I’m reading the book Scientology, a New Slant on Life, for the first time in 30 years. This book, by L. Ron Hubbard, was recently re-released, with typographical and other errors cleaned up; all the basic books of Scientology were gone through carefully, compared closely against the original author’s manuscripts so as to make them exactly correct as they were originally written, and reissued. It was big news for Scientologists. Over the years many typographical errors had crept into the published books. I had found some differences myself between versions of the books published in England and those published in the US, so it was good to see these resolved. I’ve read through most of the newly released books and I’m just finishing up the last ones.

This particular book is full of useful info. In the chapter about handling confusions of the workaday world (a phrase which invokes in me some nostalgia for the simplicity of the 1950′s work culture in America), Hubbard says:

Confusion is uncertainty. Confusion is stupidity. Confusion is insecurity. When you think of uncertainty, stupidity and insecurity, think of confusion and you’ll have it down pat.

What, then is certainty? Lack of confusion. What, then is intelligence? Ability to handle confusion. What, then, is security? The ability to go through or around or to bring order to confusion. Certainty, intelligence and security are lack of or ability to handle confusion.

He also gives the handling for confusion, which is very simple.

I’ve never looked at intelligence that way, as being the “ability to handle confusion.”

———

When I was young, my step-father was a man of above-average intelligence, who prided himself on having gone to college on the GI Bill after serving in Korea. He practically worshiped the books he had collected; a small library of texts on all manner of his interests, mostly classics of English literature, but he was also an amateur geologist so had various college-level texts on that subject. He subscribed to Scientific American and struggled through its articles every month when it arrived. He had confused, to some degree, education with intelligence. He had moderate amounts of both.

Looking at him with this new definition of intelligence, I’d have to say he was also pretty good at handling confusions.

When I was about 12, on his day off, he brought me with him to the plywood factory where he was a foreman, and I noticed that there was a very large puddle of water on one of the big concrete work floors where the men were walking back and forth, and where the forklift was stacking up plywood. It was a safety hazard to have all that water where it wasn’t supposed to be. This puddle had been around for months; it wasn’t drying up or going away. I heard him talking about it with the on-duty foreman. So I spent a few minutes while he was busy, simply looking at the many pipes that ran up and over the workspace. Some pipes held live steam, some held hot or cold water, some were for the fire-suppression sprinklers, and some were electrical conduits that just encased wires to protect them. It was all very dirty, with years of accumulated sawdust and grime covering pretty much everything. It was a jumble and not easy to trace what was what. (On a ship it would have been color-coded with arrows painted to indicate direction of flow, but this was a 1960′s era plywood plant, which had been built “fast and dirty”.)

The puddle centered around a water faucet that didn’t drip most of the time, but would occasionally gush water. The faucet appeared to NOT be leaking. If you turned the main water valve on, and turned that faucet off, nothing came out. If you turned it on, and the main water valve for the system was also turned on, water would run out of it. I’d seen my step-father standing there with the other foremen in front of that faucet, scratching their heads, trying to trace the pipes and see where the leak was coming from. The problem was that when the MAIN water valve was turned OFF, it would sometimes gush water from it anyway, for no apparent reason.

It was a confusion.

The pipe for that faucet went up and over a wall, and came down outside some distance away where there was another faucet the workmen used when they went off-shift to clean their boots and gloves and wash up before going home. I went outside and opened that faucet, and it started sucking air into it. Ah, the pipe was acting as siphon between the two faucets!

I went back inside and sure enough, the main water valve was turned off, but the inside faucet was turned on and was now leaking. I went back outside and shut off the outer faucet. Went back inside and observed — no leak. As long as the faucet outside was turned off, no air could get into the system and it didn’t let the water in the siphon run down into the shop floor. Every day, when the workmen were all outside cleaning up at end of shift, they turned on the main water valve, then the outside faucet, which filled the pipe again.

I explained what I had figured out to my step-dad, who ran the same checks on the pipes himself, smacked his forehead, and explained it to the other foreman. If they just kept both faucets turned off when not actually being used, it would never leak.

That incident at the plywood plant points up the strained relationship with my step-dad. He saw the books I read; I devoured his own library, and the local County library, skipped a grade in school, and had the highest Minnesota Multiphasic standardized tests of any kid in Oregon.

He wasn’t jealous or envious of his step-son’s intelligence, but he was very wary of it. I think it made him uncomfortable; he had been used to being the brightest light in the room.

If he’d been just a little brighter, he’d have figured out how to help me graduate from high school at age 14, and how to get into a good college. But we were both stumped by that one. The educational system at that time didn’t seem to allow it.

Not that being intelligent got me any favors at that tender age — I was bullied mercilessly at school, being a year younger than everyone else; the result of skipping a grade. The teachers and principal also rode me hard, figuring anything less than perfect scores meant I was slacking off, which was to some degree true.

