Why people look at garbage on the Internet

A little intro.

Okay, so some blog posts that I’ve done may have had better titles.

But, this really was the particular win that I wanted to attempt to articulate on this blog post, even if it doesn’t end up as the most popular post I’ve ever done.

I’m reading the LRH Basics Books another time through, this time doing them with the lectures that accompany them. I’m just now wrapping up Dianetics: The Original Thesis — the first book Mr. Hubbard authored on the subject, written originally for the medical community in 1948.

Why people look at garbage on the Internet:

Now, on to the body copy of my blog post, and why it was that I wanted to write this today anyhow.

See, for pretty much my whole life, I’ve been in and around computer people — networking guys, design guys, internet guys, all sorts.

Now, while computer people are pretty smart, generally, one unfortunate thing that also comes along with the turf is that it’s all too easy to find computer people that just spend their days and nights looking at, and getting themselves totally wound up and tied up in looking at all manner of complete crap on the Internet.

Now, by garbage I’m not referring to a how-to article on how to install Microsoft Bob, or maybe a brochure-ware website on a Korean manufacturer of anti-bedwetting devices. No, I’m actually referring to real crap. By this I mean porno, nastier porno, and worse — defamatory garbage, two girls and one crude oil barrel, or whatever other terrible nonsense one can get oneself into on the net.

Most of that is stuff that, really, doesn’t make you feel any better looking at, it’s stuff that you wouldn’t want your mom knowing that you’re into, it’s stuff that doesn’t enhance your moral character or make you better able to handle your life, or understand your surroundings. Really, it’s just crap, and something one wouldn’t get into if it could otherwise be avoided.

What’s my point?

The point here lies in something which, unfortunately, I’d have to explain half of the book to be able to articulate well to someone who hasn’t read the book. But the point is this: People do crazy, messed-up things because of their reactive minds. That is a 60-year-old fact dating now back to 1948 when L. Ron Hubbard first authored the book.

That said, one ends up with all manner of funky crazinesses about one due to one’s reactive mind. It’s called abberation, and it can cause you to do all manner of things which are insane.

I.e. cheating on your wife is never sane. It just isn’t. Case in point is the last 4 people I saw which had engaged in any measure of such behaviour were married to drop-dead-gorgeous supermodel wives, and yet cheated with some harpy-manatee cross-breed. It just makes no sense.

So, that said, when is it that someone would end up submitting to their most illogical desires and browsing and digging through total crap on the Internet, or going further and doing real physical activity which makes no sense?

Well, it’s in the book. And the reason for that now finally makes sense to me, and helps me make sense of the countless bizarre activities I’ve seen people get into on the net.

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Tags: dianetics, l. ron hubbard, scientology, religion

A HUGE realization about life

I just had a MEGA realization about life, from ONE paragraph of reading Science of Survival.  Aahh!!  I feel about 75Lbs lighter.  I feel like I just had a weight taken off me!  Aaah!

However, my realization is personal, and I’m not telling what it was.  But it rocks!

Time to Exercise!

My wife was telling me the other day that she was a bit beat-up and needed to sleep. Usually the most smiley and chipper of people, she hadn’t had the most fantastic day. Happens to us all. But, I realized that as a gymnast and champion back-stroker for years, she hadn’t also been exercising and thought at the time that this might have something to do with it.

But, in reading my Science of Survival tonight, I came across this, on page 221. (This, by the way, is from where L. Ron Hubbard is talking about a change of environment as being one of the valid therapies to raise one on the tone scale)

“A special part of environmental change would be changes in health by reason of nutrition or better living conditions.”

…

“Good physical exercise can, by itself, markedly increase the individual’s position on the Tone Scale.”
–LRH

Now, obviously exercise isn’t the whole answer to raising one on the tone scale, or else physically-fit Southern California would be the least abberated place on the planet! (Argh! It’s not!) But, like any valid therapy, one has to be smart and apply what’s right for them. If someone is stuck in a nasty painful emotion engram from the death of the grandmother, the right thing is most likely just to get that person in session and get them some Dianetics. But in the case of my wife, right now we might just need to get out and get some exercise!

