Don’t trust Source

There were 80 hopefuls in the course room. Every chair was occupied by a tensely interested Scientologist looking at the OT VIII who was about to open his mouth. It was Moscow, 2008. And the subject of the four hour seminar was “Admin Scale”.

I started: “If I say something true today, why would it be true?”

Two quick answers were offered:

• Because you are an OT VIII!
• Because what you say comes from L. Ron Hubbard!

Knowing Russian track of blind obedience to authority, I was not that surprised. It was nevertheless sad.

I promptly invalidated the answers and took the quick and scenic route via the topic Personal Integrity. I tried my best to hammer it in that you should not accept something as true unless you yourself can see that it is true. It does not matter who says it. The [b]content of the communication[/b] is true or not regardless of the source of the communication. Accepting something as true or false based on who says it is mental laziness. It is suspension of own judgment. It hurts your personal integrity and makes you that much smaller.

I hope I reached at least some in the audience.

This mental laziness of trusting the source of the communication and then accepting whatever emanates from that source is rampant in society. I see this everywhere.

I see it in the blind obedience in the Church of Scientology. I see it when a scientologist blindly accept of anything Ron says. I see it in the Scientology critics community when a critic take anything coming from a “critic of stature” as gospel.

It seems hard for some to challenge the illogic in a statement from a friend or from a “trusted source”.

A variation of this is to trust a communication that is similar to your own views even if it also contains untruth. In the critics community this is manifested by accepting any negative statement about Scientology regardless of its illogic. In the Church of Scientology this is manifested by accepting that something is true, positive or helpful simply because a similar topic or technique has proven beneficial. Again, mental laziness.

I applaud the imperfection of Wikipedia. It teaches our children to never trust the source but to exercise their own judgment.

Don’t trust Source. Trust yourself.

Out of the 80 people present, I got 79 though doing their Admin Scale – defining a set of concepts for their life, like their Goals and Purposes, their plans, their envisioned Ideal Scene and more. Without any nudging in any direction, they chose the path that was right for themselves, in accordance to their own life and living. The staff of Moscow Org were somewhat less happy that I didn’t nudge them in the direction they wanted: selling the Basic Books.