Thats right ol Kingsley W. had the world by storm. I had family that was a full time auditor in one of the west coast orgs. They had whole bunch of staff there who were THRILLED about the de dinging. My family was scared of it thought it was horrible squirreling. Problem with de-dinging was you could easily have been dinged (invalidated) by your boss or SO management and by getting it off your chest you became de-ptsed from that horrible SP. You can see the ridiculous horror of miscarriage. He would have had a real mutiny on his hands. I wonder how high it got up in the SO before someone pulled the plug.

I kinda missed that chapter, but heard the stories from family and tons of people I knew in orgs and missions. At first it was sanctioned by their bosses, then later….. OMG declares, SO Missions fired to clean up the perpetrators.

P.S. Great “chatting” with you.

Hi Mission Guy,
I was indeed in in the de-dinging era. It was a short pocket of time. De-dinging got started up North based on an eval done by Kingsley Wimbush, a Mission Holder. After his eval, which basically found that if staff were apathetic about doing their post or about Scientology expanding, it depressed stats. There was more to it. Here’s a link to a de-dinging post by Bernie Wimbush – http://www.iscientology.org/scientology-blog/384-what-de-dinging-actually-was
At the time of de-dinging in Santa Barbara Josh was on staff and participated. Lili did a lot of volunteer work and was allowed to attend one de-dinging session. Lili liked it. Maybe too much.
Staff talked about things said or done to them that hurt them as a person or as their post and “got it off” so they could come uptone.
Another staffer at the time felt conflicted as the de-dinging helped, but they were highly trained and feared it was squirrelly and not LRH. So this staffer felt guilty for revealing “reasons why” she wasn’t being as helpful in certain areas, or avoiding some staffer who they had trouble with. She felt it wasn’t based on LRH.
Shortly after the de-dinging sessions, word came from on high. It was forbidden and dropped like a corpse sleeping with the fishes.
Since Lili had liked it, she thought that forbidding it just proved that good programs that pleased staff or students were destined to die and be replaced with stodgy, boring-ass programs.
You mentioned that Gold was responsible for the ridiculous two-piece Clear-Sound cassette players. Wow, who did their surveying? Big flunk that.

You got it. The cassette players special made by gold. Kinda ridiculous.

There was also the big riverside mission got crushed. One of the biggest.

The best thing about the mission folks was they were characters. If it wasn’t fun it wasn’t scientology.

There were so many college kids just starting their lives out. Kinda made sense to do some good self help stuff to get straightened out.

Alas as you got further into the cult of belief you got more and chained down. Your story rocks telling the way it started when it was all about getting new people in and help them out, now it’s all about the money and more money. And so much control of money time, connections, just never stops. They have already collapsed under miscarriage and just keep on getting more and more donos. Were you still in when the de_dinging hit in early 80’s. What a hoot. Ridiculous. Oh well.

Actually one common error is to lump Scientology in with other religions and “cults”/NRMs as if they aren’t that different. It’s completely wrong to do this and helps prolong Scientology by lending it the kind of legitimacy it desperately craves.

This “whataboutery” aimed at attacking all religions, Christians and conservatives especially, is counterproductive and hinders the fight.

Hi Mission Guy,
I’m so happy you weighed in. Santa Barbara was indeed part of the four SCS Mission network. And bustling and fun.
I simplified it for the readers, but it was a calamitous time. A sad time. A stressful time.
Like you said the Sea Org would demand that the new class four org pony up for a new film room, an expensive bust of LRH, reel to reel tape players. And can we talk about technology? The film room, which cost the earth and we couldn’t pay the rent without begging rich parishioners to donate, used these giant metal cassettes. They were heavy, clunky and ridiculous.
CD’s were coming out and the cherch was flogging cassette players for Ron’s cassette tapes. Remember the Clearsound players? It was a two piece cassette player. Walkmans were everywhere, but this was BETTER! Uh, no.
The hard core Scientologists would walk around with these things clacking around their waist.
You can come by and ramble anytime. I loved the trip down memory lane. I didn’t know about the other Missions. It was a terrible time. And it went downhill from there. Yay!
I bet Chris Shelton has great info!

Same with the Cosmod chirch of scientology missions of Davis consisting of Davis, Sacramento Portland, Sheridan, San Francisco.

Davis closed forever when it had been a booming activity with lots of young college kids paying for communication course, student hat, dianetics course and lots of life repair and lower bridge. Same for sac, ptld. Portland turned into Portland celebrity center then folded into the Portland day and foundation orgs.

Portland and sac became quite large missions before the takeover, trained lots of auditors and lots of auditing,. In late 70s both got to over 500 hours of auditing each week with peaks over 600. Sent lots of people to local orgs and Asho and flag and made a ton of fsm commissions from doing it. Average first service starts were 10 to 25:each week.

San Francisco was different they picked the cherries off the top of some of the wise consultant groups with dentists and chiropractor and got rich from the lucrative payments for their bridges to clear then the fsm commissions from flag referrals. In the 80s refunds and internet bad publicity destroyed this line.

When sea org (miscarriage and his finance police) started the take over the demanded new franchise/mission contracts, closed the old moww mission office world wide and started a corporate corrected smi scientology missions international.

New higher percentages to management. Was 10 percent, later 18 percent. Plus many new expenses demanded, buying finance computer systems. New gold film systems, both ridiculously overpriced. Plus during the brutal sea org restructuring demanded huge cash payments, essentially any and all of their local savings or reserves.

Long established policy of treat the “field” aka franchises/missions with mild ethics and now stick it to them with brutal treatment, instant declares, harassment until they paid up, daily large fines until they sent people to local and so orgs.

End result, most of these missions either taken over, closed, or shrunk to a tiny percentage of their former selves.

Sorry for my rambling but seeing so much cruelty made it clear just how horribly the new takeover people treated the rest. Some Church. Ain’t no God or kindness anywhere there.

What a lovely wish Jere Lull.

That’s the problem with Cults, they are obsessed with their founder(s) teachings.

Objectivity is out if the window, that’s why they are gone after 50 years , third generation doesn’t share that much zeal and escape from Stockholm syndrome.

Social media has destroyed many scams which otherwise would have survived couple of more decades.

But still they have chance , introduce new product like Harry Porter as new religious tech or move to agrarian community and start poultry and dairy farming business