Mockingbird's Nest: Scientology Reflections (2)10 Years After Leaving

Scientology Reflections (2) 10 Years After Leaving- Mistakes

This is the second post in a series that I am publishing in 2024. The series is on the journey I have been on AFTER leaving Scientology and Dianetics and what my experiences were, and mistakes I made, and things that I learned, some shortly after leaving Scientology and others further along the way, even up to the present day. Some of this involves Scientology and Dianetics. Some involves the process of leaving a cult. Some is just knowledge that I could have benefited from knowing sooner, that may even be unrelated to the cultic topic entirely.

For anyone who is unaware, I was in Scientology for twenty five years, between 1989 and 2014. I left in 2014 and discovered that Scientology is a harmful fraud and jam packed with lies and further it is composed of techniques plagiarized from other practices and sources. Ronald Hubbard had the ability to take a practice, file off the serial numbers and repackage it as his own in first Dianetics and later Scientology.

L. Ron Hubbard. “Ron looks to the future with the sea org, ”

Ronald Hubbard.

I wanted to acknowledge some of the mistakes that I made in the process of leaving Scientology and trying to get an understanding of what happened to me.

The obvious mistake of not leaving sooner or questioning things that I didn't but should have and similar criticism regarding not leaving earlier or thinking for myself sooner are not the kind of mistakes that I am going to discuss here.

I am going to discuss mistakes that in many ways don't get attention and don't have to do with Scientology itself necessarily.

“If they are wise, do not quarrel with them; if they are fools, ignore them.”

― Epictetus, Discourses and Selected Writings

Okay, this is something lots of people experience.

To be clear, I have engaged with lots of people who I would have been far better off, not engaging.

If you post online long enough you are likely to respond to people and regret it. There are some people (sometimes OSA, sometimes not) who are seeking to irritate or make look foolish or get de-platformed others who criticize Scientology.

I have found that some platforms get the combination of non-attentive or incompetent or biased admins and mods who are happy to watch members violate the rules of the platform and then they themselves bully or harass other people who are trying to follow the rules.

You can have a very tough time on a platform where ad hominem attacks on you are ignored or cheered on by the admins and mods while any response by you is treated as a serious violation.

You can also get swamped by people acting in obvious bad faith that a mod encourages.

One example at a certain message board I used to post at, for years, was an effort by people to get me kicked off in which they went to the mod and lied about me behind my back.

That board was shut down a few years ago.

The mod out of nowhere said that I was saying that they personally were hypnotised in Scientology and that meant they were stupid and gullible!

I have gone to great lengths to express the idea that hypnosis is not related to stupidity or gullibility or anything negative. That stereotype in my opinion is not based on reality.

Plainly lots of people assume they are not vulnerable to persuasion by thinking that they are not stupid, gullible, weakminded or something else enough to be hypnotised, but they have zero understanding of the way that hypnosis works.

To sidestep the difficulty this mod had I simply explained that I had never claimed he personally was hypnotised and that I had no way to know.

I explained that every school of hypnosis that I have ever seen has certain ideas in common. They all have the idea that some people are apparently easy to hypnotize and some are difficult to hypnotize and some may be impossible to hypnotize.

I have no way to know if a particular ex Scientologist is a member of any of these categories.

But without that quick response that shows that I wasn't judging the mod I could have been kicked off the platform for something I never said and don't believe.

I realized that the effect of the negative people is often only magnified if you engage with them.

I made the mistake of arguing with people who don't act in good faith, far too many times.

If I could go back and do it over I would just not answer unless I wanted to. Period. People would figure it out.

You don't owe people who are disrespectful your attention or time.

If I had just left the negative alone I could have posted more and had much more peace of mind.

I used to post at a blog by someone else and over time I let a few argumentative people discourage me. Later I found that the proprietor was unwilling to consider evidence that he had some minor details about what Scientology orgs are like wrong and he simply doesn't listen to people who disagree with him, even if they were in Scientology for twenty five years and personally witnessed the things they describe.

If I was at peace with that I would probably have had a far better relationship with that person and would still be posting comments at that blog.

Other bad faith arguments you get if you post a lot include the "you are wasting MY time!" complaint. To be clear, at the message board every single post has the author listed and you see this BEFORE you open the post. You also can block anyone who you want, besides admins and mods.

So, anyone can simply not open my posts or block me to never see them. But some members are hell bent on getting content they want, catered to them!

I responded by simply agreeing that I was stealing their time and to prevent this they should NEVER go online and further never communicate with anyone because they could get their time stolen!

Another thing is that I explained that if they chose to just use ad hominem attacks that I would block them. Rapidly people who include ad hominem attacks in questions or statements that are supposed to be clever, like "anyone who believes that is either stupid or crazy!" And they claim that is not an ad hominem attack! Because it is not definitive and clear!

It is an ad hominem attack, disguised as not being one.

