Anderson Cooper - Kind vs. Cruel | | Print | |
Tuesday, 30 March 2010 10:52 |
CRUEL TO BE KIND? I DON'T THINK SOI just watched the first of the Anderson Cooper 360 series on Scientology, and the response of the Int staff to Anderson's questions made me recall quite vividly why I'm no longer in the Sea Org. It's a very hostile environment, where the only way to survive is to become just as hostile.When I was at Int in a position of seniority, I was continually berated by those above me for not being mean enough to my staff. I was slapped in the face once because I wouldn't scream at a staff member for not doing a good enough job. It got to the point where I had to do ethics conditions on the fact that I was being "too nice" to my staff. So I started screaming at staff, berating staff and generally going along with the flow in order to survive. But I was a very unhappy person, even though I was supposed to be one of the happiest people on Earth. Eventually it got to the point where I couldn't take it anymore and I left. I thought I was taking the weakling's way out at the time, but in retrospect, I realize it's one of the times I was at my strongest. When I got out of the SO, and started working in another environment, I was shocked to see how pleasant people were to one another. I mean, how did they get anything done? It took me at least two years to get out of that earlier mindset. Any time an employee was late for work, or did something incorrectly, I'd be very harsh on them. I never even realized it.. And I only snapped out of it when one of the people who worked for me did something that got me so upset I actually screamed at her. She looked at me with terror in her eyes, and my boss pulled me into her office to find out what could have been so horrible to have made me "snap" like that. I cried a lot that day, and for a few days afterwards. Then suddenly it was gone. I was free of it. And I've not had a mean moment since. That's why you see what you see with Jenny Linson, Norman Starkey et al when they are responding to Anderson Cooper's questions: They are conditioned to be hostile and cruel. That's the way it is up there. Yet, when you read the following essay on Kindness taken from the works of L. Ron Hubbard, it goes directly against everything that they are portraying. I believe (not totally certain) that this was compiled from a lecture he gave on this subject, which I listened to on one of the many administrative courses I took while at Int. And I think it bears repeating in full, given what we're seeing right now from the management of organized Scientology: There’s hardly one of us who hasn’t asked himself the question, “Isn’t it better to be mean?” Almost every one of us has had the feeling that we were a bit soft. We didn’t like flying into the teeth of some human being and making him or her feel bad. We’ve told ourselves, “We ought to be tougher. We ought to put up a better front; we ought to know when to snarl, know when to show the sharpened tooth.” And probably we have walked away occasionally after we’ve loaned somebody five dollars or something of the sort and said, “When am I going to learn to be tough? When am I going to learn to be hard-boiled and just stand right up to that little kid and say ‘No!’ When am I going to learn this?” Written by Scarlet Pumpernickel |