In the 90s I joined an organization called Re-evaluation Counseling that was directly inspired by Scientology. I was in it for only a few years. At the time, I would have sworn also, like Burroughs, that "it works". It offered a clear, simple theory that explained everything confusing about people and society. And these cults do "work", but only in the context of the cult itself. Outside of that context, your ideas and behavior are strange. I eventually left because the leaders of the organization didn't particularly have their lives in order the way I would expect if "it works". Everyone seemed to be headed toward more odd, not more composed and together. Also, like Scientology, criticizing the leadership could get you in trouble.

I think RC sessions can be great. The theory is imo unverifiable, but some of the direct work is pretty awesome. The clear anti-racist and anti-oppression stand of the org is admirable.

The implementation, leadership etc are somewhat questionable on individual basis.

Wondering, where can I read more about the connection to Scientology?

RC's Wiktionary article dryly talks about it in the "Criticism" section.

But if you really want to be deprogrammed, seek out the testimony of passionate ex-RC people. I only allowed myself to look when I was done.

E.g. Jackins would do these weird-assed "sessions on sex" with young women, and when the Minnesota RC community insisted there be a reckoning about it, the entire community was banned. That's when Jackins came out with that encyclical on criticizing leadership.

> The clear anti-racist and anti-oppression stand of the org is admirable.

Meh. My first and only, I forget now what it is called, away camp, that I went on was a racism workshop, and it was cringingly awful. It was that penny-drop that caused me to jettison the whole albatross.

There was all of this mannered formalism that white people were expected - no, required - to maintain when interacting with a PoC that was ... just, embarrassing and worse than useless.

As an aside, it also made me realize that most "anti-racism work" are people projecting their own internal discomfort with other races externally, into other people. People who insist that everyone is racist, for example, are people who cannot imagine a non-racist mindset, likely because, well, they're racists. Avoid these people for the same reason you should avoid men who insist that all men are creepers and rapists. But, you cannot avoid such people in RC, because that's a tenet of the organization itself.

I could go on and on. Anyway, good luck.

Thank you. My involvement is on the very periphery and I find my minimal interactions useful so far. I think I lucked out with a very unorthodox (RC-wise) teacher.

As for racism - I do believe our culture is deeply racist, resulting in automatic (at least somewhat) racist perceptions for everyone swimming in it. Acknowledging this influence without shame or tension, and making an effort to correct for it is not a bad thing. This is my personal view.

> As for racism - I do believe our culture is deeply racist...

Well, a lot of people agree with you. I also think that perspective is racist, and perpetuates the very problems it purports to solve.

Could you share a perspective which is more conducive to a real shift? I am sincerely excited about supporting transformation and healing, personally and at scale.

Well, shit. I was going to write just a sentence or 2 about how I don't have answers, apparently my muse decided I shall write a whole essay about how I don't have answers.

There are some ground rules you and I can agree on, I'm sure: human beings are human beings, regardless of race, and as such have certain inalienable rights like life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, freedom to assemble, freedom of speech, freedom to defend themselves from tyranny, freedom from slavery, genocide, etc. These rights apply regardless of appearance, sex, gender expression, race, religion, ancestral background, caste, sexual orientation, IQ, sins of the father, what-have-you. If we align on all that, we're on the same page. You're in my tribe.

Well, almost every culture believes its own outlook is the correct outlook. The problem with the USA in particular is that it has the hard and soft power to confidently impose their provincial ideas elsewhere. Some of these ideas are good, eg see above.

Other ideas, not so much. There's this definite assumption in the US that what is true in the US is true everywhere in the world. And, unfortunately, the US is deeply fucked up about race (among some other specific topics).

So, right now, because Americans prefer simplifying assumptions, and historically the US is comprised of (simplifying) 2 peoples (i.e. the descendents of European empires that traded slaves, and the descendents of those slaves) US culture views the entire world through that fucked up demographic lens. Europeans: colonists and slavers. Africans: enslaved and downtrodden. Sure there are other peoples in the US worldview, but these 2 peoples are what everyone talks about and everyone has to be shoved into one of those two boxes.

Even though this is incredibly reductionist, it's a fairly simple narrative, easy to understand, easy to communicate, an incredibly powerful conceptual gravity well: black & white, powerful & powerless, oppressor & oppressed. It is very difficult for Americans to see outside of that dipole, especially because for whole regions of the US, it seems to be self-evidently true.

The most powerful academic theorists on race today are American, and because they are Americans, and even within American culture they are outrageously privileged Americans, these people have platforms and support to amplify this outrageously fucked up, myopic, provincial, self-serving perspective on "transformation and healing" and insist that it applies to every last person on the planet. Ironically, that is exactly the same cultural expansionism that caused problems in the past, but here we are, repeating history.

There are 40 million slaves today, but because American "transformation and healing" experts are obsessed with American history, these real-life, contemporary slaves get very little love and attention from the world.

