The Hubbard Scale of Formulas and Procedures

(Many Scientologists would take that title seriously and expect this post to be about something called "The Hubbard Scale of Formulas and Procedures".  But it's just a joke.)

L. Ron Hubbard was compulsive about putting everything into some kind of scale.  He developed the Tone Scale, the Communication Scale, the Behavior and Physiology Scale, the Cycle of Action Scale, the Admin Scale, the Scale of Conditions, the Tone Scale of Decisions, the Scale of Whosits and Whatsits, dozens and dozens of scales, lists and codes.

And he was compulsive about creating very exact procedures for everything.  Every condition, problem, situation had an exact Hubbard-written procedure for solving it or changing it.  Thousands and thousands of procedures.

Scientology is all about Hubbard's scales and his procedures, processes and formulas.  And Scientologists are supposed to know and follow all the key Hubbard formulas and procedures.

As a Scientologist, you are not allowed to just "work things out".  You can't ignore things.  You can't think for yourself.  You are always, always, always in a specific "condition" and you are always, always, always supposed to follow Hubbard's "condition formulas" to improve your condition.  Before taking any action, Scientologists must first check these formulas to see what Hubbard said to do.

[sarcasm]That's why you see so many successful Scientologists [/sarcasm]

This is what Hubbard did.  Everything had to be plotted against some kind of scale and every situation had to be solved via one of his procedures.  He just didn't trust "humaniods" to do things the "right" (meaning Hubbard) way, so he wrote procedures to ensure everyone would do everything "correctly".

And they must be followed, even when they don't work, as is often the case.  Even when the formulas don't fit the situation.  Even when those scales don't make any sense.

Of course, public Scientologists are not strictly held to these standards.  They are expected to do all that, but the Church of Scientology doesn't have that kind of absolute control, so many Scientologists go on with their lives mostly ignoring all that stuff.

But on staff, and in the Sea Org, under David Miscavige, all these procedures, checklists, formulas, scales and whatnot must be adhered to religiously (pardon the pun).  As a result, this usually brings everything to a grinding halt.  There are factually more people "ensuring compliance" than there are people doing actual work.  There is absolutely tons of paperwork, requests for authorization, proof of compliance, formula write-ups, programs written, filled out, verified, checked, rejected, redone, and on and on.

It is micro-management gone insane.  You can't do anything in the Sea Org without a massive amount of paperwork, with all the associated time wasted in writing these things up and verifying and authorizing and rejecting.

And this is all because this is the way Hubbard said to do it. 

You can't, according to Hubbard, just go out and get something done.  That is wrong.  You have to work out what condition you are in, what formula to apply, what is your Admin Scale, what policy are you applying, what are the Hubbard-specified procedures? And this must be all analyzed (using Hubbard procedures) and written up in a program, with all the "proper" policies and procedures noted.

And then it must be authorized.

And, of course, it is never, ever authorized.  The people who are supposed to authorize your program never will.  You see, they must forward everything they authorize up to David Miscavige, who is the ultimate approval for everything, and they know that David Miscavige will hate it and he will assign everybody in that hierarchy some low condition for approving such a "horrible, f**ked up program".  So every program gets rejected and rejected and rejected.

Eventually, the program probably will get approved by the middle managers and sent up to Miscavige, who does hate it and does assign everyone some lower condition.  Then Miscavige will "write it himself," which usually means copying the original program as written, with a few insignificant changes.

And then the program must be complied with, exact step by exact step.

Now, you understand this program was written before any work was done and before anything was investigated, so the steps of the program are, invariably, completely bogus and don't fit the actual situation once real work starts.

But the program steps cannot be altered and must be complied with, no matter how ridiculous they become.  It was approved, it was "written by David Miscavige!"

So, as the situation changes, and as the changes multiply, you have the ridiculous situation where people are being forced to comply with steps that have become meaningless and forced to ignore new conditions and problems that have popped up.

You can blame Miscavige for making it so horrible, but, actually, that's what Hubbard created.  That's all strictly according to Hubbard's policy letters and his tech.

That's the inside view as to why pretty much nothing gets done in the Church of Scientology and why, if something ever does get done, it is such a mess.   Hubbard built it that way.
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