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What If We Lost LRH & Marcus Aurelius?

F

fisherman

Patron with Honors
What if we lost Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations" and all of LRH's writings in a shipwreck? Would it really matter? Is it really so important to defend "the tech" when nearly all of it is a duplication of something of equal merit?

There are countless wisdoms that have been lost to us over time that are almost certainly represented in other human endeavors. Cross cultural duplication may be nature's way of preserving human morals.

We wouldn't stop condemning murder, just because someone misplaced the Ten Commandments. Half the world follows eastern religious teachings I'll probably never know. I don't doubt their wisdom or veracity. If they've existed over any length of time, I'd be nearly certain these religions generally reflect the universal values I cherish. Sure they're are exceptions, but...

As much as I might believe that my accepted religion is the theologically "true religion" -- I couldn't deny that other religions share identical fundamental beliefs. Maybe 92% or 64.5% or 81.3%. At what point does this really make a difference.

So why would anyone defend LRH "tech" more vociferously than they would defend Marcus Aurelius? I've seen very few passionate defenses of Marcus Aurelius on ESMB and no one who wants to preserve "Meditations" as the foundation of their religion.

Why Marcus Aurelius? Because Aurelius offers a systematic wisdom more profound than Hubbard's and yet, if we lost "Meditations" the world would not be shaken from it's foundations.

Put this another way. Suppose a ship carrying the only copies of "LRH tech" and Aurelius' "Meditations" sank to a ledge over the San Andreas fault. There's only time to retrieve one author's work before the ships slides to unreachable depths. Lives will be put at risk saving even one of these treasured archives.

What would you do? Aurelius isn't the only source of stoic truth. "LRH-tech" isn't the only source of wisdom concerning past lives, the subconscious mind, or "Management by Objectives." Do you risk the divers' lives to save even one of these authors' works? Is it really worth it?

Since 2007 I've seen countless defenses of "the tech" coming from ex-scientologists, semi-scientologists, non-scientologists, FZ-scientologists, Marty-scientologists -- all using similar language:

"Some of the tech is good." "The tech is workable." "There's things I like in the tech."

O.K. -- some of the "tech" is workable. Is any of it worth arguing over? Is it worth dying for? Will the world shake on it's foundations if "the tech" falls into the abyss of history? Any more than if we lost Marcus Aurelius?

It may be the nature of message boards to defend things over-passionately, but the ardent defenses of "the tech" always leave me confused. "Parts of the tech are valid!" -- O.K. they are. Now what?

fisherman
 
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uniquemand

uniquemand

Unbeliever
It's not a concern, at all. What is valuable in Hubbard's "tech" was largely plagiarized from other works, and what wasn't was largely done by others in Hubbard's employ, rather than Hubbard himself, though he stamped his name on it. Subsequently, there have been dozens if not hundreds of people who have reformulated the work without the abusive systems, and you can take your pick of them, they are scattered all over the web.

Scientology is an anachronism.
 
L

Lamb

Patron with Honors
Marcus' words make much more sense to me than LRH's. The world would not end if either were lost, but I would mourn Marcus' and laugh over LRH's.
 
Freeminds

Freeminds

Bitter defrocked apostate
The 'tech' isn't just the words of L Ron Hubbard. In fact, considered on their own, the words look buffoonish and ridiculous. Dianetics never was successfully encapsulated in a book, and I'm sure that one of the reasons it doesn't make the grade in the modern world is because the environment in which it was meant to operate doesn't exist anymore.

In that sense, LRH is already lost. Without his cheeky, knowing twinkle and shameless flummery, Scientology doesn't work properly. David Miscavige hasn't been able to make it work by fear; all he's achieved is to make it hard to talk about why it doesn't work.

Dianetics and Scientology were a product for the 1950s. They were relevant in a world of UFO scares, Elvis Presely, worrying about The Bomb, films like The Day the Earth Stood Still, getting excited about breaking the sound barrier, buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright and machines by Raymond Loewy. Drive-in movies and roadside diners. Cute! Quaint!

That world has largely been superseded, confined to museums, swept away or allowed to change. Scientology can't change, so it becomes extinct instead.

As an episode in human history, it will be interesting to see if it survives to be considered by scholars in the future, as the work of Marcus Aurelius has. The difficulty isn't in the long, long term... that which is very old gets preserved. The question is what happens in the first couple of generations after something loses its relevance. While there are a lot more libraries and repositories nowadays, there are also vastly more to record.

I suspect that much of the materials of Scientology will survive to go on file, but that they will be very, very obscure. There are far more interesting things to read about the late 20th century, after all. A key year will be 2061, when copyright expires on Hubbard's works. At that point, even if it has survived, the 'RTC' will cease to have anything to exercise guardianship over.

