“Radical Corporate Scientology” Isn’t That Just Plain Ole “The Church of Scientology”?

A lot of really good discussions about Scientology take place in the comments section of Mike Rinder’s Blog.

This is one that took place in March of 2014, and you can find it HERE: http://www.mikerindersblog.org/important-things-read/#comment-41120

Alanzo Wrote:

“March 26, 2014 at 5:32 pm

Rory wrote that Mike was shouting from the rooftops that “something is wrong with radical scientology!”

Yes, I agree.

There IS something wrong with radical scientology: There is no such thing as radical scientology.

Radical Scientology is standard LRH Scientology.

For some reason, years ago some Independent Scientologists (we won’t say who they were) came out of the Church and decided to position the Church of Scientology with “Radical Corporate Scientology” to distinguish it from “Independent Scientology” as a marketing technique.

It has been used to somehow suggest that the Church does not apply regular old standard LRH scientology: his ethics, tech, and admin, but some other radical form of it.

No.

The Church of Scientology applies standard LRH Scientology, and there is no such thing as radical scientology.

I’m not attacking you, Rory, just pointing out that this use of “radical scientology” refers to something that does not exist. And that a more accurate term for what you are referring to when you say “radical scientology” is “the Church of Scientology”.

It’s the entity that L Ron Hubbard created, right down to how they must wash the windows with newspapers.

Radical Scientology = The Church of Scientology

Right?

Alanzo

Mike Rinder says

“March 26, 2014 at 6:37 pm

Alanzo — you may be absolutely correct that Radical Scientology = The Church of Scientology but I think you are missing something here.

As I recall the genus of “Radical Corporate Scientology” is was to distinguish the philosophy of scientology from the organized practice and to avoid calling it a “Church”. RCS became a substitute for CofS. It was not a “marketing technique” though it was an identification technique.

Radical Corporate Scientology certainly DOES exist, and yes, it IS the Church of Scientology. I certainly do not like calling this a church.

There are all sorts of Scientology practitioners these days outside the control of the church — much to the disgust of corporate Scientology. At one end of the spectrum there are those who are still pretty much “fundamentalists” and believe they have the answer to everything in the written and spoken words of LRH, though don’t practice Fair Game or disconnection because they believe he canceled those things, all the way to the other end of the spectrum of people who will not label themselves a Scientologist but continue to use some of the philosophy and application methods developed by LRH.

The problem is that “Scientology” as a subject has been equated with “the church of Scientology.” Nobody who is not in the church wants to be associated to it. I guess you could call that “marketing”…

BTW, his name is Roy not Rory.

Alanzo says

“March 26, 2014 at 7:59 pm

Wow. For months, maybe even years, I’ve been seeing “Rory” when it was always “Roy”. (Sorry about that, Roy.)

I get what you are saying, Mike.

But for me, the label of “RCS”, tends to suggest that the Church of Scientology is somehow “squirrel” as in a radical version of scientology and not really the intended way Scientology was ever supposed to be by LRH.

I believe it allows people to dwell under the mistaken idea that the human rights abuses, and even the criminality, that we are seeing from the Church of Scientology did not come directly from following LRH issues and orders and policies and tech, or from the fervent intent to follow the written and spoken words of LRH 100% standardly.

What Marty has been showing, and what many critics of Scientology before him have shown, is that the criminality and the abuse which comes from the Church of Scientology is 100% standard scientology, and not radical at all.

So I do see your point.

But do you see mine?

Alanzo”

Mike Rinder says

“March 26, 2014 at 9:16 pm

Alanzo, yes, I do see your point. As I said, I think radical scientology (i prefer to call it fundamentalist scientology) IS the church of scientology and the foundation upon which it is built is that the word of L. Ron Hubbard is gospel and must be followed to the letter in every respect in order to be a “good” church member. And that includes all the Guardian Orders and Disconnection and heavy ethics. What is NOT found in the writings of Hubbard is the vulture culture, and that is a departure. They have attmepted to cloak it in “on Sourceness” but its always a stretch as there is plenty of LRH writings that say NOT to do “fundraising” and yet it has become the norm. So, I cannot completely agree with you for that reason.”

Alanzo says

“March 26, 2014 at 9:33 pm

Mike wrote:

“As I said, I think radical scientology (i prefer to call it fundamentalist scientology) IS the church of scientology and the foundation upon which it is built is that the word of L. Ron Hubbard is gospel and must be followed to the letter in every respect in order to be a “good” church member. And that includes all the Guardian Orders and Disconnection and heavy ethics.”

Yes. And even the instructions to follow the word of LRH as gospel and to the letter come directly from L Ron Hubbard.

