To Mary Kahn and Jere Lull: Adding to what you are saying… At one phase in our ideal org fundraising journey, events began to pre-commence with an awkward procession of donators, like a grand march at a high school prom. Each person or married couple booming-ly announced with their “Humanitarian with Honors” or “New Civilization Builder” donator status, nobly summoning them forward to enter the space and take their heralded front row seat. Applause, applause—increasing as finally the most top-cat donor was ushered in.

Ugh.

Later, I noticed in the video playback of an Ideal Org Opening (Kansas City), COB himself during the public ceremony calls out top donators to that org BY NAME. The camera flashes to them waving and demurely accepting this shout-out. It is so ironically “Cult of Greed.” To call this out as WHAT THE GROUP FACTUALLY CELEBRATES to an audience filled with non-Scientologists seemed folly. (Very strange concept of public relations.) An unabashed show of how concretely C of S prizes this entirely errant behavior of people donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to Scientology. To a married staff member couple in uniform, COB even says, aloud, “I don’t know how you are doing it.” Yeah, exactly.

If you have acquaintance with any of the shout-out recipients (as many of us do) and you know, sure, they are in a good profession, but NOT a multi-millionaire, this shout-out moment is not something to celebrate. It is sad.

In the bubble, I think a recipient fails to realize the purpose of the shout-out is NOT to acknowledge them for donating to that particular ideal org (although it seems that way). It is instead to publicly COMPEL the person (or couple) to go further into crazy unmanageable debt and flimsy financial arrangements to appease the tireless donation machine working toward funding the NEXT ideal org.

#PDoLB (Public Display of Love Bombing)

#GUMoYMOE (Give Us More of Your Money Or Else)

Beautifully said!

Ms. B. Haven and Jim Rowles: Agreed: “They got what they got and that was good enough for them. They keep their own counsel well enough that they don’t need some sort of external validation.” So well stated.

I feel definitely straightened out and so much more personally grounded and better able to solve problems as a result of my training and counseling. But, well, it’s been said in many different ways here: the participation and even any minor exposure to this group is so toxic, it becomes The Law of Diminishing Returns.

“Seek to the live with the truth” is one component to fostering happiness, so someone once said.

Ms. B. Haven

Thanks for that. You said it well and fully.

Bruce, I have kept an eye on clear numbers for a number of years and don’t recall seeing any that seemed seriously out of sequence with others, as would have to be the case if there were big blocks of numbers issued to orgs and only slowly used up — except that I can’t say for certain that I’ve seen clear numbers from AOLA or FLAG.

But I also have trouble imagining that they are really making anything like 800 clears a year, given estimates that seem entirely plausible to me of a membership shrunken to 10,000 to 15,000 (especially given pictures of major local org events typically showing just 3 to 4 dozen people). And we see very few showing up in social media like this; it might be roughly equivalent to the number we see in groups of OTVIIIs on the ship once or twice a year, even if that’s hardly conclusive.

So I wonder if they somehow aren’t really using all the sequential numbers, in order to speed up the issuing process and keep up the appearance of growth. Even considering that new numbers might be used (maybe only for administrative purposes) when people have to re-do clear it seems a stretch, though relatively more plausible.

@Jere Lull,

I have never told you this, Jere. But IMHO, it is really great to have you here. You catch all kinds of errors and you help me out when I struggle to state the obvious. I really enjoy reading your POV.

I am very glad you choose to post at this blog and I think it is important that you should know that. Otherwise, you would never know just how appreciated you are.

🙂 🙂

Wow Katherine! That is so amazing.

So many times people have asked me what kind of lady I would like to marry.

Know how I always answered? I always answered by saying, I want a mother-in-law who is Italian and loves to cook. The wife isn’t nearly as important as is the mother-in-law. You made a great choice with your husband. Ciao lady!

🙂 🙂 🙂

Yes Chuck. But the only problem is ……

No one tells you that you will play the part of the snipe!

Joe, you love the promo pieces? You’re made of tougher stuff than I. The reason I came to these critics blogs about 10 years ago was because the cult found me after being gone for a quarter century. At that point I was deluged with promo from at least 12 different orgs, most I had never been associated with. I was feeling mighty embarrassed having this shit delivered to my mail box. It took me 2-3 years but I was finally able to get them to stop the mailings. I believe I was in line for some sort of award from the Sierra Club for my personal contribution to ending clear cutting to supply the cult with paper. The promo they send out isn’t even any good for toilet paper. That glossy stuff just doesn’t cut the mustard so to speak. It’s sort of ok for lining bird cages, but I found that my parrot was in a constant state of restim if I used it.