I have been listening to the audio book of George Orwell's 1984. I was amazed at the number of idea that seems to have been taken right from the book and used in the CoS.
The whole structure of the church seems to be a mirror of the party.
Many INGSOC traits are seen through out the church.
I also get the impression that LRH though of himself as Big Brother.
Much of the churches specialized language has double speak characteristics.

The date of the publishing was 1949 so I believe that this beats out the church by quite a few years. I believe I can also assume that this is a one way flow, I do not believe George Orwell would of structured this story off of anything that he would of seen from LRH.

As I have been listening to the story of the outer party member it came to me that this could also be a story based on a group that shunned most of society and thought of themselves as self-important. They do not have to be in control or even have a large power base for the story to carry itself out.

The traits that I can identify so far are:
The changing of the history (there are numerous accounts of this LRH war record, Snow White, DA of critics and ex members and so on).
Sub substance existence (always living on the edge of poverty, over worked and under paid).
A war stance (us against them mentality, one that they are out to get you no mater whom the them are, this also helps to support the acceptance of their level of existence).

I had some other points but work pulled me away and I can not think of them now.
If this thread carries on and I finish the book maybe more comparisons can be found.

Athiest:

I first read 1984 while a student at Delphi and saw many of paralells you mention even then.

Another important comparison is alteration of language: Orwell's Newspeak is designed to make bad thoughts impossible. Scieno-speak is designed to make the person self-censor his thoughts - unperson = SP, crime = overts, natter = thoughtcrime. "Unreasonable" is good and "reasonable" and "open-minded" are bad.

I think Orwell drew his inspiration from Stalinist Russia, and from Machiavelli's "The Prince." But I agree it is a rather spot-on description of what a nation ruled by Scientology would look like. I've recommended both the book and the film in this forum many times, as well as Orwell's other well-known work "Animal Farm."

In the early 80s LRH did a interview (via written questions) with Denver's Rocky Mountain News. When asked about the "best way to make $1 million is to start a religion" quote, he said it was Orwell who said that, not him!

You know, he might have been telling the truth there!

Robert Vaughn Young had some good posts on this:

http://www.xenu.net/archive/1984/

From FACTnet: "HUBBARD & SCN --- Evil & Money Motivated"

anon1
Monday, February 09, 2004 - 01:22 pm
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BB recently posted a quote from Hubbard regarding Orwells 1984 and how it would basically pale in comparison to someone using 'Black Scientology.' I've read this before.

I think this is highly relevant. Hubbard knew full well the extent he was messing with peoples minds and the harm it could all do. I just diagree with him that there is such a thing as 'White Scientology'.

anon
Monday, February 09, 2004 - 01:52 pm
Questions for OT-III's

BasicBasic
Wednesday, February 04, 2004 - 06:25 pm
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He actually quoted it as a warning in PDC 20.
Saying Orwells vision was nothing compared to
the secret use of scientology....


Anonymous
Tuesday, February 10, 2004 - 11:51 am
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"Death, insanity, aberration, or merely a slavish obedience can
be efficiently effected by the use of Black Dianetics. Further,
adequate laws do not exist at this time to bar the use of these
techniques. The law provides that only the individual so wronged
can make complaint or swear out a warrant for offenders using
these techniques."

"A person on whom Black Dianetics has been employed seldom
retains the sanity or will to make a complaint, or does not know he
has been victimized. In addition, persons claiming such offenses
against their persons are commonly catalogued by doctors as
suffering from delusion. Thus the employer of Black Dianetics can
escape unpunished under existing legal procedures."
-- L. Ron Hubbard, circa September 1952.

HUBBARD & SCN --- Evil & Money Motivated

The "Not Me" Myth: Orwell and the Mind

"They envision Big Brother coming in storm-trooper boots, holding guns to heads and forcing persons to change their beliefs, alter their personalities, and accept new ideologies. Orwell drew on the wisdom of the ages -- most manipulation is subtle and covert. Orwell envisioned the evolution of an insidious, but successful mind and opinion manipulator. He would appear as a smiling, seemingly beneficent Big Brother. But instead of one Big Brother, we see hordes of Big Brothers in the world today.

Were George Orwell alive, he might be intrigued with the variety of situations in which mind-bending and thought manipulation techniques are applied today. His genius centered on seeing how language, not physical force would be used to manipulate minds. In fact the growing evidence in the behavioral sciences is that a smiling Big Brother has greater power to influence thought and decision-making that a visibly threatening person. As Orwell's last words in his prophetic book stated: "He loved Big Brother." "
-- Margaret Singer, Ph.D.

The "Not Me" Myth: Orwell and the Mind

Jules:
Talk about smooth PR for SCN:

http://www.theta.com/goodman/

The amount of effort invested in denial amazes me!

Andreas than you for the link.
In the book the telescreen watches people everywhere all the time. In the church they do not need such things to monitor its people. The individuals are told they cannot hide a lie because of auditing. The individual spies on themselves.
Years ago on Star Trek: TNG a show delved into though manipulation. Picard had been captured by the Cardassians and was being interrogated by the individual. The Cardassians went from friendly to terrorizer back and forth. The question that he kept putting to Picard was how many lights did he see. After he was saved from the interrogation and returned to his ship he was talking to Troi and said that he believe that he saw 5 light instead of 4.

They talk about how big brother was all encompassing to Oceania. As noted in Jules Mac link on a smaller scale this has happened, but in the book only people whom were conceirned with what the party did was those in the party themselves. The prols did not care at all who was in charge.

Now I know I should remember this but what was the other text that we were talking about last year that seemed to contain many of the ideas for the OT levels?

Doublethink "tech" according to Orwell himself:

"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.

…the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth."

'nuff said

a.k.a getting some "Reality" on Scientology.

So how much of Scientolgoy or at least the SeaOrg is based on 1984?

I don't know that Hubbard conciously used Orwell's works as a blueprint for anything. Many of the sociatal control mechanisms described in Orwell's works and the Sea Org have been around for centuries - The Prince by Machiavelli is several hundred years old. 1984 is about these methods being used in a technological society, leveraging technology and psycology to control people to a maximum degree. L. Ron Hubbard put some of these mechanisms into place within a 20th century technological society, but so did the Soviet Russians, the German Nazis, the Chinese Communists and the North Koreans.

Orwell was very familiar with the Soviets (he was a dissolusioned Socialist) and the Nazis. LRH obvoisly knew about them as well, plus the post-WWII Chinese and North Korean Communists. In fact, LRH's RPF (Rehabilitation Project Force) seems heavily based on on the "re-education camps" used by the Chinese during the 1950s and 1960s. These camps got a lot of publicity in the US, and inspired the film "The Manchurian Candidate" about a US POW in Korea trained to commit assasinations after returning home to the US.

So the Sea Org is just one of many organizations that have used effective techniques to control and manipulate the hearts and minds of its members. 1984 is a dystopia about a Society where these techniques are perfected.

When you are done with 1984, get "Animal Farm" next. It shows how a group can evolve from idealistic to toalitarian and there are many paralells to Scientology that are not in 1984.

I will be looking for that one soon. I have a bit of a back log right now. If anyone has not read Black Hawk down I would recomment it.

Andrew:
I think you should now, also, make a similar post concerning "New Speak".

I am not sure I could give LRH that much credit for adapting the different ideas together. It seems that he reused what he knew and took large chunks that interested him from other places.
All of his stories about his adventures seemed to be barrowed from other people lives.


(Message edited by ~Atheist on April 10, 2004)

Atheist:
I think that most of us agree on that.

I thought that Andrew did such a good job on "double-think" that he might want to do a similar thing about "new-speak". It does apply - don't you think?