TheOriginalBigBlue
Gold Meritorious Patron
I was surprised to see how FOLO could fire missions directly into missions. This was the Flag Operations Liaison Office or a satellite of the Flag Bureaux. Missions were franchises under SMI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_Missions_International
A Sea Org mission is a special project and because it is empowered by a higher echelon of the organization it asserts authority over the org or mission that it goes into. Missionaires are often just Sea Org staff who are taken from anyplace in the organization where they are not indispensable from their post or have some skill set suitable to the mission. Consequently they can be either completely inexperienced in the central subject or have a lot of experience or an experienced I/C (In-Charge) with inexperienced juniors. Often the most important quality is being intimidating enough to get compliance. Missions by their nature bypass the normal hierarchy. Bypassing is supposed to be a bad thing in Scientology because it puts the existing people in non-existence by virtue of needing to be bypassed. These missions can conduct SP witch hunts, poach staff and public for higher orgs, virtually anything and if the lower org staff object they risk punishment or being declared SPs.
It became obvious after a while that despite all the policy against bypassing the organization runs on a perpetual operating basis of bypassing - the CMO being the most salient example. If you wanted anything to get done in an organization that was paralyzed with fear and conflicting policy interpretation dysfunctionality you looked to the CMO to bypass the insanity but there were never enough of them to really effectively manage anything and by now there are probably even less.
Scientology is essentially an organization based on predation. Every org or unit predates on the one below it right down to the public. Learning to survive in this environment is very Machiavellian. It teaches people to be ruthless and to use mental rationalizations that are based on Hubbard's world view which was only limited by his warped imagination.
The farther you are from the upper echelons of Scientology the more rational things are and people still exercise enough free will to bend the rules to protect each other but by Scientology's standards and per policy that is suppressive. Anything that prevents the predation of a higher level upon a lower one is suppressive. LRH envisioned Big Blue as a physical manifestation of the Bridge to Total Freedom but I'm convinced to his thinking putting LOA, ASHO and AO closer together facilitated predation. It would have been better if they were left apart where their respective fields were a little more difficult to poach.
It is fascinating to have been deep enough into it to understand this and then leave and dissect it in retrospect. We were all part of an insane predatory system and what is important is what we do afterwards.
A Sea Org mission is a special project and because it is empowered by a higher echelon of the organization it asserts authority over the org or mission that it goes into. Missionaires are often just Sea Org staff who are taken from anyplace in the organization where they are not indispensable from their post or have some skill set suitable to the mission. Consequently they can be either completely inexperienced in the central subject or have a lot of experience or an experienced I/C (In-Charge) with inexperienced juniors. Often the most important quality is being intimidating enough to get compliance. Missions by their nature bypass the normal hierarchy. Bypassing is supposed to be a bad thing in Scientology because it puts the existing people in non-existence by virtue of needing to be bypassed. These missions can conduct SP witch hunts, poach staff and public for higher orgs, virtually anything and if the lower org staff object they risk punishment or being declared SPs.
It became obvious after a while that despite all the policy against bypassing the organization runs on a perpetual operating basis of bypassing - the CMO being the most salient example. If you wanted anything to get done in an organization that was paralyzed with fear and conflicting policy interpretation dysfunctionality you looked to the CMO to bypass the insanity but there were never enough of them to really effectively manage anything and by now there are probably even less.
Scientology is essentially an organization based on predation. Every org or unit predates on the one below it right down to the public. Learning to survive in this environment is very Machiavellian. It teaches people to be ruthless and to use mental rationalizations that are based on Hubbard's world view which was only limited by his warped imagination.
The farther you are from the upper echelons of Scientology the more rational things are and people still exercise enough free will to bend the rules to protect each other but by Scientology's standards and per policy that is suppressive. Anything that prevents the predation of a higher level upon a lower one is suppressive. LRH envisioned Big Blue as a physical manifestation of the Bridge to Total Freedom but I'm convinced to his thinking putting LOA, ASHO and AO closer together facilitated predation. It would have been better if they were left apart where their respective fields were a little more difficult to poach.
It is fascinating to have been deep enough into it to understand this and then leave and dissect it in retrospect. We were all part of an insane predatory system and what is important is what we do afterwards.