Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973
Leon, I love your posts. You always bring a beacon of light and truth to a negative view that seems to make perfect sense, and often from a different perspective.
Power certainly corrupts many people. Not all. Gradients of power so a person can get accustomed to it without losing their centre, their "self", and doesn't fall into some weird identity makes a difference.
Some people are just natural leaders, though. Lincoln. Gandhi. They fell into their positions but never lost their integrity or compassion for even the lowliest.
Power is heady, dizzying. It's a different perspective but the perspective is only one of looking down on others if there is a false identity/false relationship to self. Then the relationship to others is based on that identity. The true perspective isn't one of elevation, after all. It's one of centeredness.
Lincoln was an arrogant, unlikeable jerk until he was challenged to a duel and backed down. Changed his perspective.
Some people get it.
I like your second paragraph about gradients of power. How a person comes into power appears to be very important and coming into it on a gradient is often beneficial. Probably even more important is the person's motivation!! Are they motivated by a duty to serve their group or by self aggrandizement so that they can control the lives of others and demand adulation and homage from them? Another, factor is whether or not a potential leader's public wants them in office, i.e. are they elected or appointed or do they pull strings on the side lines and achieve power through coercion and appointing themselves.
I never heard that Lincoln was arrogant or unlikeable and have never heard that he was a "jerk". To the contrary, the man was extremely intelligent and beloved by his public. Even those who wanted to retain slavery realized that he was no "jerk". In the perspective of History, Lincoln is almost universally acknowledged as being one of our two greatest presidents, the other being Washington. An arrogant, unlikeable jerk, could you please explain how you came up with that?
I do not believe Gandhi or Lincoln "fell" into their power. Both men were duty motivated and fought hard against strong opposition in order to earn their power. Lincoln helped form a new party, the Republican party, as a platform from which he could achieve power and faced a very spirited oppostion, including a series of renown debates with Douglas. Gandhi, a man small in physical stature took on the whole of the British Empire with his intention and his will. Both these great leaders gave freedom to those whom they were serving.
In the C of S, DM was not appointed to power by his predecessor LRH, nor was he selected in by his fellow staff members. Instead, he seized power from within with an unscrupulous program to visciously eliminate any and all people who might oppose him. Now, even though his approach is not particularly commendable or ethical, he illustrated that he was capable of stealth and cunning ("street smarts"). He also illustrated the ability to bring his intention to fruition, both by achieving power and by staying in power over the decades.
The worst type of power would be exemplified by a person who reads some of Hubbard's or DM's writings and takes a little bit of Hubbard's training and processing and then uses those things to transform his previously humdrum life into a life with delusions of grandeur. He joins the Sea Org, Hubbard's supposedly "elite" team, takes on a zone of operations which he knows almost nothing about and them uses his Sea Org altitude to control people. This type of person is a fool and such fools usually enjoy humiliating and belittling the people over whom they have power.
A typical and classic case happened to me and my ex wife around 1999 when my daughter was 12 years old. Two recruiters, a male and a female, both about 18 years old were corraling our daughter after her Student Hat Course and were attempting to recruit her for the Sea Org. They were in a room with the doors closed but we could see our daughter through the windows. We knocked on the windows and yelled at the recruiters that we were there to pick up our daughter from course. The two lunatics flashed looks of disgust on their faces and motioned for us to go away. We opened the door and went in. The two psychos started yelling at us for interrupting a Sea Org recruiting cycle and threatened to write us up and have us "declared suppressive".
We got into their faces and a heated encounter took place. In the course of this encounter, the male psycho bellowed out that the Sea Org and its personnel were "Senior" to a kid's parents when it came to determining the future of their child!!! Now that statement was and is complete and total insanity and illustrates the outcome of the worst possible way for a person to attempt to achieve Power. Read something from a leader such as Hubbard, join his "elite" group and thereby appoint yourself to power.
Rather than being pure evil, it is probably pure immaturity and stupidity but the final outcome is virtually the same as an outcome attained through pure evil! This incident is what sparked me to leave C of S. The blatant insanity was so clearly obvious after what the recruiters said to us. My response was - "Sayonara baby!" I left that Org but tried another org with the same results. Then bye bye to C of S.
Lakey
