The following is a chapter passage that immediately follows another one that was posted earlier, Deconstructing Scientology. A quick reminder perusal of the first passage will make reading the following easier.
Part II:
Such a psychotherapy has been shown to have the power to convert conscientious, caring, emotionally disturbed, and relatively intelligent people into cheery, focused followers who yet accept implicitly, and act according to, subconscious commands on the order of:
A. One should never fear to hurt another person in a just cause (most particularly when that cause is the cause of the creator of the mental therapy he engages in).
B. One should never withdraw his allegiance to any group to which he has pledged it, irrespective of how criminal and destructive he discovers that group might be (most particularly when that group is the one endowed with a monopoly on the mental therapy he is engaged in).
C. One should never show compassion to the weak for to do so will worsen the weak and the strong attempting to lend a hand. Only the ‘able’ ought be supported and assisted. Like in social Darwinist thought it is justified by the arbitrary datum that only further empowerment of the elite will raise anyone else’s boat.
D. That now considering oneself one of the elite, every time you engage in self-absorbed, introspective processes to make yourself feel better you are improving humankind’s lot. A sort of imbued megalomaniac narcissism is effectuated re-enforcing a-c above.
E. Personalities inclined to not go along with the mental therapy program and instead find fault with it ought to be disposed of permanently and with no slightest dent in one’s conscience for having done so.
The thinking becomes so inverted that the mental health therapy acolyte becomes fiercely contentious and combative about arguing the rationality of the a-e thought pattern and behaviors above. In fact, this is the ingrained mindset and behavior pattern of a scientologist; and he or she will defend it as ferociously and instinctively as a she-gator protects her young. Being utterly oblivious to any sub conscious (associative) mind system in himself the scientologist may even purport not to hold these views and yet continue to argue vehemently for their rationale. Even when scientologists leave and disavow the organizations and the subject itself, they can be observed continuing to act out these patterns. Little compassion and much arrogant, vicious fault-finding and attempts to undermine espousers of opposing views often marks the interchange between them.
That people can have their characters and long term behavior patterns so apparently permanently molded and that they can continue to argue the virtues of their programming ought not come as a surprise. Many scientifically grounded studies over the past several decades in fact have demonstrated that that is precisely how sub conscious (associative) and analytical thought works hand in glove. The subconscious (associative) mind system automatically rationalizes the content of its adopted narratives perpetuating the human proclivity toward creating, adopting and bolstering stories to make sense of the world. Those rationalizations become somewhat permanent associative mind narratives. The narratives’ matrices of associated ‘facts’ become the filter through which new information and perceptions are sensed and organized. The auto-associating mind system prompts the individual to use his analytical faculties to further explain and justify its conclusions. The comfortable, if lazy, analytical function usually complies or simply abides and articulates the sub-conscious-associative faculty’s conclusions. It most certainly does so when the individual is not on guard against misinformation, mis-association and irrationality common to associative mind processes. And when the person is convinced that there are no such processes present – as the ‘cleared’ scientologist is – his analytical system can become mighty reactionary itself.
Many of these facts about how the mind works are understood and plied by those who mold educational, political and social thought. This knowledge is used and affects us daily in advertising, business, law, politics, media, you name it. Arts and sciences driven by it are increasing exponentially with the advent of the Age of Information. Fantastic sums of money are invested into utilizing this knowledge to maintain the status quo and make populations more materialist-consumerist oriented to increase the dollars flowing toward the top of the wealth pyramid. Like it or not, we live in a culture driven, fueled, and maintained by consultation to and application of the advices of the greatest minds in human psychology.
The knowledge utilized to keep the masses slaves to the current economic system demonstrates how an understanding of these mechanisms could make a hypnotic ‘therapy’ as discussed herein possible. They are the very mechanisms used to make scientologists slaves to their leadership. The scientologist is kept oblivious to this. Scientology keeps its followers ignorant by clever application of a-e above. It teaches them that those who know anything about psychology are the enemy and that understanding what the enemy knows could poison the follower. The enemy and his knowledge must be attacked and destroyed by any means necessary in order for a-e culture to function. And so scientology ultimately becomes an insulated cult playing out an exaggerated form of that which it is taught to condemn.
In practice this is how scientology culture operates. Its form of governance is closed-system, thought-controlling totalitarianism. It closely resembles George Orwell’s 1984. That holds parallel right down to omnipresent electronic recording, thought police, thought crimes, and Newspeak. If a scientologist begins to cultivate thought patterns that question authority (or even explore the very mechanisms we discuss here) they are soon ferreted out by liberal use of one component of a lie detector (the electropsychometer or e-meter). The discovered offending mind is put through rigorous reformation techniques. That reform can include years-long confinement in re-educating concentration camps. It more often entails the loss – or threatened loss – of communication and communion with one’s family and closest friends and even business associates.
It should be noted that the psychological mechanisms at work in commerce, marketing, media and politics are not held secret. The only reason for their continued negative effectiveness is people’s lack of energy or curiosity in learning of them. And therein lies the most troubling aspect of scientology’s enforced information bubble.
It would seem that the road to recovery for a scientologist should include education in the very psychological mechanisms that were employed on him so effectively that they often continue to affect him long after he has left the cult.
Moving On Up a Little Higher 