Why it’s important to be high on the Tone Scale

In having a look through Science of Survival (arguably one of my favourites of all of the Dianetics & Scientology Basics), it hit me again how utterly important it is for one, as an individual, to be high on the tone scale.

Now, first off, if you’re reading this and don’t know what the Tone Scale is, you should watch this video from the Scientology Video Channel.  It pretty well explains the basics of this.

My point in this, though, and realization from a review of Science of Survival, is really how important it is from the aspect of one’s worth to others and to society, to be high on the tone scale.

See, the tone scale is not just an index of how happy you are.  If you study the Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation, which the Science of Survival book takes up in great detail, you’ll see that when someone is high on the tone scale, they are also much more trustworthy, much more productive, get more done, have better relationships, do what they say they’re going to do, relay communication appropriately instead of twisting it, are generally  more helpful and great people to have around.

For the last 15 years of my life, I’ve been a technician and System Administrator by trade, stopping only to be a mountain biker, a white-men-can-jump evangelist, a soccer junkie, and a husband.

Now, a system administrator, really, is one who basically make stuff work and keeps stuff working – to tear it all down to a simplicity.  He’s supposed to be able to figure out anything, fix anything, keep everything working all the time, and answer the most preposterous questions posed by end-users.   People try to tell me tech support jokes about the “my cupholder is broken” and “I can’t find the ‘any’ key” type of thing and so forth, but I have had way worse stories first-hand.

But taking just a simple system administrator function, and plot such a person on the tone scale.  If you had someone who was at 1.1 (covert hostility) on the tone scale as your system administrator, per the Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation, you would have an utter disaster on your hands.  You’d have someone who used their administrator access to run a porno web server on company equipment, someone who would say they fixed something and actually didn’t, someone who would get a beep in the middle of the night that a server was down and then have no faintest responsibility to actually get up and handle it, and someone who would covertly be setting the entire system up to fail in a catestrophic atomic meltdown while saying he was achieving the ultimate in redundancy.

Given a worthwhile cause he’s supporting, a system administrator could be facilitating the communications and speed of interaction of an entire organization, quadrupling their productivity and making them all able to work trouble free in total harmony and coordination.

However, only someone who was an opposite of the aforementioned 1.1 would be able to achieve such a thing.

Impinged-upon constantly as a Sys Admin is by broken machinery, frustrated users, budget constraints, and the crap that’s all over the Internet, it’s easy to get enturbulated and plummet down the tone scale.

That’s precisely why it’s important for even the System Administrator – as detached as it may seem from study in a religious field — to get himself a study of the Scientology Basics, and then sit down and get enough Dianetics Auditing to raise himself up the tone scale to a place where he can achieve the purpose of his job.

Scientology is not Dogmatic

In reading a section of my Scientology Basics, I just had to look up the word “dogmatic” as it was definitely a misunderstood word for me.

Dogmatic is “Characterized by an authoritative, arrogant assertion of unproved or unprovable principles.“

The reference this is from refers to a Scientology course supervisor as someone who “will be a stable terminal, point the way to stable data, be certain, but not dogmatic or dictatorial, toward his students.” – LRH

I think this is a fear or earlier association with religion that people sometimes associate reactively with Scientology.  They think that someone is going to come in with a commanding voice and carp at them and tell them what they should believe, especially when it comes to esoteric and unprovable principles.

I know from reading my history books that this has happened plenty of times throughout history.  Plenty of people have been torched by dogmatic individuals throughout history (i.e. how about the Spanish Inquisition).  So, I’m sure most people would have an aversion to something “dogmatic”.

Good that it’s right there in one of the most basic codes of Scientology instruction that a Scientology supervisor is not to be dogmatic, but be a stable person that one can get the right source of Scientology data from.

Moral Debate: An ethical code you can’t enforce

I just finished reading probably what is one of the most deep, most profound, and singly most significant articles I think I’ve read in Scientology.  It’s the passage L. Ron Hubbard wrote in 1954 entitled The Code of Honor.