The world is nuanced. There are, today, whole nations of dark peoples who currently benefit from centuries of privilege. There are whole nations of pale peoples who have quite recently endured the most terrible privations imaginable, including slavery. Some of them no longer exist, because genocide. And all the range in between. Melanin content of the skin is a manifestly stupid way to categorize people, a very stupid proxy for understanding their background, attitudes, success, politics. We were all supposed to have learned this lesson already, but here we are, both racists and so-called anti-racists, insisting we do exactly that.

Americans, and RC in particular, like to put individuals in boxes, in categories, because it lends a false predictability and regularity to the messy chaos of humanity: "raised owning class, middle class or working class", "Raised Catholic, Protestant or Jew", "white or person of color". I loved RC because I felt like it have me a super-power: all I had to do was know about somebody's background, and because of the RC taxonomy of distress, I felt like I knew what someone's issues were. If they disagreed, clearly they were distressed! Reductive. Circular. Closed. Just like American-style "race work".

I don't have answers. Just, trust your instincts. Don't allow anyone to override what you know to be true and good. Embrace nuance. Listen to people you disagree with. Form genuine bonds with people unlike yourself. Set aside time for genuine fun. That should introduce enough cognitive dissonance to insulate you from some of the more egregious, virulent brainwashing and propaganda you will endure.

Thank you for this. I think I haven’t been in RC long enough to believe in or embrace the checkboxes. Also, I am clearly noticing the class/slavery/racism/genocide threading through past and current U.S. culture and institutions.

I don’t see a reason not to correct for these, in context and with awareness of personality + scenario.

I get the complexity and the limitations of trying to come with universal solution.

Those two ideas are not mutually exclusive. Escaping circular logic and social traps is not always easy.

Scientology: did some alien make a bet that he could get the daftest religion ever to take hold in 1950s America?

"The Underground Bunker: Latest News"

https://tonyortega.org/scientology/

"Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leah_Remini:_Scientology_and_t...

It happened with Mormonism in the 1800's. They've done such a good job integrating the made up mormonism image into being accepted as a "real religion" culturally that I'll probably get flagged for this. Truth is, some charismatic dude just made it up. In 50 years, discussion boards will probably flag people for dissing Scientology.

EDIT: As pointed out below, the term "real religion" just means one that has lasted to this day with a substantial enough following to obtain protected status.

I mean, arguably, a real religion is just one which hangs around for a while. Typically, in the process, losing its weirdest elements; early Mormonism, and Christianity for that matter, had many strange elements that are today have become niche or been entirely abandoned (few modern Mormons are polygamists, and proportionally even fewer modern Christians are religious vegetarians, say).

When I was a kid in a christian household I asked how come there were no supernatural things happening today like the stories in the bible. I got the idea it was not good to ask impertinent questions like that. Later I started to be more skeptical. People just believe things with no evidence (often heard when they were young), whether its the story of angels and demons in the bible or the ideas in scientology about aliens. But the thing I noticed is people usually believe the things they learned as a kid, but are really skeptical of other religion's bizarre or supernatural claims of magical things happening. The part that is missing (in some people as adults) is applying some of that skepticism to their own religion.

So what's happening when an adult accepts a new religion that makes them accept a new set of supernatural 'facts'? I always wondered about that process.

Well, for the really established religions, all the supernatural things happened 1400+ years ago.

Mormonism, on the other hand, was only 180 years ago. For some reason, that makes their supernatural stuff a little harder to accept.

> Well, for the really established religions, all the supernatural things happened 1400+ years ago.

For many branches of Christianity, miracles continue to happen! Of course, most Christians likely don't _literally_ believe in miracles.

The Charismatic Christians still speak in tongues and lay on hands. Althought given what I've seen in the past 4 years with Flat Earth, Q, and AntiVax, that's no longer crazy IMHO.

One proposal is that religion is the cargo cult built around the fossil of a once-living system that worked or was relevant for a particular time, place, and group of people.

So in the case of Scientology, perhaps there was a set of techniques that worked for one reason or another, and people still swarm around the dead husk - the empty rituals. The why is obvious; control and greed. Two things that are almost guaranteed to kill something delicate and living.

Good point. There are a lot fewer stonings in Christianity today than in the past.

Wow, I had NO idea Burroughs was a Scientologist. I'm surprised too, with his distrust of organized religion and government. Of course, he was a massive heroin addict, so I'm not surprised he found other addictions.

I'm pretty sure Burroughs was everything at least once at some point in his specific timeline.

As far as undisclosed sources go, Hubbard's work with Jack Parsons was not known at the time, as that was yet another person Hubbard scammed. Hubbard's only acknowledgment of that time was a highly fictionalized account of breaking up a circle of black magicians.

From the title I thought this was going to be about the sexual harrassment scandals that hit astrophysics/cosmology a while back.