Arthur Ronald Conway Hubbard

Ethics – Part 1

Scientology 1.0.0 – Chapter 34

“Not just politics, everything is downstream from culture“

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“So, the Tone Scale. You guys have got yourself a list of feelings… and? Anybody can make a list of emotions and arrange them this way or that; it don’t mean anything. People are emotional; so what?”

Well, as mentioned, if you can read emotions and then you spend time successfully helping people deal with heavy emotional issues, you will notice, eventually, that feelings always run in a sequence, just like a music scale. How this was so thoroughly missed by the hifalutin worlds of psychiatry and psychology back in the day as possibly something useful to know regarding human behaviour has got to be one of the great mysteries.

Though to be fair, and as I also mentioned, there’s a rub. People stuck in the lower emotions can be counted on to misread all emotions, especially the higher ones. Most psychiatrists and psychologists, dealing as they do with psychotics and sociopaths day in and day out, can get pretty dour themselves over time, so I guess it’s understandable if they fudged it. I’ve dealt with some pretty hardcore cases myself; it ain’t for the faint-hearted, let me tell you. Making it your day job without really understanding human nature has got to be about as fun and safe as jumping off a cliff.

Nonetheless, the Tone Scale serves as the primary instrument used by Scientology professionals to assess the immediate effectiveness of Scientology 1.0.0 procedures and processes, as well as the efficacy of any technology or system for enhancement. It is also a scale all laymen can use to evaluate the actual mental health of anyone in real time because emotions dictate how the world around them is perceived and influence how they act in it. People occasionally evaluate emotions correctly, but they do so randomly; therefore, creating a systematic approach can only be beneficial.

But there’s another factor. All the enlightening experiences in the world are pretty useless if, after having them, there is no significant improvement in long-term behaviour. You can go on an ayahuasca retreat, drop acid, become a Buddhist or born again, meditate ’til the cows come home, feel the Earth move under your feet or even undergo every Scientology procedure, but if your life remains a disordered mess, then to what avail? It turned out that simply helping an individual raise themselves up the Tone Scale is not enough; there is still another step: reorienting them to their new possibilities, particularly concerning the world they inhabit, which remains full of people who have not yet benefited from any evolutionary methodology.

So, this now brings me to the discussion of my father’s broader goal.

His project wasn’t to be primarily focused on assisting individuals in enhancing their emotional well-being; rather, it functioned as a means to an end. Certainly, feeling good, such as one does when high-toned, is a meaningful end unto itself, but, as it turns out, raising a person up the scale is rather like defanging and declawing a cat when all the other cats are still so equipped without giving him or her even better defences.

When this realisation came to light, his undertaking underwent transformation. Without an education in conduct according to Natural Law, clients continued to operate in line with group norms and standards that, if not improved, will eventually lead to societal collapse.

The issue at hand was, in essence, always ethics.

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No definition

Before delving into the topic of ethics, I would like to highlight a factor that complicates almost all discussions surrounding Scientology. Although I have touched on this issue previously, it is important to note that when criticism is presented without any clear definition, it raises a significant question: what in blazes is being talked about? One of the major obstacles to a thoughtful evaluation of Scientology has to be the lack of clarification regarding what’s being discussed.

I mean, it would already be quite perplexing if we were talking about a cat and referring to it as a potato. However, in this situation, no definition is provided at all, and it appears that no one seems to recognise this lack of clarity. People who criticise Scientology complain about the organisation, which may or may not be guilty of faults, without ever defining anything about actual Scientology.

To compound the problem, not only do you never find a comprehensive definition of Scientology, but nothing I have ever seen on the internet or anywhere else ever even puts it into any context. The story, as you can find it in most places, is pretty uniform: “Out of nowhere, a daft but calculating science fiction writer stitches together zany fantasies to brew up goofy religion and thus line his pockets; and lo! he succeeds: lots of dupes and soft-brains fall for it.” Apparently, according to the extended narrative, all you’ve got to do is tell people that if they don’t blindly follow this or that wholly invented rule, doctrine, or ideology, the world will end. Or, because so many people already believe the world is ending, you tell them they can still save themselves if they follow this or that arbitrary rule, doctrine, or ideology, usually as dictated by a charismatic Svengali, of course. It’s an easy enough grift; a sucker is born every minute, after all, right?

It is true that all cults are created on the basis of some form of millenarianism, usually either utopian or nihilistic. “The end is nigh!” It’s raw nonsense concocted to frighten credulous people into participating or submitting. But this is not what Scientology 1.0.0 is nor how it got started.

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Context

The mid-1940s saw the U.S. reeling not just from a world war but from the fact that its leadership had sanctioned the destruction of two whole cities full of people using not thousands of bombs but just two. The period was a time when many were quite rightfully concerned about the direction the United States government, now armed with a novel technology, might be headed. During this period, after three and a half years of fighting in one of the bloodiest wars in history, mental illness — an issue that typically increases following wars — had become critical, leading to the passage of the National Mental Health Act in 1946.