So, the technique used here is one I call hop scotch. A person is rude and insulting. I eventually just block them. They get mad that I do not respond to their comments, since I can't see them.

They get someone who I haven't blocked to quote their remarks and these may be more ad hominem attacks. The admins and mods don't do anything.

In a number of these situations the simple problem boils down to a number of bad actors getting together and the mods and admins simply not doing their jobs.

You could have one person using a few accounts and the mod or admin could tell ALL of these people that if someone blocked someone else, don't act as a way to bypass this. Period.

Anyway, I could give many other examples.

Sometimes I have joined Facebook groups and discovered that the admins and mods may be biased towards some members of the group or the group may state it is for certain ideas and actually have mods and admins who don't follow the stated rules of the group.

It is best to simply leave these groups. Every time. Say nothing, when you realize that they are either not doing what they say or not the right fit for you, just leave, say nothing.

I have several times made the mistake of telling an admin or mod that they don't run the group as they claim or something similar. The inevitable result is they report me to Facebook and try to get me sent to Facebook jail.

You are dealing very often with people who can't stand the idea of someone telling them off and simply getting to get away with it. Or the fact that you tell them their group is not what it claims is too much to bear.

My advice now is just realize they are not right for you, say nothing and leave. Block anyone you want.

I am not talking about people you have a real relationship with. I am not talking about friends and family and a partner that you see in person in real life.

I am talking about people that you just interact with very slightly and briefly online only, very briefly, that you don't have a strong connection to.

I mean that you can see a group, either get invited or join, and immediately see that the other people are not a good fit for you or that the group is not right for you.

I have had members of a group ask very rude questions that contain negative remarks and conclusions about me. I have chosen to not answer these loaded questions. I have had an admin or mod tell me they are telling me I "have to" answer these questions!

I realized this was unacceptable to me and left the group then blocked the admin or mod who ordered me around. Then I got asked by others to unblock the mod or admin and explain why I left the group!

It's funny how some people can decide they are important authorities and then demand that others obey them!

I would have been best off if I had simply left the group earlier and never remarked on it.

Another mistake I have made is mistaking a para-social relationship for a real one, a few times.

As a Scientology critic, like many others, I made the mistake of thinking that the person (who I am reading the blog of and watching the YouTube videos of) has a similar relationship with me.

Simply put, I can read hundreds of pages of material by someone and watch hours of videos by a person and they can see a half dozen comments by me on their articles and videos and I can mistake this as a relationship. For the other person it is quite clear that they may have a fan or not, but I am essentially a stranger. They don't know me and they know that they don't know me.

This is something that happens to a lot of people who leave cults as they look for a way to make sense of their new life and they are often overly eager to replace the group they are no longer a part of.

People leaving a cult often lose all of their friends or loved ones.

Margaret Singer was a top cult expert for decades and interviewed over four thousand ex members over decades.

She remarked in an interview that after you leave a cult don't rush into relationships and you can trust people again but take your time and let relationships develop slowly.

Of course an ex cult member often doesn't want to hear this.

I saw a quote by someone and I don't remember who.

I will try to paraphrase.

The person wrote that some people learn by their mistakes, some learn by observing the mistakes of others, and some are merely guided by their desires from one moment to the next.

It took me a long time and a lot of mistakes to see this.

I was recommending reading books on cults and related subjects to people who, well frankly don't learn much, if anything, by reading. For them a book is read, discarded and forgotten.

Reading a book won't help such people, sadly.

I also dealt with a number of people who think anything past reading a Wikipedia article on a subject is "going down a rabbit hole" and wasting time. Some people think we shouldn't even have higher education.

I of course disagree, strongly.

I of course dug deep into many subjects to be able to dissect Scientology because I had to understand the tools that Hubbard had in his tool box and how and why he disguised them and his intentions to make Scientology.

I simply had to develop a better than surface level understanding of the parts of Scientology to see what they actually are and how they fit together.

I am sure an engineer needs to understand how various components of something they design work and what the parts are doing. A doctor must understand what various parts of the human body do and what various injuries and diseases do to human beings. We could go with many examples, lawyers, mechanics and many specialists and experts.

But I didn't understand that lots of people are just not going to get that. They may or may not have been heavily indoctrinated in Scientology and really have a need to understand the techniques and parts of Scientology very in depth to recover from Scientology, but need doesn't equal inclination or ability.

It is sad but some people really don't have the aptitude to understand what they really need to. Life unfortunately sometimes involves challenges that people simply are not equipped to overcome.

I have had to learn that you are only going to do certain things in life and if something is not going to help you it is not for you.

If I was wiser, I would have simply said that this material is for anyone who it may help, if that's not you, no problem.

Note: here is a link to my blog archive by topic which has almost all my older posts at the blog sorted into categories for your convenience.

Blog Archive by Topic

I am going to include links to several articles at Mockingbird's Nest blog on Scientology that have either been quoted in this post, or that expand on the topics introduced here.