SCIENTOLOGY ZERO
by L. Ron Hubbard
10 December 1963
Well, it works out this way: Having completed the entire span of Scientology research
at all of the upper levels and rounded it all out, I never thought I’d be
called upon to suddenly undercut the lot, find a brand-new series of processes,
and a processing theory and philosophy on which to build the edifice. You don’t
think that’s quite a trick?
But
to jack up Scientology one level and run a whole new philosophy underneath of
Scientology, which is immediately graspable, understandable and quickly agreed
with, which can be discussed in the highest intellectual planes over the very,
very best breakfast tables and in the lowest hovels, all with complete and
utter reality the whole way, and to provide in that sphere a therapy, based on
no different an understanding than this, and a reason why... And the last few
weeks I’ve been walking around in a small circle trying to do just that and
finally succeeded. And finally got a Scientology Zero that undercuts Scientology
One, and which everybody would, I’m sure, agree with.
Scientology Zero, as you knew
before, was descriptions of the environment and what was wrong with it, and so
forth. This takes care of the world in which the person lives. Has nothing to
do with his mind at all. Scientology One is the isness of things and takes care
of his mind as well, but Scientology Zero simply takes care of the environment
in which the person lives.
Now,
the whole subject is instantly summable in—of its own heading, which is “the dangerous environment.” That’s all. You just say, “the dangerous environment,” you see.
And that sums up what you’re talking about, and the frame of mind of the
individual who is listening to you. You have immediate agreement that the
environment is dangerous.
Now,
the funny part of it is, a great many people who are professional
dangerous-environment makers—these include the politician, the policeman, the
newspaperman, all these blokes are specialists—the undertaker. These birds are
specialists in the dangerous environment. That’s their mainstay. They sell a
dangerous environment. If they didn’t sell a dangerous environment they feel
they would promptly go broke, and so on. So it is to their interest to make the
environment far more dangerous than it is. The environment is dangerous enough.
But they make it far more dangerous than it is.
They
sell a dangerous environment, 100 percent. And like judo, the avidity with
which these people sell a dangerous environment can be used by the Scientologist.
So understanding Scientology
Zero would include an understanding that the very person who is the worst enemy
of Scientology—the chaos merchant, the slavemaster, the fellow who’s trying to
hold everybody down, the fellow who’s trying to keep everybody shook up one way
or the other and so he can’t ever get up again, and so forth; the fellow who
makes his money and his daily bread out of how terrible everything is—that
fellow, of course, would forward Scientology Zero for you with great speed.
[…]
I’ve studied twenty-one primitive races, including the white race. I know these
boys pretty well. I’ve eaten lizard’s tails around the campfires with them. And
it’s absolutely staggering— staggering—the threat of the environment of such
peoples.
Mexico—the political
situation, the crop failures, the avarice of taxation, religious taxation, two
or three different kinds of courts that you could be hauled up to, everything
going to hell in a balloon. And if you haven’t got that, you’ve got bandits,
dysentery, so forth. Strictly a case of “Why try?” So why not put your back up
against a wall and pull your sombrero over your eyes and just go to sleep? It’s
just too much.
And
that’s your black in Africa—same story. Too
much challenge in the environment. The environment is too dangerous. And that
environment is too dangerous for a fellow to have ambition.
[…]
And we come to the conclusion that the individual, whether he be white, black,
red or yellow, if he is a man and if he is on this planet and if he has not
been able to achieve his own destiny—we must conclude that he is in an
environment he finds overwhelming, and that his methods of taking care of that
environment are inadequate to his survival, and that his existence is as
apathetic or as unhappy as his environment seems to him to be overwhelming.
Now, if we get those
principles down, we have Scientology Zero. Of course, the chaos merchant, who
wants an environment to look very, very disturbing . . . Somebody says there’s
such a thing as a good news story. Have you read a paper lately? There’s no
good news stories. “Train Wrecked,” “Child Raped,” “Murder”—what’s good about
these stories? There is no such thing as good press. These are fellows who are
shoving the environment in your face and saying, “Look—dangerous.
