The show where I answer your questions left in the comments section of these Q&A videos or sent to me by email at AskChrisShelton@gmail.com. Here are the questions from this week:
Link to org video: https://goo.gl/xHfUxs
Link to Affirmations: http://goo.gl/NswulC
(1) Scientology is very expensive. I think Ron said an intensive should cost either 1 week’s or 1 month’s salary from the general public. Are the prices different in different countries in order to match the income of the denizens of that country? If a miracle happened, and someone independently figured out how to actually go Clear and demonstrate OT abilities and wrestled control of the church from COB, the Crime Organization Boss, would you be willing to take DM’s place and run the church and fix the problems you have so clearly exposed?
(2) I’ve never quite understood the need for that many people on post, especially for the really small orgs. With all due respect, but some of the tasks sound like things I can knock out in one afternoon – by myself. Can you please clarify what it is that a typical staff person does all day. Moreover, now that there is less public to be had, are orgs cutting back on the number of staff? I’ve sometimes wondered if staff was hired to make the orgs look fuller and busier than they really were and if staff members are given “busy work” to justify their presence. I mean no disrespect, I’m aware that staff members work their tails off to meet the goals/quotas they’re given, but it does appear like mismanagement of resources from the outside looking in.
(3) A Hubbard Management Consultant is active in our local business community. He got his hands on my business card three years ago and the emails haven’t stopped since. He’s friendly enough and I’ll give him high marks for persistence. However, I have real concerns about his qualifications to do consulting work that requires a high degree of education, integrity and trust. Here’s an interesting quote from the WISE website advertising for new Hubbard Management practitioners:
“A hugely rewarding career, Hubbard management consultants not only help businesses flourish they help individuals succeed and achieve their life-long goals. Whether it is helping a bright young business owner get off on the right foot, or rescuing the family firm that’s been handed down generation to generation, or straightening out the accounting office that’s all but captured its owner from his wife and children, the accomplishments of consultants reach out, touching all areas of people’s lives.”
That is a highly personal – and perhaps even intrusive – statement of what a family business consultant might do. “Capturing its owner from his wife and children,” seems like some weird imagery to make the point. So is the Hubbard Management Consultant the right guy to do the job? No way. Consultants aren’t Certified Public Accountants. They aren’t lawyers. They don’t train in any normal business school. The Hubbard School of Management is unaccredited, has no transferrable units, and has not one single course on financial accounting. Yet we expect him to “straighten out the accounting office”? What’s going on with these people? Does Hubbard Management have anything worthy to offer, or is yet another dangerous trend spawned by the destructive cult of Scientology?
(4) In a video, you mentioned LRH’s “Affirmations”. There are a number of odd aspects to the Affirmations that lead me to believe they were not written by LRH. The biggest is that it simply doesn’t read like LRH, it has some bits of scientology sounding phrases peppered in, though I just don’t hear LRH when I read the Affirmations. Then there’s Armstrong’s desire to get back at Scientology, the lack of an original for the Affirmations, and the conflicts within Armstrong’s story. What do you think? What leads you to believe they are authentic?
(5) What do you personally think of Marty Rathbun? I am sure when he was in charge of dirty tricks he did some awful things. To me he tries to come off as a good guy in a bad situation. Do you think he should tell some of the things he has done? I am not talking like when Scientology screams ” what are your crimes.” I just think he should be honest not only about Miscavage but what he may have done that he regrets.
(6) What does Scientology do with all of that video they have? it would have to be a massive undertaking to archive all of that footage.
(7) I notice that you use the word “spiritual”. e.g. “LRon was deeply troubled, mentally and spiritually”. I’ve never really understood what people mean by that. I’ve heard it described as “understanding your place in the Universe” which sounds fine but a bit vague and “supernatural”. I would be interested to hear what you meant by that, and especially what you, as a skeptic, understand by the term “spiritual”.