My father’s idea at that time was to interest discerning and well-educated adults in considering what might be done to improve the mental health of the average citizen so that they could be better equipped to not only help a traumatised country but also to insist on saner government.

The concern in the ’40s about the world being in danger was not limited to a few paranoid outliers, like those drawn to the mad exhortations of some charismatic mesmerist; rather, it was a universal sentiment. What was happening back then has everything to do with not only why Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health was written but also that it could be published in the first place.

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The situation

By the summer of 1945, the United States government found itself in a very strange position; it had won the war.

Not just WWII but the whole shebang: the United States of America was the only country left standing; everywhere else was in shambles; England, Europe, Asia — all in ruins, a total mess.

But not only had it won the war; now it had a weapon nobody else had. Never had any country in the history of the world possessed such power.

Now, my father knew a thing or two about total victory. Anyone who’s studied esoterica as well as history and philosophy understands the nature of games and the mechanics of power. Unless a person or group is very sane, when they reach the pinnacle of power, they will tear everything down. This might be because fighting against other individuals or groups is the only game many people seem to know, so with no external enemies, they destroy themselves. Most civilisations don’t die of external forces; they die of suicide.

If there’s no actual opponent, most governments conclude that there is no game, and having no game is untenable. Natural Law states that there must always be a game, as our physical reality cannot be devoid of direction. Even the smallest subatomic particle engages in some form of hustle. Games consist of purposes, you see, and there are never no purposes, not for anyone or anything, and if one can’t come up with constructive purposes, such as people above 3.0 can usually be counted upon to do (to see the scale, click here), then you default to destructive purposes, such as those stuck below 2.0 can always be counted upon to do (if not pressured or forced to do otherwise).

This peculiar wrinkle in behaviour isn’t usually dangerous for much of anything beyond the group or country in question, but when it affects the whole world, as the United States now did in the late 1940s, it might be time to pay attention to the phenomena.

So, in the late ’40s, what’s the purpose of the United States government going to be? Since there are no opponents left, now what? Well, what it did was… create a “cold war”. Typical.

My father reasoned that if the country had consisted of more enlightened citizens who were more independent in their thinking and less enthralled by the White House (as evidenced by their votes for a series of deplorable presidents, two of whom helped get the country into two world wars), they would have insisted on a better approach than pretending the Soviet Union posed any real threat. For instance, if Western interests hadn’t supported the USSR in the 1970s, the ever-insolvent and dysfunctional Soviet Empire would have committed suicide much sooner than it did. It’s true; you can look it up.

Then in 1949, the Soviets got ahold of their own atomic bomb, and now there was no one who didn’t think the threat was real. Yay! With everybody quaking in their booties, the U.S. government could continue to write its own ticket. Blank cheques forever, folks!

Real or not, it looked like the same machinery that so often destroys civilisations — the all-powerful government with no games to play other than war and a mesmerised, complacent population — was on the march again in the only land that had ever developed individual freedom. For any government to gain authority, citizens must surrender their own power. This was the case in Rome during the second century B.C., and now it was happening in the only “shining city on a hill” that the world has ever known.

Same as it ever was.

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Individual sovereignty

Therefore, because concern for the future of a relatively free society was not merely an invention of one lone “paranoiac” but rather a shared interest among all perceptive and informed adults, the primary objective of my father’s project was to promote, as much as possible, what Enlightenment philosophers refer to as the “sovereign individual.” (As Scientology was developed, the goal was to go beyond that, which I have already touched on but will go into further detail in future chapters.) Without the sovereign individual, the Enlightenment project cannot proceed.

The sovereign individual is the only bulwark against rogue governments — if there are enough of them. The sovereign individual prioritises personal autonomy above all else and drives the advancement of civilisation; without personal freedom and the private investment in the well-being of society that this autonomy enables, civilisations ultimately fail. This idea, which dates back to John Locke (1632–1704), remains a radical proposition today because individual sovereignty is considered a very, very dangerous concept. That is, it poses a threat to those who aspire to dominate everyone and everything, as well as a threat for a growing number of people in Western societies who fetishise slavery.

Without individual sovereignty, the ineffective and dependent person, seeing that there are problems in the world, votes for the guy who says he’ll fix them. As the situation worsens, a new candidate emerges, promising to solve the same problems, and everyone slavishly votes for him or her too, a sequence that continues until the end of time. Remind you of anything?

So back in 1950, my dad was interested in living in a higher toned world with higher toned governments; achieving that requires a society with many more sovereign individuals. However, since governments and various organisations around the world have been — and continue to be — feverishly investing in even more devastating weapons, along with methods and systems to create greater numbers of cowed individuals while keeping the rest surveilled and suppressed, this plan seemed pretty good then – and it remains a good plan now.

