Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 16:18, 20 October 2006

About me

You will perhaps forgive me if I do not say too much "About me". I enjoy the anonymity I have here and am not anxious to "out" myself. This has to do with my stand on Scientology, you see. I edit from what I call a "Scientology-sympathetic" viewpoint. However, I also understand where most critics are coming from and do not oppose their right to criticize the Church of Scientology. The Scientology Ethics Officer would likely say that I was in a Condition of Doubt or lower; the Scientology critic would likely say that I am "still brainwashed". I would deny both claims, but that is only to be expected. Since extremists on both sides are guilty of bone-headed acts against even moderate individuals on the other side, I will remain justanother - just another editor. Oh, I should mention that I most certainly do not the divide the universe into pro- and anti-Scientologist; I do not even divide the editors working on the Scientology articles here that way; I only put people in those categories that seem to so tightly hold their own POV that they cannot conceive that the other might have some validity too. I would say that they know who they are but, in actual fact, I doubt that they do.

How I edit

Basically, I edit to add my own perspective to the articles. Some might call that POV but I counter that we can ONLY edit from our own perspective. It is where we are, our point of view, the point we view things from. What is really the issue is that we present our perspective in a fair and verifiable fashion and do not deny others the same right.

Let me expand; If you come to an article and it is just how you would write it, has all the elements you think are important, with the proper amount of importance assigned to each, no extraneous elements, then you would find little to edit there - it is already correct and complete from your perspective. If it is controversial subject but you felt the opposing side(s) to be fairly presented in accordance with wikipedia fundamental policies then you might be pretty satisfied overall. IMO, we edit articles because they are not already complete and correct from our perspective and/or the opposing side(s) are not, in our estimation, presented fairly or in accordance with wikipedia policy. I find many articles in the Scientology series that, based on the above, I feel that I can contribute to. I do not imply that my edits are the be all and the end all; I simply state that I have something to contribute.

For inclusion in wikipedia, our perspective must be a shared perspective and must be verifiable in each particular. The arrangement and choice of what verifiable material to include is where we get to contribute our understanding to the article; we do not get to use loaded terms that specifically add our own interpretation. We cannot describe something as bad or good or anything else. We can report that a reputable source either stated that or quoted someone else stating that. The terms that we contribute must be neutral.

You might also say that we edit from our understanding of the subject. That understanding may be imperfect but often we improve it during the process of editing, an example of what the Scientologist calls the KRC triangle, the link between Knowledge, Responsibility, and Control. Once we decide to take responsibility for an article and start to control the mechanical process of editing, our knowledge increases, which leads to better control of our tools and research, more knowledge, a higher willingness to take responsibility. The Scientologist knows that they are linked and by increasing any one, you increase all three. That is cool because it means that you can enter at any point. You may start with knowledge; you read an article, decide you would like to know a bit more and research it a bit, then edit the article (responsiblity and control). Likewise you can enter at the point of control, perhaps making a minor edit not particularly related to the content of the article.

I'm not sure if the above is "How I Edit" or "Why I Edit". As to the latter, I also find that editing here is therapeutic in that it helps me to put my long experience in and with Scientology into perspective and moves me more toward my "center". It helps me look beyond my upsets and toward the truth and workability of Scientology that I enjoy most about the subject. I know of no other philosophy that so accurately models the world of human experience. It is a very useful tool to have, indeed.

I also find editing in wikipedia holds excellent lessons for life. I am sure that others have formed the same opinion. It is kinda like those "Everything I Learned in Life" themes such as "Everything I Learned in Life I Learned in Kindergarden", "Everything I Learned in Life I Learned From My Dog", or the ever-popular "All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Watching Star Trek". I am sure we will someday see the book "Everything I Learned in Life I Learned Editing Misplaced Pages".

