democracy

HUBBARD COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE
Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, Sussex
HCO POLICY LETTER OF 13 FEBRUARY 1965¹
Issue II

POLITICS

Now and then you hear me speak derisively of governments and ideologies — including democracy.

If, by seeing I criticize an ideology, anyone seeks to believe I embrace its opposite, he has failed to get the point.

What political system could work amongst very aberrated people?

A democracy or a communism would be a huge joke in an insane asylum. Well, isn’t it?

The basic building block of any political system is the individual. One can seek to avoid this point by conceiving of the masses. But you can’t have masses which aren’t made up of single units. Therefore the single unit is the basis of a mass.

No political system applied to a colony of monkeys would have anything to govern but monkeys. That’s plain, certainly.

A political system seeking to function amongst ignorant, illiterate and barbaric people could have marvelous principles but could only succeed in being ignorant, illiterate and barbaric unless one addressed the people one by one and cured the ignorance, illiteracy and barbarism of each citizen.

The collective think of apes is ape-think. A fascism led by and applied to idiots would be idiot-fascism.

So there is no reason to suppose any political system is any better than thosewho use it to govern or be governed.

The only difference in existing systems of politics is their relative values in giving the individual a chance to develop and receive a higher level of personal sanity and ability.

That rules out any system which witch hunts, freezes opportunity or suppresses the right to improve by any workable system or suppresses a workable system.

Watching the US and Australia fight Scientology with blind fury while supporting oppressive mental and religious practices proves that democracy, applied to and used by aberrated people, is far from an ideal activity and is only aberrated democracy.

Every human has in common with every other human the same reactivebank. This is the most they have in common.

The reactive bank-unconscious mind, whatever you care to call it — suppresses all decent impulses and enforces the bad ones.

Therefore a democracy is a collective-think of reactive banks. Popular opinion is bank opinion.

Any human group is likely to elect only those who will kill them. That’s concluded from actual 1950 experiments.

The group succeeds only by the efforts of individuals who rise above their banks and do their best for their fellows despite the vicious character of groups and the idiot nature of collective-think.

Believe in the individual being and work with him and you will find he is basically good.

Work only with a group and you work with collective-think which is basically bank and therefore evil.

Scientology gives us our first chance to have a real democracy.

By freeing from the worst aberrations each individual, one then achieves a group which doesn’t react only on bank and which will be, like the individual, basically good.

For the bank was made to keep people who were not bad from going bad. It was a mistake. So it is bad.

We prove daily in Scientology that an individual freed of aberrations reacts more decently toward his fellows and that an individual, restimulated, acts worse; we prove that the individual under stress of aberration is unreasonable and an individual freed is bright.

So we can conclude on actual evidence that the first true democracy will emerge when we have freed each individual of the more vicious reactive impulses. Such beings can reason, can agree on decent and practical measures and be depended upon to evolve beneficial measures.

Until we have done that we will continue to be critical of human “democracy” — and any other political philosophy advanced upon man as a cure for his ills.

A political philosophy can’t audit. We can.

And don’t be so sensitive to popular reaction. Just get on with making a saner world and it will all come out all right.

L. RON HUBBARD
Founder

Notes