The Scn/1984 Parallel - Big Brother/LRH (RVY)
(make this part of OSA US DR on RVY)
Parallels between "1984" and Scientology. Substitute "L.
Ron Hubbard" for "Big Brother" and "Scientology"
for "the Party."
On Big Brother.
From George Orwell's "1984" published in 1949: "At the apex
of the pyramid comes Big Brother. Big Brother is infallible and all-powerful.
Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery,
all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issue
directly from his leadership and inspiration. Nobody has ever seen Big
Brother. He is a face on the hoardings, a voice on the telescreen. We may
be reasonable sure that he will never die, and there is already
considerable uncertainty as to where he was born. Big Brother is the guise
in which the Party choose to exhibit itself to the world. His function is
to act as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence, emotions which
are more easily felt toward an individual than toward an organization."
Commentary: Hubbard gets the same praise. Every success is due to his
methods and every mistake or failure is due to someone or something else.
His face is everywhere in Scientology organizations, just as one finds the
leader in other dictatorships: Cuba, Iran, Iraq, China, the old USSR and Nazi
Germany, and for the exact reasons Orwell gives. Orwell's remark about Big
Brother not dying even applies to Hubbard for he didn't "die."
His death was unthinkable as it would have meant the tech did not work. So
he merely went to his "next level of research."
Robert Vaughn Young
The Scn/1984 Parallel - Doublethink (RVY)
make this part of OSA US DR on RVY)
Parallels between "1984" and Scientology. Substitute
"Scientology" for "the Party."
On "doublethink"
From George Orwell's "1984": "To know and not to know, to
be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed
lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing
them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic
against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe
that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of
democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw
it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then
promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process
to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously
to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of
the act of hypnosis you had just performed.
Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use
of doublethink."
Commentary: After nearly 22 years in the cult, I came away puzzled how I
could know the truth and think otherwise. Many people asked me how it
worked but it wasn't until I read "1984" that I read a description
that fit the mindset to move up the command ladder in Scientology.
This is what one is encountering with Sea Org/Dept 20 personnel. One
wonders, can they believe this? Don't they know the truth? Yes and no. It
is doublethink, right out of "1984." And if you tell them this,
they will doublethink their way out of it as self-protection. As one moves
up the Scientology ladder of command, this is how one begins to think and if
one doesn't think this way, one does not move up the ladder. One begins to
learn that there are facts being withheld but there are reasons and so one
begins to hold both facts in one's mind while learning to think with
Scientology's "logic." Then one does what Orwell says, the process
is applied to the process so that one if finally deluding oneself that up is
down or black is white. For example, one of Scientology's favorite come
ons is, "What is true for you, is true for you," as if a person
can believe what they want. It doesn't take long to learn that this is true
only as long as what you want to believe is what L. Ron Hubbard wants you
to believe. To do otherwise sends you to their "thought police."
Further trouble and - if you are Sea Org - you are sent to a camp for
"rehabilitation," a word and a concept that Orwell would have
loved. In the meantim, the staff member also believes the original promise:
that what is true for him is true for him. This is doublethink. It is also
what one is astounded to see, when one steps out of it and says, "I was
believing WHAT?"
Robert Vaughn Young
The Scn/1984 Parallel - Expansion (RVY)
(make this part of OSA US DR on RVY)
Parallels between "1984" and Scientology.
On Scientology "expansion"
From George Orwell's "1984" published in 1949: "Day and night
the telescreens bruised your ears with statistics proving that people today
had more food, more clothes, better houses, better recreations -- that
they lived longer, worked shorter hours, were bigger, healthier, stronger,
happier, more intelligent, better educated, than the people of fifty years
ago. Not a word of it could ever be proved or disproved."
Commentary: L. Ron Hubbard loved statistics and he insisted that Scientology
will only expand, it cannot do otherwise. So at events the "up
stat[istic]s" are shown, with big graphs. The "expansion"
news is given.
Nothing else. They will announce a new country where LRH books are being
sold, but fail to tell them the countries where they were kicked out or
closed down or simply failed. In the eyes of Scientologists, every org is
booming, every continent is expanding, every book is selling like mad. To
Scientologists they are happier and better off than ever before and
International Management has the statistics to prove it. (If you can't
make one of their events, look at their literature, such as "Scientology
Today" or "KSW News" or one of the other propaganda sheets.)
Then again,
no Scientologist has anything to the contrary, which is one of the reasons
the Internet is hated. It is hated the same way the old Soviet Union hated
Radio Free Europe: it is an uncontrolled source of information to people
under control. That is dangerous.
Robert Vaughn Young
The Scn/1984 Parallel - Privacy (RVY)
(make this part of OSA US DR on RVY)
Parallels between "1984" and Scientology. Substitute "Sea
Org/Dept 20" for "Party".
On Lack of Privacy
From George Orwell's "1984" published in 1949: "In principle
a Party member had no spare time and was never alone except in bed. It was
assumed that when he was not working, eating or sleeping he would be taking
part in some communal recreations; to do anything that suggested a taste for
solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly
dangerous. There was a word for it in Newspeak: _ownlife_, it was called,
meaning individualism and eccentricity.
Commentary: Lack of spare time and never alone is characteristic of life
in the Sea Org/Dept 20. Solitude is highly suspected. One is expected to
be a "team member." If one wants to be alone, the Scientology
Newspeak that is thrown at a person is that they are being "first
dynamically oriented." To understand this, one must understand there
are "eight dynamics" in Scientology:
While the public posture is that one is to "balance" these, the
truth is that one lives in the group and if one wants to take a day off,
that is being "first dynamically oriented" and means one is
being unethical, selfish and probably a sign of criminality.
