Refund and Reparation

 From: Gerry Armstrong < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology
Subject: Re: is "groupthink" a definition of how Scientology works internally?
Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2007 20:27:53 -0800
Message-ID: < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it >


On Sat, 29 Dec 2007 18:53:52 -0800 (PST), cultxpt < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it >
wrote:

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink
>
>   I'm always amazed at how Scientology seems to look for short-term
>gain without considering long-term consequences. For instance, at
>pickets in Clearwater, the crazy behavior of the OT Committee members
>was designed to harass us into stopping our picket(s). But the long-
>term consequence is that their nasty behavior will forever be
>memorialized in videos on the internet.  So they sacrificed long-term
>embarassment for short-term results.
>   So it seems to me that what happens is somebody says "let's do
>this! That'll really take care of things!" And everybody else goes
>"yeah! That'll take care of things!" without listening to contrary
>opinion or considering long-term consequences.

You are onto one of the great Scientironies.

Hubbard had his own definition for the noun "group think:"

[Quote]

GROUP THINK, the common denominator of the group is the reactive bank.
Thetans without banks have different responses. They only have their
banks in common. They agree then only on bank principles. Person to
person the bank is identical. So constructive ideas are individual and
seldom get broad agreement in a human group. (HCO PL 7 Feb 65)

[End Quote]
Dianetics and Scientology Technical Dictionary
L. Ron Hubbard

HCO PL 7 Feb 65  is the most important policy letter in Scientology,
"Keeping Scientology Working," so it can be seen just how important
Hubbard's concept of "group think" is.

The irony, of course, is that the cult under no circumstances will
permit different responses among Scientologists, but compels group
agreement, which, pursuant to their own "tech" and scripture, cannot
but be on reactive principles.

Where this "group think" meme is crucial, and also where it can be
profitably analyzed, is in the "Suppressive Person" doctrine and its
execution against the group's targets, or the targets David Miscavige
gets the group to think are targets.

This would theologically make sense because all the people the
Scientologists target are God's children.

What wogs have in common, in the realm of thought or spirit, is not
something that should be erased, as Hubbard and his cult and now
Miscavige insist. It is their relationship with God that they all have
in common, and of course the attempted erasure of that reality is the
work of mad men, and done willfully, the work of sociopaths.

This excerpt from one of Hubbard's ESTO Series lectures also shows how
he meant the term "group think." It's a bit long, because I wanted to
include what Hubbard says here about his father leading up to his
pronouncements about "group think." It was a glimpse into Hubbard's
case I hadn't noted before, and a couple of mentions of Hubbard's
priceless governing policy of finance, "make more money."

[Quote]

Now, the answer kiddies is make more money. I by the way had a, let me
tell you a little anecdote. I had a bad experience with this one time.
I told the wrong man, I told my father this one time, I got tired of
all of his talking about me and money and so forth, he knew nothing
about money and he knew nothing about me, been a naval officer all of
his life. I was often making a month what he made in a year. I don't
know, the unreality of people is gorgeous. And he told me that once
too often and I was just out of hospital, it was at the end of the
war, and my temper was rather short. And I turned on him and I said,
"Look," I said, "Don't go telling me this anymore, I've listened to it
most of my life and it's not true," I said, "Look at yourself. You've
been making money all of your life, you haven't got anything to show
for it, you spend your money like a drunken sailor. Now, why don't you
make more money?" So he did. He got ahold of my yacht and sold it. And
having done that, he sold my ranch, well anyway, he made more money.
So it doesn't always work that the message goes through straight, but
it is the answer, it is the answer. If you have hatted according to
policy and not hatted off a lot of squirrel, offbeat actions; if you
have made sure that you don't have using policy to stop; they can do
that by the way by always applying the wrong policy letter. All you've
got to do is take the policy letter that applies to A and instead of
following that, find another one that really doesn't really apply
to A but find something in it that can be construed as to apply to
this and they say, "Well, you see we can't do that." Policy was
designed to tell people things they could do and when it tells them
not to do something, it's trying to put edges on the channel so they
won't go off of it. But what channel? The channel of doing something
right. When you say this is a high crime PL it means we've had enough
of it, it's been too prevalent, this why is big enough and prevalent
enough and has been in the past to become a policy why, so don't. But
that doesn't stop anybody from going down the main channel. Now, if a
fellow doesn't know the policy that gives him the main channel and
only knows the policy that tells him to stop, then you will get people
using policy to stop. Do you follow?
There is always policy that tells them how to go on the channel. If
they only specialize in stop, that's terrible. Well, there's one thing
that you must know that any group of thetans can get best agreement on
a stop, they will most readily agree on a stop, that's any group of
thetans. It's one of the reasons democracies don't work. That's what
you know as group think. That's a very funny one and that's how they
all get sort of frozen. If you're not able to put in the public lines
and if you can't get a student into and out of an org, you know then
that you have a group think and it's a stop think. They don't know the
ways to do things and they've only agreed on the ways to stop things.

[End Quote]

And from HCO PL 18 December 1968, "Gung-Ho Groups:"

[Quote]

When doing a survey to discover the targets of the area, you interview
the public individual.

YOU DO NOT interview Ministers of State, Government Officials,
Presidents or Leaders of groups or firms to discover the targets of
the area.

RULE: INTERVIEWING LEADERS AND PEOPLE IN HIGH POSITIONS = NO
TARGETS.

If you interview such people, you will hit "GROUP THINK" and what they
suggest as targets are rarely and not necessarily what the public
want.

Follow this rule strictly. It is naturally ok to inform officials of
what you are doing but do not get involved in "officialdom", only
social snobs endeavour to do this.

[End Quote]

Another use from HCO PL 9 April 1970, "Conference Hats:"

[Quote]

Why do Committees fail? Why do Parliaments pass such strange bills?
Why does one get unreal solutions out of conferences?
The facts are these as we have lately discovered.
When a person comes to a Conference:
A. He dumps his own hat.
B. He picks up a planning hat.
C. He expresses opinions not data.
D. The Group Think is based on collective opinion, not on actual data.
E. Results are unreal.
Example: You call in a plumber, an electrician and a concrete man. You
ask for their opinion. They decide on a building with a helicopter
port roof! But they don't schedule when or how they plumb, elect or
concrete! That's an example of what happens in conferences.

[End Quote]

I knew about "group think" and "bank agreement" and how Hubbard had
risen above the bank within my first few months in Scientology. It was
a way Scientologists looked down on wogs. No group think in
Scientology, much.

© Gerry Armstrong
http://www.gerryarmstrong.org