Re: Should a Person Let a Former Friend Know That He/She is No Longer a Friend?
I think that what I wrote applies in every case, without exception. That is what I was trying to say....I know you want to see your situation as an exception. But I don't see how it is.
Also, I don't believe in conforming so i don't understand why you or anyone would conform to 'guidelines'.
Humans need to get off the teet. That is my opinion. (I am not referring to you, just saying, in general.)
I wanted to comment on this post. If you read my story of being on the Apollo, you see that I had a mid level executive job for 3 weeks. There was no Hat write up and I was told to do Hubbard style Data Evaluations even though I had not done the Hubbard Data Evaluator's Course. I was given one evaluation to do. I came up with the right "Why" in a matter of minutes but I did not use any of Hubbard's procedures to arrive at my answer. In fact, I had figured out the answer when I was back at CCLA prior to coming to Flag. My corrected "why" was not acted upon for 25 years but became implemented around 1998!
After 3 weeks, I was busted from my post and place on the EPF work detail and worked their for 5 weeks after which time I routed off of the Apollo. That small bit of exposure was all that I knew and all that I based my Apollo story one.
The person, who was my friend for 18 - 24 months had spent many years working closely with Hubbard in top executive positions, or so he says. I don't even know if this is true or not. The person seems very knowledgeable as to what was going on on the Apollo and later, the Flag Land Base so I am accepting his claims as being true. Whether it is true or not, he knew much more about how things were run on the Apollo and at the Flag land base than I ever knew. That I am certain of. It is just a matter of exposure, he was exposed to Hubbard and the Apollo in a high executive capacity for years while my exposure was only 3 weeks as CCLA Programs Chief and 5 weeks on the Flag EPF.
Considering our relative backgrounds and the fact that both of us are smart and perceptive, he should know much more due to his enormous advantage over me in the amount of exposure which he had to Hubbard versus the extremely limited amount of exposure which I had.
I don't know about
conforming to anyone or
conforming to guidelines. I am shooting for truth and for accuracy. If I have 8 weeks of exposure on the Apollo in mid level and low level positions and he has 10 years or more in high level positions, I am going to accept that he is much more knowledgeable on the subject of the Apollo than I am. If he and I form a friendship and we are both talking about the Apollo or the Flag Land Base, I am going to defer to him and learn from him. There is very little that he could have learned from me as regards the goings on at the Yacht Apollo and a great deal which I could learn from him. That is just a no brainer!!
So when the two of us had differences in our stories, I tended to go along with his position. He was my friend and he had much more exposure to Hubbard than I did. If he corrected me on any subject having to do with Flag, I would revise my opinion to coincide with his opinion. When I first arrived on ESMB, I was in that weird area where so many ex Scios are. I had totally cut from CoS about 5 years earlier, I still thought highly of Hubbard and his Tech and thought that DM had ruined CoS and that Hubbard was a saint. or more accurately a partially flawed saint. I was looking for help in understanding the workings of CoS. It was pretty obvious that even with Hubbard at the helm, most people ended up losing big time, myself included.
I was trying to flesh out my experience there and see what was good about CoS and what was bad about it. Many people played major parts in helping me formulate my current positions on CoS. I learned a lot from perhaps 10 or so key people and this individual was one of those ten. As he clarified various aspects of CoS and helped me understand the truth of it much better, I felt obligated to him. While I was his friend, I was able to express my gratitude in several ways. Once he became my adversary, I no longer can do that.
As far as conforming to him or to some guidelines, I just don't do that for anyone or anything!! I go all out not to be a conformist. That being said, I am able to realize when someone knows more about various areas of life than I do. In such cases, I do not conform to them but I defer to them and attempt to learn from them.!! Thus, I defer to Einstein in Physics, I defer to Mozart, Bach and Beethoven in music composition, I defer to Van Gogh and Monet in painting, I defer to Somerset Maugham and Dostoyevski in story telling ability, I defer to Maria in philosophy, I defer to several of my opinion leaders as regards the subject of CoS. I defer to M.L. King in understanding racial relations, I defer to Jackie Robinson and Rosa Parks in breaking down religious bigotry, etc.
Lakey