Rhetoric In Scientology- A Few Brief Examples

 The following is an excerpt from a post at ESMB on Ron Hubbard using the Rhetoric he studied under Dean Wilbur in forming his cult doctrine .

I can think of some surely - for ethos ( authority) Hubbard's many fake credentials and accomplishments like his degrees and trumped up war record and his claim of healing himself from being crippled and blind . They make him an instant expert - if believed . His stating that Scientology works every time if exactly applied is given with such confidence and unwavering certainty it implies thorough study to logically arrive at such a conclusion . His claims of having traveled far and seen all kinds of men in all kinds of situations and having studied nineteen primitive races seems to be something that would impart extraordinary wisdom to the few who pursue such efforts . His claims of doing all that research into the whole track weave a fantastical image of distant stars and wondrous worlds , of amazing adventures but most of all that he found and overcame the mechanisms that he said made remembering those things disabled in others . All the space opera was a big claim to ethos - as proof of his technology's workability and therefor his expertise . And the only way to test or verify it we believed ( incorrectly) was to go as far up the bridge as Hubbard but he could always claim he went further and further so no proof has to ever come .

For pathos ( emotions ) all the claims of proving men are good appeals to our desire to be good , his claims that Scientologists are smart and trying where "wogs" are not makes us feel like we are better than others , that is an appeal to vanity or pride or arrogance , he carries this further as he highly compliments staff saying they have a sacred trust and crusade . He goes on with Sups and this becomes far , far more in the Sea Org . They truly are painted as the elite of Earth far , far better than all others beyond any doubt . That is a powerful emotional boost and validation against any outside ideas - as they are the ideas of lesser beings .

Magneto , Lex Luthor , Doctor Doom and Galactus can take lessons in arrogance from many Sea Org members . Hubbard concentrates much of his efforts into using fear of damnation to appeal to people to comply . Fear is a primary motivation of almost all Scientologists , fear of letting down others . Hubbard uses claims of an utterly hopeless slide into blindness , amnesia and constant pain as an immortal eternal spirit for any who do not completely devote their lives to him and sacrifice any other goals to serve his .
he talks of endless trillions of years in agony and the extinction of the human race on earth to dig deep into fear . He also uses blind irrational hate ( rightly called disgust by Jon Atack ) to motivate disregarding all criticisms out of hand and always attacking the attacker.


For logos ( logic or logical sounding statements ) he used the tone scale and lots of scientific seeming claims around it to pretend research and scientific methodology went into it . With big charts and columns it looks like a real organized body of info and the length and many complex and technical words serve to reinforce the lie . And his claimed "discoveries" by name sound scientific . The term technology itself is a claim to a logical method and verification . In KSW he claims uniform workability which means this is a bona fide science that has been validated and its time has come . When he claims to remember admin materials from the whole track it makes a claim they are valid from past civilizations . The tape Org Board and Livingness was the reference that pushed me over the line as focusing intently on it and the awareness characteristics for each division and department with the combination of scientific sounding names and descriptions made me think this was the real deal . His frequent borrowing of terms from engineering makes his ideas sound scientific and as valid as material sciences which get tested very thoroughly . His use of a meter made it seem to involve science in measuring and studying something . It seems like a scientific instrument after all and he claimed it required expert handling so it must do something .

Really I could go on for hours . I see nothing but persuasion and fraud and stolen ideas that never made miracles in all of Dianetics and Scientology . I have been doing this so much and so long and from so many angles I see fallacies and they relate to rhetoric and sublime writing and misdirection and stolen doctrine from others to control thought , emotion and behavior in all his works . It is all I see in them now . EVER . I just am directed by someone or a post to a Hubbard reference or idea and instantly see elements of the con in multiple terms from multiple subjects ( including critical thinking , hypnosis and NLP and psychology , other cult language and my own impressions on how cons are made and cults and abusive relational dynamics )

I am at a very different place than most will probably ever be - or need to be on this . Hubbard always sought to persuade by rhetoric and always lied to my mind . I am truly sorry for any still clinging to any hope it is at all otherwise . All his tricks boil down to creating confusion , pretending to solve it and then making more confusion and getting compliance with his methods to bring on more compliance and confusion in a never ending road to total slavery. Confusion and misdirection off it that seems to cure it - even temporarily , then it returns and demands more direction from Hubbard to relieve it . And this is always done with lies . ALWAYS . Mockingbird's Nest : http://mbnest.blogspot.com/search?up...08:00&max-resu


stuff at ESMB