From: cerberus@medusa.com (Cerberus) Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology Subject: Re: Individual scientologists on a.r.s.? (was Re: MARINA GETS CLAM FAN MAIL!) Date: Wed, 11 Oct 1995 23:44:40 GMT Organization: Rocky Mountain Internet Inc. Lines: 349 Message-ID: <45hl1t$hhq@natasha.rmii.com> References: <45blnq$kqd@cougar.vut.edu.au> <45gabq$36ju@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: slip852.rmii.com X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.0.82 referen@ibm.net (Diane Richardson) wrote: [snip] > When I read Cerberus's classic post about C.R.A.P., >the Church of the Relentlessly Annoying People, Steve Draper >automatically came to mind. Oh what the hell. Here is Cerberus' delurk again. Enjoy the CRAP: ******************************************************************* Subject: Memo from a Wog Dog From: cerberus@aol.com (Cerberus) Date: 22 Apr 1995 14:19:29 -0400 Message-ID: <3nbhbh$ckb@newsbf02.news.aol.com> TO: Sea Org, OSA and the Scientologists participating in the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology FROM: Cerberus@aol.com SubjECT: Agitating the Wogs The word is out, the milk is spilled, there's nothing that can be done about it, and I think it's a damned shame. The cyberwar between Scientology on one side and a strange alliance of its critics, ex-members and cyber-anarchists has spilled out from alt.religion.scientology (a.r.s.) into every part of the internet, and the "secrets" of Scientology are being posted everywhere. Hard to miss 'em. As usual, there is bad news and good news. Surprisingly there is also some hope, if you act now. THE BAD NEWS The bad news is that I'm here. God knows, even I could find a.r.s. -- and I'm so lame a net navigator that I still have to use AOL. But the word is out, even on the loading dock. Dear Scientologists, if *I* know about a.r.s., believe me, *everybody* knows. Not that there isn't some pick 'n shovel work for the tyro. Ramp-up on the subject is formidable, largely because the flame war on a.r.s. is well into its third year. About the *only* thing that is Clear (pun) is that the regular participants have grappled themselves into such enigmatic knots that they have become the incomprehensible masters of the newsgroup. Even the anti-CoS regulars posting on a.r.s. have become so acclimated to the argot that they have "gone native" -- flinging Scientology and net jargon around like a demented OT VIII sysad. Both sides are supposedly appealing to the same audience -- the public -- right? Uh... that'd be me. Is the church a criminal cult? Is CoS the victim of unlawful misuse of its copyrighted material and a malicious hate campaign? Who knows? Hard to tell what the hell people here are talking about. The latest dustup seems to be over the CoS "outing" anti-CoS posters by revealing their real names and addresses. I'm sure it's a violation of net etiquette and all, but it's not the kind of thing that is likely to cause Joe Citizen to get the musket down from the wall. Now what *is* causing a buzz in the real world -- even in the technologically-differently-abled crowd that I hang with -- is the revelation of certain church secrets. Body Thetans and volcanoes and spaceships can hardly compete for the fickle attention of the off-line crowd -- such things are no stranger than the stuff the New Agers are coming up with. But some of LRH's stuff goes right over the top. Here's what's getting the wogs stirred up: 1. L. Ron Hubbard (LRH) is coming back from the grave as the Anti-Christ! But it's OK because we've been programmed by evil entities to see good as bad. Lucifer is the light-bringer after all, and LRH will be our true savior -- just as soon as the Scientologists he left behind present him with a body to inhabit that is clear of other entities and bad programming. Pray for Virgin Mother Vera to annunciate better. 2. The Second Coming, for which we have been programmed to yearn, will actually mask an invasion of Earth by evil income-tax collectors from the Markab Confederacy. So unless we get audited by CoS, the rest of us are damned to that Big Audit coming from the Sky. Markabs storm troopers, wearing those translucent green visors and wielding USN steel desks, will want to see all of your receipts for the last 200K years. [Works for me -- the audit from hell. And the IRS is a demonic agency. Didn't we all just know it?] 3. Jesus Christ was never crucified. What's worse, LRH says He was a whiny homosexual pederast. Uh oh. 4. Xenu, the entity who is responsible for most of this evil programming and solely responsible for stranding all of us here in the first place, is locked up in a volcano (with Pele? -- some guys have all the luck). LRH says he can't get out, but LRH was writing in the 50's before the discovery of plate tectonics, so who can say for sure? 5. Don't even ask about the clams. Great gospel. Just great. No wonder we weren't supposed to see it. The wogs sit quietly by while Scientology clears the planet and saves mankind. Hear no evil. Speak no evil. Xenu evil? .....Ooops! Jesus, what a cock-up. So what does Sea Org, the Vatican of CoS, do? It circles the wagons around the cash-cow and tries to cram the toothpaste back into the tube. The scheme adopted is threefold. (1) Threat of litigation -- Not much actual