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As to Hubbard’s state of mind (pt 7); Hubbard’s doctor Dr. Denk, told me, under some unusual circumstances, in Jan 1982, that he had diagnosed Hubbard with dementia and the accompanying paranoia. He went on to say that this was getting worse and that he, as hubbard’s doctor, was very concerned about it. He told me that he had first diagnosed this the previous year.
Hubbard was always quite disturbed but as of 1980 or so he was out of it. I would guess that the little guy, knowing this, took advantage of this pathology to climb and stay on the throne.
I was once a very strong critic of Rathbun and highly suspicious of his motives at first which strongly looked to me like a preparation for becoming the “Marty Luther” of Scientology… I have been impressed however by his growth (though I cringe when I think he still makes money from sales of his ‘pro-Hubbard books), and feel that he has honestly made a real break and ‘seen the light’. I felt for him as a human being as he said he ‘died a little inside’ each time someone brings up something he did.
However, to say ‘It is between him and ‘ (his critics) is a bit facile-
By his own admission (after the Statute of Limitations ran out), he covered up for a murder (Lisa McPherson) for one thing, and his recollections of this sort of thing are highly self-serving (to say the least).
Can you name one thing he did or revealed BEFORE it was discovered elsewhere or the legal repercussions ran out?
I truly understand this as a person who is no moral paragon myself, and I can see why he might want to live out the rest of his life free from not only Scientology but any legal repercussions for his acts.
I cannot, however, just blanketly say that because he suffered (less than most) under the yoke of the heavy psychological persuasion of Scientology, and because his current enemies are mine (with the exception of Gerry, which,honestly..) as well that he should get a fee pass.
We aren’t talking just ripping off money, or even forcing abortions, Chris- Covering up for Murder sis FELONY in the United States, not some made-up, Hubbard’s Upside-Down “Ethics’ “CRIME” of the sort Jenna Elfman declaims on the streets of Hollywood for wearing the wrong tee-shirt.
Even admitting that we give every single ex-Scilon a pass for having spent the great majority (or all of) their adult lives in the service of an organization that openly proclaimed goals of Stalinist Totalitarianism and arguably even Genocide, chasing down people fleeing for freedom and physically re-imprisoning them in reeducation camps is nasty stuff.
There are still Arabs in Guantanamo who tossed a grenade at the troops invading their country in 2001, or who followed another religious fanatic and lived under much worse (society, country and continent-wide moral suasion who are held legally responsible. (NB: I do NOT support people being imprisoned in the Guantanamo Hole either)
Why should all the ‘Homo Novae” get a 100% free pass based upon their assertions they have ‘made things right’ or in Mark’s words, “Apologized to THOSE WHO DESERVED IT” (emphasis mine)?
I know my idealistic fantasy of a South Africa-style ‘Truth Commission’ where everyone comes forward and for the sake of history comes clean, apologizes and gets a pass, will never be feasable in this instance, but what you are proposing comes dangerously close to a free rise for anyone who ever did anything under the banner of Hubbardism, or any extremist philosophy for that matter. Where would it stop, Chris? With people you personally like? Miscavige? Jim Jones? Manson? Bin Laden?
I find it very hard to swallow that with 6 decades of criminal behaviour what we have is an organization with 24, 999 victims and one bad apple.
I hate to invoke the famous internet Godwinism, but have we truly learned nothing from Nuremburg? (not that even Miscavige’s crimes rise so high, BTW. I am merely speaking of the principle of ‘I was just following orders’ as being no excuse for legal culpability)
There it was established that as long as you could show that others did NOT go along and SURVIVED that you still could be held culpable as a moral actor.
I have been moved to rears by some of Rathbun’s writing and clear personal pain and growth. I truly wish the best for him and his new family.
But these are things he never gave anyone a break on in his entire adult life until he left. And he only left the moment he was asked to live Scientology like everyone beneath him. It is not like he woke up one morning and said, “You know, I’m in no danger, but those poor sods in the Hole..!” I cannot support this system and I renounce my privileges to fight for Moraity and the Rule of Law!”
