So true, Val. If there is an easy simple modern way to do something the Sea Org will go for the ancient, labor-intensive horrific option.
How many serfs does it take to screw in a light bulb? Dunno, no light bulbs in the castle dude. Takes an army of serfs to place and light the rushes every night though.
Behind the big LRH House at the Int Base you can see a row of smaller buildings. The one on the far left is a small theatre with 35 mm dual projectors. Some of the others are guest houses, mostly for Tom Cruise and his entourage.
One of them is a museum of Hubbard artifacts. Hundreds of cameras, every kind of old E-Meter including the Japanese toy meter and the old Mathison Beep meter. Ancient 50s and 60s audio gear, like the old Neve mix board. You can sometimes see pictures of this in the Ron Magazine issues.
That Hubbard, such a collector! He had old junk that he never even looked at, all stacked up around him like Scrooge McDuck. They even kept the boxes and packaging for all his acquisitions, stacked up in attics like the Music Studio attic. And the famous Del Sol attic.
There were I think 10 or 15 staff completely devoted to Hubbard purchasing, called Logistics. The order would come down to buy something, the crew would leap into action. Sparing no sleep time or money until the item was delivered as ordered. Woe unto the Logistics operator that delivered a Nikon F2AS when an F2A was requested!
I guess it gave a boost to his endless ego whenever a new acquisition or hapless slave was added to his collection. It seemed to give him no particular pleasure to actually use them for a good purpose though. He would never relinquish a possession but trashed his staff at will. As the Bible says, where a man's treasure is there also his heart is. Matthew 6:20,21.
Yes, Hubbard thought acquiring new super high quality equipment somehow made him more of an expert in that field. He always ranted about being professional when he was nothing more than a dabbler.
So so true, Geoff. The tools of a Beethoven or J. R. R. Tolkien could fit in a small room. Hubbard needed many buildings full of expensive stuff to produce "The Power of Source" album and "Mission Earth".
As I often said as I was walking around the Int Base (sorry Churchill) - never have so many sacrificed so much for so little.
"We were being subtly trained to enjoy pain." Wow, just freakin wow. Staff and Sea Org really were the flagellates of $cientology.
No doubt that by now the mailing list is being done electronically and mail merge is being used. I mean, how can anyone in this time do anything else? It would be like having 2 up to date TV studios and not using one of them or keeping a cruise ship running without enough paying customers to pay the upkeep. Nah, no one would do that.
After I wrote that article, I had a dream about sitting on that concrete patio all night in my dress pants. It was odd because it was now me looking at past me doing it. Past me was just being all “uptone” cheerfully doing what needed to be done while future me kept telling me to wake up. I woke up very disoriented. But then I realized I was not there and it was ok.
I am not sure what has been covered here about telex drama but there was a lot. Certain staffers who ran the continents spent lots of time trying to get telexes out to their underlings in these conts. ( East US, West US, EU, etc.) Every Thursday night they tried to get these telexes out so the people in the outer areas would have their marching orders for the week. A person above them had to approve the telexes and if there was anything this approval person thought was off policy, the telex went back, rejected. Sometimes the person writing the telex had to be corrected (read things, do other steps) before they could resend the telex. Meanwhile, their counterpart in the outer area was trying to figure out what the priorities were for the week.
There are (were) very strict rules about calling anyone on the phone, management needed to send a telex. This continued up to 2000 when I left. No one could communicate by computer or phone.
Picture someone on the battlefield in WW2 waiting for a telex to tell them where to send their troops while the enemy closes in. This pretty closely approximates the situation and because the approval terminals were in short supply it sometimes took a while to get these telexs out.
As in all organizations, you have people who make sane decisions on the job and ones who don't. The people who approved the telexes were higher in the organization than the people writing these telexes. Some were sane and let most telexes go through. They didn't nitpick for errors. Other people on the same job took any little miswording as a reason to reject a telex. As this was the telex writer's only tool for getting orders carried out, this was a problem.
Add to this the fact that organizations were managed on statistics of what they accomplished in a week. Without these telexes orders, things didn't get done. It was a very buggy management system.
I am sure a former programs chief (the person who sent the telexes) could say a lot more about this but this is what I recall of this outdated and time-consuming SCN management ritual.
Wow. This is really one of the most remarkable and bizarre stories I have ever heard, about $cientology or anything else. A lot of stories are about other forms of evil and abuse. But this is. Really. Just. Bonkers.
Wow, I forgot about the addresso system. I was briefly in charge of that when Celebrity Centre started on 8th street. As an org we had to start doing mailings. At the time CC had three SO staff. Yvonne Gillham, me and another Australian women, Bett. Letters out was so important based on Hubbards rule about income is directly tied to letters out. I wonder how the orgs interpret that policy now?
Haha! I’d also forgotten addresso! (my spell checker wanted that to be a dress o! over and over again) I never knew the mechanics of it. Thanks for laying it out so clearly Val. I was always in either management or deck force so no use for Adresso (ah… capitalize it, and spell check is foiled)
Writing this article, spell check fought with me. I finally had to make it learn that word. I’m afraid now of what word it will correct with addresso. I can’t even type we. Spell check corrects it to west. Sigh. Technology. Can’t live without it can’t get it to play nice either.
The GPS scolded me the other day when I swore at an errant driver. I had it open for more directions. It quickly told me not to talk like that. I didn't know it did that, Robots are everywhere.
So true, Val. If there is an easy simple modern way to do something the Sea Org will go for the ancient, labor-intensive horrific option.
