Page last updated: Jul 2, 2020 @ 5:31 am

Here is yet another “breakthrough” bulletin from Hubbard full of unproven claims and contradictions with very questionable application:
HCOB 22 JULY 1963 YOU CAN BE RIGHT [color]

Partial (and altered) text of this reference is presented on one of Scientology official websites:
http://www.scientologyhandbook.org/integrity/sh9_5.htm

Let’s go over some of the reasoning.

Rightness and wrongness form a common source of argument and struggle.

The concept of rightness reaches very high and very low on the Tone Scale.

And the effort to be right is the last conscious striving of an individual on the way out. I-am-right-and-they-are-wrong is the lowest concept that can be formulated by an unaware case.

What is right and what is wrong are not necessarily definable for everyone. These vary according to existing moral codes and disciplines and, before Scientology, despite their use in law as a test of “sanity”, had no basis in fact but only in opinion.

Right off the bat, Hubbard appears to dismiss the existence of actual facts that can be argued and instead shifts all the emphasis on the APPARENT BEHAVIOUR claiming that “the effort to be right” is basically a form of aberration. So if someone was trying to prove that the Earth was round to a crowd of people who believed that the Earth was flat, such efforts to “prove something right” would have been dismissed as a form of “aberration” and “the last conscious striving of an individual on the way out.” After all, right and wrong has “no basis in fact but only in opinion.” Apparently Hubbard did not bother with an idea of using scientific method and/or logic (as a professional skill) for the purpose of establishing the “rightness” or “wrongness” of something. Let’s continue…

 

Reference continues:

In Dianetics and Scientology a more precise definition arose. And the definition became as well the true definition of an overt act. An overt act is not just injuring someone or something: an overt act is an act of omission or commission which does the least good for the least number of dynamics or the most harm to the greatest number of dynamics. (See the Eight Dynamics.)

Thus a wrong action is wrong to the degree that it harms the greatest number of dynamics. And a right action is right to the degree that it benefits the greatest number of dynamics.

Many people think that an action is an overt simply because it is destructive. To them all destructive actions or omissions are overt acts. This is not true. For an act of commission or omission t o be an overt act it must harm the greater number of dynamics. A failure to destroy can be, therefore, an overt act. Assistance to something that would harm a greater number of dynamics can also be an overt act.

An overt act is something that harms broadly. A beneficial act is something that helps broadly. It can be a beneficial act to harm something that would be harmful to the greater number of dynamics.

Harming everything and helping everything alike can be overt acts. Helping certain things and harming certain things alike can be beneficial acts.

The idea of not harming anything and helping everything are alike rather mad. It is doubtful if you would think helping enslavers was a beneficial action and equally doubtful if you would consider the destruction of a disease an overt act.

In the matter of being right or being wrong, a lot of muddy thinking can develop. There are no absolute rights or absolute wrongs. And being right does not consist of being unwilling to harm and being wrong does not consist only of not harming.

Okay, so now it is becoming evident that in this reference Hubbard is actually referring to a very narrow subject of potential argument over rightness and wrongness in relationship to human actions and behavior, and NOT arguments over establishing rightness or wrongness of FACTS about something. Such important distinction is never made throughout the reference.

 

Reference continues:

There is an irrationality about “being right” which not only throws out the validity of the legal test of sanity but also explains why some people do very wrong things and insist they are doing right.

The answer lies in an impulse, inborn in everyone, to try to be right. This is an insistence which rapidly becomes divorced from right action. And it is accompanied by an effort to make others wrong, as we see in hypercritical cases. A being who is apparently unconscious is still being right and making others wrong. It is the last criticism.

We have seen a “defensive person” explaining away the most flagrant wrong-nesses. This is “justification” as well. Most explanations of conduct, no matter how far-fetched, seem perfectly right to the person making them since he or she is only asserting self-rightness and other-wrongness.

People that “do VERY wrong things and insist they are doing right” usually suffer from psychopathy or some condition of inanity, especially when we look within the realm of criminality, yet Hubbard draws ZERO DISTINCTION on this fact and instead asserts that this kind of behavior stems from an “impulse” that is INBORN IN EVERYONE. Really?! Where are CASE STUDIES? Where are specific examples across selected population? Where is PROOF of this sweeping generalization about EVERYONE? Also, making others wrong and making self right are two different forms of actions that do not have to be inextricably connected as Hubbard seems to imply in this reference.

This assertion about EVERYONE in this reference is also in direct contradiction to Hubbard’s own statements in a different reference where he discusses “social” and “antisocial” characteristics: HCOB 27 Sept. 1966 The Antisocial Personality The Anti-Scientologist.

