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I once thought that. . .

Purple Rain

Crusader

Well, I did acknowledge straight up that I thought she was intelligent and liked her sense of humour. I liked lots of her posts before she went down this path and even said, "Oh, Kate's alright," or something like that. But I still stand by what I have observed.
 

DoneDeal

Patron Meritorious
I haven't really been keeping up, but so far, I LIKE Kate!

She has a different viewpoint, and it is okay with me.

She pisses on Scientology enough for me to remain content. :confused2:

Could she be other than she appears to be . . . . . ? :unsure:

But, for now, I will accept what I see.


She, he, it rocks. I can see goofying with words to cause someone else to see what "I" can see. I've done that all the time to total fail.
Great rockers try to do that all the time. Words are fun.


Someday I'm gonna get rich! Cause I'm getting better at it. lol.

I once had a thought lrh was a good writer. Then I realized I didn't know anything about writers. And then I quit defending him.
 

Claire Swazey

Spokeshole, fence sitter
No.

I have already said, right from the start of all this, that I respected Kate's intelligence and quite liked her sense of humour. It's her honesty and evasiveness that I have issues with - but as I said then - if she's going to promote Scientology then the gloves are off because people who know nothing about Scientology also come here to learn about it and I will not let praise for it go unchallenged or presumed to be agreed with in case a journalist reads it and gets the wrong idea, or a person who is considering getting involved reads it and gets the wrong idea etc.

The truth is that life is nearly always better without Scientology. For instance, if my child was a drug addict and I was desperate I would STILL NOT send them off to Narconon. I would STILL look for a way that did not involve substituting one life-destroying practice for another. I would never knowingly sign anyone I care for up for anything they do, nor would I send them off to an independent Scientologist to do the Purif and TRs and Objectives. If I was burying them, I would not regret NOT trying "the tech" because there is such a thing as out of the frying pan and into the fire. And Scientology should come with a warning label NOT a recommendation. There is nothing useful in there that cannot be found elsewhere without all the harm.

I liked how Student of Trinity put it in that thread where Kate wanted us to agree that some of the things Hubbard said were actually true (emphasis mine):

Reading JB Writer's and HH's posts were more what prompted me to write that, really.
Kinda over the top there. Surprised to see that from JB Writer.

I do think that I don't necessarily agree with you on some of it, though. However, I don't think of that as witchhunting.

Now, Kate has said she disagrees with about 90% of the tech. Previously, when we were discussing OT stuff and spirituality the other day, I kind of had her pegged as someone who might like maybe just a few things in Scn but has a more new age slant where there's commonality in her views but not cuz she's an Indie or some other sort of Scn'ist. That's the impression I had, FWIW. And today she's saying kinda not digging 90% of it. That being the case, that would make her views more like those of some New Age and Pagan practitioners I know, perhaps.


And why or how would a, say, party line churchie or even a hard liner type FZer (there are some) be able to get away with saying they didn't like most of the tech? That would be sacrilege, I think.

Now, me, my views on Scn as ology are, for god's sake, get away from CofS. If you want to do the stuff elsewhere and afterward, so what. And on that, I'm almost directly quoting a long time critic friend of mine who's never ever been in the cult and thinks the whole entire subject is dross. Not my husband, the "juice slurper" or whatever. Take the OT levels. If there is any part of tech I really think is quite wrongheaded, this Xenu stuff would have to be it. But I would consider doing that equivalent to being an Odinist or being a 7th Day Adventist or a Satanist. Soooo not what I'd ever want to do and so very down a side path that leads nowhere (in my opinion, that is). Yet, if they wanna do it, well, as long as they don't frighten the horses, etc...It's not a problem.

I personally would like to forcefeed Ayaan Hirsi Ali's books to every fundie and even some of the moderate Moslems who don't let women drive, who arrest women for being raped, who force young women- yes, and men, too- marry people they don't know or who even just support the Fatwa aganst Salman Rushdie. I have strong reservations about so much of it. But I realized that, hey, can't make people believe or not believe things. Unindoctrination ONLY works when that person wants to participate in it. So best they get it out of their system their own way and I feel I could only make a big deal out of it if they do something illegal or flat out immoral.

Other than that? Go 'head 'long wid yo bad self.

I don't know that she's promoting Scn. Kinda hard to do if she doesn't like 90% of the "tech", right? But if she were promoting Scn, for the sake of argument, well, a lot of us are promoting some of our ideological beliefs. Because, yes, saying that there're problems with Scn beliefs and what they are (and I've been doing it, too, remember) is also a promotion of belief. It's all the same to me.
 

Claire Swazey

Spokeshole, fence sitter
Yes, it's so important to humanise Ron. We have all been making a terrible mistake by deifying him as we do with terms like Hubbard, or Hubtard, or Fatty.

