The Virtue of Selfishness
I'm making the comment below based on a post by Synthia tonight on another thread. I put it here because I didn't want to distract the Debbie Cook thread the post appeared in.
Can't say I can argue with you here. I really need to examine how I feel about all of this exactly.
Just because I am against the cult doesn't mean I am for efforts to reform it. I just absolutely hate to watch the church getting away with its thuggery but, is it really capable of becoming a kinder, gentler organization as long as it runs off LRH's policies where an enemy was seen around every corner?
Truth is, if someone came and asked me for a donation to the C of S, I would tell them to go jump in a lake.
My husband worked for 25 years straight for the church, during his most formative years where he should have been building a better future. His average W-2 over the 25 years was $6,000/year. That's $115.00 per week before taxes and he had to pay for his own rent, food, clothes, etc. which SO members don't have to pay. In addition, no one was cooking his food and doing his dishes, grocery shopping, laundry, etc.
I'm sure he had less disposable income than Debbie or any other SO member. He gave them 25 years of full-time service 9 am-10:30 pm most of those years. He got NOTHING when he left, not even a thank you.
Still, I think I'm going to help Debbie but, I am done wrapping my life and my attention around this atrocious cult. Both my husband and I have a lot of time to make up. So, even though I am still going to contribute to this motion, I am not going to get all wound up in it.
Back in the summer of 1965, when I was 14, in the general store in Camp Curry in Yosemite Valley, I found a little paperback book,
The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand. I was already on board Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley, Jr.'s political train. Ayn Rand was a welcome addition to my reading material. What she had to say resonated very deeply with me.
If you're on an airplane and the oxygen masks come down. They tell you to put yours on FIRST. Then help someone else.
If you have a job to do, it's probably a better idea to get it done first before you go to a movie.
Back in the early 1970s, when I was single I worked in Scientology for $80 - 100 a week.
When it was my own Scientology center, I plowed the money back in and didn't take more than $50 a week, but I had a day job that paid $25 an hour. I took care of
me first. I bought a house, I fixed it up. Wallpaper, wiring, insulation, trees, flowers - none of those things come free.
When my wife and I got together, it was summer heading into fall. She was married to a guy, who ran a Scientology center. One week after we went on a date, we moved in together. She took the kids, four boys aged 3 through 14. School was starting, I took the boys out to Macy*s and bought them "back to school" clothing. It was close to $500 in one shopping expedition.
Somehow (go figure), because I was disaffected from Scientology, money stopped flowing from the kids' dad.It stopped dead in the tracks, (and never restarted flowing, even when he left the Co$, 3 or 4 years later).
They were being raised by an auditor, a briefing course grad, (me) who didn't buy the juju anymore. And... the kids' momma, my girl friend, a Class Vlll, was also not feeling warm and fuzzy about the church trying to shake her down for 10% of her school's gross income. She had, and still has, a K-12 private school that she started, ran, and now is only chairman of the board. I think our united, tho unstated, opinion of the Co$, was "fuck 'em."
Money is the mothers' milk of families. In short order, we had kids in ballet, gymnastics, soccer, musical theater. Singing lessons, acting lessons, sports - all cost money. Food costs money. We used to go to Safeway (in the 70s) every Sunday, and fill two shopping carts. We never got out of there for less than $250. Five kids eat. Usually their friends ate too. One winter, I gathered fallen trees, and cut them up with my chain saw, then split them with a wedge and a sledgehammer. It was cheap heat.
Even when we were poor as church mice, during the recession around 1980, we managed to take the kids on a train trip across the country from San Jose to Washington, D.C, and back through Chicago, and then the Empire Builder across Montana to Seattle and then down the west coast to San Jose and home.
It radically disturbs me that the "church" that I helped build became so money hungry and depraved. I find it so upsetting just reading what Synthia wrote above about her husband's wages, that I just want to DESTROY that lying, greedy, monolithic black hole.
It really makes me angry.
As Dolly Levy (in
Hello Dolly) said, "Money is like fertilizer, it isn't worth anything, until it's put to use encouraging young things to grow." (I paraphrased, I don't remember exactly)
Money buys security. if you're reading this, and you work for Scientology, please walk out the door now. Quit. get a real job. Get a life. Have some kids. Buy a house, See the world. Get out. Get out now!
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