CHARACTERISTIC 4

Anti-Social

Social

4. A characteristic, and one of the sad things about an antisocial personality, is that it does not respond to treatment or reform or psychotherapy.

4. Treatment, reform and psychotherapy particularly of a mild nature work very well on the social personality. Whereas antisocial people sometimes promise to reform, they do not. Only the social personality can change or improve easily. It is often enough to point out unwanted conduct to a social personality to completely alter it for the better. Criminal codes and violent punishment are not needed to regulate social personalities.

 

In the beginning of this reference Hubbard states that:

As they [antisocial] only comprise 20 percent of the population and as only 2 1/2 percent are truly dangerous, we see that with a very small amount of effort we could considerably better the state of society.

Yes, the reference on “Antisocial Personality” came out a few years later, but why did Hubbard not redact his claims in “You Can Be Right” reference if he supposedly figured something else out about human behavior?

 

Reference continues:

We have long said that that which is not admired tends to persist. If no one admires a person for being right, then that person’s “brand of being right” will persist, no matter how mad it sounds.

According to Scientology’s own axioms it is not admiration but DUPLICATION which causes vanishment of any existence:

Axiom 20 Bringing the static to create a perfect duplicate causes the vanishment of any existence or part thereof.

A perfect duplicate is an additional creation of the object, its energy and space, in its own space, in its own time using its own energy. This violates the condition that two objects must not occupy the same space, and causes the vanishment of the object.

So when applied to the reality of someone insisting on being right about something, what needs to happen is complete DUPLICATION of the reality of that individual and the reasons WHY that individual is expressing what he or she is expressing. Specialized knowledge and sound logic could be required for the complete understanding of the situation. No “admiration” is actually necessary especially when it is faked with an intention of stopping someone from some form of expression as opposed to developing true understanding.

 

Reference continues:

Scientists who are aberrated cannot seem to get many theories. They do not because they are more interested in insisting on their own odd rightnesses than they are in finding truth. Thus we get strange “scientific truths” from men who should know better, including the late Einstein. Truth is built by those who have the breadth and balance to see also where they’re wrong.

It is quite ironic that this reasoning about scientists and the need for being balanced is coming from a man who instituted aggressive measures to attack and suppress any form of criticism, scrutiny or deviation from his own work.

 

Reference continues:

You have heard some very absurd arguments out among the crowd. Realize that the speaker was more interested in asserting his or her own rightness than in being right.

A thetan tries to be right and fights being wrong. This is without regard to being right about something or to do actual right. It is an insistence which has no concern with a rightness of conduct.

One tries to be right always, right down to the last spark.

Hubbard starts with a select form of observation that can be made of SOME people and progresses to generalize about EVERYONE. “A thetan” means a spiritual being. So ANYONE and EVERYONE “tries to be right and fights being wrong… always, right down to the last spark?” Was Hubbard projecting his own personal malady onto everyone else? Has he not studied principles of scientific method and resolving arguments using logic? Has he never seen men dwelling in guilt and regret over something that they believed was wrong? That can’t be the case because Hubbard himself addressed handling “regret” under the subject of Dianetics in 1950’s.

Seeing “no wrong” with one’s actions regardless of their impact onto others is something that could be true of “antisocial personality disorder” (psychopathy or sociopathy), not just “a thetan” (meaning any spiritual being, individual). This can also be true of someone who is very aberrated and operates in defence of “fixed ideas” rather than using reasoning and sound arguments.

 

Reference continues:

How then, is one ever wrong?

It is this way:

One does a wrong action, accidentally or through oversight. The wrongness of the action or inaction is then in conflict with one’s necessity to be right. So one then may continue and repeat the wrong action to prove it is right.

So no “wrong action” can be committed with an INTENTION to do so, only “accidentally or through oversight?” No criminals actually pre-plan their activities? They “accidentally” rob convenience stores, burglarize homes, set-up complex group structures, smuggle drugs across borders or “through oversight” execute highly complex financial schemes? Really?!

 

Reference continues:

This is a fundamental of aberration. All wrong actions are the result of an error followed by an insistence on having been right. Instead of righting the error (which would involve being wrong) one insists the error was a right action and so repeats it.

What about traumatic incidents (engrams) getting restimulated and causing aberration by overwhelming the mind (the main tenet in Dianetics)? And what about a later assertion that actually makes a lot more sense?

THE BASIS OF ABERRATION IS A NON-CONFRONT.

