> For instance, the Church of Scientology, U.S. Navy, and the Washington State Military Department told Prism that they are no longer working with the network.
That first one took me by surprise. What a random hodgepodge of organizations.
That first one took me by surprise. What a random hodgepodge of organizations.
There was an front page article about aliens and American pedophile leaders in the most recent issue of The Onion.
I don't see it online. Maybe it takes a while for the dead tree stories to appear there.
Read Stranger in a Strange Land, read about Hubbard and Heinlein's friendship, and look at the timeline of when Scientology started and Stranger in a Strange Land was published.
I mean, it shows how much intel agencies can "screen for high intelligence individuals" ?
But if you're looking for a club you can advance it, I highly suspect Scientology is as quid pro quo as anything else out there. In other words, it's more of a social function than a religion.
That said, focusing on some narrow topic is also totally legitimate, as human being we can’t encompass everything and the rest in our tight attention window.
I just can't imagine tainting my name by joining those scientology retards...
People think it's doctrine, scripture and proseltysing that sustains it and anyone looking into those first 2 at least would think they're idiots but mostly it's things like CREDs (credibility enhancing displays) and group ties that contribute to believers selfidentity which calcifies the belief.
Looking at their or a different religion for what it is would challenge their sense of self and as humans we really don't like that kind of cognitive dissonance.
Only when looking at "other" groups one generally starts to activate critical thoughts on the down sides of being part of that group.
A name in western culture is often not even chosen by the carrier, so any concern about what could be attached to the name is already part of this wanna show group value adhesion.
>Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":
>First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.
>Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.
>The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.
But naturally, there significant limits on how much and how long each of infiltration be effective. A infiltrator from X sent to gain control of Y and gaining complete control there of will often identify with Y since leading it give them more power (Stalin was likely a agent of the Czarist secret police before the revolution but he probably wasn't taking orders from them in 1935 etc).