Scientology

Tue Mar 21, 2006 (Religion) Comments

I just finished reading an article recommended to me by a friend, "Inside Scientology" in the March 9th edition of Rolling Stone. Excellent.

Reading this stirred up a number of thoughts gestating in my head. Many exploring the obvious route: Laughing at the silliness of these people, the fanaticism of their cult, their Genesis myth involving space aliens gathering trillions of beings across the galaxy, flying them to Earth and vaporizing their souls in volcanoes, to be condensed later into human souls implanted with false beliefs in God, Christ, and organized religion.

Many exploring the hypocritical route: How are these people any different than followers of other organized religions? What is so strange about their beliefs and organization? Human beings as thetans trapped in material bodies. The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Xenu's scattering of souls seventy five million years ago. The Biblical Flood a few thousand years ago. The Sea Organization. The Roman Curia. Aggression towards apostates such as William S. Burroughs or Galileo Galilei. Do they not share a disdain for science, both choosing to believe without testing rather than testing one's beliefs? That is what makes them crazy to me. Crazy- that is a word often used to describe Scientologists. But how are they so different from fundamentalist Christians? Their unwillingness to question, test, and live with uncertainty is what makes them crazy in my mind. Also their intellectual insularity. Not their particular mythical stories or proselytizing.

When reading the article on Scientology what struck me most was the feeling that it's all a big damn joke. L. Ron's Hubbard's revenge on the masses, who are so predisposed to believe what they're told and not think for themselves. I mean the man called his religion Scientology. He had the audacity to put the word science in the name! He's laughing at them! Now that's not to say he wasn't a weird dude, a bit off his rocker. It's possible to be both crazy and intelligent and contemptuous.

I think Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, feeling unrewarded for his efforts early in life, felt compelled to take revenge on the stupid middle class who made no effort to question the efficiency of the society they were born into. They believed implicitly in its order. They did not notice when it failed to reward its best servants. Why not exploit this sheepishness and invent a new society with himself at the head? Have a little fun with the herd before his time was up.

I was reminded of a passage from Anthony Powell's A Dance To The Music of Time where two characters explore the motivations of a despised acquaintance, Kenneth Widmerpool, who by sheer will- not by birth- lifted himself to the topmost echelons of the British Establishment only to abandon it for Communism and ultimately the Occult.

      "But what has Widmerpool to gain from being a crypto [spy]?"
      Bagshaw laughed loudly. He thought that a very silly question. Political standpoints of the extreme Left being where his heart lay, where, so to speak, he had lost his virginity, the enquiry was like asking Umfraville [a gambler] why he should be interested in one horse moving faster than another, a football fan the significance of kicking an inflated bladder between two posts. At first Bagshaw was unable to find words simple enough to enlighten so uninstructed a mind. Then a lively parallel occurred to him.
      "Apart from anything else, it's one of those secret pleasures, like drawing a moustache on the face of a pretty girl on a poster, spitting over the stair- you know, from a great height on to the people below. You see several heads, possibly a bald one. They don't know where the saliva comes from. It gives an enormous sense of power. Like the days when I used to throw marbles under the hooves of mounted policemen's horses. Think of the same sort of fun when you're an MP [Member of Parliament], or a respected civil servant, giving the whole show away on the quiet, when everybody thinks you're a pillar of society.
      "Isn't that a rather frivolous view? What about deep convictions, all the complicated ideologies you're always talking about?"
      "Not really frivolous. Such spitting itself is an active form of revolt- undermining society as we know it, spreading alarm and despondency among the bourgeoisie. Besides, spitting apart, you stand a good chance of coming to power yourself one day. Giving them all hell. The bourgeoisie, and everyone else. Being a member of a Communist apparat would suit our friend very well politically."
      "But Widmerpool's the greatest bourgeois who ever lived."
      "Of course he is. That's what makes it such fun for him. Besides, he isn't a bourgeois in his own eyes. He's a man in a life-and-death grapple with the decadent society round him. Either he wins, or it does."
      "That doesn't sound very rational."
      "Marxism isn't rational, Nicholas. Get that into your head. The more intelligent sort of Marxist tells you so. He stresses the point, as one of its highest merits, that, like religion, Marxism requires faith in the last resort. Besides, my old friend Max Stirner covers Kenneth- 'Because I am by nature a man I have equal rights to the enjoyment of all goods, says Babeuf. Must he not also say: because I am "by nature" a first-born prince I have a right to a throne?' That's just what Kenneth Widmerpool does say- not out aloud, but it's what he thinks."
      Bagshaw had begun on his favourite political philosopher. I was not in the mood at the moment... There might be some truth in the exposition: that Widmerpool, conventional enough at one level of his life- conventional latterly in his own condemnation of conventionality- might at the same time nurture within himself quite another state of mind to that shown on the surface; not only desire to reshape the world according to some doctrinaire pattern, but also to be revenged on a world that had found himself insufficiently splendid in doing so. Had not General Conyers, years ago, diagnosed a "typical intuitive extrovert"; cold-blooded, keen on a thing for the moment, never satisfied, always wanting to get on to something else? In one sense, of course, the world, from a material assessment, had treated Widmerpool pretty well, even at the time when Bagshaw was talking. On the other hand, people rarely take the view that they have been rewarded according to their deserts, those most rewarded often the very ones keenest to be revenged.

Need another example? Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent convicted a few years ago of spying for the Soviet Union and Russia and sentenced to life in prison. A quiet, dutiful, patriotic family man serving his country. Member of Opus Dei, the secretive Roman Catholic sect. Secretly idolized Kim Philby, the mole in British Intelligence who eventually defected to the Soviet Union and wrote an autobiography entitled My Silent War. Had an extramarital affair with a stripper. A Widmerpool in the flesh.

Finally, to stretch the story, perhaps, a bit too far. And to better articulate my skepticism of popular diagnosis of a Hollywood celebrity discussed with friends during our summer vacation. I see similar motivation in the erratic behavior of Scientology's most famous advocate, Tom Cruise. I think he's having a good laugh at the celebrity hangers on. He's mocking their society by giving them exactly what they want- glossy insincerity. He's got them all in a tizzy over his insincerity in dramatizing his love affair with Katie Holmes. Well, that's their business, isn't it? Insincere drama. How's he any different than a Botox-injected Joan Rivers on the Red Carpet? It's possible that he recognizes parallels in his relationship with the tabloid press to the travails of his religious mentor, L. Ron Hubbard. Or he's simply raving mad.