Look—overwhelming. Look—threatening Look. Look.” Well, they not only report the
most threatening bits of news that couldn’t have any possible effect upon their
readers’ lives, but also sensationalize it and make it worse than it is. What
more do you want as a proof of their intention? Well, of course, this is the
chaos merchant. He’s paid to the degree that he can make the environment
threatening.
Now,
it isn’t just and only the politician, the soldier, the militarist, the fellow
making the big rockets and the newspaper reporter and so forth that’s making
the environment threatening. There’s a lot of people spend their whole lives as
professional chaos merchants—just worry everybody around them to death. In
fact, the percentage is pretty good. The percentage is probably one out of
four. Pretty good. “If I can just keep Henry worried enough, why, he does what
I tell him”—this sort of philosophy. Just spread the confusion, spread the
upset, you see. And along with this goes, “I wonder why Henry doesn’t get
ahead?” Of course, they’re making Henry sick.
So
the chaos merchant has lots of troops—a lot of people with vested interests.
What’s a blackmailer but somebody who’s trying to extort money by telling
somebody that he can make the environment far more dangerous. “If I just tell
people that you and Mamie Glutz were seen in the tourist cabin. . . A few quick
pounds will keep this environment a little less dangerous, see? Because I won’t
tell.” You get the whole theory of the thing? Well, it isn’t as crude, you see,
as extortion. The newspaper prints “Thousands dead in. . .” and the thing lies
there on the newsstands, and people think, “God! Thousands dead in . . . !” You
see, they’re hit with the news, they can’t let go of it, and actually they
respond to an extortion—they throw pennies down. You turn to the inside page to
see the rest of the headline and it says, “. . . history.” “Thousands dead in
history. Past strewn with death.” “Have you been plagued lately? The great
plague took twelve million citizens in the year 1204.” “Will you be a cancer
victim? Support your local doctor.”
The
medico, you know—he doesn’t get paid for the number of people he makes well, he
gets paid for the number of people in the society who are sick. Don’t think it’s
any accident that the cops will take a dangerous criminal, throw him into
prison, make him more antisocial and more dangerous and then release him upon
the society. Don’t think this prison system which is being used is an accident.
It’s a marvelous method of getting police appropriations. If you didn’t have
that much crime, why, nobody would permit police salaries and equipment to be
extorted out of them. Of course, the police chief—he’s as important as he has
policemen under him. He’s got fifty policemen or he’s got a thousand policemen.
He’s important and draws pay in ratio to the number of policemen. Well, the
number of policemen give you the number of—amount of crime there must be in the
society. If there’s no crime in the society, naturally you don’t have very many
policemen. If there’s lots of crime in a society, naturally you have lots of
policemen. See? So, the more crime, why, the more cops. And the more sickness,
the more doctors, see?
Newspaper
reporters, for instance, sit around and think solely on this basis: “If I could
just run into a big story. . .” I can see this fellow sitting there now.
There’s a schoolhouse, you know; a big beautiful school has just been finished,
you see. Schoolchildren are playing out in the yard, playing happily ring-around-the-rosy.
And this newspaper reporter is sitting there looking at the schoolyard,
“Supposing that should all catch on fire, just as they all go inside? What a
story!” You know, “What a story. I’ve —sitting right here with my cameraman,
why, I’d become famous overnight,” you see. “Time magazine, Life magazine—probably
give me coverage all over the place, you know? Charred bodies of little
children,” you know? Well that’s what he eats. That’s what he eats. That makes
his life forward
[…]
Here you have tremendous numbers of people—vast amounts of money. In fact, I
think three-quarters of the national income of the United States right now is
dedicated to atomic war. Well, that's interesting. There hasn't been one. If
they hadn't developed it, there wouldn't be one. Elementary. So the money that
financed the horror is now busy supporting the horror, don't you see? And you
know, I don't think there have been two cents spent on the actual reduction of
the threat of atomic war. They talk about shelters—people could crawl into
shelters and that sort of thing.
The
truth of the matter is if you had a few billions to throw around you could
probably dream up a defense for atom bombs that would detonate them in the air.
