As many of you know, I am a Scientologist. I have been as long as you have known me. It’s a very important part of my life, but one that I rarely talk about with my friends who aren’t Scientologists. It’s something I’ve been hesitant to bring up, because I always have to deal with various lies about my religion before I can even start to have a sensible conversation with somebody about it.

This is nothing new–new movements that want to help humanity have experienced ridicule and misinformation for as long as history is recorded. The reasons for this are varied, but primarily it’s because somebody profits from the degraded state of humanity and protests anybody who they fear might undo their “good work” of keeping people down. The simple story of something like Scientology (which is remarkably simple, actually, and really does exist just to help people, and isn’t weird or strange at all–except perhaps in believing that people _can_ be helped) is twisted into something so foul that it becomes hard for me to even bring up the subject in casual conversation, or even to talk about the fact that I’m a Scientologist.

Now, of course, there is another reason, and that is that there have been many organizations on Earth which claimed that they were here to help people when in fact they were here to take advantage of people and betray them. You could probably think of such examples in your own life, even if on a small scale of an individual. And yet, if you look at yourself, you will find that _you_, an individual, actually do want to help others. And if you examine your past, you will find that you _have_ helped people, even if in small ways such as cleaning something up, smiling at them when they’re down, or encouraging them in their lives. And if you can’t recall an instance of this from the past, you could probably imagine some small way in which you could help another. No matter how small, _something_ could be done about it.

The fact that this is so universal indicates that in fact, people do want to help each other, and that help is real. So by extension, there must also be organizations that want to help people. Some organizations are bad, yes, and they do bad things to people with the power that they have. We think, perhaps, that control itself is bad, that nobody should be in control of anything or exert any power over anything. And yet, some organizations have done good things with the power that they have. They have brought clean water to people, they have educated children, they have taught people skills that saved their lives. We have all seen examples of this in YouTube videos, TED talks, etc. This is why we love such things, even, because we see people use their power to _help_ others, not to harm.

This brings us to the problem of communication, however. If people believe something bad about you, it’s hard to communicate. If you feel bad about something, even if it’s because of lies, it’s hard to communicate about it. Imagine if all you knew about somebody was what their ex-wife or ex-husband said about them. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that, but it’s not always accurate. People often become embittered when they fail in life, and often they will blame this failure on others instead of looking at what they themselves can do about it, causatively. This makes communication difficult, because the embittered people then spread lies about the subject that make it hard for anybody to communicate about it. This is definitely the case with Scientology–some have failed in their own lives and feel bad about it, but instead of taking responsibility for their own misdeeds, they have blamed Scientology and even created incredible fabrications about the church, its founder, its management, and its organizations. It’s something that I can assure you is so far from the truth that were you to experience the _truth_ of Scientology, you would be confused at how something so simple and so true could become twisted into something so seemingly sinister or dangerous.

This brings me to my point. Before today, it was hard to explain this to people, because even though Scientology is the most open organization on Earth (truly, anybody can walk into a church who genuinely wants to know about Scientology, anybody can read a book, etc.) it still hasn’t been super-easy to find out about it. You had to know somebody who was a Scientologist, decide to read a book yourself, etc.

However, now all you have to do is go to https://www.scientology.tv/tv/ and watch five minutes of any show that is playing, and you will get a general sense of what Scientology is about. It’s not a trick, it doesn’t cost any money, and it even includes some shows with the actual voice of our founder, L. Ron Hubbard–it’s hard to get more exact and direct about what Scientology is than that, since _all_ of Scientology is nothing more than than the writings and lectures of L. Ron Hubbard.

If it’s something you’ve ever been curious about, just go watch five minutes of whatever is playing live right now. It’s not going to hurt you, or trick you, or even confuse you. It’s very simple, straightforward, and actually, kind of interesting. And it’s absolutely the truth of what Scientology actually is.

One thing that usually becomes very obvious during a tragedy is that people very much want to help each other. The reason this is obvious is that everybody has an idea about what should be done about it, how they or others can help, how it should be prevented from happening again. Nobody goes, “Oh yes, those victims deserved it!” Or at least, only a small percentage do—usually a small percentage of people who we already know are basically crazy.

This is why, every time there is a tragedy, people come up with explanations of why it happened and what should be done about it. If they can’t figure out truly, basically why it happened, they will still want to prevent it. This usually manifests itself as blaming non-causative things that were involved in the tragedy and saying something should be done about those non-causative things.