courtroom litigation, of course. Those of you familiar with the law know that preparation for trial is both enormously expensive and enormously invasive of a person's privacy. The CoS has been an aggressive litigator in the past, and has shown itself capable of ferreting out and publishing information embarrassing to its critics. (2) Hacking -- Allegedly, CoS hackers have been cancelling messages posted to a.r.s. by other people. (For more details, see a.r.s. -- This is WAY out of my field.) (3) Spambots -- Scientology supporters have been posting hundreds of messages to A.r.s. of two varieties. The first is a paean to Scientology, either an outright ad for the new members or one of the many "success" stories members are required to submit to the church hierarchy. The second type consists of a long quote from previous messages, then a short, insulting, uninformative response. Persons, like me, who don't have sophisticated newsgroup-reading software end up wading through this "spam" in order to read the a.r.s. newsgroup -- and that is the idea. Let's see if I can recapitulate the strategy concocted by the most advanced entities on the planet to protect the holy mother church. First, by resorting to legal process, CoS confirms that these silly ramblings of Hubbard ARE, in fact, holy writ. Inspired. Second, CoS decides not only to piss off its usual detractors, but the cyberpunk community. So now they become enemies of the cooperative anarchy that is the internet, and the internet, as we are all endlessly told, is the information highway that even I will have to navigate in the Future. The result? -- CoS now has the attention of the American Public, in a forum controlled by rowdy, young, irreverent radicals who think the CoS wants to take away their liberty to say "fuck" to perfect strangers. In other words, CoS picked a fight in a ring where the referee is the other fighter's trainer. Brilliant. Third, CoS unleashes its best debaters into a.r.s. The trouble is that they have honed their skills tongue-lashing other Scientologists. Consequently a.r.s. and the world are treated to perfect examples of CoS-think -- Dead Agenting and Fair Game -- which are gleefully highlighted by a.r.s. posters who still have some command of English (or who ARE English -- what's with all the UK's?). Bummer. It turns out that CoS castigation rings in most ears like a harangue from a biker conehead. Do you guys ever listen to each other? Evidently not. This is madness. The church has made itself Fair Game on the internet in front of millions of people. CoS is Darth Vadar to an army of hacking, wannabe Jeddi. The sins of the church will be endlessly spammed across the web and newsgroups. Is that what you wanted? The transgressions of CoS are detailed (interminably!) elsewhere. Nasty. Ugly. Not the worst cult stories I ever heard. Not even the worst CHURCH stories -- for instance, Mormons massacred a whole wagon train of gentiles 150 years ago, only a few years after the Inquisition was formally abandoned by the RCC. While the overts of CoS are not much different than the sins of any church (with some interesting innovations in the field of litigation), I cannot imagine that you want them center stage in the new-tech-review. Yet, there they are. Why is this? Did you intend to volunteer CoS as the whipping-boy of the internet? How long do you think you can stand the exposure? Do you think you can dodge a Congressional subpoena? Is Kirsty still returning your calls? You'd better believe there's a Congressional subpoena in your future. Can it be long before some ambitious Congressperson sees the opportunity to add millions of netizens to his/her constituency? All one has to do is bring in the ACLU and some inter-denominational organizations at the get-go to make sure no 1st Amendment toes are trampled, and one has hearings that are not only covered by C-Span but spammed all over the net. You can't buy publicity like that. I predict Congressional hearings within a year -- RICO within two. Which is, as I said, a damned shame. I think CoS, like any church, meets a genuine human need and serves a worthwhile purpose. If you leaders of the church will let go of the cash-cow (it'll come back) and look at the bigger picture, Scientology just might survive. THE CHURCH OF THE RELENTLESSLY ANNOYING PEOPLE Everyone needs a church, and I see CoS as filling a special need. There is a type of person in the world who needs to feel superior. [Is it me, or are there more engineers in this category?] We all know them. As employees, they are whiners -- carping, critical, sure that they're underpaid and unappreciated and that the bosses are idiots. When one is boss, he is the boss from hell. He is critical and sarcastic about employee contributions, suspicious of good work, certain that any good idea from whatever source was actually his first. They are not aliens. They are our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and even (God help us!) our children. Somebody loves them. We need to help them out. It's hard for them to get into Christianity -- too much foot washing and kneeling, I guess. Most of the cult scene is too weird for them (with the exception of Eckanar and EST). Scientology, however, is tailor made. Think of it. It has a patina of science (it's even