Scientology’s Ethics System
David Miscavige or anyone carrying out his whims would have us believe that Scientology’s ethics system was designed:
- To ensure we toe the line.
- To root out and expose our overts as the “obvious” cause of any concerns we have regarding Miscavige or what’s going on in Scientology today.
- To locate additional overts committed by us which cause any unwillingness to donate our money to one of Miscavige’s slush funds.
- To detect further overts committed by us which cause resistance to such things as out-tech sec checks.
- To keep us cleaned up and on the straight and narrow which is the very essence of ethics, isn’t it?
Well, all the above reasons for the design of our ethics system and a hundred others implied by Miscavige are false. I hope you are sitting down because you may be very surprised to hear that the actual purpose of our ethics system is: “to protect producers and decent people”.
In HCO PL ETHICS, THE DESIGN OF*, LRH states:
It is very easy for a staff member and even an Ethics Officer to completely misunderstand ethics and its function …
Yet in the absence of true ethics, no one can live with others and stats go down inevitably. So a justice function must exist to protect producers and decent people.
The Inversion of Ethics
Now, in my 35 years in Scientology I have found to be true what a number of media people have recently expressed to me: that the vast majority of Scientologists they have met over the years have been incredibly decent people – that the Scientology membership (staff and public) is made up of productive and honest souls.
So if that is true, and it is true, what’s with all the ethics? If the purpose of ethics is to protect producers and decent people why are the producers and decent people getting all the ethics handlings? It doesn’t make any sense because rather than protect Scientologists, ethics is used against them for anything and everything, from someone refusing to donate to the IAS to anyone expressing a valid disagreement with the status quo.
Why the inversion of ethics – why is it operating in the exact role reversal for which it was designed? And who benefits from this alteration of the ethics system? Certainly not you or I. And whose interests are served? Who is in need of protection from hard working and decent people? Well, let’s go back to the above policy letter in which LRH also says:
There are people who suppress. They are few. They often rise up to being in charge and then all things decay. They are essentially psychopathic personalities. Such want position in order to kill. Such as Genghis Khan, Hitler, psychiatrists, psychopathic criminals, want power only to destroy. Covertly or overtly they pay only with death. They arrived where they arrived, in charge of things, because nobody when they were on their way up said “NO.” They are monuments to the cowards, the reasonable people who didn’t put period to them while they were still only small bullies and still vulnerable.
Ethics has to get there before tech can occur. So when it doesn’t exist or goes out, then tech doesn’t occur and suppression sets in and death follows.
So if someone doesn’t hold the line, all become victims of oppression.
All this ethics creates a very oppressive environment. But the purpose of ethics is to prevent the formation of said oppressive environment, so ethics has been turned on its head. It now manufactures the very thing it was supposed to prevent.
Now, this ethics inversion is very evident at Flag and elsewhere in the field -- a trickle down effect from the International Base where ethics is and has been most oppressive for the longest because it’s where Miscavige reigned over his serfs like some medieval feudal lord.
Whereas ethics was meant to protect the majority from the suppressive minority, it now acts to protect, serve and support a minority of one – David Miscavige – against the majority.
And the only reason people buy into this and accept the status quo is because they swallow the false idea that Miscavige is the most decent and the greatest producer among us and so is worthy of supreme ethics protection because we all pale in comparison to him.
Now, that’s not as hard to swallow as you might think because Miscavige has worked long and hard at fostering such an image, he’s spent an awful lot of time and our money spinning the fabric of the big lie which contains many fallacious threads such as the claim that he SAVED Scientology from the bogey man; that he has been the sole cause of unprecedented expansion, that L Ron Hubbard endorsed him as the chosen one, that to get anything done Miscavige had to do EVERYTHING himself, and that he is an all around great guy while everyone else is just a bunch of “fucking cocksuckers” (his words, not mine and I have the evidence to prove it).
After seeing well in excess of a hundred illegal events where Miscavige has ruthlessly pushed these messages and other falsehoods, being decent souls, people felt it would be wrong on their part if they disagreed with Miscavige or spoke their concerns, so they didn’t and his self protection system stayed in place exposing everyone to continued abuse, bullying and oppression, and all the while only a few, too few, noticed that the whole ethics system had been turned on its head.