Let’s take an example that isn’t recent, so that we don’t stir up the flames of recent tragedy and upset. The Nazis used gas chambers to kill people. Who is at cause? The Nazis. However, if one didn’t wish to confront Nazis (since that’s certainly unpleasant to confront) one could say that the use of gas to kill people like that should be banned, and in fact I believe that it is, now. In other words, it’s easier to focus on the gas (a non-causative but very simple culprit) than on the Nazis (a causative agent, but also a difficult-to-confront evil).

This is even more complex when the culprit is incomprehensible. One of the key qualities of insanity is incomprehensibility. That is, insane people are almost impossible to understand. If you’ve ever been personally around an institutional psychotic, you’ll know what I mean. They do things for no good reason, they say things that don’t make sense, they have emotional reactions that are completely disconnected from reality, and they are extremely confusing to the people around them.

So what you tend to see when a crazy person does something bad is others blaming the tools they used to commit the crime, or some other material object that was involved (like drugs) rather than some actual person who was involved directly or indirectly. What is frequently overlooked is that there was often somebody involved in making this person crazy, whether that was their drug dealer, their doctor, their “best friend,” their psychiatrist, their mentor, or some other person.

Most people do not come out of the womb thinking, “Boy, I would like to buy a gun and shoot some people when I get older.” Their ideas are crafted by some sort of false education, or the drugs that warp their mind are provided by somebody. A very few are born insane, but mostly, it’s not a gun, it’s not a drug, it’s not a bomb or a knife that causes things—it’s a person, a being, or a group of beings.

I’m all for stopping people from spreading hateful messages that attack people for their race, religion, country of origin, etc. It’s foul and harmful. But when you support laws against hate speech, you’re essentially trusting the government to make a decision about what is and isn’t okay to communicate about.

Okay, you say, maybe that’s fine. I mean, that’s a pretty simple decision, maybe it will be made correctly. And you know what, I bet in many cases it will be.

But let’s look at this generally. Do you think the government is an efficient system which makes logical decisions always? Do you think that the legal system is totally workable and always results in fair justice?

See, the problem isn’t that hate speech is good, or hate speech is bad, or whatever. The problem is rationality. You’re trusting one group which has a history of behaving irrationally in many circumstances (the government) to regulate another set of people who are irrational (racists, bigots, etc). Basically, imagine the situation was reversed, and you trusted the racists and the bigots to regulate the government. Would that make sense? I mean, some people argue that some politicians are racists and bigots, but I don’t really have a stake in that argument. What I’m saying is, take a group of people that you think are crazy or harmful, and ask yourself, “Would you trust them to say what the government can and can’t communicate about?” Okay. So now reverse it. Maybe the government isn’t as crazy as that group of people you were thinking of. It’s probably not. But do you fully trust that the government will behave rationally?

I would have no problem giving the government the power to regulate certain aspects of communication if I expected the government to always use that power rationally. But, from my perspective, the reason that we have human rights encoded into laws is that the government does not always behave rationally. I do believe that many people who work in the government are good people who have good intentions. And some parts of the government do a good job. But, historically, governments do not do a good job in the area of choosing what speech is okay and what speech is not okay. They have certain restrictions even now in the USA, but those are very limited and usually very specifically defined so that it’s hard to behave irrationally with them. Mostly, the courts uphold free speech. But even so, sometimes irrational results come even from the narrow restrictions that we have now.

But look, even if you did think that the government was rational, remember that it could change completely tomorrow. Some of you thought the previous President of the USA was bad, crazy, etc. and some of you think the current President of the USA is bad, crazy, etc. So would you trust the government that you don’t like with the power to decide what speech is okay and what speech isn’t okay? Because when you pass a law, you are giving every possible future version of the government that power.

If I had my way, it would be a crime to engage in extensive verbal harassment of another person’s race, religion, etc. in a public setting. I would expel every Nazi, racist, etc. from America and make their groups illegal, or at least create a focused re-education program that slowly dissolves their groups. Those sorts of groups are a scourge against humanity.

In fact, there are many web sites and companies where spouting Nazi or racist rhetoric would get you banned or fired. I’m fine with that—I trust those web sites and companies to make that decision. But even if I didn’t trust them or they messed up really badly and censored me inappropriately, I could go somewhere else and not experience that injustice, because I have other options. But with the government, I don’t really have other options. I can’t just “go somewhere else.” And I don’t believe that they will always make good judgments or that the legal system will always result in a fair trial. So I would never support a law that made it illegal to communicate some belief or ideal—not because I think all communication is fine (I don’t), but because I simply can’t imagine a government of Earth that would always get that right.

One of the qualities of an insane person is the inability to differentiate things that are different–to say that two things that are actually different are instead similar or identical.

Consequently, insane people (or at least, evil people) tend to take two things that are different and say they are the same. A classic example of this is the mis-use of words in the naming of organizations or the incorrect identification of two political movements with each other. It’s also used by various groups to claim that they are in fact another group.