You could probably render them null and void without too much trouble—if
anybody—if any politician was ever interested in peace. They aren't. They get
all their appropriations and public interest and so forth from the amount of
disturbance.
Why,
he could probably dream up some solution of some kind or another that would
handle this international tension situation. And certainly if they spent as
much money on it as they did on rockets, they could certainly come up to some
kind of a solution. Oh, I don't know, in Scientology we could undoubtedly solve
the thing without too much trouble. And talk about money and expense and so
forth, it wouldn't take anywhere near the money and expense. But look at the
money we would do people out of. Boy, look at the incomes we would cut! Oh,
man!
So,
anything moving forward that tends to pacify or bring a calmed environment is
met and makes a ridge with—is met by and makes a ridge with the backflow of
vested interest in making a disturbed environment. So you get this ridge.
Now,
if Scientology moved on forward, the environment would become calmer and
calmer. Not less adventurous, but calmer and calmer. In other words, its
potential, hostile, unreachable, untouchable threat, and that sort of thing—
the amount of threat contained in it—would reduce. That's for certain.
So
in actual fact, the chaos merchant does not like calming influences. He tends
to fight these things. This wife—she’s made her coffee and cakes for a long
time scaring her husband to death, and she keeps him good and scared to death.
Scares him at breakfast table, scares him at dinner, and so forth and so on. If
nothing else works she brings in the pile of bills after supper, don’t you see.
Stress. She keeps putting stress on it, and somehow or another consoling during
this thing about—you know, consoles him, about this, even though he is
completely overwhelmed, there’s nothing they can do about it, and so on. Got
him completely under her thumb, see?
All
right. This bird walks down to a PE Course. He hears about communication—he talks
to somebody or something like this. He starts talking to his wife, just as an
experiment—saying hello to her or something like this, see. He looks a little
calmer. This is not to be borne. And incidentally, at that time, you can expect
a considerable explosion. She’s going to go on a tirade about the subject that
he must not have anything more to do
with Scientology. And every once in a while you run into this in PE Courses and
that sort of thing; you run into this in practices, and so on. Bill or Pete or Oscar
or something—he mustn’t have anything more to do with Scientology.
Well,
what have you run into at that point? You’ve run into a chaos merchant, see?
And they’re buying and selling this commodity called “disturbance,” and he’s
less disturbed. And so therefore, he obviously then is less under control and
can be extorted from less, and so therefore he is being lost as an edible
breakfast. You’re taking the food off the plate of the chaos merchant, see?
And
here is a whole worked-out philosophy, now, on the subject of the environment,
under the heading of, "the dangerous environment." Now, if you
scatter your own wits around in this thing, you could at once
extrapolate—knowing, as you know, upper levels—you could at once extrapolate
the ramifications of, well, diagnosis and treatment. You could dream up
processes on just this basis: This individual believes that the environment is
more dangerous than he is—than it is. He certainly believes—this individual
certainly believes— that the environment is too dangerous for him. That, we're
completely convinced of. See, it's too dangerous for him. There are zones and
areas in that environment which he believes are completely overwhelming and
that he will not be able to personally cope with.
This
we can say with absolute certainty, whether or not we're talking to Joe, Bill
or Pete, or even a politician or a newspaper reporter or a cop. This
individual—this individual would be able to agree with you on that basis,
unless, of course, he were completely insane. He'd be walking around in a toga
saying, "I am emperor of Earth," you see, "and all Earth is
subject to my orders," you see. And he'd be in a booby hatch someplace,
see? He'd be crazy. He, of course, got the final solution. You just make up
your mind you're dangerous enough and you won't worry anymore.
But
falling short of that, any relatively sane person that you can talk to will
agree with you that the environment, and certain spheres of the environment,
are a bit too much for them.
I'm not, by the way, reviling
the merchant of chaos. He's completely crazy in that he thinks the environment
has to be made chaotic. I don't know why he thinks it needs his assistance! But
this fellow has his points and he thinks the environment is too much for him, and
he certainly knows he's making the environment too much for others. He
certainly knows this.
— L. Ron Hubbard