What about Scientology

Scientology is a philosophy. In its broadest sense as envisioned by L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology would be essentially the same thing as metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of Life, the Universe and Everything. Since it deals with man as a spirit, comprises a community of "like-thinkers", and has shared morals codes and practices, it is what is commonly termed a religion, at least for members of the formal Church of Scientology. Many rational and intelligent people subscribe to the beliefs of Scientology. The core belief being that you are a spiritual being called a thetan that inhabits a body and has and uses a mind. No-one says that Hubbard invented this idea, what Hubbard did was attempt to determine if there were underlying laws to the nature and behavior of spiritual beings, akin to the laws of the physical universe, for example the laws that control bodies in motion. He came up with sets of basic laws that he termed the "Factors" and the "Axioms". Hubbard also attempted to develop techniques based on these laws that would improve the state of the thetan. He termed this entire body of work, Scientology. No-one claims that Hubbard created Scientology in a vacuum, out of whole cloth as it were. He researched many, many previous philosophies and took what he could from them. People should not point at some similarity between Scientology and some earlier philosophy and say "Hubbard copied this". That is like pointing at Einstein and saying "Oh look, he copied Newton".

If one wants to approach Scientology intelligently as an editor of articles describing the philosophy and practice of Scientology (as opposed to articles describing the controversies associated with the Church of Scientology, which require a different knowledge-set), it is important to understand something about metaphysics or religion and science. Science, as commonly described, is a subset of metaphysics. Science, especially natural science (which includes physics and biology), deals with things that can be measured with physical instruments. Things that cannot be measured, love for instance (as distinct from the effects of love on the physical body which can be measured), are beyond the scope of science. Those individuals that understand science best, men like Newton, Einstein and Schrödinger, understand this point and know the limitations of science. If there is an "ultimate reality", that reality likely lies at the intersection of the physical and the spiritual; The Tao of Physics explores that idea and the author found agreement from two more giants of the physical sciences, Heisenberg and Bohr. People that do not have that depth of understanding sometime mistakenly believe that science describes or addresses everything, "observable" or not, in the entire universe of human experience and that if something is not explained by science then it is "wrong". Such people may not know it but they subscribe to a philosophy termed Scientism, a philosophy that I doubt many scientists themselves follow. They perhaps forget that that very concept (i.e. that "thought") cannot be measured or explained by science. Attempts to "measure" a spiritual thing such as a concept amount to nothing more than attempting to measure their influence or effects on the human body. Hubbard, in addition to taking a few stabs at that "ultimate reality" previously mentioned, attempted to bring an understanding to the spiritual universe akin to that brought to physics by physical scientists. That does not make Scientology a "physical science"; it might be termed a "spiritual science" if one were to term it a science at all; it is better termed "an applied religious philosophy" which is what Hubbard termed it. However, it works and it is reproducible. If I apply the principle of the ARC triangle to my relationship with another person, I get the uniform result of improved understanding between us and a more harmonious relationship. The fact that people can "naturally" do this does not invalidate the "law of ARC" no more than the fact that people can "naturally" fall down invalidates the law of gravity. Hubbard's genius was in describing what "laws" underlie human experience and when you look at human experience using Scientology it makes much more sense and you can be more effective in life. You don't need to understand Hubbard's "Axioms" and "Factors" to be effective with Scientology, you can just learn the techniques mechanically. Just like you don't need to understand aerodynamics, metallurgy, and mechanical engineering to be an effective pilot, you just learn the techniques of flying.

It is interesting that the recent lecture by Pope Benedict XVI that started such a stir was not so much about Islam as it was about this very point; what is reason and what is science in relation to religion. The lecture was entitled Faith, Reason and the University; Memories and Reflections and is a "critique of modern reason". The lecture makes interesting reading for those interested in the intersection of science and religion.

In the lecture, the Pope discusses the "modern concept of reason based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology." and makes the following observation:

"This gives rise to two principles which are crucial for the issue we have raised. First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity. A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned."

He continues, "it must be observed that from this standpoint any attempt to maintain theology's claim to be "scientific" would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self. But we must say more: if science as a whole is this and this alone, then it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by "science", so understood, and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective."

The Pope concludes that there is a need for "broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity , we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically falsifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons".

