Scientology seems like a boogeyman and the butt of multiple jokes throughout the years. However, it still remains a powerful entity with thousands of fervent followers. If it is as crazy as it sounds (spoiler: it is), how does it manage to build its insidious hold to so many people?
This book chronicles the life of Mike Rinder who grew up in Scientology, rose through the rank of the organization to the very top and found the reason and courage to escape from the organization. It chronicles the allure of this ‘religion’ and the many techniques it employs to keep its followers.
Scientologists believe in past lives and that traumatic experiences in those past lives create negative ‘engrams’ which can only be removed through expensive ‘auditing’. They can also gain more enlightening by climbing the ‘Operating Thetan’ (OT) level which require more payments, as they learn about the existence of an alien being called Xenu and much more. It sounds so incredulous but many people truly believe in this. What allows Scientology to be so effective?
- It gives you hope for the future. Through your action, you can be more enlightened and be saved
- It gives you higher purpose to latch on to. You are needed to save humanity from the negative influences of those outside scientology
- It takes away choices and will and makes life easier to live. When you feel compelled of what to do, you can just go along with what you’re being told
- It provides tribe to belong to. You have the community of people who understand and care for you. You know that if you step away, you risk losing the whole community you grow to depend on.
- It provides time to be introspective. Scientology teaches you that if something bad happens to you, it must be because past behaviours you have done. As self-blaming as that sounds, it provides a lot of opportunity for you to think about yourself and how you can self-improve
- It collects secrets that can be used for blackmail later. Those introspective things you shared are kept and used to threaten you if you decided to do something against Scientology like living
- It induces loss aversion. Walk away and lose everything. The author lost touch with his two children who still remain in Scientology
- It makes you feel special. You are the chosen one who knows the truth about life
- It maximizes cognitive dissonance. If all of these are hoaxes, then you’re so gullible and stupid. Since you’re not stupid, all these must be true
- It monetizes so well, giving it large warchest to intimidate people, jourmalists and governments
The story dug into a lot more insane incidents of Scientology under the leadership of Hubbard and later Miscavige. It also sounds so scary and we may all think we won’t fall prey to something so stupid. It does give pause though since the religion employs a lot of psychological and social tricks that many good organizations and community also utilizes (probably not as extremely but still). Its lure and fanaticism is probably something we all want in our tribe without all the toxicity. This book really portray an objective and inside look into this insanity and what we can learn to not fall into this kind of echo chamber.