When young, I was a sponge — I could read practically anything, soak up any material they threw at me and spit it back at them on any test. It helped that I had an eidetic memory and could “see” with my mind’s eye the text on any pages I’d studied. I lost that ability for a while when they forced a primitive form of “speed reading” on me, but I got it back later.

But that wasn’t what made me FEEL intelligent — it was the ability to handle confusion. Which was an ability I had in abundance at that young age, but which ability the rest of my education only dulled with false data, through creating uncertainty, and by instilling insecurity.

By the end of one year of college I had gone from someone with complete certainty on what I knew (and didn’t know) and near-perfect SAT scores, to being someone spinning with confusion. It took a couple of years to get my certainty back, but I did. I spent the next year as a ship’s carpenter, making things with my hands. It was honest work, and helped me focus on the real world.

For me, my purpose in getting an education was to be able to handle the confusions of life. And for me, college merely created more confusions — it didn’t help at all with the basic problems of a serious young man: how to find the right mate, how to raise a family, how to succeed at a job, or even more basic, how to actually talk to people. To find answers to those questions, to gain the skills so I could handle those confusions, I had to look elsewhere.

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This is a personal rebuttal to some websites I’ve seen from apostates recently that denigrated my religion with regard to raising children in Scientology. Here’s how I see this issue:

———-

My parents divorced when I was an infant, back in 1953. I grew up in a series of broken homes, attended 17 schools before graduating high school in 1970, and had 3 stepmoms and 7 step-dads at various times, as well as foster parents. I can remember living in 52 different houses in 6 states as a child. My parents were alcoholics, whose lives spun out of control in the 1960′s from abuse of booze and pills. Various religions were shoved down my throat–I rebelled against them.

What I learned from my parents’ examples was that I didn’t want to be like them in the way they lived, or in the way they had treated their kids. I left home at 16 after a fistfight with my latest drunken step-father. I became an emancipated minor, living on my own while I finished high school and went to college with little help from my family. I felt I couldn’t communicate with anyone and was terminally shy, not to mention depressed. In college I became addicted to street drugs and was spiraling downward when some friends pulled me into a Scientology church and signed me up for a $25 course that, over the next three months, taught me how to communicate. For me, it was hard, slogging work. But worth it, because having that skill in communication turned my life around. In 1974 I married a woman who was and is still a Scientologist.

By the early 1980′s, after my wife’s younger sister died of a heroin overdose at age 18, and my oldest sister became a drug dealer with drug addicts for children, my wife and I were very concerned over the outcome of our kids’ education and preparation for life as adults in this society. Our fears were justified; one of their cousins (not a Scientologist) later became a pornographer, one (also obviously not a Scientologist) became a crack addict. Other cousins have spent time in jail for theft, battery, domestic abuse, and the like.

Today I have two grown daughters (who now have kids of their own), who were raised as Scientologists during the 70′s and 80′s. They are great people and we are happy to have them and their children in our lives. They didn’t ever become drug addicts, they didn’t become criminals, instead they have made reasonably happy and productive lives for themselves.

What does that mean, being “raised as Scientologists”? Does it mean we were control freaks indoctrinating them in some weird religious rites, or that we abused them in some way or tried to stifle their self-determinism? No. My wife and I raised our kids so that they would think for themselves about whatever they were doing. It means they were given a common sense moral code (“The Way to Happiness” booklet) and that we helped them understand that moral code as kids and to figure out for themselves how to apply it to their own lives so they could grow up to become happy adults. We never shoved it down their throats.

Does being raised as a Scientologist mean they never had drugs in their lives? No. But they never (as far as I know, anyway) did any street drugs. If they needed antibiotics for an infection, they got them. If they had bad menstrual cramps, they would take Mydol. It means we didn’t push them toward drugs as the first solution to their problems, and it means we weren’t drug users.

Part of our moral code is “Set a good example”. Neither of our grown daughters has had a drug or alcohol problem at any point in their lives, and I like to think part of the reason for that is the example we set as their parents. We didn’t drink often or hard (a beer once in a great while, or a glass of wine at a party), and we didn’t ever condone marijuana or other drug usage by their cousins or friends. We explained to them that drug addiction is usually a solution to a problem of some kind; alienation, an inability to communicate, or to numb some kind of pain. We presented other solutions to those problems. Our moral code also says, “Be temperate” and we were, and we taught them to be temperate.

We taught them as best we could how to communicate, and encouraged them to talk to us, and didn’t evaluate for them or tell them what they should think about things. If we didn’t like something they were doing, we’d talk about it and express our disapproval, and then validate anything they were doing that we did like. I tried as hard as I could to get them to think for themselves. Our moral code says, “Be competent”, and we taught them to be competent at whatever they set out to do, and had a lot of fun in the process. My kids were happy kids.

