimes to the world at large would cause “untold harm to Scientology”. Well, quite in addition to the fact that untold harm has already been caused to Scientology, I say that the very fact that it is Scientology means his crimes MUST be exposed to the world at large, that Scientology must fix itself and the world must see it do so or there is little hope it will ever regain a correct image or achieve its purpose. LRH never said Scientology was perfect but he did say it was workable, so the world witnessing such workability in action by seeing Scientology overcome its own internal problems and then implementing needed reforms has many great advantages.
The last major line in Miscavige’s wrong target defense is that prominent Independents just want to take over from him so they can have all the power for themselves.
It’s no surprise that such a power hungry creature as Miscavige would think that way and by myopically making the accusation he misses the fact that it is an admission of guilt, an admission that anyone grabbing his power would be able to dominate Scientology. But what Independents would like to see is an end to dictatorship (and all forms of abuse) and a system put in place that prevents a single person or clique from ever dominating Scientology again, a system that would allow the power of the tech to shine through and carry out the simple purpose for which it was designed – to help the people of earth, certainly all those that wish to be helped by it.
A Better Way
Surely a subject as broad as Scientology contains within it the answers to the riddle of its own correct government. I certainly think it does so from what I know of Scientology I carried out a brief exercise to see if there was a way of governing the Church of Scientology that would be better than the tyrannical mess we have and that might prevent such destructive domination from ever happening again.
I believe there has to be some form of governing body for Scientology, but that a prospective member of such a body would have to qualify in a number of ways. They would have to be experts in Scientology technology, policy or jurisprudence and they would have to exhibit the very essence and nature of Scientology (understanding, pan-determinism, the granting of beingness as well as other qualities unique to Scientology). In short, they would have to be highly trained and experienced OTs.
As LRH points out in Ron’s Journal 67 and elsewhere, OTs work best when organized with other OTs so the governing body of Scientology would have to be a well organized group of OTs. And it would be wise to form a number of such OT organizations, each with their own duties to perform but each with an additional responsibility to cross check or police the performance of the others. In that way no one person or organization could become too powerful, too out of control or stray too far off track or go criminal, what Thomas Paine would have called “checks and balances”.
Such a set up (these three organizations simply working in concert) would represent the highest toned government possible for Scientology as confirmed by LRH in his masterpiece, HCO PL An Essay on Management, in which he states:
We are examining here, if you have not
noticed, the tone scale of governments or companies
or groups in general from the high Theta
of a near cooperative state, down through the
Theta of a democratic Republic, down through
“emergency management”, down through
totalitarianism, down through tyranny and
down, if not resurged by a new goal finder
somewhere on the route, into the apathy of a
dying organization or nation.
TONE SCALE OF GOVERNMENTS, COMPANIES OR GROUPS
Near cooperative state
Democratic republic
“Emergency management”
Totalitarianism
Tyranny
Apathy of a dying organization or nation
But this is just my take on things, my brief and humble attempt to solve the problem which shows there are potential options, there are better ways. I am certain that if Scientologists put their heads together and use what they know, the problem of going forward with Scientology and how to prevent tyranny from ever happening again will be solved. But that debate is for another time and another place.
The Task at Hand
The immediate barrier we are faced with is the fact that the current dictatorship ruling Scientology bears a greater resemblance to pre-1776 colonial America than it does to the technology and policy of Scientology.
But don’t sit back and expect someone in corporate Scientology to do anything about it. The Church of Scientology has been subjected to tyranny for so long it has dropped far down the organizational tone scale and is now experiencing apathy of a dying organization. And within that apathy there is blind acceptance of the assertions from Miscavige’s wrong target defense. So we have to grow up boys and girls, L Ron Hubbard is not here to bail us out, it’s up to us to take responsibility and put things right. But we move forward comforted by the knowledge that whatever comes after him, it will be a great deal better than Miscavige.
And since Scientology is a “closed shop”, mis-run by a dictator with no effective form of remedy open, there is but one course of action left – to withdraw any and all support from the tyrant, the same position Americans found themselves in circa 1776, when one of those great men I referred to wrote:
TO CONCLUDE: however strange it may appear to some, or however unwilling they be to think so, matters not, but many strong and striking reasons may be given, to shew, that nothing can settle our affairs so expeditiously as an open and determined declaration for independence.
Thomas Paine,
Common Sense, 1776
Haydn James (AKA T Paine)
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