Scientology puts American individualism (or for that matter, individualism anywhere) in a religious perspective.
Do you think that money can be made by making people believe in a personal God? Wait till you see a Church that makes people believe that the individual is God.
Scientology
It is the runaway individualism in America, which is taken to extreme in Scientology.
Scientology is a symptom of a cultural malaise.
The end product of Scientology is well demonstrated in Tom Cruise’s self-centric attitude and behavior here:
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Here is the Wikipedia article on INDIVIDUALISM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualism
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The ex-Scientologists can’t have their cake and eat it too.
These ex-Scientologists are rallying against Scientology, but they are still beating the drum for individualism.
Where do you think it will end up?
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For me at this time, individualism has failed philosophically.
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The above went down like a lead balloon on Tony Ortega’s blog. I see the same phenomenon there as on ESMB.
An individualist is bound to get into fight with other individualists. That is built into the very philosophy of Individulism. So we see Scientologists, ex-Scientologists and Independent Scientologists all fighting with each other because they are all individualists.
Hubbard, actually, did us a favor by bringing this aberration to light.
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Vin: Hubbard, actually, did us a favor by bringing this aberration to light.
Chris: I get you and that is very humble but I think it is you and I and others who are bringing the light. All Western religion exalts the individual as a tool of the power mongers who would use and waste a man’s natural life to forward their filthy goals. To get a man to lay down his life for an unworthy cause, he needs to be convinced there is a greater reward waiting for him when he does so. None of the people preaching “pie in the sky when you die” are themselves trying to “die for the pie.” Individualism is a trap to beat all traps.
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That’s a nice way of putting it. There is a lot of bone there to chew on.
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The result of extreme individualism will be the same as the result of extreme socialism – a very constrained society ruled by a few individuals.
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And fantasizing about becoming the head-cheese.
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Ha ha!
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It is interesting that criticism of individualism is received with hostility by critics of Scientology.
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In Scientology, the assumption that “the individual is good” is an assumption which seems to drive parishioners toward that goal. It is assumed that the greater the individual, the greater the good. Yet we do not see that result coming out of the practice of Scientology at all.
Individuals practicing greater and still greater individualism become more different not better. Hubbard seemed to be fully aware of this and promoted it never seeing the inconsistency of it.
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It is the greatest inconsistency of religions preaching “pie in the sky when you die” that no one is in a hurry to “die for the pie.”
Crystallizing the goal of becoming a greater and still greater individual blinds one to the possibility that assumption may lead in exactly the wrong direction.
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It is interesting that the following two ideas are coming to notice at about the same time:
(1) Stress on individualism
(2) Transition from wave to discrete particles, and stress on mass and inertia.
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I saw that as well and have been wondering about it. Again, I am watching the sequence and imagine I see a mathematical iteration. Earlier in man’s history he imagined Atlas holding up the world on his shoulders so considering that, I’m not sure where that leaves me and my own imagination.
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I am reading GOING CLEAR by Lawrence Wright.
Part 1, Chapter2, SOURCE, is extremely well presented portrait of Hubbard. Over the years I have read lot of material on Hubbard over the Internet. I also had brief personal exposure to Hubbard. It is the skill with which Lawrence Wright writes that really comes through in this chapter. It is a thrilling chapter.
Lawrence is looking into what made Dianetics very popular in the fifties. He is comparing the premise of Dianetics with those of Freudian psychoanalysis. That is quite an interesting comparison.
Lawrence has done excellent research of Hubbard’s timeline of early 1950s and has filled in quite a few gaps. Hubbard is in Cuba writing the book SCIENCE OF SURVIVAL. He is there with his daughter whom he abducted away from her mother. He has been torturing his wife and continues to do so. At the same time he is writing the chapter on sexual behavior associated with different Tone Levels. Are there inconsistencies here?
But he writes through automatic writing. It is almost as if he has decided to experience all level of the tone scale through his own behavior, and then just let it rip. We assume that he has to be high toned to be able to write what he wrote. Is that assumption correct not just for Hubbard, but for anybody? I am sure every person experiences his own behavior at all levels of the tone scale. That does not necessarily mean that he is mostly hight toned.
What seemed to matter to Hubbard was he and his experience only. He could sacrifice everybody but not himself. He was the great individualist. He was surviving. He expected others to survive like he did. He manipulated others and controlled them for his own survival. He expected others to do the same. So, he never trusted anybody. Everybody was a fair game including himself. He went to great lengths to protect his own skin. He had no care for anybody else.
What a philosophy! This same philosophy is reflected in the behavior of Scientology.
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Interesting review. You have made me want to pick up that book and read it. However, your report is already completely in sync with what I have already “concluded” about Hubbard. Always open to a new insight however.
There is a healthy balance of individualism that brings a person into lively focus occurring before this overlaps into what we would label narcissism. Hubbard was for sure narcissistic and cruel.
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In the English language, the word “individualism” was first introduced, as a pejorative in the late 1830s.
An individual is a person or any specific object in a collection. In the 15th century and earlier, and also today, individual means “indivisible”, typically describing any numerically singular thing, but sometimes meaning “a person.” From the 17th century on, individual indicates separateness, as in individualism. Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual; a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs, goals, and desires.
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Where one’s personal interests and well being overbalance every other interest and well being of and for those around him, one has tipped into narcissism and that seems to be a common trait of abusive people. Hubbard had no qualms putting his temporarily close friends, wives, and children in harms way for his own personal benefit. He was callous and unafraid to abandon them when it seemed that disconnection might keep that danger that he had created away from his own door. I never have and I never would treat my own friends and family as he did his. His treatment of others fostered the karma and is why he died alone, confused, anxious and afraid in a shrinking world rather than surrounded by those who longed to warm and care for him.
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Nicely stated!
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