What is NOT found in the writings of Hubbard is the vulture culture, and that is a departure. They have attmepted to cloak it in “on Sourceness” but its always a stretch as there is plenty of LRH writings that say NOT to do “fundraising” and yet it has become the norm.

Yes, I certainly agree with you there.

You have shown very clearly, using LRH’s own writings, that “Hard Sell” regging was never supposed to be for new buildings or for getting straight donations for the IAS, but was to be applied for blood to selling scientology services on the Bridge to Total Freedom.

It was very easy to transfer over the instilled fanaticism built into reges by LRH (with his “hard sell” tactics and instructions to “never be reasonable”) from selling Scn services right on over to buying Miscavige new buildings and building up his IAS War Chest.

Once you saddle up that fanatic pony, you can ride him any where.

We do agree. I’m glad you took the time and energy to discuss this with me, Mike, and to let me see a little more of where you are coming from.

I appreciate it.

Alanzo

Roy Macgregor says

“March 27, 2014 at 1:30 am

Just to jump in with a point of view here. You make good points Alanzo. But think about this. All religions have passages that are harsh and passages that are gentle. Christianity, Islam, even Judaism (a very harsh religion) has some softness in it. A lot of what you get out of a religion is determined by the preist or pastor who leads a particular congregation. That persons personality determines whether he breathes fire and damnation or if he breathes love and tolerance. This is not something that is perculiar to Scientology. Perhaps only Buddism contains no writing such as “an eye for an eye” or “stone the unbeliever” or “disconnect from whoever we tell you to”. Thus you end up in all religions with factions, some soft, some hard. You have factions that are kind and loving and factions that are brutal and harsh- yet they look to the same source writings for their guidance. I believe very strongly that you could have a kind and loving Scientology if you had a leader that was not a vain and steriod-crazed psychopath as the top dog. I hope that one day there will be a branch of Scientology that looks at all the writings of L Ron Hubbard and says “wow, he must have been in shitty mood the day he wrote that” and just more or less disregards it as not in keeping with the overall tone of the activity. However the offical “Church” of Scientology is not that. It is lead by a man who wants a “cold steel chrome” attitude to his fellows. He likes to hit people with his little fists and appreciates others who like it too. It is very appropriate to give some special name to David Miscavige’s implementation of the Scientology philosophy. Having so much knowledge of David Miscaviges actions, plus so much knowledge of L Ron Hubbards writings gives a unique perspective. In my opinion, L Ron Hubbard wrote a sea of stuff about love and good will. He wrote probably 100 or perhaps even 200 pages of paranoid and brutal material on the subject of stamping out detractors. He wrote thousands of pages of love and goodwill to all men. His spoken words in terms of lectures are also thus balanced. There are a few lectures where he gets angry and advocates harsh treatment. (DM knows these verbatim and plays them over and over for staff). They are there within a body of thousands of lectures about love, goodwill, understanding and paranormal feel-good stuff. So if you were to try to extract the essense of this, distill the flavor or feel, you should come up with something that has a lot of love and very little harshness. That is not what David Miscavige and his supporters have found. They have searched and searched and found those 100 pages of harshness and ill temper and spent millions of dollars and built whole organizations (OSA) that do nothing but dramatize that ill temper as hard and fast as they can. To say that LRH was never ill tempered and mean is to say he was never a man, never human, never had a bad day. But if you look across ALL of his works, and just count pages of love and pages of hate you come up to 1000 to 1 ratio. Haters love to quote LRH when he was in a shitty mood. I have never seen a critic that says “I listened to 25 hours of lectures and in all that time I heard 12 minutes of harshness”. To a sicko like Davey Miscavige, those 12 minutes are everything. And since he has clawed his way to supremecy, so it is with all of Scientology in this day. But it was not always so, and will not always be so. Also, just to drop in my own personal axe, DM has not only accentuated the few nasty things that LRH wrote, but he has also MASSIVELY violated things that LRH did write- refusing refunds (a big no-no according to LRH), massive SP declares (Another big no-no), refusal of recourse (a huge no-no), demanding donations with no service in return (a massive no-no according to LRH), huge changes in technology ( A shoot him dead no no according to LRH)- I could go on and on. So yes, David Miscavige’s Scientology deserves its own name. And it deserves a gravestone as well. On that point, I think we can all agree.”

Alanzo says

“March 27, 2014 at 8:51 am

Roy wrote:

“I believe very strongly that you could have a kind and loving Scientology if you had a leader that was not a vain and steriod-crazed psychopath as the top dog. I hope that one day there will be a branch of Scientology that looks at all the writings of L Ron Hubbard and says “wow, he must have been in shitty mood the day he wrote that” and just more or less disregards it as not in keeping with the overall tone of the activity.”