How many serfs does it take to screw in a light bulb? Dunno, no light bulbs in the castle dude. Takes an army of serfs to place and light the rushes every night though.
Behind the big LRH House at the Int Base you can see a row of smaller buildings. The one on the far left is a small theatre with 35 mm dual projectors. Some of the others are guest houses, mostly for Tom Cruise and his entourage.
One of them is a museum of Hubbard artifacts. Hundreds of cameras, every kind of old E-Meter including the Japanese toy meter and the old Mathison Beep meter. Ancient 50s and 60s audio gear, like the old Neve mix board. You can sometimes see pictures of this in the Ron Magazine issues.
That Hubbard, such a collector! He had old junk that he never even looked at, all stacked up around him like Scrooge McDuck. They even kept the boxes and packaging for all his acquisitions, stacked up in attics like the Music Studio attic. And the famous Del Sol attic.
There were I think 10 or 15 staff completely devoted to Hubbard purchasing, called Logistics. The order would come down to buy something, the crew would leap into action. Sparing no sleep time or money until the item was delivered as ordered. Woe unto the Logistics operator that delivered a Nikon F2AS when an F2A was requested!
I guess it gave a boost to his endless ego whenever a new acquisition or hapless slave was added to his collection. It seemed to give him no particular pleasure to actually use them for a good purpose though. He would never relinquish a possession but trashed his staff at will. As the Bible says, where a man's treasure is there also his heart is. Matthew 6:20,21.
Yes, Hubbard thought acquiring new super high quality equipment somehow made him more of an expert in that field. He always ranted about being professional when he was nothing more than a dabbler.
So so true, Geoff. The tools of a Beethoven or J. R. R. Tolkien could fit in a small room. Hubbard needed many buildings full of expensive stuff to produce "The Power of Source" album and "Mission Earth".
As I often said as I was walking around the Int Base (sorry Churchill) - never have so many sacrificed so much for so little.
Can you imagine the old man in the day and age of one-click purchasing on the interwebs ?
Hubbard fancied himself a futurist. He could not ever see himself as steeped in the past. Not a futurist a plagiarist
"We were being subtly trained to enjoy pain." Wow, just freakin wow. Staff and Sea Org really were the flagellates of $cientology.
No doubt that by now the mailing list is being done electronically and mail merge is being used. I mean, how can anyone in this time do anything else? It would be like having 2 up to date TV studios and not using one of them or keeping a cruise ship running without enough paying customers to pay the upkeep. Nah, no one would do that.
After I wrote that article, I had a dream about sitting on that concrete patio all night in my dress pants. It was odd because it was now me looking at past me doing it. Past me was just being all “uptone” cheerfully doing what needed to be done while future me kept telling me to wake up. I woke up very disoriented. But then I realized I was not there and it was ok.
I am not sure what has been covered here about telex drama but there was a lot. Certain staffers who ran the continents spent lots of time trying to get telexes out to their underlings in these conts. ( East US, West US, EU, etc.) Every Thursday night they tried to get these telexes out so the people in the outer areas would have their marching orders for the week. A person above them had to approve the telexes and if there was anything this approval person thought was off policy, the telex went back, rejected. Sometimes the person writing the telex had to be corrected (read things, do other steps) before they could resend the telex. Meanwhile, their counterpart in the outer area was trying to figure out what the priorities were for the week.
There are (were) very strict rules about calling anyone on the phone, management needed to send a telex. This continued up to 2000 when I left. No one could communicate by computer or phone.
Picture someone on the battlefield in WW2 waiting for a telex to tell them where to send their troops while the enemy closes in. This pretty closely approximates the situation and because the approval terminals were in short supply it sometimes took a while to get these telexs out.
As in all organizations, you have people who make sane decisions on the job and ones who don't. The people who approved the telexes were higher in the organization than the people writing these telexes. Some were sane and let most telexes go through. They didn't nitpick for errors. Other people on the same job took any little miswording as a reason to reject a telex. As this was the telex writer's only tool for getting orders carried out, this was a problem.
Add to this the fact that organizations were managed on statistics of what they accomplished in a week. Without these telexes orders, things didn't get done. It was a very buggy management system.
I am sure a former programs chief (the person who sent the telexes) could say a lot more about this but this is what I recall of this outdated and time-consuming SCN management ritual.
Wow. This is really one of the most remarkable and bizarre stories I have ever heard, about $cientology or anything else. A lot of stories are about other forms of evil and abuse. But this is. Really. Just. Bonkers.
Wow, I forgot about the addresso system. I was briefly in charge of that when Celebrity Centre started on 8th street. As an org we had to start doing mailings. At the time CC had three SO staff. Yvonne Gillham, me and another Australian women, Bett. Letters out was so important based on Hubbards rule about income is directly tied to letters out. I wonder how the orgs interpret that policy now?
Haha! I’d also forgotten addresso! (my spell checker wanted that to be a dress o! over and over again) I never knew the mechanics of it. Thanks for laying it out so clearly Val. I was always in either management or deck force so no use for Adresso (ah… capitalize it, and spell check is foiled)
Writing this article, spell check fought with me. I finally had to make it learn that word. I’m afraid now of what word it will correct with addresso. I can’t even type we. Spell check corrects it to west. Sigh. Technology. Can’t live without it can’t get it to play nice either.
The GPS scolded me the other day when I swore at an errant driver. I had it open for more directions. It quickly told me not to talk like that. I didn't know it did that, Robots are everywhere.