A Million Miles Away From Scientology

I feel that in obvious defiance of Scientology's claim that we are a cult at the Underground Bunker our diversity and inclusion is the opposite of Scientology as a cult.

I disagree about many things with many people here, but understand we don't have to have one voice and one will.

Unlike Scientologists under the totalitarian authority of Hubbard and Miscavige we are free to have different lives, ideas, feelings, lifestyles and opinions.

In coming out from Scientology one of the stunning changes was realizing it's not only okay but normal and healthy to have differences but to respect and accept people who have their own unique beliefs and behavior if you can find common ground and hopefully basic human decency. Many, possibly most people by a large margin are basically decent. They have empathy, humility and compassion. We are not perfect but have common values to start with.

Obviously the Hubbards and Miscaviges of the world are arguably quite different and quite difficult to deal with. Fortunately many people who study these individuals consider that only perhaps one to six percent of people are like them.

And out of those only a fraction ever do harm on a scale comparable to those two cult leaders.

The black and white pure good or pure evil false dichotomy that Scientology encourages is tough to move away from because it is instilled so deeply. It becomes first nature to react emotionally as either pure acceptance and agreement or pure rejection with disgust (as Jon Atack told me) and disdain.

To realize people who disagree or even show a lack of understanding are not automatically evil is a huge transition from the Scientology mindset.

People can have different opinions and information. They can be good people and do many things differently.

I have realized why psychologists and psychiatrists agree on very little with one another. Their fields are -  to the degree that they don't examine actual structures that can be scientifically measured -  based on assumptions and serve as metaphors made of subjective language.

A psychologist can start with assumptions about what mind, thought, conscious, subconscious, habit, compulsion, trauma, and many other basic terms mean.

The boundaries of what are and aren't the terms are highly subjective. That's why these are metaphors. They aren't perfect descriptions of measurable physical structures.

You can't weigh thought or mark a conscious thought and distinguish it perfectly from an unconscious thought or impulse.

Someday neuroscience and other fields may help psychology and psychiatry to clearly delineate between various phenomena and their causes, but if that day comes it's likely to be many years from now. Probably not in my lifetime.

So there is disagreement and varying understandings and assumptions about what is what in the field of thought.

But disagreements are allowed here and it's acceptable to have them. That's a million miles away from Scientology.