Sunk Cost - Crushing Gravity Of Scientology

Sunk cost is a kind of appeal to emotion - relief from cognitive dissonance . When you have sunk so much of your identity or worth or ego into an idea turning back is overwhelming and disorienting - that is cognitive dissonance .

I know as a 25 year Scientologist who did a great deal of harm to relationships while using the "rightness and certainty " of Scientology as a way to deny responsibility. For many of us harm done to ourselves , immediate family and friends and careers and other cult members comes to mind as something to be willing to face to overcome the overwhelming bias sunk cost accumulates over time . Sunk cost is flanked and bolstered by habituation - the more we do things the more we tend to do them again without question or thought . Together they often enable permanent divorce from reason and critical and independent thought regarding topics . Hubbard depended on this , as does DM .

Sunk cost and habituation rely on similar but not identical factors . Sunk cost is similar psychologically to gravity as a physical force . Gravity is an accumulative force - that is to say concentrating more mass in a smaller space makes gravity grow stronger in local effect . It overwhelms the other forces at some point despite being many , many times weaker than them . That is how stars collapse to neutron stars as the atomic structure is crushed , them even the neutrons are crushed as their integrity fails .

Similarly enough sunk cost stops consideration of contradictory evidence . Some atheists would say the sunk cost of the indoctrination children receive and their identity and that of their families as Christians prohibits them considering evidence the bible and Christianity are possibly less than perfect . But that is a fight for the Dawkins of the world - I am unqualified to discuss God . I don't know what she is like .

Regarding Scientology for me once I had enough hypnotic experiences in the course room I let Hubbard define as mental and mystical ones I was so fooled the accumulative effect of the other persuasive methods just compounded and compounded to overwhelm all reason quite well and grow for decades .

Hubbard's trap is set to grow subtly at first then via key experiences lower your guard permanently bit by bit ( often the crucial experience is hypnotic but defined differently by Hubbard ) and then be like a star that grows from , say a disc that settles in some theories , . Via confirmation bias the Scientologist only seeks to confirm Hubbard's rightness and dismisses any evidence that contradicts him .

 And it is easy - he says critics are always liars and SPs so by SEEING them, as such their information is swept aside without examination and their criticism is seen as proof of Hubbard's rightness !

That is similar to the idea of the settling star reaching a magnitude of size where comets and other bodies that could disrupt it are instead vacuumed in and add to its mass and gravity as they are too small to break up the star . The growth is increased and the chance of matter escaping decreases .

Then with the mind well closed the Scientologist sees all info as either confirming Scientology or irrelevant ( this includes things denied or dissociated from ) or affirming Scientology by showing the Scientologist they need to learn more Scientology to make sense of them and biased toward that end . This is similar to the transference issue in therapy. When a patient in many forms of mental therapy has little or no trust many forms of therapy produce no change. When the therapist gains trust and the patient starts trusting the therapist's mind more than their own and treats the therapist as infallible that makes the patient too submissive and the the therapist too influential. No one over about twelve years old should be in that dependent state . Therapy is harmful in this relationship.

Hubbard cleverly made it seem that you needed to do the entire bridge ( both sides bottom to top ) and all Sea Org training and then listen to his lectures and read all his writings then...pretty tough with a reported thirty five million words of doctrine to do a quick study brush up on to be qualified to have an educated opinion and conversation on Scientology !

Any unresolved problems ONLY require that before you are seen as having given Scientology " a fair try " !

So , back to the star analogy the Scientologist is so close minded they are like the star in allowing very little to influence them or knock them off their course as the gravity grows with the star it becomes a more influential and difficult to influence force of nature .

Especially if it is concentrated to the neutron star and then black hole levels of density . It is an example of one force overwhelming the others and losing balance . Similarly the Scientologist can have the sunk cost and accompanying psychological defense mechanisms including fallacies overwhelm any balance of reason within their mind . What is true is what is true for you cancels all other views but Hubbard made sure his view covertly replaced yours along the way . Slavery has been defined as letting another decide reality for you and Hubbard certainly fits that description perfectly .

. Fortunately unlike a star that transforms into a black hole due to its immense localized gravity a Scientologist can escape the cult mindset even after decades of concentrated reinforcement and bolstering - we leave everyday . But , we can be quite dense in our close minded and arrogant defense of Scientology .