fallbacktostone wrote:even when they're losing they don't know it or care..
This is an interesting observation coming from someone whose sample size of observing Scientologists is limited to a few Youtube videos. From someone who has interacted with a LOT of Scientologists (I live 30 minutes away from the world headquarters, and several friends/acquaintances are Scientologists), I find this observation to ring true almost across the board, to the point where I think it has almost nothing to do with individual personality and almost
everything to do with Scientology training.
I've mentioned this before on the board, actually. A friend of mine's dad was a former high-ranking Scientologist who ended up having to move from his Clearwater home after being shunned by the church (and his wife left him, and so on). If you leave the Church, you automatically lose all of your contacts in the Scientology world, although the Church denies this (despite overwhelming unanimous agreement amongst everyone who's ever left the church). He was OT VIII, which is the highest level of Scientology you can get to. If a Scientologist read this right now they would accuse me of flat-out lying, because the thought of an OT VIII leaving the church is an impossible scenario, according to their training.
Anyway, talking to the guy is very weird. He comes across as creepy to just about everyone he meets, but I can tell that he's actually a very smart and normal guy, other than the years he spent undergoing training to become a high-level operating thetan. Stuff like maintaining eye contact with an auditor in silence for hours on end. So as a result, he developed this completely unbalanced view of himself in relation to his peers as someone who has "special" abilities or a somehow more acute understanding of interpersonal relationships and dynamics. But it's all bullshit! His Scientology-derived tendency to dominate conversations and ask strangely pointed questions doesn't give him any sort of special power over his fellow man (ostensibly one of the great benefits of becoming OT VIII), it just makes people uncomfortable when speaking with him. Even though he left the Church years ago, the effects of the Church's training have had a permanent effect on his personality.
I say this because these personality traits are consistent among nearly everyone I've ever met in the church (more than a handful of people). To myself and others, they often come across as slightly arrogant, abrasive, and a little creepy (even when they're people that we generally like otherwise). I'm not trying to paint an unfair portrait of Scientologists as people—many of whom are decent, good people despite their involvement in the Church—I'm only explaining that a good amount of empirical evidence suggests that this is a direct result of involvement in the Church of Scientology and not pre-existing personality traits.
For more evidence, see every single one of the videos posted in this thread.
Full disclosure: the paper I work for has covered the Church of Scientology (in what I'll admit is a
strongly un-objective manner) for many years, and in 2009, they started publishing a big series where they interviewed former high-ranking officers from the Church, Sea Og, and so on. The stories are insane and also seem to support my hypothesis that intimidation and aggression are fundamental characteristics of Scientology training. When the first series of articles came out in 2009, the Church got SUPER PISSED and published a glossy magazine called "Freedom" that they mailed to almost every resident of the Bay Area (the Times' primary circulation area). That magazine is also online:
http://www.freedommag.org/the_bigotry_b ... mes_facade
http://www.tampabay.com/specials/2009/reports/project/
Changing the subject a bit: does anyone know if homophobia is inherent in Rastafarian ideology? I know Jamaica has one of the most unapologetically-homophobic cultures in the entire world (on a level of insanity as the way women are treated in some super-conservative Islamic regions), but I don't know if this has anything to do with being a Rastafarian. I would suspect that it's more due to Jamaican culture than Rastafarian belief itself.
Useless trivia: the derogatory terms for gay men in Jamaican slang is "batty boys," which is a surprisingly common reference in lyrics from big-name reggae artists. Like if top-40 acts routinely peppered their lyrics with references to "xasthur fans."