We didn’t have a television in the house when they were little because we didn’t like the way they acted after they would watch it; jumpy and not themselves. They did better without TV, so we got rid of it entirely despite our own feelings about it. For entertainment they learned musical instruments and would play for us; Joplin, Chopin, Beethoven, etc., and we talked and laughed a lot. We would go to movies as a family activity on the weekends, which seems very old-fashioned to me. Every year we took long vacations together driving around the country visiting relatives and seeing the sights. Despite my hectic schedule as a Scientology staff member and minister working as a member of Scientology’s Sea Organization during the 1970′s, I made time to see my kids every day, spent extra time on the weekends with them, and managed to take a three-week vacation every year. In 1981 I knew I wanted to spend even more time with my kids, so I left my Scientology staff position and focused on jobs that made good money, and on raising my kids. We moved to a little place in the country in Oregon and created something of an idyllic environment for young kids. Both of them still talk fondly of our place in the country.

We sent our girls to public schools some of the time, but the results of that were pretty poor in my estimation. For example, at the end of the 4th grade, in about 1980, we realized our oldest daughter was completely blocked on math and numbers, and not reading well at all either. She had known how to read before she started school, so this was a very real regression. What was most frightening was that she didn’t WANT to learn any more; she hated public school. Over the summer, we got her a tutor who used Scientology teaching methods (Study Technology), and she learned math and reading; a few months later she was happily reading above her grade level. We tried when school started again to put her back in public school, but after a few weeks noticed the same pattern–she was unwilling to study, wouldn’t do her homework, and hated school. When we found out exactly what she was being taught, we were appalled. In one class, the teacher had all the kids write their own epitaphs and pretend to be dead and laying in a coffin. What in God’s name does that have to do with educating a kid? So we took her out of what we considered to be an insane public school system and started home schooling her. I think this was the best thing we ever did for her–she blossomed and quickly learned anything and everything she set her mind to.

Both my daughters chose, during their teenage years, to become Scientology staff members. They did this on their own, without any coaching or advice from their parents on the subject, because they wanted to help. Conversely, they both later left staff–my oldest one got married and became pregnant and wanted to focus on raising her son, which she did. He’s a great kid, and now a teenager himself and looking to become a veterinarian when he grows up.

To put not too fine a point on it, my younger daughter was booted off staff, for various misbehavior. Obviously being a staff member wasn’t what she thought it would be when she joined up. She wasn’t up to the challenge (from my experience it is a very rewarding challenge) and so she came back to live with me. She got her life sorted out, grew up some more, got married, had twins and has focused on being a mom to them for the last ten years. She is now a Scientologist in good standing, and works with me in our own little business. She’s sane, good company, and an excellent mom. And she still plays the piano and teaches her own kids music; they don’t watch much TV either. Her kids are being raised as Scientologists–they’ve studied “The Way to Happiness” for themselves and adopted it as their own. Nobody shoved it down their throats.

Our moral code says, “Love and help children”. My wife and I did that with our kids when they were young, and continue to do that now that they are adults, loving and helping both our children and their children.

I have a third daughter I haven’t mentioned so far, much younger than the others, who is still a teenager and something of a wild child with purple hair, tattoos, piercings and plenty of attitude. That she hasn’t done drugs despite the pressure from her many non-Scientologist friends is a testament to her education and moral upbringing and her own common sense. I am keeping my fingers crossed that as she matures she will remain a Scientologist and pick up the tools it makes available to people and use them for herself as my older daughters have; such tools as the moral code I’ve mentioned and the communication skills that have been so helpful to me over the years. She’s still figuring it out for herself, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Certainly no one is forcing her to do anything.

I’m very glad to have had the many tools that Scientologists have, relating to communication and morals. I think that using these tools is the key to helping children achieve competent and happy adulthood without falling into the many pitfalls along the way (drug abuse, violence, and criminality to name but a few). So far, it has worked very well for us.

I wish to God that I had had the tools of Scientology when I was a teenager, or that my parents had had them when I was a child. I am absolutely certain life would have been much happier and less stressful for me and for them. They might still be alive, and I might have a higher opinion of them.

Rev. Jere Matlock

Note: Here’s what my older daughter said on reading this post:

—————————————-

Hi Dad,

That’s beautiful! Thanks for sharing this with me. I’ve been very lucky to have you as a father that’s for sure.

I love you!

K

—————

Here’s what my younger daughter said about Scientology and Children.

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L. Ron Hubbard wrote a lot of books. I have several bookshelves groaning under the weight of his books, and I re-read them at least once a decade, as I do C.J. Cherryh, Iain M. Banks, Robert Silverberg, and Vernor Vinge.

