Blown for Good
I don’t normally write about Scientology. My general feeling is that people who are weak and stupid enough to get involved with Scientology get what they deserve and deserve what they get.
Reading an interview with Marc Headley at Wikinews reminded me of one important exception to that rule. Marc was sucked into Scientology at the tender age of seven when his mother joined the organization. He never had a real chance to know another life. As an employee of the Church of Scientology for fifteen years, he wasn’t even able to escape by going to work at a “normal” job.
Marc finally escaped in 2005 and has now published a book about life inside Scientology’s world headquarters, or “Gold Base.” As a highly trusted employee, Marc saw a lot of disturbing things which are hidden from normal church members.
The interview itself is a good read. You can buy Marc’s book at BlownForGood.com or at Amazon.com. The book is self-published and I have to give Marc a lot of credit for making that work.
Marc is a very down-to-earth guy. In that way, he’s not far different from most other I.T. guys that I know. Marc’s viewpoint is remarkably non-religious and he really focuses more upon the violations of employment law and human rights abuses within the organization.
Blown For Good has received excellent reviews for accuracy from many ex-Scientologists. It’s also received a lot of complaints about grammar and editing. I’m not very interested in grammar and editing, but I am very interested in the truth.
From what I am reading, it seems very clear that the Church of Scientology is actively suppressing the liberty of both church employees and church members. In our day and age, we normally expect that sort of bad behavior to only come from governments — at least outside of the Muslim world. Western religions have largely been “civilized” so as to be mostly harmless. It appears that Scientology, one of the worlds youngest religions, needs a bit of civilizing.
Thank you for writing about Marc Headley and his amazing story.
When an organization has written orders to find people’s weaknesses and exploit them for its own gain particularly during a time of emotional difficulty, you can hardly call people ‘weak and stupid.’ That’s something that I’ve learned is very easy to say when you’ve never been in, but doesn’t ring true when you talk to people who have experienced it. Marc is certainly not weak or stupid, and he is certainly not alone; thousands as strong and intelligent as he have left this organization. But please don’t add insult to injury by calling victims of a bait-and-switch ‘weak and stupid.’
What looks like weakness and stupidity to you boils down to carefully engineered incremental mind control that is later reinforced with extreme negatives for resisting – like losing your friends, family and job AND having information about yourself that you disclosed in religious confidence revealed to the world — all in the same decision – think about how easily you would do that.
Scientology, Inc. is policy-driven to lie, cheat and steal in the name of the ‘greater good’ of its own propogation. The cognitive dissonance is staggering. Marc’s right, it’s not about religion, it’s about abuse of people and the law.
Why people get involved in cults is compicated. I have some compassion for them, but my compassion doesn’t go on endlessly. There is a point where they become responsible for their own actions. Our law enforcement agencies should act against the sort of thing Marc talks about. Where is the FBI?
With more and more stories like Marc’s getting out, more and more people like yourself reporting on them, and tension at the top of the cult, I can only hope that Scientology will crumble.
Except for children born into it (see exscientologykids website), it seems like adults who were targeted by the cult, often joined without too much thought about it, simply because there was a lack of easy availability about the other side of Scientology. Now there are dozens of critical websites, and hundreds of stories about ex-members on the web. Books about Scientology used to be nearly impossible to find and when they were published they went out of print quickly and didn’t make money. A lot of people hadn’t heard about Scientology, so why read a whole book about it?
Today, for a computer-literate person, it seems insane that an adult would drop out of college, throw themselves into an expensive reverse pyramid of mind-control and “secrets,” without knowing the history of Hubbard, what they were paying for, what they really believe, without exploring the experiences of ex-members. Fact is, the web is cutting scientology’s new membership down, but they are always looking for new markets, new ways of hiding.
One of the problems now is that Scientology has morphed into hundreds of front groups, which target people who want to make more money in their business (Dentists and Chiropractors), recover from drug addiction (Narconon), learn to read or study (Study Tech), or believe that answers to “human rights” somehow translate to the obliteration of the psychiatric profession. (Some mentally ill people in that group, since Scientology teaches that psychiatrists are responsible for mental illness…figure that one out.)
It’s a niche market, but Scientology has ALWAYS gone after a small market, curious people, preferably with lots of money or good credit, who like to explore and try something different. Or, desperate, vulnerable people who find some kind or promise, hope or resonance, with the cult’s promises or ideas.
Hubbard began Project Celebrity in 1955 and it was off to a very slow start, but when it caught on, with its Celebrity Centers as an industry networking cult with popular stars like Travolta and Cruise, it seemed to have a life of its own.
So Marc Headley and wife came face to face with Cruise, behind this Goldbase compound, bounded in high fence and spikes, inside which they even have a prison camp for employees called the RPF. Marc and Tom Cruise training together, the lowly paid 80-100 hour a week cult slave, with the superstar.
Should interest a lot of people. Scientology isn’t all “a blast” is it, and people can watch old documentaries like this excellent one on Hubbard, years ago, that shows how the Sea Org began, and what a bare-faced liar and weird character Hubbard was in person, even when being interviewed on TV.
The Shrinking World of L. Ron Hubbard
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_w-YWwC1lI
There is no doubt that Scientology is a destructive, criminal cult. Law enforcement at every level has let us down by tip-toeing around Scientology because of their religious status. Religions of every stripe are the problem because they elevate creduelity to a virtue and are given undue deference in our culture. Shut down Scientology for outright criminal acts, and open your eyes to the deception of religion in general.
Excellent review, Will. Marc is a good guy, and his escape from the cult is fit for a movie. $cientology and civility are two words one seldom sees together in any kind of positive context.
While I sympathize with your general statement about those getting pulled into cults (caveat emptor!), it should be pointed out that much of how the cult gets away with recruitment is via bait and switch tactics and outright fraud. In other words, they are only able to retain people by lying to them up front. Once those individuals have revealed their innermost, darkest secrets via scientology “auditing” .. those secrets, along with tactics like “disconnection” become levers to keep those people on board, in line and under control.
Many ex’s speak of spending years “stuck” inside the cult, unwilling to speak up or leave out of fear of losing their entire family through disconnection.
There is no shortage of complete kool-aid drinkers, but there are also those (some who I know personally) who are in, will remain in and will quietly follow along out of fear of losing their families, friends or even businesses. Never mind the fear of having their reputation smeared with neighbors and non-scientologist friends with information culled from their auditing files.
Caveat Emptor applies, in my opinion, only when it comes to doing your homework before getting involved in the first place — But even this is only recently an option. Historically Scientology would kill any negative press as quickly and aggressively as possible. Today, we have the internet and large amounts of information available to those who would get involved — as a result, we see the power and size of the cult diminishing rapidly.