The End of a Bully
The simple facts are that Miscavige has never been anything but a liar and a bully. He gained power by bullying the CO CMO Int out of her post in the early days, used bullying tactics and lies to see off any (more legitimate) rivals and grab full control of Scientology and has used the same means to maintain his position. And his main weapon, his key tool for all this was OUR ethics system.
But just because he has reigned for nearly 25 years does not make Miscavige’s rule legitimate or right, nor does it make his lies true. Just because something has gone on for a long time and we have lived with it or endured it does not give it any special credence or legitimacy. It simply means that some people will tend to resist acceptance of the truth because it will make them feel wrong if they now have to admit they’ve swallowed a bucket full of lies all these years.
Well, it’s time to get over such obstacles because this bully’s reign is at an end. Too many people have been hurt by Miscavige and his inversion of the ethics system and people are still being damaged. Under his perversion many decent people, who deserved better, have been labeled “undeserving” of even basic necessities and human rights, deprived of the right to bear children or receive pay or proper health care. Many have been cast out bereft of family and friends. Miscavige has caused the financial ruin of many of us and the deterioration of people’s health and even death. And as a great many Sea Org members are now approaching old age many more will die, deprived of care and the dignity they deserve after dedicating so many years of the lives in the selfless service of others.
The bullying ends now.
How do you end a bully’s dominance? Let’s go back to HCO PL ETHICS, THE DESIGN OF, in which LRH states:
To give you an example: When a little boy this life, the neighborhood a block around and the road from home to school were unusable. A bully about five years older than I, named Leon Brown, exerted a very bad influence over other children. With extortion by violence and blackmail and with corruption, he made the area very dangerous. The road to school was blocked by the five O’Connell kids, ranging from seven to fifteen, who stopped and beat up any smaller child. One couldn’t go to school safely and was hounded by the truant officer, a hulking brute complete with a star, if one didn’t go to school.
When I was about six, I got very tired of a bloody nose and spankings because my clothes were torn and avidly learned “lumberjack fighting,” a crude form of judo, from my grandfather.
With this “superior tech” under my belt, I searched out and found alone the youngest O’Connell kid, a year older than I, and pulverized him. Then I found alone and took on the next in size and pulverized him. After that, the O’Connell kids, all five, fled each time I showed up and the road to school was open and I convoyed other little kids so it was safe.
Then one day I got up on a nine-foot-high board fence and waited until the twelve-year-old bully passed by and leaped off on him, boots and all, and after the dust settled that neighborhood was safe for every kid in it.
So I learned about justice. Kids would come from blocks away to get help in their neighborhood. Finally, for a mile around, it was a safe environment for kids.
We’re tired of being messed with, abused, spat upon, beaten and tortured. We’re fed up with having our money taken, our friends hurt or ruined, of being exposed to out-tech and oppressive bullying ethics that perpetrates extortions and supports only Genghis Khan who enriches himself while Scientology crumbles. So my friends and I are busy, busy strapping on boots and finding those nine-foot-high board fences. And I feel very relieved and thank god my friends are on OUR side because let me tell you, they are extremely tough guys and gals and have awfully big boots.
And yes, most of the nine-foot-high board fences we are using are outside Scientology. But remember most of the nine-foot-high board fences WITHIN Scientology are manned by Miscavige’s own bully boys (OSA and others) and are used solely for coming down hard on our own people. Besides, the outside world is full of decent people too, all willing to help. Any idea to the contrary is just a lie spun by the bully himself to increase the feeling of oppression and give us the idea we have nowhere to go, no choice but to accept his extortionate terms. Well, those days have passed; ethics is now going to be used as LRH intended it, to protect the decent people, the producers.
But the one remaining board fence available within Scientology is the biggest and highest of all – it’s made up of YOU, all of you. We want your help. A bully only keeps bullying if people don’t stand up to them. Once people take a stand the bully runs for the hills. Scientology needs to become free again, the more people who take a stand now the faster it will occur.
There will be no penalty from Independent Scientologists if you don’t help, if you just sit this out (those oppressive days are over), but when the dust finally settles we’d like to see that you stood shoulder to shoulder with us, just the same.
Written by Haydn James (a.k.a. T Paine)
* HCO PL ETHICS, THE DESIGN OF, page 250 in the latest version of the Introduction to Scientology Ethics, Page 233 in the earlier version, also in OEC Volume 1.
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