Edit: I once thought that it was important to let people know that Hubbard locked little deaf mute children in chain lockers and perpetrated many other human rights abuses, but now I realise that we should just humanise LRH in case people might start to think that Ron is some kind of a god.

A good friend of mine (who is definitely no bot though does still like some of the ideas. She is often pretty scathing about Hub, tho') asked me "why do you call him Hubbard"-disapprovingly. To me, it was like, ok, like an author. The other thing, too, is J was in the armed forces for years. He loves to call other d00ds by their last name.

But the other thing is hey, Hubbard sounds cozy. Like a cupboard. To me, it never sounded that curt, cuz I kept thinking of cupboards and nice bookshelves with oodles of pulp Westerns and Sci fi stories on them.
 

Claire Swazey

Spokeshole, fence sitter
Re: Use of the Independent Scn'ist moniker

I agree, unfortunately there is not a good label that I have found :-/ I'm open to suggestions there.



The majority of my criticism of things actually comes from the things the church itself has said rather than other people or exposes. In many way it seems to me that the church is its own worst enemy.



I have noticed ;-)





That is reasonable.

The cult is its very worst enemy- definitely.

I used to be really into the labels, cuz I was trying to find out who I was. So I left the cult, and you know how into labels they are, right? So I still had that way of thinking. And I wanted to be candid with other forum contributors since they're always [STRIKE]demandin-[/STRIKE] I mean asking- what your dealio is. So I was like, hey, I'll explain I'm a non CofS Scn'ist. And I then coined the term Indie Scn'ist (which since went viral. Ah'm a legend in mah own mind, I say, boy!) and I came popping out with it a lot. Hit people over the head with it a bunch, too, though hey, if I didn't, they'd have once again [STRIKE]demande-[/STRIKE] I mean asked what what what.

Then I realized labeling needed to go bye bye. So I ditched that.

Perhaps you're a Kate-ologist, and just that. And you listen to your heart.

That is what people here are, you know. (Since the board's like 90 or 95% ex members). People who listened to their hearts.
 

HelluvaHoax!

Platinum Meritorious Sponsor with bells on
..

Reading JB Writer's and HH's posts were more what prompted me to write that, really.
Kinda over the top there. Surprised to see that from JB Writer.

--snipped--


Nobody said anything "over the top", they just said what they were thinking. And it is just kinda odd when someone picks Ex-Scientologists as the people they want to talk to about the "good part" of Hubbard's tech. LOL.

Scientology is a frightfully bad planet. For anyone clever or fortunate enough to get a safe distance from its dark gravitational forces, who then wants to go back to planet Scientology and pick some flowers---all I can say is: "Is that a theta boner in your universe or are you just VGIs to see Mankind's Greatest Friend?"

Yeah, I know, people leave in stages. But, this is 2013 and there is something called the Internet. Anyone who can get online should be able to figure out what Scientology and Hubbard are trying to do to them after a few days of reading.



 

kate8024

-deleted-
..
And it is just kinda odd when someone picks Ex-Scientologists as the people they want to talk to about the "good part" of Hubbard's tech. LOL.

I can certainly understand this sentiment, however it seems to me that site also tries to cater to independent scienologists and I am not personally aware of any other site which, in general, caters well to that group. The only good things I remember having actually said about the tech in these forums is that I find doing ruds using paulsrobot3 helpful for getting stuff off my mind prior to doing zazen meditation and that some of the creation of human ability exercises are useful for inducing trance states via mindless repetition.
 

DoneDeal

Patron Meritorious
..




Nobody said anything "over the top", they just said what they were thinking. And it is just kinda odd when someone picks Ex-Scientologists as the people they want to talk to about the "good part" of Hubbard's tech. LOL.

Scientology is a frightfully bad planet. For anyone clever or fortunate enough to get a safe distance from its dark gravitational forces, who then wants to go back to planet Scientology and pick some flowers---all I can say is: "Is that a theta boner in your pocket or are you just VGIs to see the Mankind's Greatest Friend?"

Yeah, I know, people leave in stages. But, this is 2013 and there is something called the Internet. Anyone who can get online should be able to figure out what Scientology and Hubbard are trying to do to them after a few days of reading.





Two things. Stop the fight right now....

And Include the words "I once thought that...." in front of at least one sentence in a post in this thread.

What is the problem with people not being as cool as the "regulars" in here. That's why I get in trouble so much.

Fucking scn and cults are not a joke. It cuts. i can't fucking stand any cults, not even this social one. Heck I hate cults so much I am part of a hating cults cult. I can't get away from them! Fuck.