And you know, I strongly suspect that all indexing and cross-referencing done thereafter will lump the entheta and the 'source' in the same category. The writings of L Ron Hubbard will rest uneasily, in obscurity, cheek-by-jowl with the memoirs of Scientology's victims, the writings of squirrels, and the critique of protesters.

And a thousand times more people will know the work of Marcus Aurelius, than will recall anything about Tilden, Nebraska's most infamous son.
 
S

Student of Trinity

Silver Meritorious Patron
This is an interesting slant on an issue that struck me when I first started reading here. I tried to distinguish 'hard' and 'soft' forms of Scientology, such that the hard version makes strong claims about OT superpowers, and the soft version doesn't. My conclusion was that the hard version was obviously false, simply because if there were any truth to it, we would have seen proof by now.

The soft version makes much more modest claims for what Scientology can do, and this seems much more plausible and defensible. But it also seems much less worth bothering about: 'soft' Scientology is just one among very many comparably worthy practices, and if it were somehow to disappear entirely, it wouldn't really be missed.

Hard Scientology is another matter. If it were somehow true, it would certainly be worth risking lives to save it from the deep. Of course it isn't true, and most independent Scientologists seem to admit that. But I still wonder whether it may not be easier to give up hard Scientology's explicit claims, than to give up its aura of mighty mystery. And I wonder whether the value of soft Scientology is exaggerated because of this lingering reputation of greater things.
 
FlyingMyMonkey

FlyingMyMonkey

Patron
fisherman said:
What if we lost Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations" and all of LRH's writings in a shipwreck? Would it really matter? Is it really so important to defend "the tech" when nearly all of it is a duplication of something of equal merit?

There are countless wisdoms that have been lost to us over time that are almost certainly represented in other human endeavors. Cross cultural duplication may be nature's way of preserving human morals.

We wouldn't stop condemning murder, just because someone misplaced the Ten Commandments. Half the world follows eastern religious teachings I'll probably never know. I don't doubt their wisdom or veracity. If they've existed over any length of time, I'd be nearly certain these religions generally reflect the universal values I cherish. Sure they're are exceptions, but...

As much as I might believe that my accepted religion is the theologically "true religion" -- I couldn't deny that other religions share identical fundamental beliefs. Maybe 92% or 64.5% or 81.3%. At what point does this really make a difference.

So why would anyone defend LRH "tech" more vociferously than they would defend Marcus Aurelius? I've seen very few passionate defenses of Marcus Aurelius on ESMB and no one who wants to preserve "Meditations" as the foundation of their religion.

Why Marcus Aurelius? Because Aurelius offers a systematic wisdom more profound than Hubbard's and yet, if we lost "Meditations" the world would not be shaken from it's foundations.

Put this another way. Suppose a ship carrying the only copies of "LRH tech" and Aurelius' "Meditations" sank to a ledge over the San Andreas fault. There's only time to retrieve one author's work before the ships slides to unreachable depths. Lives will be put at risk saving even one of these treasured archives.

What would you do? Aurelius isn't the only source of stoic truth. "LRH-tech" isn't the only source of wisdom concerning past lives, the subconscious mind, or "Management by Objectives." Do you risk the divers' lives to save even one of these authors' works? Is it really worth it?

Since 2007 I've seen countless defenses of "the tech" coming from ex-scientologists, semi-scientologists, non-scientologists, FZ-scientologists, Marty-scientologists -- all using similar language:

"Some of the tech is good." "The tech is workable." "There's things I like in the tech."

O.K. -- some of the "tech" is workable. Is any of it worth arguing over? Is it worth dying for? Will the world shake on it's foundations if "the tech" falls into the abyss of history? Any more than if we lost Marcus Aurelius?

It may be the nature of message boards to defend things over-passionately, but the ardent defenses of "the tech" always leave me confused. "Parts of the tech are valid!" -- O.K. they are. Now what?

fisherman
Click to expand...

All fair questions, but the underlying question is: Why does anyone search in the first place?

Common sense coupled with a well-rounded (and continous) education usually voids these kinds of rainbow chasing adventures. Look at it outside the realm of philosophy, therapy and religion: Bernie Madoff investors, for example. They ignored intuitive common sense and either avoided investment guidelines or if they knew, ignored that too.

What were they searching for? Eternal material security, for themselves and their heirs. What are sci's searching for? Eternal spiritual security.

I have since learned the secret to security from several 4-year old "guru's" who told me, in essence:

"Do the right thing, learn your ABC's, do your chores, and do what makes you happy."

The only dough it cost me to obtain this worldy wisdom was baking a few dozen chocolate chip cookies. Corny pun, but true.
 
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