This is a totally valid point. Any two individuals can read the same sentence in a religious text, have no MUs whatsoever, and see two different things, depending on their overall temperament, or just their temperament that day.

So yes, there ARE possibilities that Scientology can be applied in a loving, and life-giving way.

So we agree there.

But when your calculus of the ratio of LRH’s writings only counts words and pages to find his intent for Scientology, then I have to make another point to you. And this point is generally overlooked.

It isn’t the number of pages he wrote, it is which pages and words will get you shot for not following them to the letter, and which pages and words do not matter to anyone if you violate them in the authority structure LRH set up?

For instance, The Creed of the Church of Scientology “What We of the Church Believe” contains recognitions of inalienable rights that the Church of Scientology supposedly believes, and by firm LRH policy the Creed must be hung on a wall that is the first wall a new person sees when they walk into any org or mission.

Yet if someone violates a point in the Creed of the Church of Scientology “What We of The Church Believe”, what punishments of hellfire did LRH set up for them in his structured hierarchy in the Church?

None.

Yet the HCOPL on Suppressive Acts, which LRH wrote himself in 1966, say that going to the press about Scientology (speaking freely about your own opinions – in contradiction to the Creed), remaining connected to a squirrel group (although you supposedly have a right to your own group – in contradiction to the Creed) will get you expelled AND Fair-Gamed.

So which of the pages and writings did LRH really mean?

The rights-recognizing Creed on the front wall of ever org and mission?

Or the Fair-Gaming Suppressive Acts HCOPL?

Which is on the front wall of every org?

And which is buried in a big fat green volume that you only become aware of after you are totally entrenched as a Scientologist?

So I have to say that your calculus of numbers of pages LRH wrote is not a valid way to evaluate LRH’s intentions for Scientology. You have to look at the Awards and Penalties he set on the behaviors he wanted out of Scientologists with his Church hierarchy.

And you have to know about Operand Conditioning techniques and social coercion – that will tell you LRH’s real intentions for Scientology and Scientologists.

Alanzo”

KFrancis says

“March 27, 2014 at 9:06 am

A brilliant view Roy…..Nothing to add but applause.”

Margaret says

“March 27, 2014 at 4:44 pm

Alanzo wrote: “So which of the pages and writings did LRH really mean?
The rights-recognizing Creed on the front wall of ever org and mission?
Or the Fair-Gaming Suppressive Acts HCOPL?”

As on-the-money that Roy’s response above was, you hit it out of the park with this observation Alanzo. This is the exact conundrum that Scientologists need to confront, if there is going to be an honest and thorough reform.

I would further add to your observation though, Alanzo, that policy at one time was supposed to just apply to staff members and not necessarily the public (i.e. the general membership). At some unknown time (but clearly in full force by the 1980s), that demarcation point — where public were in one category with regard to Church policies, and staff were in another — was lost.

My view is that there was a sort of built-in “oh, everyone knows that doesn’t apply” to the general public through the 1960s and 70s, when the green (policy) volumes were not widely distributed and available. There were a number of these important “everyone knows” things that got lost when the old regime was replaced with the new one in the 1980s. Add in the loss of the balance that Mary Sue often added to the equation, the hyper-fundamentalism and psychopathy of Miscavige, and you have a perfect setup for the mess we have today.

And by the way, I’m not saying that certain policies by LRH should be continued and supported, just because they were possibly meant only for staff (and clearly by the 80s, I don’t think they were, even in LRH’s mind). I’m in favor of radically reforming the whole “Suppressive Person” witch hunt — and their mechanisms in policy — that exist in the RCS. And a number of other areas too, such as the hyper-focus on stats which also has seeds found in policy, sec checks, et al.

Any real reform must be honest about the whole thing: including not only retiring certain LRH policies, but creating other policies which don’t allow the same situations to recur. Unfortunately, I don’t know or expect this type of reform to ever take place, but this is what would be needed for any real reform to be meaningful and successful, imho.”

Alanzo says

“March 27, 2014 at 7:23 pm

Margaret –

I certainly swell up with pride reading you say that I “hit one out of the park”!

Thank you.

I wasn’t in Scientology in the 60’s or 70’s, so I don’t personally know about what public thought of policies, and which ones applied to them. But there is a guy named Robert Kaufmann who was in Scientology at that time, at Saint Hill where Ron was writing most of those policies, and he writes about their effect on public and staff at the time.

When Ron first issued the ethics tech, some of the penalties for liability and below were pretty draconian – having to wear dirty grey armbands, etc. Kaufmann describes what it was like to be a public back then.

The whole book is here for free:

http://www.xenu.net/archive/books/isd/isd.htm

I think this is one of the best books ever written on Scientology.

Alanzo”