In a documentary on Osho and his cult members it was noted that the meanest and most domineering members of his cult were promoted to positions in which they could order around the others.

Many other cults follow the same routine. The lieutenants of the leader are strongly encouraged to be abusive, since a cult is an abusive relationship spread out over a group.

Obviously many of us have seen Sea Org members who screamed at people all day long in positions of authority.

If you aren’t willing to tear people a new asshole and give severe reality adjustments you are not likely to be a programs chief or higher executive in Scientology.

I have known several executive directors at class V orgs who got an endless barrage of phone calls by Sea Org executive after executive, screaming at them, all day every day.

One had a heart attack after a few years. Many are chewed up and spit out. I have seen executive director after executive director get run down, removed from post, blamed for the org not expanding then either SP declared or shunned.

The Hubbards of the world think that people need to be beaten down, gaslighted into oblivion, confused about everything, and exhausted and exasperated to be under control, their control.

High conflict personalities tend to see kindness as reserved for themselves and cruelty as deserved by others, especially others that they have conflict with.

He has several short and very easy to read books oh high conflict personalities and issues related to this such as dealing with them in the workplace, in family court or a divorce or even that we tend to elect them or accept them as leaders.

I recommend them.

He has dealt with them as an attorney and seen how often the police, courts, and judges don’t believe they are really as extreme as they are and so they can manipulate the system to try to get a “compromise” when sometimes they are not willing to compromise, as one example of what they do.

I think that the world unfortunately has so many people who exhibit this behavior that it’s extremely difficult to avoid them. To me that’s unrealistic.

Other people have written books that give the advice of basically telling you to learn to identify them well, then to just remove them from your life.

But in reality most people can’t leave every job if they spot such a person, because the odds are another one is at the next job, or even if you find a job without one, due to turnover one can be around the corner.

You also may have them as neighbors or local merchants or the local police or school board or homeowners association president.

Are you supposed to be constantly moving to a new city and quitting your job? To say nothing about if they are your children, in laws, or relatives.

Bill Eddy has addressed the reality that you may HAVE to deal with such people for the long term.

I have realized that the indoctrination in Scientology was definitely created by a high conflict individual in Hubbard and encourages similar behavior in Scientology cult members.

Obviously even in the world outside of Scientology one is going to encounter high conflict personalities and they don’t behave as other people do.

They are not identical and some are definitely far more extreme than others. For every Carl Panzram there are probably a hundred who are not going to end up in prison.

But even the minor ones are worth being aware of, because they can wreck groups and the ex cult community unfortunately is not immune.

One thing that I have noted with a lot of them, for example, is they seek and continue conflict far more than most people.

You may disagree with them on something that is minor to you, but they don’t let it go and then to them the conflict may be more important than the relationship.

If someone in a group has this trait, they can make the conflict they have with others over shadow everything else going on in a group and then push it until the group has a schism with people either with them or against them.

The original purpose of the group may even be relegated to a secondary role or forgotten altogether.

This can derail an entire group because of the self centered or conflict centered values of one person.

I think that ex Scientologists and cult watchers can be aware of this and try to remain true to their own goals and values, despite anything that anyone else is doing.

Cavalier, I think that in most CL V orgs it was and is as you describe.
However, I also think these behaviors are more evident in all their aspects in the Sea Org. While up to a certain period these attitudes were more visible but limited to the higher levels, since the early ’90s they have started to exist even in the lower ranks up to the CLOs.

Yelling, threats, bullying, staff being denigrated at staff muster and from then on being seen and treated like dirt by everyone. I have also seen staff from orgs brought up to the CLO to be “handled,” where they were yelled at with all sorts of things, and if the CO CLO didn’t like them, it was even worse.

In other words, this way of behave, like a contagion, has spread throughout the Sea Org. It was considered acceptable to exhibit these traits to produce a product, to show how tone 40 and tough you were, to handle someone, to be right, or to explain why it was someone’s fault. Maybe things have changed a bit recently, as with all the information available online, they had to correct themselves, but I’m not so sure about that.

I think many others who were around at the time would feel about the same as me.

I was on staff for over 6 years in a Class V Org and left at the end of my contract (in the mid-80s.)
Maybe it is different these days.

The main thing that made being on staff bearable was the sense of camaraderie between all of us on staff. I had a group of friends and we always had each other’s backs. It wasn’t at all dog-eat-dog.

Of course, there are always occasions when you lock horns with someone else. I don’t think that most held onto grudges.

Hubbard said somewhere that if some activity is unsuccessful then one should always look at their own areas and behaviors first, because it is easier to change oneself than to change someone else.

This is good advice and something I still use to this day. This doesn’t mean that I feel overly guilty or think that everything is my fault. It just means I try to learn from mistakes.

I was a Senior Exec for most of my time on staff. This is not particularly impressive but does mean that I could have thrown my weight around had I wished to. I am far from perfect, but I very seldom did so or lost my temper (2 or 3 times over the whole 6 years.) Most of the other execs were similar to me.

I am not trying to say that it was all sweetness and light.

There was much going on in the Guardian’s Office that I only found out about much later.

We had the Finance Police (who were a bunch of absolute psychos), and one screaming and shouting Cont. CO (whom I despised.)

Both were only around for a relatively short time.

Aldeboni, once, an OT V told me that when you are OT, you no longer have a reactive mind, so you no longer commit ‘overts’ (which is a colossal bullshit, from what I’ve seen with my own eyes, at most you learn to ‘justify’ better) and then said that the analytical mind was even worse. I didn’t understand what he meant, but I sensed that there was still some ‘reactivity’ that manifested randomly and he had no data to explain It.

The fact is, driving a car, work appointments, shopping, or remembering what you said you wanted, require a mind or whatever it might be that functions in that way. Furthermore, the mind needs to interpret everything it encounters with some logic. However, pre-existing information taken as ‘certain’ and self-awareness (and here it also depends on where the ‘certainty’ comes from) are the ground on which everything comes to life.

Wanting to reach a high spiritual state (which theoretically might already be there, but that’s another story) by believing that you need to resolve problems, incidents, and GPMs from the entire track, perhaps establishes that these must necessarily exist, and the mind will provide them in abundance.