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Notes -
This weekend, I became obsessed with the question of whether Scientology chief David Miscavige (who grew up in Scientology and took over upon Hubbard’s death in 1987) actually believes in the mythos. If I have time, I’ll write a moderate effort-post, but I’m curious since I know there are other scientology nerds here (it is one of the oldest ‘very online’ hobbyist topics, after all), what do you think?
I wouldn't say I'm a nerd about it, but I read through operation clambake and a lot of the other online resources years ago. The "church" as it currently exists is fairly depressing, but I find the accounts of Hubbard's early life much more interesting. His apparent ability to either con his way past peoples' defenses or else select those without defenses is remarkable, and that paired with Tex's thesis of the Christmas Effect, combined with problems like the Replication Crisis, is something it seems to me more people should be paying attention to.
Any explanation of the Christmas Effect that's faster than 1.5 hours?
Some people can lie on a scale that beggars all belief, with very serious and very obvious consequences, and get away with it in ways that seem completely inexplicable.
Dr. Christmas wanted to be a titan of aviation. He designed a plane that he claimed would be vastly superior to anything else flying. He had no actual idea how to properly design a plane, but he talked his way into control of considerable financial and material resources sufficient to build his plane, and then send it up with a human pilot for a test flight. It immediately crashed and killed the pilot, in the process destroying a scarce airplane engine loaned to him by the government explicitly and exclusively for ground tests. All this happened very publicly, under the auspices of a major airplane manufacturer, and he simply lied about it to the press, who believed him unquestioningly. He continued lying until he'd amassed enough resources to build another plane, which likewise immediately crashed and killed its pilot. This again happened very publicly, but he again simply lied a lot, often to the press, and escaped all consequences. He learned nothing, and continued pushing shitty airplane ideas for the rest of his life, while being lauded as a sort of hipster pioneer of exciting aeronautics ideas in the press and the public. He testified to congress about how his planes were the best planes in the world, and all the other planes the US was buying were garbage by comparison.
He never suffered significant consequences, and the truth never caught up with him.
The Christmas Effect, as I understand it, is the way in which our protective social systems don't actually work all that well, allowing dedicated liars to do absolutely absurd things as long as they lie the right way. People here are doubtless familiar with Mitnick and Abagnale, but those guys were small time. With a resume consisting primarily of swindling old widows, L. Ron. Hubbard talked his way into no-shit command of a literal US Navy warship, in wartime, via one flight where he ended up sitting next to a senior federal politician. That's a bit beyond scamming checks or plane tickets.
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I've read a few books about Scientology, including Beyond Belief, by David Miscavage's niece. She doesn't seem to have been close to her uncle, but she grew up in the church and says that nowadays, most die-hard Scientologists are those who, like her, grew up as children of Scientologists and have had little exposure to the world outside the Scientology bubble.
The degree to which high-ranking believers really believe in everything the church teaches is certainly an interesting question. Tom Cruise, when he reached level "Operating Thetan" or whatever and was told the secret Scientology history of the universe, including all the stuff about thetans and Galactic Overlord Xenu, reportedly said "What is this sci-fi bullshit?" And yet he stayed.
Scientology's biggest problem, and the reason recruitment has plummeted since their peak in the 90s, is the Internet. With ex-Scientologists putting all the Xenu nonsense online for everyone to see, it's pretty hard to get a full buy-in from newbies who won't go Google it and say "What is this sci-fi bullshit?"
Personal anecdote: I visited a Scientology center once, out of curiosity, and took their personality test. They were very nice and polite, and of course tried to get me to sign up for some of "Mr. Hubbard's" courses. I asked the Scientology lady about Xenu. She politely deflected in a way that made it obvious they were used to people off the street asking them about the crazy shit. I figured my skepticism must have been apparent because they didn't try a hard sell, but I got a letter three years later asking if I would like to come down for another "assessment."
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Miscavige strikes me as someone with full-blown narcissistic personality disorder. And narcissists don't think like non-narcissists. They really don't care about objective truth. Words are merely a means to an end. They're tools or weapons, like teeth and claws. Used to manipulate their environment in order to get what they want: narcissistic supply. They'll tell a useful lie and then instantaneously believe it. It's more convincing if it's believed.
"Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia."
There's no inner core. They're predators running on subconscious protocols/impulses.
