There are a number of ways in which David Miscavige has reversed L Ron Hubbard technology for purposes of creation of stupidity and tractability. I was reminded of another example while reading a section of Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning. The Scientology Life Orientation course was designed by Hubbard to help people sort out the meaning of their individual lives – or as he put it to find his or her ‘hat’ (function) in life. Miscavige of course could not leave simple and workable alone and interjected arbitraries with resultant recalls (retreads in Scientology terminology) and a mass of confusions for students. Miscavige insisted that a person decide upon the post title he was currently assigned to as his function in life (which really equates to the purpose or the meaning of a person’s life), then canceled that with another arbitrary, then re-implemented the “post is hat in life” arbitrary – and who knows what else since. With the perpetual ‘musical chairs’ Miscavige plays with personnel – very few staff ever staying on any particular post for long – one can imagine the mental, emotional and spiritual havoc his arbitraries have wreaked upon many.
Irony of ironies, a psychiatrist gets what David Miscavige apparently won’t get. Further, Viktor Frankl so much gets it, I think the following passage from Man’s Search for Meaning serves to effectively repair the Black Dianetics reversal Miscavige has implemented.
excerpt:
Let us now consider what we can do if a patient asks what the meaning of life is.
I doubt whether a doctor can answer this question in general terms. For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment. To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: “Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?” There is simply no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one’s opponent. The same holds for human existence. One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.
As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of any life may actually be reveresed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
Kind of a lot like L Ron Hubbard was trying to get across before David Miscavige put his hands into the mix.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 