For example, the word “Nazi” means “National Socialism.” The Nazis were maybe extreme nationalists (though I wouldn’t say a group that murders a huge part of its own nation is truly “nationalist”), but they were definitely as far from being socialists as you could get–they were fascists. They even used to be called the “German Workers Party,” another clear attempt to incorrectly identify themselves with the then-popular Marxist movements happening throughout the world.

Most of the people that I know would now acknowledge Nazi-ism as an insane philosophy, so this is a good example of how an insane group of people will confuse the issue by using words that make them sound like they are something else.

Similar examples exist in American history. The States’ Rights Democratic Party was the official name of the group that most people now know as the “Dixiecrats,” a group most famous for attempting to stop black people from voting in the South through methods that are now not only illegal, but which people of conscience would have considered to be immoral even then. And yet, here they are calling themselves “democrats,” a word based on the concept of democracy–a concept that is basically all about voting.

The “National States Rights Party” was supposedly about states’ rights–a valid concept of Constitutional Law as expressed in the Tenth Amendment. But really the National States Rights Party was led by a person who was also a leader of the Ku Klux Klan. The only “rights” they cared about was the “right” to deny everybody other than white people their rights. It’s not even a party that supports anybody’s rights–it was explicitly about removing the rights of other people, a concept that is forbidden in almost all legal systems everywhere in the world. (That is, almost all legal systems, including the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, forbid using the concept of “rights” in order to destroy or deny the rights of others.) This isn’t reasonable, it’s evil. It’s insane. It’s also a lie–the name of the organization is not really what the organization does.

Even Communism ultimately became the opposite of what it claimed to be. Instead of being about empowering workers, communist countries became the most absolute dictatorships the world has ever seen.

One of the problems that human beings have when confronting this is that it’s very difficult to confront evil and insanity. People want to justify it. They want it to make sense when it doesn’t make sense. They don’t want to see evil or believe that it exists. So they say, “Well, I suppose those people really did just care about states’ rights and they all just went a little astray,” or something. But no, they were never about states’ rights, really. Not only weren’t they, but they did nearly-irreparable damage to the very concept of states’ rights by associating it with racism. They were harming “states’ rights,” not helping it.

Nowadays you see white supremacists use the term “alt-right” to describe themselves. But this is just evil, insane people hijacking the word “right” to mean “racism.” It doesn’t really matter to them which word they hijack. Remember that they already hijacked the word “socialism,” which is about as left as you can get. In fact, even “alternative right” could have meanings that don’t have to do with racism; it’s just been so confused by modern-day Nazis (and the media that loves to use them to sell papers and TV shows) that now the phrase means only “racist agenda.” Just more insanity from insane people.

In reality, racism isn’t political. It’s just evil, stupid, or insane.

I love how people are like, “Oh yeah, let’s all be peaceful and respect everybody,” until something that they think is evil shows up, and then they’re like, “Oh yeah, hit that person!”

And what’s funny is that you usually think the evil person is evil because they are all like, “Oh, we want to hurt people!” So when your response is “Right, I want to hurt these evil people!” you should perhaps take a moment to reflect on how stupid that is. 

The arena of politics is fraught for a lot of reasons.

It’s the subject of power, a subject on which humanity as a group is pretty much insane, from a historical perspective. Very few people ask themselves why they want to be in power, assuming that power is its own end and that one has “won” in life by getting to “the top.”

Because it is the subject of power, various control mechanisms (themselves mechanisms to attempt to gain power) such as manipulation (read: marketing, news, PR, agent provocateur, etc.) are used to accomplish it. This obscures the actual subject of politics (the efficient organization of large groups of people and their stuff within particular boundaries of space) and replaces it with push-button topics that are used to manipulate populaces into placing certain individuals in power, without any consideration of what power or politics actually are.

Now, having obscured the subject with emotionally-charged manipulation, a sort of definition change occurs—it makes “politics” into “emotionally-charged hot-button topics,” almost definitionally. It makes it impossible to discuss, and actually even makes the actual subject of politics (a social science which is known and does work) itself into an emotionally-charged hot-button topic.

In fact, anybody bringing up the subject of actual politics gets their position attacked more than any other supposedly “political” position, because attempting to put any sanity or actual politics into the subject goes directly counter to any attempt to manipulate populaces. That is, actual politics is not the subject of manipulation, fear, divisiveness, etc. It provides freedom to the individual and supports the group. It does not lead to autocracy, domination—these things that humanity thinks are “power.”