HCO PL 18 Sept 1967 Study – Complexity and Confronting

 

Reference continues:

As a being goes down scale it is harder and harder to admit having been wrong. Nay, such an admission could well be disastrous to any remaining ability or sanity.

For rightness is the stuff of which survival is made. And as one approaches the last ebb of survival one can only insist on having been right, for to believe for a moment one has been wrong is to court oblivion.

The last defense of any being is “I was right”. That applies to anyone. When that defense crumbles, the lights go out.

…

All repeated and “incurable” wrongnesses stem from the exercise of a last defence: “trying to be right”. Therefore the compulsive wrongness can be cured no matter how mad it may seem or how thoroughly its rightness is insisted upon.

But by getting the offender off the compulsive repetition of the wrongness, one then cures it.

But how?

By rehabilitating the ability to be right!

Again, where are CASE STUDIES or at least specific examples demonstrating the validity of this sweeping generalization? Isn’t it actually the case that people ordinarily get stuck in “having been wrong” mindset when faced with failures in their live which then serves to prevent them from further attempts at the desired level of success?

 

Reference continues:

This has limitless application-in training, in social skulls, in marriage, in law, in life.

Example: A wife is always burning dinner. Despite scolding, threats of divorce, anything, the compulsion continues. One can wipe this wrongness out by getting her to explain what is right about her cooking. This may well evoke a raging tirade in some extreme cases, but if one flattens the question, that all dies away and she happily ceases to burn dinners, Carried to classic proportions but not entirely necessary to end the compulsion, a moment in the past will be recovered when she accidentally burned a dinner and could not face up to having done a wrong action. To be right she thereafter had to burn dinners.

Hubbard goes from apparently discussing “trying to be right” as the last line of defense for someone low on the tone scale almost giving an impression that he is talking about someone who is reaching a point of complete failure in life – to giving an example about a wife burning dinners. What?!

If someone continues to fail at cooking food right, why not look into their way of cooking directly instead of asking “what is right” about their cooking that is obviously NOT right? Why not simply ask: “Honey, why do you keep burning dinners?” to figure out if the wife actually needs more training or is actually upset with something and so communicates it in an indirect manner. Or maybe there is a soap opera on TV that is on during the time when she cooks dinner and so she forgets to turn off the stove on time, being distracted by television… There could be all kinds of actual reasons behind someone’s actions and behavior. One needs to looking INTO REALITY to find our what these actual reasons are, instead of looking into Hubbard’s bulletin and just assuming that one knows it already.

There could be various actual reasons, yet an indoctrinated Scientologist is conditioned to assume right away that he or she already knows the “true hidden cause” of someone else’s actions WITHOUT ANY INQUIRY and already have the “handling” worked out to “remedy” something that may not be there to begin with – i.e. a supposed “hidden impulse of insistence on trying to be right.” No further thought or investigation into the actual reality needed. This the the “tech” and the “tech” is always right – this is what Scientologists are conditioned to believe. But the “tech” is just Ron Hubbard’s assertions which may or may not be correct in view of objective phenomena.

 

Reference continues:

Go into a prison and find one sane prisoner who says he did wrong. You won’t find one. Only the broken wrecks will say so out of terror of being hurt. But even they don’t believe they did wrong.

So from a wife ruining dinners at home Hubbard goes straight to criminals in prison. The whole point of the reference is Hubbard arguing a supposed problem of “trying to be right,” but if someone in prison admits to having been wrong, it is actually being a “broken wreck” in his view. Is there any hope for some clear logic in Hubbard’s thinking?!

 

Reference continues:

A judge on a bench, sentencing criminals, would be given pause to realize that not one malefactor sentenced really thought he had done wrong and will never believe it in fact, though he may seek to avert wrath by saying so.

The do-gooder crashes into this continually and is given his loses by it.

Yes! Because criminals in prison usually suffer from PSYCHOPATHY – lack of empathy for the suffering of others and disregard for social order.

 

Reference continues:

But marriage, law and crime do not constitute all the spheres of living where this applies. These facts embrace all of life. The student who can’t learn, the worker who can’t work, the boss who can’t boss are all caught on one side of the right-wrong question. They are being completely one-sided. They are being “last-ditch-right”. And opposing them, those who would teach them are fixed on the other side “admit-you-are-wrong”. And out of this we get not only no-change but actual degradation where it “wins”. But there are no wins in this imbalance, only loses for both.