From time to time I’ve seen blog postings from people who should know better, dismissing Hubbard as a “hack” or a “bad SF writer”. As this post will demonstrate, they couldn’t be more mistaken.

When I was a teenager (back before dirt), I first read his “Ole Doc Methuselah” tales and asked the Jospehine County librarians to keep an eye out for anything else from Hubbard and to let me know when they had anything new. It was a small library and they didn’t have any of his other classic books from the era of the pulps. I kept hoping…

In the intervening years, I’ve read a lot of Sci-Fi, and in my opinion, Hubbard’s best-selling Battlefield Earth book is a masterpiece, and his Mission Earth series is also terrific, and very funny.

This review of Mission Earth, from one of Hubbard’s colleagues pretty much refutes any bad-mouthing from the jealous or merely uninformed:

“You will lose sleep. You will miss appointments. If you don’t force yourself to set it down and talk to your family from time to time, you may be looking for a new place to live. Reading ‘The Invaders Plan’ is simply the most fun you can have by yourself.”
- Orson Scott Card, Author of Ender’s Game

Invaders Plan is the first book in the Mission Earth series. BTW, if you’ve never read Ender’s Game, you’re in for a treat. If you have, you know it is one of the best SF books ever penned.

Then there was A.E. Van Vogt’s review of Mission Earth: “Written with style and verve…a wonderful story.”

Then there is the review of Hubbard’s horror book, Fear, by Stephen King: “A classic tale of creeping, surreal menace and horror … one of the really, really good ones.”

Hubbard’s book Final Blackout, got this review from Robert A. Heinlein: “…as perfect a piece of science fiction as has ever been written.”

Robert Silverberg had this to say about Ole Doc Methuselah: “Delightful, amazing, and filled with wonder!”

But don’t take their word for it. Read any of Hubbard’s sci-fi or westerns or detective stories, and see for yourself why he was such a big name in the era of the pulps. His writing shines.

So when you see some critic bad-mouthing Hubbard’s writing skills, realize that a) critics are critics because they can’t “do”, and this one doesn’t have a clue and b) he’s probably got other hidden motivations (such as a prejudice against Scientology or popular literature).

And that’s my two cents on the matter.

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Impatiently awaiting the release of “Matrix Reloaded” tomorrow. It irks me that I won’t be able to see it until the weekend. Was it really necessary to spend $300 Million on making these two sequel movies? The original “The Matrix” movie raised the bar on special effects, but will the 2nd and 3rd do the same? We’ll see…

Found some new quotes I like in the latest issue of “The Federalist”, a conservative newsletter that comes out two or three times a week and has clips, explanations, and commentary worth reading. I learned that WMD have been found in Iraq, in the form of a functional mobile WMD lab. Exactly what you’d expect, despite Sean Penn’s comments from Baghdad.

Recently finished reading P.J. O’Rourke’s book, “Give War a Chance”. Ten years out of date (the book is about the first Gulf War) yet it was completely timely. What sticks with me is his description of a gun-toting teen-aged wannabe terrorist who in one sentence called America “the great Satan who should be destroyed” and in his next breath said he would to move to Detroit and learn to be a dentist if he could get the money together.

Arrived home today after a week in Florida for my daughter’s wedding on the beach in Clearwater. She was beautiful – a mini Pamela Anderson Lee, tan and blonde and made up to the nines.

I don’t want to fly anywhere, ever again, despite the experience.

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Been working on new website design using all CSS for the old Gloves in a Bottle website. Finally settled on this design, which has nice crisp text over blank buttons, and uses no tables. Now on to the drudge work of converting all the pages over to the new design. Joy!

Installed and am using Mailwasher Pro to try to cut down on some of the 300 or so spam emails I get in a day. I like it because it doesn’t just delete the spam, it never downloads spam from the server, and it bounces the spam back to the sender, so my address will eventually be taken off the list. At least that’s the theory. It’s cut my time handling emails in half. I have been using the iHateSpam anti-spam tool, but it kept routing valid email from friends and business associates into the “deleted” messages folder — and it missed a bunch of spam. Overall, I’d say it needs a more intelligent comparison algorithm. With Mailwasher you manually mark all the email to tell it which is from friends, and then it becomes easy to see the spam, mark it to be deleted and bounced, and then process it. Only after Mailwasher deletes and bounces the spam does Outlook Express then actually download it for you to read and handle.

Found an amusing peace plan attributed to Robin Williams but not actually written by him – a “Plan for Peace“. If you start reading it, stay with it to the last paragraph, which Robin did write – it’s the kicker!

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I have reserved tickets to my daughter’s wedding in Florida. Should be fun, although taking a week off in May will be tough with my current workload. Feels good to have posted four stories today.

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