While Hubbard may have, at some point, had the intention that Scientology be an attempt to expand the limited definition of reason and science beyond the merely measurable, it has, for better or worse, become something else altogether. Early on in the history of Scientology, Hubbard "gave" it freely to the world and, at that point, Scientology might have been described as a protoscience. Later, it seems, he reconsidered that "gift" and, in one of Scientology's most important Policy Letters, Keeping Scientology Working, he claimed that contributions from others had been of no real value, had in fact been almost uniformily destructive, and that Scientology would not entertain contributions by anyone other than himself. With that stroke, Scientology moved from protoscience to dogma. Hubbard believed that it was more important that the "workable path" that he had developed remain unaltered than that Scientology be developed further by a community. History will perhaps prove him right or wrong in that but that viewpoint does not detract from the value of what he created.

An Open Letter to Scientologists

For now, I quote from a previous post. I stress the importance of wikipedia and invite more Scientologists to edit here in a spirit of cooperation. I will expand on this theme in the future and post a "hat write-up" of what I feel it takes to successfully edit here (for now "live and let live" will work pretty well). This is a big job and the more people working on it, the better.

"Someone that wanted to know about Scientology might google the term and be presented with these top three choices; the official CoS site, the clambake site, and wikipedia. They might recognize that the first two would be clearly biased but might mistake wikipedia for being encyclopedic and unbiased on the subject of Scn. While wikipedia might be a great source for many topics, even the critic's crow their success in making the Scientology articles a mass of "entheta" (Scn for lies, upsets, misinformation - Touretzky gleefully proclaims wikipedia an "entheta-palooza" on the subject of Scientology). Both sides basically seek to make wikipedia a mirror of their own websites; the critics are winning. My goal is to make it encyclopedic and to show the good side of Scn in the sympathetic light it deserves while not discounting the bad side. Meaning that I will not contribute to the bad side but neither will I try to prevent it from being PROPERLY presented (i.e. derogatory information must be well-referenced, and discredited or biased sources reported in reliable sources to be such should be labeled as such). I should mention that I feel that there are plenty of editors here that are "mirror images" of myself, i.e. they are "no fans of Scientology" but would not dream of standing in the way of my well presented presentation of the good in Scientology provided that I allowed critics the same rights as I ask for for myself. ... On the other hand, there are some that want to prevent ANY presentation of the good side of Scn. They probably feel that Scn is SO bad that any good is irrelevant; it would be like mentioning that Ted Bundy bought Girl Scout cookies to support the Girl Scouts. Such a claim is ridiculous and insulting to the perhaps 500,000 active Scientologists that would disagree and all those that they impact favorably."

On wikilawyering

During a recent run-in with a sysop, I was accused of "wikilawyering". What I realized is that making such a claim is a great means of avoiding dealing with the actual substance of what I was asserting. It is kinda like when the CoS declares someone to be an SP. So we have: "I don't have to deal with your complaints because you are "wikilawyering'" and "We don't have to deal with your complaints because you are an evil SP". Huh. I should note that the sysop in question never ever dealt with the substance of my issues. Even after I put it on Jimbo's talk page as she was usurping a right only Jimbo holds as an individual, the right to ban users; even after I very specifically asked her to address the issue on her talk page. Oh well, I don't assume bad faith, just low confront. She did, of course, resume acting as a sysop should and cease targeting me after Jimbo chimed in with the "can't we all just get along 'in a spirit of kindness and mutual respect'" reminder.

Just some links for me

http://collaboration.wikia.com/Main_Page

http://www.wikitruth.info/

http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl

http://en.wikipedia.org/Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Scientology/publicwatchlist

Userboxes en This user is a native speaker of the English language. US This user uses American English. This user is sympathetic to Scientology and feels that does not affect his ability to maintain WP:NPOV. This user contributes using Firefox. This user is just happy to have a pink userbox. U This user uses software that YOU write. Keep up the good work. This user enjoys geocaching. ...

• User en-N
• User en-us
• Wikipedians who use Mozilla Firefox
• Wikipedian geocachers