It’s not just autocrats that practice these attacks on people. They have educated the populace extremely thoroughly, by taking a few push-button topics and making them the basic pillars of “politics,” saying that nobody could really know anyway and it’s all just opinion, and then pushing forward from these pillars as though they were the fundamentals. The populace then accepts these new “fundamentals” as the most senior data in the subject of politics and they push these ideas themselves, because they are subjects that are emotionally important to people. It doesn’t matter whether the new “fundamentals” are right or wrong. The best ones have some truth in them–it makes them more defensible, which leads to more arguments and confusion. As long as they are not truly fundamental but you make them “fundamentals,” you can get the effect you’re going for. And that effect is to (a) make the subject impossible to resolve, leading to endless arguments, (b) make the subject so emotionally charged that nobody can think straight about it, (c) cause people to defend their positions either irrationally (since they have no basic principles to work with) or with tremendous complexity (since it’s very complex to explain a subject that has no basic principles), and (d) allow the subject to be manipulated by any person who can sufficiently establish themselves as an “authority” on the subject (something easily accomplishable with sufficient funding and marketing power).

So yes, sometimes when you talk about politics, humans react in a strange way.

You know, once in a while I see people post about immigration into the US, or get unhappy about it, or something, and I wonder if they understand how immigration into the United States works.

Here’s a reasonable summary here of ways to legally immigrate into the US.

You know, people sometimes get down on major record labels, but they do some pretty good things. I just discovered Rachel Platten’s most recent album (even though it came out last year) and I’m really impressed.

I met her many years ago when she was opening for Matt Nathanson in San Francisco (which was an awesome concert, by the way) and (a) she was actually a great performer (b) she was a really cool person–like somebody who it seemed I would want to hang out with. I liked her performance so much that I actually bought her album at the show, which I’ve rarely done. When I listened to the album, it was okay, but it wasn’t nearly as good as she actually is live.

Many years later, she was signed by a major, and the album she did after that is great! It really shows off what a fantastic singer and songwriter she is. I think there are a lot of stories about the “bad” things that major labels do, and I don’t even doubt that some of those stories are true. But one of the things about these big companies is that they have the power and resources to really bring together great artists (like, in this case, Rachel and the people who produced her album) in a way that brings us a level of artistic quality in recordings that we actually might not really get to experience otherwise.

I read an essay by David Griffin (a successful record executive) many years ago, and one thing that he pointed out was that most people go I to the record business because they _love music_ (at least, the original creators of these companies do). It’s not even the best way to make money–for example, I did a bit of math, and I probably still make more money per year as a programmer than Rachel Platten does as an internationally successful recording artist. There are reasons the companies behave the way they do, which mostly have to do with the economics of the industry. It’s not something I’m going to go into (or really, even particularly defend it–there could be a better model for them, I think) here, other than to just provide another reminder of an important fact:

People are basically good. There is evil in the world, but sometimes it’s best to assume good intentions unless you have the right evidence to indicate otherwise, even for (or perhaps especially for) large organizations.

It is quite true that constructive ideas come from individuals, not from groups. However, without the assistance of a group, no individual will ever make any significant impact on the planet by themselves.

This was a difficult realization for me to come to. I’m pretty smart and I’d like to think that I can do some good things for the world by myself. But every time I’ve gone off on a kick of individuality and decided that I was just going to handle some whole scene by myself, most of the time I failed. On smaller things, such as making major changes within a group I belonged to, I was successful. But on changes to things on the scope of a planet or many many groups, when I tried to do it all by myself without any support from anybody, I failed–or at least, I didn’t have the impact that I wanted.

In my life, I’ve read a lot of fantasy novels–boy gets magic powers, boy fights off evil, the world is saved. But in my life, I’ve come to realize that the most fantastic and untrue viewpoint on those stores isn’t “boy gets magic powers.” I mean, that could happen, one way or another, maybe even with technology we can’t imagine now. The most unlikely part is “boy saves world all by himself.” That is a fantasy. Nobody saves the world by themselves. And if you think about it, in the best books, the magic boy or girl almost always does have some huge organization backing him or her up.

So if you think that groups are bad and nobody should ever be in any kind of organization or anything whatsoever, I fully respect your viewpoint. You’re entitled to it. But if you _also_ are a person who wants to change the world, you’d better come fast to the realization that you’re NOT going to do it all by yourself, get over whatever objection to groups that you have, and become a part of (or lead, or form) the most effective group around that’s doing something about the situation you want to resolve.

It’s not about ideologies or holding the group above the individual. That’s a lie. The individual IS the creative force from which all good things flow.

It’s about BEING EFFECTIVE. If you hate being effective so much that you’d rather just take on the world all by your lonesome and fail, good for you. But that’s not for me. At least, not anymore!