Learning Curve

I got that paying gig I mentioned in my last post.

It paid $200 for the half day. That was awesome. What is not awesome, but rather intensely thought provoking, is what follows.

Let's get the basics out of the way first. This was an internal instructional video for the Church of Scientology. I didn't know that when I submitted for the role. By the time I was called back, I'd discovered this fact. I knew this when I was cast.

Instead of following Internet tradition at this point and launching into a raving tirade about the evils of Scientology, I'm going to go through the ups and downs and ins and outs of the moral debate that I went through in the process of doing this job.

At first, I didn't reject the project out of hand. My logic went something like this: This is a video aimed at willing participants of this religious/science of the mind system. I'm not actively participating in the propagation of a religion other than my own, but rather simply facilitating the creation of material that people who've already chosen this belief system will use to do their thing. Analogously: I might not like potato salad, but it doesn't hurt to play on a script on how to make potato salad.

I was sent a lot of material the day before going into this project. I mean a lot. Five attachments explaining the basic concept of Dianetics (the Scientologists understanding of the mind) the "correct" procedures for actors according to L. Ron Hubbard, the "correct" focus on diction and delivery for the actor according to L. Ron Hubbard, a summary sheet of the procedures of a Dianetic auditing session (which, in Scientology, is supposed to subplant all other forms of psychological treatment, and elevate the human to a higher level), and the simple sheet containing directions.

I read this material. Aside from being slightly bamboozled that this religion has accepted, standardized procedures for everything, I was troubled by the summary of Dianetics. Before I read this, it had seemed as though Scientology was just a different approach to psychology. It's a bit more than that. I won't go into gory details, but here are the important points in terms of this post.

1) According to the religion, it's a scientific fact that man is good. It's not a belief. It's a fact.

"The Clear [the elevated human], the goal of Dianetic therapy, can be created from psychotic, neurotic, deranged, criminal, or normal people if they have organically sound nervous systems. He demonstrates the basic nature of Mankind and that basic nature has been found uniformly and invariably to be good. That is now established scientific fact, not an opinion."

2) According to the religion, a person can reduce their problems and graduate themselves toward the "Clear" status by effort, commitment and participation in Dianetics (which is represented as a discovery of an ancient and universal truth about the mechanics of the mind and body).

My issues with these...

Not only is it irritating and academically irresponsible to toss around ideas as scientific facts without appropriate references, on a broader level, this assertion of proven innate goodness flies in the face of what I strongly believe about the nature of man. My assertion (the Biblical assertion) was created good, but rebelled against God, spiritually dying in the process. Something that is dead cannot make itself alive. So in a bit of a nutshell response, not only is it a fallacy to instill false hope in people that we're good, it's a deeper fallacy to insist that we're good and then insist that all we need to do to achieve more good is to try harder. On top of that, not only is it, "we can be good if we try harder," it's, "we can be good if we try harder at this thing that we just discovered in the last hundred years...and there's no other way to really do it."

Okay, I hear the alarm bells ringing for everybody out there, saying, "Christianity says there's no other way, too, hypocrite!"

Let me [briefly] draw the distinction and move on. If we can save ourselves from ourselves, it's patently ridiculous to insist that any one person or group could have a monopoly on the procedure. This is Scientology. If we cannot save ourselves from ourselves, and need to be made alive by God, it's perfectly reasonable that said God could engineer only one way for it to work. If that doesn't make sense or pisses you off, email or comment, I'm moving on.

These fundamental conflicts between my beliefs and Scientology's canon were disturbing, but I didn't back out of the job. I was still on the, "I'm not telling people to do it, I'm helping them understand how to do it, because they've already decided they want to," track.

Then, sometime in the middle of waiting to go on set after wardrobe and make-up, it occurred to me. If I was in Germany in the 1930s, I could say, "I'm not telling people to believe in the doctrines of the NSDAP (Nazi Party), I'm just taking their money and helping explain the minutiae to those who are already in."

Let me be very clear: I AM NOT comparing Scientology to National Socialism. The analogy applies insofar as it speaks to the fundamental conflict between my beliefs and theirs. I find the tenets of Scientology false, and whether I'm encouraging new converts, or instructing the "faithful" in how to perpetuate their religion, I'm still solidifying a religious belief I find false and contradictory to the discovery of the only True God. I can't do that in good conscience.

I did the job, and I'll take the money, and I'll tell you why: I went into this project ignorant. I learned as I went, and I know what I need to know in order to make an informed decision in the future. If I did one of their projects again, it would be dirty money (for me).

I titled the post "Learning Curve" because it applies in more ways than just the one I've described. Not only did I learn enough about basic Scientology to hold a conversation with a Scientologist and not get lost (a good thing), I learned the limits of what I'm willing to ideologically sacrifice (or endanger, perhaps) for the sake of acting. It was nice to realize that I wasn't so happy about getting a paying job that it didn't matter that what I was doing flew in the face of my spirituality.

I'm pretty sure this whole experience was a part of The Plan so that I could wrangle up all of this self-understanding before I got deeper into the culture. There's a lot of Scientologists out here, and, while I'm sure I risk making enemies of a few just with this post, I'm comfortable with their presence, far more than I was when I had no idea what they believed.

At the last: It's funny to me that some Christian churches can be just as demanding and legalistic about procedures for every little thing as Scientology is. It's even funnier that this kind of Christianity (the kind that insists learning about other belief systems is somehow "giving up") is exactly the Christianity that paralyzes the individual's ability to evangelize.