PeaceMaker, I just wanted to say that I enjoy reading your thoughtful comments. Think of this as a “thumbs up”. 🙂

Jere, I’d agree that the pandemic may be just a sort of convenient excuse – probably more implicit than explicit – and just an acceleration point in a long decline.

What in Scientology really ‘worked’? As far as I can tell it was just whatever benefits came from well-intended people like yourself providing a sort of mutual support group, and a certain amount of talk therapy happening in sessions with auditors who were intuitively empathic listeners – essentially, unintended effects of Hubbard’s high control system.

Independent Scientology has also virtually collapsed due to the “subject” being fundamentally un-workable, except as at most an unimpressive, moderately effective talk therapy when applied by talented or conventionally trained practitioners (see Sarge Gerbode’s work and research). How could anyone who took over from Hubbard really have done much better with the CofS, except perhaps to have thrown in the towel on The Commodore’s megalomaniacal dreams, and let it die an inglorious but perhaps more dignified death like Christian Science Reading Rooms, providing old-timers a quiet place to hang out until the doors finally close for good?

Jere, I think he gave up on delivery when he realized it was a fatal liability after the death of Lisa McPherson, and a string of other incidents including suicides and killings.

While a lot of people may have gotten auditing highs and whatever out of their involvement in Scientology, as with other sorts of thrill-seeking, messing around with minds and psyches like trying to get people to ‘exteriorize’ (disassociation, technically a step short of psychosis) came with heightened risks, and a certain number of unfortunates had psychotic breaks and other bad outcomes.

The cathartic therapy that Hubbard was inspired by in Naval hospitals at the end of the war, had been abandoned by the time he was writing Dianetics, because it turned out that while it initially seemed to have impressive effects, in the long term it was relatively ineffective and even made some people worse. I think DM just had to face, decades too late, the ticking time bomb built into Hubbard’s techniques.

Isn’t having members run around poles and give money, at least preferable to their flinging themselves out of hotel windows and drowning themselves in the surf? (the sort of things that happened at Flag before DM really cracked down)

I had an MU on neologism so I looked it up and I’m glad I did. It’s an interesting and useful word/concept. Some current woke culture is attempting to replace many King’s English words and phrases with neologisms. 😇

Being on the same theta wave length would be a scn neologism for being on the same train of thought in common vernacular.

(Did I use the word “neologism” correctly in a sentence? I think so – pass)

What is white glove bag? Sorry if this is a dumb question but I never had the honor of going to Flag, and probably never will.

That was awesome.

Good one Jere! For sure! I’ve been visiting that place for a long time, they have or had really good pizza. Haven’t been there in two years.

As we passed the COS building, Outside the building smoking a cigarette were two young dudes. we had passed them by when entering the Pizza place….we felt bad for them as we saw them not wearing jackets as they stood rubbing their hands together to keep warm as they were handing flyers out.

After we had our fill of pizza, we had two slices remaining & not wanting to carry it around all day or throw it away, we had it placed on a paper plate & then put into a paper bag & took it with us, intending to offer it to the two kids standing in front of the COS building.

We offered THEM the remaining two slices. they looked at use some what suspiciously l but then gladly accepted the slices & wolfed it down. Hope they didn’t get into trouble for it….they did NOT offer us a flyer!

Mark, it’ll work better than it did back in the ’70s when Ron introduced the OEC and FEBC to great fanfare and continued downstats. DM will “adjust” the executive courses and material to crash the stats even worse than the ‘tech’ did when it was forced upon the orgs. Only now, the franchise network which flourished by often largely ignoring the worst-performing policies is dead and gone; only left are mini-orgs forced to march in lockstep with the (failing/failed) orgs, especially the poor, beleaguered ideal orgs.

And for the QAnon folks, that pizza place ALSO doesn’t have a basement, so they can rest assured nothing nefarious is happening there, other than some spreading waistlines.