in the name!), the members wear suits, there's none of that silly bowing and praying stuff, no stained-glass windows full of people in peculiar outfits getting massacred. What it does have is a very business-like, no-nonsense, information- oriented, hard-driving atmosphere. Better yet, it turns out that once you are Clear, the world is just what you thought it was! Most people are stupid, contemptible "wogs" -- they are "raw meat" fit only for feeding the CoS. There are a few elect people who have the *real* information. All those things you couldn't get into in college are just as unimportant and wrong as you thought -- you know, liberal arts, sociology, sex. Finally, you're with the elite! And what an elite! Under the leadership of the most brilliant Thetan in 75 million years, you're a member of a secret army of geniuses who are going to save the Earth! It's almost like having a secret-identity! Boy, if those girls or boys who wouldn't give you a tumble in high school only knew! Even the Freezoners laude LRH as a genius. He must be. How else could he be the undisputed leader of so many perspicacious people? (Those of you who detect a false hypothesis lurking in that syllogism are requested to report to the Church of the Sub-Genius, and good riddance.) RECOMMENDATIONS Now that the jig is up, the CoS needs to bail off the net and refocus on its core membership. I have not even copyrighted my suggestion, so it's a gift. You can call it "Scientology -- Church of the Relentlessly Annoying People [tm]." Catchy, huh? Why be subtle? You know the kind of people you want to recruit. Then there's the theology problem. The old one was pretty good, but now that it's been outted, it can't pass the straight-face test. (Actually, I think LRH was pulling your leg. OT III *was* a kind of test -- if you couldn't keep a straight face during the revelation, you hadn't been audited enough, you weren't dependent enough on the church, you might still have some cash stashed somewhere. Bet it worked, too.) The Mormons have proved that a theology is not necessary for a church to survive and prosper. Sure, you've got to have one, and it doesn't have to make much sense, but it CANNOT be laughable. (Well, yes it can be laughable, but only after you've been around a couple hundred years.) So change it. Set up OT XII or whatever. Especially attractive is the Carlos Castaneda solution. It might go something like this: %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% OT XII: Everything we've taught you so far is bullshit. Forget it. INITIATE: What? Ron is not coming back? No Markabs? I didn't have body thetans? I'm not clear? What are you talking about? OT XII: Look, when you came to us, you had a head full of calcified garbage about what the world looked like. You were clogged solid with family dogma, religious dogma, societal dogmas, government dogma, intellectual dogma. You had so much garbage in your head, you didn't have room to think. So we put in new garbage. Gradually, over the years of your training, the new garbage has pushed out the old. Now you see the world in a different light. You can see what crap the old dogma is, how it blocked your ability to think for yourself and see the world as it is. Now I'm telling you that the new things you have learned are garbage too. Ron made 'em up. Discard them. They are not impacted. You didn't really believe them in the first place -- not like the ideas you brought with you when you first came to the church. Well you were right. You've been right all along. INITIATE: But... but what do I think? What is the world really like? What is the truth? OT XII: What do you think we've been training you for? Look around. You tell us. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% What do you think? It's got zen. It's got snap. Trust me, the kid est veritas. Problem: This approach might lead to true insight, which can be pretty expensive -- you know, stuff like "One thing thou lackest: go, sell whatever thou hast, and give to the poor..." Whatever. If you want, you can add the space opera stuff back in at OT XIV -- you can update and discard the bad geology and cosmology, throw in some parallel universes and superstrings and maybe even attach some ecological nonsense to stay hip with the times. Saving the Earth is not such a bad thing. I'd keep that part. The point is that you all need to get off the net and back to your roots. An author got you into this mess. Another author can scribble you out. And you can afford the best without any extra expense -- just cashier a couple of lawyers. Oh, and this time use a competent writer. Good luck. Cerberus ________ "I pray you, remember the porter." Macbeth, II, 3 cerberus@medusa.com------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- henry : Identity outed and "Shuddered into Silence" 10-6-95 by agents of the Church of Scientology, despite: "We of the Church believe:... That all men have inalienable rights to think freely , to talk freely, to write freely their own opinions and to counter or utter or write upon the opinions of others." -- The Creed of Scientology, L.Ron Hubbard, 1954 http://www.amazing.com/scientology/ http://www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/scientology/home.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------