So, let's all take it easy and kick back and listen to a ball game. <----another cult. That would have been a good one to join...billionaire ballplayers.

And no one like or none of that goofy "clicking" thing on this post.
 

HelluvaHoax!

Platinum Meritorious Sponsor with bells on
I can certainly understand this sentiment, however it seems to me that site also tries to cater to independent scienologists and I am not personally aware of any other site which, in general, caters well to that group. The only good things I remember having actually said about the tech in these forums is that I find doing ruds using paulsrobot3 helpful for getting stuff off my mind prior to doing zazen meditation and that some of the creation of human ability exercises are useful for inducing trance states via mindless repetition.


Cool. If you can find bits of Scientology you like, go for it.

But, I doubt you will find that this entire website "caters" to Indie Scientologists. Maybe there is a section or two and a small handful of people here who still use Hubbard's "tech" to some degree, but this kind of discussions are usually hermetically sealed in those "special sections" reserved for such discussions. I don't venture in those areas 'cuz having audited/trained up to a significantly high level, I find those theoretical discussions super-cringey. But you can easily find them if you look at the directory.

The only junk you are bumping into, I would guess, is trying to take such discussions outside of those "isolation" areas and into the "mainstream" population, like this thread. People on this thread typically went through a lot of Scientology wars and have the medals, scars and wisdom to prove it. And those kind of folks tend to say what's on their mind very directly. They earned that, so don't be surprised if they are sometimes brutally honest.

Maybe the war analogy is apt in another way. The view of hardened veterans who have been "in the shit" (combat soldier parlance), they don't have a starry-eyed view shared by new recruits who want to get them talking about the exciting glories of battle. For them, it was not romantic or wonderful to see such massacres up close. Don't be too surprised that they are not happy to talk about guns and shooting and combat, for they have had their fill and it was not the same as what they believed when they saw the recruitment poster and joined up.

I know you have had some months of training or auditing--it's not the same for those who have spent many long years and decades in the trenches.

I do admire your inquisitive nature and search for answers. Read on, Kate, read on!

Best,
hh

(this message not proofed, sorry, hope it is readable)
 

Rene Descartes

Gold Meritorious Patron
You must be joking. Unless you meant physical attacks. Now, there I'd agree. Never heard of any happening.

But attacking verbally? Yeah. Has happened a number of times. There's no way that could be missed.

I just wanted to make sure verybody and anybody including herself are aware of that.

Now we just have to all work on the concept that all criticism is not a verbal attack.

Not saying you are saying that. Just saying....

So that everybody and anybody including herself are aware of that.

Rd00
 

A.K. Myers

Patron with Honors
...threads that were getting TA could never get disrailed.

This thread has thoroughly disabused me of this idea.

:coolwink:
 

Claire Swazey

Spokeshole, fence sitter
I just wanted to make sure verybody and anybody including herself are aware of that.

Now we just have to all work on the concept that all criticism is not a verbal attack.

Not saying you are saying that. Just saying....

So that everybody and anybody including herself are aware of that.

Rd00

Of course not all criticism is a verbal attack. I think you know me well enough by now to know that I am aware of the difference. I do not and never have characterized criticism as a verbal attack, per se.

But there HAVE been verbal attacks. Name calling, posting of private info about the person, talking about their families, accusing them of doing things to people here. Those are attacks.
 

Claire Swazey

Spokeshole, fence sitter
Why cater or not cater to anyone? Why not view this solely as discussion re Scn, CofS, Hub, and related subjects?
 

Claire Swazey

Spokeshole, fence sitter
Re: Use of the Independent Scn'ist moniker

And also if one claims to disagree with 90% of the tech then one would expect that person's posts to reflect that level of disagreement, which they don't. People here are not stupid and they don't like being lied to. I always try and judge a post on its own merits and leave personality or affiliation out of it. I have nearly died (figuratively) defending people here considered to be Indies - to the extent that I have been accused of being a "Ron lover" myself.

I distrust and dislike the evasiveness and the fact that what is claimed is not what I observe. I'm really over that kind of cognitive dissonance, and trying to explain how it can fit and make sense. From now on I'm just calling it like I'm seeing it and if I'm wrong then I'm calling it wrong and as I have said I am quite willing to be convinced. If she behaves consistently with her stated position then I will believe her.

The reason I defended karen#1 on this board is that no matter her personal beliefs or relationship to Hubbard she NEVER came here and tried to sell it to a group that had been hurt by it to the point that they mostly rejected it. I respected her so much for that - and still do - for having that sensitivity and knowing her audience - that they were upset by Scientology for a very good reason.

Well, there are reasons that contributors may be evasive. One is that a lot of people here are posting anonymously and are concerned with letting out too much personal info. That's evasion, right? But for a good reason.

