I very much enjoyed Chris and Aaron’s video. Here are a few notes/thoughts on it:
The people living around places like Big Blue in Hollywood, Flag and Saint Hill where the RPF is conducted would be horrified if they could see a video of a day in the life of an RPFer.
I suspect that when the public who live near RPF bases find out about this they tend to dismiss it because these people on some level are subjecting themselves to it when they should just leave and to a great extent that is true. But the extent and nature of coercion and mental indoctrination causing people to stay is not well understood.
The Church knows it looks bad so not only is it kept isolated from the public but it is also kept isolated from public Scientologists and other Sea Org members who live and work at the same base. Many Scientologists have no idea what it is really like. If a Scientologists wants to remain in good standing even if they route out of the Sea Org they won’t talk about it to their Scientology friends and family. Sea Org crew don’t talk about it even to each other lest they too be sent to or back to the RPF.
There is a massive amount of written policy on Scientology’s internal justice procedures, crimes and penalties, hearings, committees of evidence, judicial recourse, petitions, etc. which give staff and public Scientologists the impression that the organization tries very hard to avoid injustices. LRH written policies state harsh ethics is to be avoided and ethics are to be used on a broad gradient scale or in other words start out lightly and use measures that are only proportionate to the situation. But as Chris points out, people are routinely summarily “condemned” to the RPF for very arbitrary reasons with little to no recourse. It had been like that from the beginning.
The Sea Org is an exceptional life experience because it is an opportunity to observe organizational policy contradictions and insanity. For this reason I value my own experience though I would not wish it on anyone else and hopefully it doesn’t take long for people to see it for what it is and get out. Executive positions in the SO are insane because you are tasked with a lot of responsibility without the authority or resources to accomplish any meaningful productivity. And LRH rants against “bypassing” posts on the org board but the entire management structure operates on the basis of bypassing orgs and posts. There is a lot of irony in this. Many orgs would probably do better if left alone because they would treat the public and themselves with more compassion. After all, these people got into this out of a desire to help people but then they become crippled with upper management overwhelming them with programs and orders based on LRH policy and solutions that do nothing to help them actually succeed and whatever income can be used on what the local org recognizes as priorities is skimmed so much that we are left with the perennial jokes about the shortages and creative alternatives to a shortage of TP. So upper management sends in missions (special projects teams) to tell them what to do or to find the SP among them and this stresses people out so they leave, perform badly, and alienate the public. After a while, the only way anything gets done is when upper management bypasses because they are the only one’s with the authority to do anything and that authority is generally based on threats and fear instead of a spirit of mutual cooperation.
Chris and Aaron are correct in that the RPF is extremely inefficient. It is often said that they RPF people to maximize their labor. They get no time off, no vacation, work long hours, pay is cut in half or less, they eat left overs or cheaper food, lower grade berthing, etc. But they are supposed to do 5 hours of study or auditing a day. Even regular staff often don’t take their regular study or auditing because they are working so hard to get their stats up over the prior week before Thursday at 2:00 that by going to course they lose any chance at some free time. Getting a guaranteed 5 hours on the RPF is envious. The RPF is inefficient because it often doesn’t salvage a staff member who has inclinations to leave. It often only reinforces their determination to leave so after all that auditing and study they leave anyway. It also tears up orgs by ripping staff off post. Often the people being RPFed are people who were Peter Principled to an executive level and then failed so the RPF could have the most qualified experienced people. I’d also add that study and auditing time can and has been cancelled on the RPF when something is deemed important enough so even that isn’t certain.
The desired effect of the RPF that would offset these inefficiencies are two fold. First it serves as a “head on a pike”. This is an LRH euphemism for picking someone, anyone, and severely punishing them to set an example to the rest of the crew. One way to look at the Sea Org is that it IS the RPF and as an EPFer learning the intro courses and organizational orientation you are generally considered to be too green to be RPF material but I have seen plenty of EPFers summarily RPFed. And as a regular staff member you are basically just someone who hasn’t been RPFed…yet. So in the Sea Org there is the RPF and essentially the pre-RPF. Secondly: The RPF deflects responsibility. The Sea Org is uniquely and wholly representative of LRH’s ideal organization and culture and the best hope for mankind. All doubts, reservations, critical thinking about the Sea Org as a valid endeavor must be shifted over to the individual’s responsibility or fault. The ongoing guilt tripping is intense. Everyone must be 3 feet inside their own heads trying to figure out what they are doing wrong and 1000 hours of sec checking will do just that.
But all this can still be done without the RPF. The Sea Org goes through cycles where they ferociously enforce some aspect of LRH’s writings, experience a huge failure, back off and then try it again later. Without the RPF I’d expect the whole Sea Org to become more of a generalized RPF environment operating on fear, guilt and misdirection.
The RPF is in their DNA.