Scientology Building The Prison Of The Mind Part 10 Mass Phenomena

 
 






Like all other posts in the Building the Prison of the Mind series this post consults and may quote Leon Festinger's book A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.

Festinger wrote:
When a situation occurs where the identical dissonance exists in a large number of persons, one may observe very startling and curious mass phenomena. (Page 193)

Quite important in Scientology is the extremely similar beliefs and experiences Scientologists have. As a totalistic cult with extremely structured indoctrination designed to be nearly identical for several paths or routes in Scientology, really they serve as a caste system for slaves for Hubbard, covertly mentally enslaved, but slaves nevertheless.

Festinger goes on:
Uniform dissonance in a large number of people may also be created if undeniable and incontrovertible information impinges which is dissonant with a very widely held belief or opinion. (Page 194)

Scientologists have uniform dissonance since they all have to accept doublethink, all have to strive for clear and OT states which actually do not exist, and past life memories which cannot be authenticated and do not actually restore any knowledge or abilities, among other pesky observable facts that directly contradict Scientology.

Independent Scientologists have the additional problem of access to far more accurate information than Scientologists in the main cult. The independents can easily see how reviled and mocked Scientology actually is and that the cult is and always has been much smaller than Miscavige or Hubbard ever claimed. That is like a constant kick in the teeth, or perhaps crotch. They can also see that Scientology is so small and lacking influence that most people frankly never learn what Scientology even is or interact with Scientologists. All these unpleasant realities directly discredit both Hubbard and Scientology doctrine.

Festinger goes on:
Denial of Reality
It sometimes happens that a large group of people is able to maintain an opinion or belief even in the face of continual definitive evidence to the contrary. Such instances may range all the way from rather inconsequential occurrences of short duration to phenomena which may almost be termed mass delusions. (Page 198)

Let us imagine a person who has some cognition which is both highly important to him and highly resistant to change. This might be a belief system which pervades an appreciable part of his life and which is so consonant with many other cognitions that changing the belief system would introduce enormous dissonance. (Page 198)

These two ideas are extremely relevant to Scientology. They almost cannot be stressed enough.  Regarding maintaining mass delusions an entire series of books could be written detailing the delusional belief system Scientology requires continuously and the encyclopedias Hubbard assembled detailing how to install and maintain these delusions to enslave his victims mentally.

He uses the tendency to not be able to reject an entire belief system as an ironclad grip on his victims' minds. He knew slowly creating beliefs, behaviors and emotions in line with his desire to control people very gradually, on a gradient approach, could result in creating a total reluctance to give up any aspect of Scientology as they are all firmly interrelated and bolster one another.

Festinger goes on to describe how introducing consonant elements to resolve dissonance or at least reduce it can occur by proselytizing to non-believers. As a group convinces more people to join their group and take on their beliefs the new members introduce more ideas in agreement with the group and more consonant elements ease dissonance.

 In theory he discusses how if a group gets the entire world to adopt their beliefs then the dissonance could be entirely eliminated. That has special significance for a number of groups in a number of ways. Scientology in the main cult often through lies pretends a significant number, perhaps twenty million or so, members and the concept of rapid unstoppable growth to seem to be taking over the world as a way to use an image of inevitable universal acceptance and agreement. The image is entirely false with tens of thousands of Scientologists existing in reality, but the image is enough to influence people, no need for pesky reality to inconvenience anyone.

Interestingly as a comparison other belief systems have gained millions or billions of members, sometimes in a context of enough isolation that entire populations have little or no exposure to other belief systems. They often don't consider ideas outside their beliefs as possible. Some scholars who were, for example, in a Christian dominated society which considered Christian beliefs as given proven facts and infallible truth. Some based all logical proofs on unproven assumptions traced back to their religion.

Now, direct observations of contradictory facts within the doctrine or observable reality in comparison to doctrine can still inspire dissonance, despite popular acceptance of beliefs. So absolute escape from dissonance in non reality based beliefs is probably impossible. This is not an attack on Christianity, but any large religion will inevitably have some differing presentations of ideas so if all the doctrine are not reflective of physical reality it will inevitably be observable. Christianity has several thousand variations, some of which conflict quite profoundly and so are unlikely to all be completely simultaneously true.

Even universal acceptance would not bring eternal freedom from dissonance.