However, the sovereign individual cannot be realised in tones below 4.0; therefore, raising a person up the scale is vital.

But it is only the first of two steps, the second is education.

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Education

Once an individual achieves 4.0, it becomes imperative that they understand the process that got them there.

People undergoing Scientology processes who have been relieved of some mental issues will now be affected by Scientology if they don’t learn how and why the processes work. Knowing how the processes actually work, beyond learning how to run them on others, puts the individual in greater control of their lives, back to a level of personal causation upon which mental health depends, which was the original intention of the processes in the first place.

There is little benefit in freeing a person from the influence of various negative forces in their mind if it only leads to them being awed by the mysterious mechanics that caused that outcome. I mean, there’s not much point being mystified by Scientology when already so much of life is an enigma. Given the lack of education in philosophy, physics, religion, and mathematics among the general population, it is unsurprising that a person, who has undergone a few Scientology processes and feels more optimistic about their future, will then struggle to apply those procedures to everyday life. As a result, such an individual’s life may not go as well as expected. Getting one’s mind cleaned up does not automatically make one wiser. Now you have to replace the old operating basis they’d lived with their whole lives with one that works according to Natural Law.

The fundamentals of many subjects, such as law, medicine, economics, and engineering, are perfectly knowable, but not knowing how things work puts the ignorant at the mercy of the experts in these fields, and this is not good for society. Even if the original experts had the best of intentions, they shall, sooner than later, be replaced by people who are simply attracted to the power being an expert gives them; that is if such power hadn’t already warped the minds of the original experts.

One could justifiably justify the control of people by external vectors, provided that these authorities somehow remained benign. But all positions of domination are irresistible to the darker elements of our species, who are drawn to power the same as moths are to a flame. So, inevitably, as Lord Acton observed, power corrupts. (And, in the case of those who control the United States: absolute power corrupts absolutely.)

Now that we are in a mental health crisis that would have made the mental health situation of the 1940s seem like the model of rational lucidity, sanity versus insanity has become very hard to discuss. It is somewhat similar to the atmosphere in an asylum, where the crazies think they’re the sanest ones there. Regrettably, if social media serves as any guide, mental illness has not only normalised but is now also a virtue.

Populations have been steadily dumbed down by compromised schooling, secularism and materialism since the second decade of the 20th century, arguably since the mid to late 1900s. Bad diets, over-medication, and misusing technologies can easily distract individuals from real-life social situations. This is part of the problem in discussing Scientology today. Without a background in at least mathematics, physics, and philosophy, as well as a healthy respect for and involvement in religion or any understanding of history, Scientology can easily appear to be the creation of a daft but calculating science fiction writer who stitched together zany fantasies to concoct a goofy religion solely for personal profit.

As a result of this tragic decline in general education, fewer and fewer people who become involved in Scientology actually understand how its processes work. The result is that they were more easily affected by the various rules and regulations that govern Scientology organisations, many of whose policies are peculiar to specific times and places in Scientology’s past and no longer applicable today, as well as special circumstances that apply only to church staff and not the general public. Consequently, the administrators who work there become the experts. Over time, some individuals, dissatisfied with these administrators’ methods, develop a resentment towards them. Lacking a thorough understanding of Scientology, they mistakenly associate the philosophy with its personnel, and then throw the baby out with the bathwater, a tendency often exhibited by the uneducated.

So much has happened since the miracle of Ancient Greece that set us upon this path to personal and social enlightenment. Understanding what happened, how it happened, and why it was such a good thing is the only way to hold on to what has now, to a significant degree, spread across the world: Western culture with its accent upon the individual, equality under the law, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, the right to defend against rogue governments, etc. Collectivism, along with the violent tribalism that accompanies it, and progressivism, which involves dismantling effective systems to achieve its goals, threatens to overwhelm what remains of these precious values, potentially leading to a decline in civilisation — a rare historical occurrence — and the end of the Enlightenment. Dystopia, here we come!

(Just as an aside here. So much confusion swirls around individualism. Today, individualism is usually discussed as “individuation,” which, in Scientology 1.0.0, is understood to mean what happens to someone when they fall below 3.0 on the tone scale. Individuation occurs when a person separates from the dynamics, resulting in non-survival behaviours. Nobody at, or below, 3.0 is perceptive enough or responsible enough to be independent or properly autonomous in any way and thus an actual individualist.)

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Embodiment

After learning how Scientology processes actually work, one needs a comprehensive education that reviews all the subjects listed in Chapter 8. These studies will allow students to incorporate (embody, put into action) this knowledge, ultimately revealing the essential element upon which any truly advanced (enlightened) civilisation relies: the sovereign individual.

Address the factors that cause a person to fall below a 3.0, provide them with education in Scientology, and give them a comprehensive briefing on Western culture; then, the tyrants and their sycophants will be on the run.

This will give us the result of my father’s original plan, the sovereign individual:

One who is ethical.

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Next: moral philosophy