Thats absolutely brilliant!
When I was in $cn. I relied heavily on my TRs, basically to function.
I guess I never really sat down and thought about why I had no need of them after I'd been out a while.
... Just when I think the onion has no more layers, someone like you says something like this
Thank you Victoria, I hold your opinion in high regard.
Was all this Tommy Davis type red-in-the-face spittle laden SRA (Severe Reality Adjustment) stuff common before 1980-81. That is when I noticed it becoming institutionalized in the Sea Org and it seemed to be migrating down lines through the CMO. I didn't understand where this was coming from at the time but now I figure it must have originated with DM. But am I wrong about this? Did I somehow live in a Sea Org enclave where I missed it and it had been going on all the time? Was this an LRH innovation and DM just took it to its next level of evolution?
Aside from DM's personal mental state I can understand how something like this might evolve. We start doing TRs as public and they don't want to blow you away so it is light and fun. Then you join the SO and TRs become much more intense. And here you have a group of people who have been hardened with strict routine, discipline, training, testing physical endurance, working long hours, sleep deprivation, self sacrifice and often degradation with poor living conditions, low pay, poor diet, poor medical care, little free time or outside interaction, bug infestation, or outright abuse such as public confessions, cruel amends projects, ridiculously grueling Sec-checks lasting months, assignment to the RPF or RPF's RPF, sometimes several times and for extended periods, even years, eating left-overs, having to live in the basement, etc. Then these people are ingrained with the mindset that they must demand and enforce all these things not only on themselves but each other.
Eventually the stat system falls flat due to burnout. People realize that trying to maintain a constant uptrending stat or even a normal level trend is impossible without sacrificing every 3rd or 4th week to a lower condition and another round of corrective thinking. The proper equipment or logistical support isn't there to do the job and now you know it never will be. This is your life, you now know it is unsustainable but your exits are obscure. 3 out of 10 comrades are quietly disappearing every year and you must take up the slack.
Its like the workers in Metropolis. How do you motivate someone who has nothing left to lose and little to gain - where a reward is just a matter of having less taken away?
Not only are these people emotionally numb but they have been trained to be immune to anything that might penetrate the numbness with butt-aching TRs. Something like this has its place in the military where soldiers must learn to deal with overwhelm and stress but this is a church that sold itself as fun and helpful. None of this was attached to that Billion Year "Agreement" as a comprehensive disclosure.
TRs evolved from a training routine to handle PC originations to a reprimand for being human "Get your TRs in!" and the culture has learned that overwhelming with screaming and cursing is still an effective method of squeezing a little more compliance out of these people and the ones who can give and take the screaming the most make the best executive material.