And some people's responses to really direct or somewhat aggressive commentary is to evade. Remember, nobody here owes anyone anything. People don't like being backed into corners.

That's one reason I've been accused of evasiveness a time or two (or forty) myself. Because there were times when no matter how much I tried to respond to people's queries, it was never good enough, then came publicly posted speculations about who I was and what I did, privately, and allegations, too. And I'm seeing publicly posted speculations and allegations about Kate, now, too.

I'll give you an example. On OCMB a few years ago, someone posted that he was "trying to reach" me. Kinda odd, since I was already out of CofS and said so, but there ya go. I asked the guy point blank what he meant by it. I asked several times. Each time he danced, evaded, wouldn't directly respond at all. He didn't want to answer. And sometimes people don't want to answer. And they particularly don't want to do so if they think the other person's queries are kinda coming from distrust/annoyance/dislike. They may have other reasons, but I've found that this one seems relatively common on discussion fora.

I'm curious as to what caused you to think that Kate is trying to promote or dissem in some way, as opposed to just talking about the subject and being candid about her own interests. The former is different from the latter.

And the reason I'm curious is that I've always found you to be fair minded and open to the idea that we aren't all coming from the same place, now that we're out and figuring out what we want to do, ideologically.

Finally, it's pixels on a screen. This is a discussion board and nothing more. Not everyone wants the same things and if they're candid about their perspectives, sooner or later somebody's not gonna like something (or a whole LOT of somethings) that the person's saying.
 

HelluvaHoax!

Platinum Meritorious Sponsor with bells on
...threads that were getting TA could never get disrailed.

This thread has thoroughly disabused me of this idea.

:coolwink:


LOL LOL LOL

Funny you should notice that. I was thinking along those lines when the thread just suddenly went dead silent last night after I posted a response to Kate and Claire. And I thought: "Hey, did I just kill the thread?" LOLOLOL

But then I thought: "Nahhhhhh, that didn't happen."

And then I thought: "So what DID kill the thread so suddenly?"

And then I thought: "Jeez, it sure seemed like Claire and Kate were trying to derail it a few times already, musta been them."

And then I thought: "Well, I better just keep that thought to myself."

And then I thought: "Is it as obvious as I think it is?"

And then I thought: "Well it sure seems obvious."

And then I thought: "Hey, Claire nearly derailed all by herself (before this last derail attempt) when she insisted on debating people about Jesus and Church of the Latter Day Saints and other wacky stuff."

And then I thought: "Okay Helluvahoax, you better STFU and not mention the obvious, that this thread had the two ingredients that make it worth derailing." (extremely active/growing thread and also one that exposes the lies of Scientology in an entertaining and compelling way)

And then I thought: "Hey I remember a few times when someone tried to derail the "Top 100 Stupid Moments In Scientology thread." (It was so obvious and they left so quickly when it didn't work)

And then I thought some other stuff about why someone would want to derail this thread and how they actually did it.

Or did they? LOL
 

HelluvaHoax!

Platinum Meritorious Sponsor with bells on
...


ps: It doesn't mean anything to me (personally) that this thread suddenly got derailed and went dark, because there are always other threads and no shortage of things to have fun with on ESMB.

But…….

I find it really fascinating to use this thread as a great case study on HOW/WHY some threads get targeted for derail and how people go about doing that. Really interesting, especially when it works!
 

Student of Trinity

Silver Meritorious Patron
Grammar being the masonic handshake of the intelligentsia, Kate writes like a sharp person. If she is on some kind of covert mission for Scientology, she's not going to be able to keep it up long without realizing how silly it is all by herself.

She has as much as said that she cherishes a hope that there is something real, somewhere in the general direction of some parts of Scientology; her ambition seems to be to find something that really stands up to scrutiny. That's not necessarily a healthy scientific attitude, but it's not necessarily unhealthy either. Having personal wishes about your hypotheses is a kind of bias, but experimental design that is seriously vulnerable to that kind of bias is no good, anyway. If you're careful enough, and honest enough, you can overcome your own prejudices. Otherwise science would never work, because everybody does have biases. And the hope of discovering something grand can keep your nose to the grindstone, just as the hope of striking it riches makes entrepreneurs work so hard. Not everybody makes it, but often those who do, do so because they were hopeful.

If you're hoping to find some fire somewhere under the smoke, someday, you'll probably keep chipping in little objections when people insist that there can't possibly be any fire whatever. That's not quite the same as defending Scientology, because it really may stop fighting once you allow an inch of possibility, and not just be scheming to take the full yard of acceptance. I think that's a nuance worth allowing, even though all kinds and degrees of sticking up for Scientology may be equally irritating to people with a lot of bad history behind them.
 
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