I’ve read it before I don’t know how many times, and read it first probably when I was about 12.  The code itself is easy enough to duplicate — it is:

1. Never desert a comrade in need, in danger or in trouble.

2. Never withdraw allegiance once granted.

3. Never desert a group to which you owe your support.

4. Never disparage yourself or minimize your strength or power.

5. Never need praise, approval or sympathy.

6. Never compromise with your own reality.

7. Never permit your affinity to be alloyed.

8. Do not give or receive communication unless you yourself desire it.

9. Your self-determinism and your honor are more important than your immediate life.

10. Your integrity to yourself is more important than your body.

11. Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today, and you make your tomorrow.

12. Never fear to hurt another in a just cause.

13. Don’t desire to be liked or admired.

14. Be your own adviser, keep your own counsel and select your own decisions.

15. Be true to your own goals.

(the above is a quote, cited from the Code of Honor site)

Now, like I said, the code of honor itself is easy enough to duplicate.  Of course, you’d never want to desert a comrade in need.  Of course – don’t withdraw your allegiance once granted.  Sounds easy enough.

But, it’s the paragraphs after this (printed in full in the Creation of Human Ability book and the Scientology 0-8 book), which quite fully explain the significance of this code.

The point is that whereas a moral code, like a “don’t kill other people” and “don’t steal” and so forth — such codes can be enforces as they are moral — and by definition come about by necessity through the interactions of groups and people rubbing elbows with each other.  We’ve found by experience that if you run over your neighbor’s wife with your car, the neighbor gets really mad, and you end up experiencing something very unpleasant and the whole of life just doesn’t go well.  So, even if you don’t like her, you moral codes in society would prevent you from doing such an act.

But what about something that is for you.  Something – a code by which you can agree to and follow because you yourself have honor and self-respect, and know that you will do certain things because you respect yourself and others.

A code with a clause like, “Never compromise with your own reality.“  If you think that someone’s kid shouldn’t be put on drugs just be cause they’re active and full of energy — and yet you shut up and don’t say anything and when asked about it just shrug and say, ‘well, I guess it’s — well, do whatever you want.’

Nobody is going to send you to jail, but dammit you feel just terrible and like you should be sent to jail, as you’ve just violated your own internal honor by not speaking up and saying NO and telling the other person that instead of turning his kid into a chemically-jacked-up zombie who’ll be our next university murderer, that perhaps he should just take his kid for a walk out to the park and run him around the soccer field until he falls over if he’s got too much energy.

It’s one’s own honor and pride and feeling of self-worth that such a code is for, and really, can be applied by anyone anywhere and of any religious background.

The Code of a Scientologist

(first off – I think I’m going to finish Scientology 0-8 today!  yay!)

The part I’m reading right now is on the Code of a Scientologist.   Originally written in 1954, I’m  looking at the revised version which Mr. Hubbard put out in 1969.

Personally, I think that if anyone new to Scientology, or who has just heard a thing or two about it in the press, were to just read and understand this code, you’d see what we were really all about.

Also see the above video on what Scientologists say about Scientology. It says it all too.

The Sleep Scale

Here’s another great one I got from my Scientology 0-8 book:  the SCALE OF SLEEP — from an L. Ron Hubbard lecture of 31 July 1957:

Quote:

Sleep

No Sleep

Exhaustion

Manic State

Degradation
(a harmonic of exhaustion)

Death

To me, that explains why you have so much in the way of degraded material on the Internet that people can get sucked into when they’re low on sleep.   Moral of the story — get sleep!

How many people will play the game?

This is one of my favourite scales in the Scientology 0-8 book that I’ve read so far.  It’s called the Third Dynamic Scale.

If you don’t know what the 8 dynamics are in Scientology, this video will explain it to you:

The scale itself reads:

“Number of people who will participate in the game.

“Number of people who will actively sit there and watch the game.

“Number of people who will talk about things.  They won’t go to the game; they will talk about it.”
– LRH

With so many spectators in the game of life right now, I’m always trying to figure out how to get more people into the game, instead of just jabbering at the sideline!

What comes after the Basics?

In reading a chapter in Scientology 0-8, I came upon the Tone Plotting Scale from a June 1955 lecture by L. Ron Hubbard.  Looking this up on the Materials Guide Chart, I saw that this was from the Anatomy of the Spirit of Man Congress which LRH held at that time.   However, I quickly also saw that there are a number of other unreleased items that look like they will much further explain some of the concepts I’m reading on the Basics.  Can’t wait for these to come out!!