Ron didn't make me do it. Nor did the Church. I did.
Are you forgetting the incredible amount of "pressure" exerted by the Church, in the way of per policy staff and public behaviors, towards other staff and public?
Scientology is that subject that teaches and forces the horrendously strong application of ideas like dedication, persistance, Tone 40, 8C, HARD SELL (very hard sell), no back off, never giving up, pushing, pushing and more pushing until the environment conforms to ones will.
Those same pressures are constantly exerted on and against staff and public. I, again, will have to disagree with you.
Example:
A man stands with a gun pointing at your head, and tells you that if you don't cut off your right thumb, that he will order his friend to execute your daughter. While it IS true, when all is said and done, that it will be YOU who chooses, decides and takes resonsibility to cut off the thumb, there is a bit more involved than "ONLY I DID IT"! There is more going on than isolated units of personal repsonsibility (examining people as entriely unrelated separate units, as opposed to taking a more holistic and organic view).
You and Baker push this to an absurd extreme.
It IS true that a person, for any action to occur, must direct the body and make it act. Of course, in some severe and extreme way,
in a world without influences, the person might be thought of as being "the captain of his ship". But, IDEAS often contain the seeds that define and describe the ACTIONS
any person will take once any person accepts the idea - and there are many cases, from modern advertising, to cult manipulation and control, like in Scientology, where people act on what they come to believe following great amounts of carefully planned psychological pressure and external influence.
Now, someone can say, while sticking their chest out, that "all people are basically responsible for what they accept and do". Huffing and puffing like some right-wing rugged-individual type. THEORETICALLY, that is correct. But, having it be some theoretical fact that people are responsible for their actions is far different from intelligent & aware people
TAKING resonsibility for the ideas he or she accepts, and for the actions that follow.
IN FACT, most people are not at all aware of "accepting ideas". To most people it is NOT even a choice. People just come to believe what they do and will, often due to aggressive forces in the environment aiming and acting to GET YOU to accept and act on some idea or set of ideas. The dynamics of all that remains unconscious to most people. Most are NOT aware of the many strings pulling them in many different directions. In a perfect world with perfectly aware intelligent people, MAYBE the idea of "personal responsibility" might begin to have
anything to do with REALITY.
I can guarantee that pretty much everyone reading this simply believes what each does out of some natural evolution of notions for each person. It might be a grand IDEAL that each person is "responsible" for the ideas he or accepts, but it is just that - an ideal. That is NOT the way it is in nature - meaning the way it happens to real people in involvement with a real world.
Also, one needs to pull back and view the larger picture, where the person and the envionment function as an organic whole, that only APPEARS as separate things, with separate motivations, when one gets up too close and introverts on arbitrary aspects of the detailed thing.
There is a Yin and Yang here, and the two cannot be separated.
Yin: There is a
person with a mind. A person with a mind can create and entertain "ideas". The truth of falsity of the idea is irrelevant when noticing ONLY that a person does do this - creates and entertains ideas.
Yang: The
idea contains a "model", or "seed", or "pattern", or "blueprint" for all sorts of attitudes, thoughts, views, biases, and ACTIONS for ANY person who accepts and thinks with the "idea". The IDEA does have a "sort" of existance of its own, even though granted, yes, it can ONLY exist in the mind of a sentient being. But also, an idea can be written down on paper, or recorded in words, and remain entirely dormant, yet INTACT and posssessing all the power it can have, ONCE any person contacts and thinks with the idea.
BOTH factors are key.
Yes, a person SHOULD be made aware that he or she alone is entirely responsible for accepting and acting upon any IDEA. In the end, the idea is irrelevant.
But also, the person would never even think to act in certain ways if he or she hadn't be approached with the idea, fed the idea, indoctrinated with the idea, force fed the idea, given mass amounts of admiration for agreeing with the idea, and so forth.
There is no human world without IDEAS.
And, ideas have no power at all until accepted and entertained by some person.
Saying that an idea is "bad" simply means that the blueprint for "bad behavior" exists in the details of the significance of the idea itself. Describing something as a "bad idea" is slang, and can have different meanings.
As far as Scientology goes there are plenty of ideas, that when acted upon result in "bad behavior". The potential for this bad behavior is contained IN THE IDEA. Of course, this won't happen until some person entertains the idea and acts upon it in some way. This is easy to understand in Scientology because the ideas are so clearly spelled out in policies and tapes.
The concept of forced disconnection exists AS AN IDEA. As an idea it has the potential to almost ALWAYS have negative results when applied. In that regard the IDEA itself contains the potential for "bad" or "harm". And when any Church member accepts, think with and applies the idea, then harm often follows.
The same with many other ideas of Hubbard's, that are EXACTLY spelled out, like KSW, hard sell, control the public onto services, take as much money as possible, destroy all enemies, lying is entirely acceptable, etc.
As long as the details of the idea exists on paper, on tape, or in some person's mind, the "idea" exists. But, an idea can
die, when and if all copies of it are destroyed, and any person with the slightest notion of the idea is eradicated. That is why dictators like to burn all the books containing any sort of criticism or competition, and to murder everybody who thinks such things. If an idea no longer exists in any
dormant form, on paper, on tape, on a video, or on a CD, and is not being
considered by ANY human being, then the IDEA is effectively DEAD.
IN a very real way, IDEAS do have an existance of their own. They are born, they survive, they decay and they die. IDEAS undergo the cycle of action. Just like the world around you, an IDEA
only has meaning or value if you BREATHE LIFE into some aspect of it. An idea is no different than ANY other relationship you have with something "out there". Of course, in the end, it is YOU that must bring life to the idea, by entertaining it, just as it is YOU who bring life to a relationship with your spouse, with your children, with your job, or with anything else. Just as you would with any aspect of some Dynamic!
In Scio-terms, IDEAS exist as a part of the seventh dynamic. While IDEAS may be largely "invisible" aspects of existance, just as are most things of the seventh dynamic, they do cause MANY REAL effects in the physical realm. In fact a GREAT DEAL of the dramas of life for humanity are due to some person or group of people accepting and choosing to act in conformity with some IDEA or set of IDEAS. Man is often "idea-driven". Any person following some ideology is a good example of THAT.
Ideas DO exist. They do have power. In a very real sense, they "influence" the person who accepts the idea(s).
There are TWO sides to this coin, and BOTH sides must be considered. The truth is not one or the alone, but both together, in a dynamic relationship between any
person and some
idea.
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