No, it was only when be saw he was about to become one of them that he jumped off the gravy train. I strongly suspect he may have known MIscavige wasn’t a realy nice guy who worked for the common good once or twice before…
And that is only human. I cannot honestly say that put in the same exact situation that I would have come out smelling of sunshine, fresh apple-pie and God’s grace. But I certainly wouldn’t expect to get one of those exams where I give myself the grade (“A”, because of all the things I DIDN’T DO but COULD HAVE! I am a resistant!) and get to begin to make money off of my life trying to overthrow liberty in the world by browbeating teenage girls,imprisoning and enslaving infants and covering up for murder (and this is just the stuff that has been (relatively) freely revealed.
Plenty of people find Jesus and apologize to their victims in Prison too. Should they then be sprung? Is it all a question of circumstance and personal growth?
Seriously, Chris. How can you justify this as ‘Critical Thinker’.? Where then do you draw the line? Where should society?
(please erase the draft that I just accidentally posted!)
1) If people think Mark Rathbun knows more than he is letting on, it is to a great extent his own fault for heavily hinting that Miscavige should leave him alone or else he was going to reveal soemting or knew somehting (your mysterious suspision here). Perhaps he was jsut bluffing, how should I know? But he did engaged in quite a bit of this that frankly, to my mind, made him look like he was engaged in a petty power struggle and high-school spat (some might argue that that is as good a definition for Scientology as it exists to day as there is). This is what led to the slightly snark English TV take on the harassment he and his poor wife were suffering at the time. You can only hint you are a gangster so much before you lose to the right to complain that people refer to you as one.
2) I think you may have slightly misunderstood (if I am correct in thinking that you were referring to the e-recent conversation with Alonzo et al) Rinder’s comments. Miscavige is indeed cagey, etc, but Rinder was underlining* that he was the SPOKESMAN. These guys are routinely left out of the loop to establish plausible deniability (a NIxionian term). The can say they don’t know, or that’ snot true without perjuring themselves. They are there to put a good face on things and NOT to make decisions (as Bush jr’s Press Secretary Mike McClellan made all too clear after he left). Rathbun was in a totally different position on that, even if MIscavige didn’t openly tell him, he probably could have guessed and should have known about. I am sure Mark knew about plenty of things he wasn’t supposed tot (again, he has more than once implied as much, if not even openly said it (my memory isn’t holding up well with the onslaught of middle age, I fear…)
I found the moment in the above-mentioned TV report when his wife, describing what she imagined his job to have been, said that id someone needed to be pushed back into the cabinets (misquoting, but that was the gist of it) that he probably did it. I am sure he did, as well as burning documents, putting witnesses on planes, threatening journalists, breaking up marriages, relationships etc…
Did he know about every dog killed? I am sure he didn’t. Does he have the numbers for every illegal bank account, No, of course not, Does he know they exist and have a sneaking suspicion where? At the very least, I am sure.
Giving he the benefit of the doubt (and she does seem like a great lady, strong, smart, loving, loyal and, let’s face it it, quite lovely as well), then this would seem to imply he is perhaps not totally honest even with his own wife (or worse, using her/ involving her in a cover-up).
He may well have apologized to everyone he thinks deserved it. But these were public, real-world crimes. Private apologies (taken at the word of a guy who spent his entire life lying, by his own admission**) seem a bit weak tea as far as remedies are concerned.
*(Whilst typing “underlining, it came out “underlinging” which I almost left in as the malapropism is almost too delicious)
**(lying for the CoS, yes, but not as they try and claim, simply a compulsive liar who snuck into thier organization soiled it with his uncontrollable lying, and then was expelled to lie some more.
He was doing the job they trained, manipulated and twisted his mind and morality for. To eb a Scientologist is to lie, to yourself above all else. Their ‘admitted liar and perjurer’ sophistry is the most cold-blooded, unfair, dishonest nonsense since..well, since Dianetics..
Since his escape, I believe he has been at times painfully, brutally honest, in a very public way about his failures, personal struggles and even emotional and spiritual journey. He seems like an honest guy and someone who I would love to hang with (the feeling may not be mutual, which I can understand) and have a beer.)