More from "1984": "A Party member lives from birth to death
under the eye of the Thought Police. Even when he is alone he can never be
sure that he is alone. Wherever he may be, asleep or awake, working or
resting, in his bath or in bed, he can be inspected without warning and
without knowing that he is being inspected His friendship, his relaxations,
his behavior toward his wife and children, the expression of his face when
he is alone, the words he mutters in sleep, even the characteristic
movements of his body, are all jealously scrutinized.
Not only any actual misdemeanor, but any eccentricity, however small, any
change of habits, any nervous mannerism that could possibly be the
symptom of an inner struggle is certain to be detected."
Commentary: In the Sea Org, private "berthing" (meaning where one
lives) is subject to inspection at any time, and these are done, often under
the guise of a "white glove." Rooms are allowed to be locked,
providing their authorities have a set of keys. Inspectors watch for
anything unusual that might be suspicious, e.g., a suspicious magazine,
a letter from a strange person, notes that indicate anything suspicious.
Everything else Orwell describes are inspected and watched and reports
made. If suspicious, the person is called into "Ethics" which
is Scientology's "Thought Police." One might undergo a
"Security Check" which is an interrogation on Scientology's
lie detector, to get at any thoughts that the person might be hiding
from the organization. Under this type of scrutiny, one learns
to simply not think certain thoughts and to adhere to the "straight
and narrow."
Robert Vaughn Young
The Scn/1984 Parallel - The Future (RVY)
(make this part of OSA US DR on RVY)
Parallels between "1984" and Scientology. Substitute
"Scientology" for "the Party" and "L. Ron
Hubbard" for "Big Brother."
Substitute your name for "Winston".
On The Future by Scientology: The "Cleared Planet"
From George Orwell's "1984": "We have cut the links between
child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one
dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there
will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers
at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be
eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a
ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. our neurologists are at work
upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty to the Party. There
will be no love, except the love of Big Brother.
There will be no
laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be
no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no
need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness.
There will be no curiosity, no employment of the process of life. All
competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always -- do not forget this,
Winston -- always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly
increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there
will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who
is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping
on a human face -- forever."
Commentary: Only those who have lived the Sea Org/Dept 20 life and left it
will recognize the chilling parallel, starting with the control of the
children and the control of relationships. Children _are_ separated from
their parents. And Hubbard, a few years before he died, wrote how sex was
invented by psychiatry, which means it is evil. It is only a matter of
time before the implications of that announcement is known. Loyalty is to
the Sea Org and L. Ron Hubbard. Any other loyalty is suspected. Only
Hubbard's "sciences" and 'art" are allowed. "He even has an "Art Series,"
a series of directives as to what constitutes "art." And Orwell's insight
into power is exactly what happens.
Many people have asked me if the
leadership have a dozen BMWs and Rolls Royces the way some cult leaders
do. No, I said. They don't. A couple of them might have money stashed in a
Luxembourg account but the money is not present. Then why do they do it, I
am asked. Because of _power_, I tell them, exactly as Orwell says it. It
is the euphoria, the drug of power - exercising it or being close to it -
that drives the leadership. And when it comes to trampling on "an enemy
who is helpless," that is one of Dept 20's favorite pastimes. Evidence
abounds, especially on alt.religion.scientology.
Here is an additional quote from "1984" to make this point. The
parallel to the Sea Org/Dept 20 and RTC is staggering: "The Party seeks
power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others;
we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or
happiness; only power, pure power. What pure power means you will
understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the
past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who
resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the
Russian Communists came very close to us in their own motives. They
pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power
unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there
lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like
that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of
relinquishing it.
Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not
establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a
revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of
persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object
of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?"
For further parallels, read Hubbard's policy letter on power. It is called
the "Bolivar PL," after Simon Bolivar. (Hubbard believed he had been
Bolivar.) The exact title is HCOPL 12 Feb 67, "The Responsibilities of
Leaders" and is found in the most basic Scientology volumes. Every
Scientology staff member knows it. In it, Hubbard tells how to take power,
including the inevitable stacks of dead bodies. (He tells you what a true
leader says when he is told, "Well, boss, about all those dead bodies,
nobody at all will suppose you did it. _She_ over there, those pink legs
sticking out, didn't like me." He also recommends hiring assassins and
bribing the police. Read it. It was written by the man Scientology wants
to introduce to California school children.)
Robert Vaughn Young
The Scn/1984 Parallel - Unreality (RVY)
(make this part of OSA US DR on RVY)
There are disturbing parallels between "1984" and Scientology.
Substitute "Sea Org/Dept 20" for "Party".
On accepting unreality
From George Orwell's "1984" published in 1949: "In a way,
the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people
incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant
violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of
what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public
events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they
remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed
did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of
corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird."
Commentary: This degree of naivete will be found in other movements and
groups, not merely in Scientology. A difference is that in Scientology,
they enforce the lack of interest in public events and they continue to
increase the amount of unreality that one is to accept. It is dosed out,
which is one of the reasons the "upper levels" were kept
confidential. The matter of "swallowing everything" can be
found in Hubbard's study methods, where there is no possibility of
critical thought or disagreement.
Disagreement means you have a "misunderstood word" or some
other flaw in you. You look up words until you "duplicate"
it, which means the grain of corn slides on through. The difference is
that there _is_ harm in that lack of use of the faculty of analytical
criticism lessens the persons ability to exercise it.
This can be shown by finding a long-term SO/Dept
20 member and asking them questions about issues that have been front page
on the New York Times or on the evening news. They don't know because
they don't read the papers, especially the NYTimes. They don't care
because they have withdrawn and are living off the prescribed diet. They
feel that L. Ron Hubbard has told them how to find truth, wo what else do
they need? Hence the same gullibility as in "1984."
Robert Vaughn Young
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