Yes! Yes! Hubbard’s irrational, unfounded, and confusing generalization applies to everyone everywhere is every sector of life. It must be true because Hubbard simply says it is, and any form of disagreement is an aberration of “trying to be right and make others wrong.” (sarc)

 

Reference continues:

Thetans on the way down don’t believe they are wrong because they don’t dare believe it. And so they do not change.

A thetan is a form of beingness. It just is. A spiritual being is just is or is not. There is no such thing, really, as BEING right or BEING wrong. Saying that a thetan is being right or being wrong without actual clarification as to WHAT that “right” or “wrong” may apply to is in itself a moronic proposition disconnected from reality. It is like saying “a cat is wrong” or “a tree is wrong.” A cat, a tree, a thetan are forms of beingness – beingness either is or it isn’t. In the example with the wife, burning dinners as an action may be wrong, but wife herself, as a human being in existence, is a beingness that is apart from the action and is neither right nor wrong.

On another hand, a STATEMENT or an ARGUMENT could be right or wrong depending on whether it can be proven or dis-proven (such as in terms of some reality to which it applies). An ACTION could be evaluated right or wrong within the framework of some situation or a given moral construct. So the very basic premise behind this reference – BEING right or wrong – is simply false, empty, and irrational.

An argument could be made right or wrong, an action could be made right or wrong, but a person is just is – it is an existing form of beingness that is neither right nor wrong. To connect the two together, through a trick of language and overwhelm of the mind with unreason can actually make people indoctrinated into this logic become DEFENSIVE toward any form of scrutiny of their actions or statements because of looking at an argument through the logic (or concept) of BEING right or wrong as a person as opposed to looking at the actual statements or actions under question as being right or wrong. To make matters worse, Scientologists end up believing that EVERYONE thinks in these ways – having a rational argument becomes impossible as any argument begins to be viewed through this “being right or being wrong” paradigm analytically implanted through this reference. [interesting concept: analytical implant]

 

Reference continues:

Many a preclear in processing is only trying to prove himself right and the auditor wrong, particularly the lower case levels, and so we sometimes get no-change sessions.

Yes, of course. If an auditing session goes nowhere, here is yet another reason why it is always something wrong with the pre-clear (as opposed to a given auditing methodology).

 

Reference continues:

And those who won’t be audited at all are totally fixed on asserted rightness and are so close to gone that any question of their past rightness would, they feel, destroy them.

We are finally getting to the actual intended use of this confusing reference – to invalidate and prove wrong anyone who has any form of disagreement with Hubbard’s various auditing methods.

 

Reference continues:

I get my share of this when a being, close to extinction, and holding contrary views, grasps for a moment the rightness of Scientology and then in sudden defence asserts his own “rightnesses”, sometimes close to terror.

It would be a grave error to go on letting an abuser of Scientology abuse. The route is to get him or her to explain how right he or she is without explaining how wrong Scientology is, for to do the last is to let them commit a serious overt. “What is right about your mind” would produce more case change and win more friends than any amount of evaluation or punishment to make them wrong.

You can be right. How? By getting another to explain how he or she is right-until he or she, being less defensive now, can take a less compulsive point of view. You don’t have to agree with what they think. You only have to acknowledge what they say. And suddenly they can be right.

It is all about the “rightness” of Scientology in the end.

 

Reference continues:

A lot of things can be done by understanding and using this mechanism. It will take, however, some study of this article before it can be gracefully applied-for all of us are reactive to some degree on this subject. And those who sought to enslave us did not neglect to install a right-wrong pair of items on the far back track. But these won’t really get in your way.

Drill the nonsense into your mind until you can only think with Hubbard’s nonsensical ideas. Hey, and finally we get Hubbard’s version of “scientific proof” of his claim – the right-wrong “mental aberration” is evidently an IMPLANT by our ever persistent whole track enemy forces.

 

Reference continues:

As Scientologists, we are faced by a frightened society who think they would be wrong if we were found to be right. We need a weapon to correct this. We have one here.

…

You can make yourself right, amongst other ways, by making others right enough to afford to change their minds. Then a lot more of us will arrive.

Here it is – Hubbard finally lays out the actual intention behind this reference – yet another “weapon” against the critics of Scientology. Any criticism, scrutiny, or insistent disagreement with Scientology no matter how rational is filed away into a band of “frightened society,” of someone “low on the Tone Scale” and of someone dramatizing some form of aberration “trying to be right and make others wrong” – all other possible reasons dismissed and any increasing efforts to clarify an opposing point of view are taken as a further indication of the supposed aberration at work.

 

Page initially published on CivilizationUpgrade.com: December 14th, 2015
Moved to ScientologyAnalysis.com: June 20, 2020