Think of narcissists as solipsistic alien hiveminds. You are merely an extension of them. A conduit of their psyche. The leg does what the brain says. That's why when Jim Jones decides it's time for him to commit suicide, it's everyone's time to commit suicide. Cult leaders and family annihilators have the same thought patterns.
I'm rambling, but I would say he doesn't think like you or me in the same way that spiders don't think like you or me. His beliefs are useful delusions. He doesn't believe in the mythos in the same way that I believe the Sun rises in the East and sets in the West.
EDIT: Whatever is useful in the moment, he believes. They're amorphous.
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I sometimes wonder if the Pope actually believes in the mythos. Not at the level of "yes, God exists and wants us to be good, but everything else about the doctrine is waves hands", but at the level of creed: "of course God is triunite, of course Jesus was true man and true God in one person, of course the Holy Ghost proceeds from both the Father and the Son, of course it's the blood and body of Jesus that we use for the Eucharist" etc.
I'd expect many have. In recent history, I know Ratzinger, at least, wrote a lot on theology.
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Yeah.
I don't really know enough about Catholicism to say, but I assume that that advancement of clergy to higher positions doesn't directly select for who seemingly believes the hardest in the doctrine. I mean, those who genuinely lose faith are probably going to self-select out, but someone who doesn't really have a deeply-held belief in the truth of the Bible could still be a loyal cleric simply because they see the church and its' teaching as an overall net good in the world that should be maintained. Or because they personally gain from it.
And that element of belief also seems like the easiest part to fake?
I mean, assume that you commit to the cloth out of a true belief in the divinity of Jesus, the supremacy of the Pope et al., but after many years you simply do not observe the evidence that would support the churches' teaching about God (I do not make a comment on whether he exists or not, here), and see the churches' failures up close. Do you continue to present yourself as a believer on the basis of simple inertia, do you double down on your faith, or do you decide to simply 'game the system' and see how far you can get?
The whole thing about martyrs is that they demonstrated their ultimate belief by maintaining it in the face of the most serious oppression and sanctions which tends to make it quite obvious that they were acting on a true belief that held serious meaning to them. We don't see many martyrs for Christianity these days.
So returning to the topic, I also would guess that Scientology does NOT select for 'true believers' in terms of who gets leadership positions, and the whole thing seems even more prone to abuse than most other mainstream religions, so I would absolutely bet in favor of Miscavige being a fairly convincing charlatan, if you were to stick him in a high-resolution brain scanning device and probe the nature of his actual vs. stated beliefs.
If you did that I'd be exceedingly concerned because we don't believe the Pope is divine 😁 Might I suggest you go next door where they're offering free personality tests and clearing sessions?
Think I mixed that up with Papal infallibility.
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We don't see them in the West much because it's rare for people to kill Christians qua Christians these days. Not that it never happens, but it's rare. In other places, such as several Muslim majority countries or anti-religious authoritarian countries like China and North Korea martyrs are still quite common.
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I know this is a tangent, but the selection of senior clergy in the Catholic Church is interesting because it doesn’t work quite the way you expect. Future bishops are selected before the end of seminary(by grades and connections) and early assignments(right out of seminary; priests marked out as potential bishops spend decades building their resumes, largely with experiences that they themselves don’t pick) determine a lot of the career progression. Becoming a bishop is also a major, further commitment that lots of priests decide they don’t want to make after doing their several decades of necessary experience and further degrees.
There certainly are ambitious career climbers in the upper clergy(and the current pope wasn’t one of these as an archbishop), but these guys knew by the age of, say, 25 that they had a good chance of hitting very senior positions and they’re in their sixties now- and at each step of the process they knew what the next step would be. And the evidence suggests that while less than 100% of them believe in 100% of catholic doctrine, the ones who lose their faith entirely usually leave the clergy- with the archbishop of Paris being the most recent example here. Remember that highly intelligent(nearly all RCC bishops have graduate degrees) senior citizens are a carefully selected population.
Interesting. It sounds like the Vatican is looking for a set of factors which contribute to the long-term success of the church.
Considering the history of the Catholic Church, making sure the well connected yes men are actually competent is understandably a priority.
Moreover, the other big fact of Catholic Church internal politics is really, really long terms of service. It just makes sense to filter in potential candidates for authority positions ahead of time when you have decades long terms of service whose ends can be predicted to within a few years(all senior clergymen submit their resignations at 75 but Vatican bureaucrats processing them act with typical Italian inefficiency).
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