Big Words...And Stuff

 



I will share a secret with you...only you cannot tell anyone else. A way some insecure or even shallow or pretentious or narcissistic individuals can pretend superiority or authority or try to confuse or dominate others is by intentionally using big, specialized or unusual words .

A person doing this can enter a kind of trance with extreme confidence and certainty. It functions as a thought stopping cliche. As the recipient is confused that reinforces the feeling of superiority and close minded overconfidence the verbose( using overly long or complex words ) word user feels.

It encourages the fallacy in the verbose communicator's mind of feeling their vocabulary or certainty or ability to dumbfound or fluster others proves their rightness.
This is a particularly noticeable problem for Scientologists as they have critical , logical and rational thinking reduced by the cult's influence. They become entrenched in a false system of status with higher rank assumed by possession of a larger vocabulary with more Scientology terms, phrases and abbreviations.

It is truly a false pretense intentionally created and strongly encouraged by Hubbard. To learn the mountain of terms one must totally devote their life to the cult- so the false status and fanatical devotion go hand in hand. This helps to discredit never in critics as they are falsely seen as ignorant if they "don't talk the talk".So , they never get listened to.

Ex Scientologists suffer a tremendous loss of status if they realize that Scientology is less than what Hubbard said. The loss in some ways is proportionate to the severity of the downgrade in value of Scientology. If they accept it as still conveying some value or special insight they may feel they still are especially intelligent or have rare wisdom. If they see Scientology as a worthless con or wasted effort they may have a potentially humiliating experience. This humiliation may be partially avoided by using the immense English vocabulary some Scientologists achieve while in the cult for years and decades as they "clear" thousands and thousands of words.
Routinely in Scientology indoctrination a cult member spends many hours in looking up definitions. As a result some can rattle off definitions for thousands of words without hesitation as that is required in the cult.

So, with the old status stripped away it is easy to try to reassert an appearance of high intelligence and knowledge formerly held in the cult. This is done by strategically using vocabulary to overwhelm others .It can conceal uncertainty and a lack of knowledge and confidence from both the ex Scientologist and others.

I have several times in casual conversations with never ins who know nothing about Scientology seen an interesting phenomena. I have just as an off hand remark explained things like why spelling and grammar rules have so many exceptions or the derivations of the days of the week or idioms people ask about or just spontaneously broken down a long obscure word into its root parts and then put the prefix and suffix together to find the meaning.

Years ago if I did this some would act like it had to be an act , a put on.
In recent years if this happens I calmly tell the doubters to take their phone and Google my statement . I say it will take five minutes to check . A few still acted unsure.
Then I see them a while later and they have a suspicious and nervous look. They know I was right , but feel I could not have known that obscure information as they didn't and they are sure they are smarter than me.

Now , in fairness I barely have a high school level education. And as humbling as it is to admit it memorizing thousands and thousands of definitions and derivations in Scientology indoctrination really doesn't make me a truly intelligent or educated person .Not at all. But , and this is a huge but, I can occasionally fool people regarding this - confidentially - even including myself . So, now you know my humbling secret . Thanks for keeping it just between us.