Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief

[The Grand Nudger]

I've thought the same about structure...however, if you take a look at the bottom end of scientology there actually isn't much structure for the user at all.  They show up, they pay their coin, they air their secrets and fears.  Like a cheap visit to a mall psych. I suppose that they hinty at strtucture, they hint at great mysteries and secrets.....but they don;t actually provide it (because that's the service that they hope to sell - and if they actually gave it to someone then why would they come back?)  Rules...again, not so much....try to find the ten sci commandments?  Doctrine is expensive to acquire...and if you line up 100 scientologists you can expect that not a single one of them will have any idea what the doctrine of scientology actually is (no one really knows, publicly...to be fair).  They just know that they can report back to their auditing center whenever they need the services.  Good, bad, etc...these are things that they absolutely shy away from.  It's hard to extract the coin for an audit if you're judgemental about it.  For judgement...you have to pay extra, and at that point I think it's safe to say that you're pretty well committed.  It really has a different set of operating principles than most other religions - and they take great care to distance their methods as a religion (until the taxman calleth, of course).  

Mind control...though, is absolutely pushing it too far.  They have their little navy...and there are some stories about that barge that boggle the mind.....but mind control is, essentially, magic.  There's no such thing.

I honestly don't think that it's anything that scientology -does- that brings in the bacon. I lean towards to idea that people were looking for -something like it-, and scientology filled a happy gap. They'd been around as an effective non-entity for a long time then they just took off. It didn't appeal to people at all, it seems, until a very definite point in time. Just to take one example..I'm sure we could dream up plenty, but...wish fullfillment is something that we see operating in many faiths. Thing about scientology, is that their business model is predicate on discouraging you from believing that your wish will actually be fulfilled within any definite time either during your life or at any point thereafter. You stay sick, with no hope of a cure..only treatment. That's pretty bleak, definitely not "punch and pie in heaven for everybody and all the people who hurt you will be punished" stuff...you know?

(I spent half my life in the bay area..watched scientology come up down there...collected their little books at yardsales. LOL, used to sit on the pier and watch them mill around in their khakis taking notes about god knows what.........It's a minor obsession for me.)