Scientology: Us vs. Them

Hi everyone. Thanks for reading my blog and for all the love and support you’re sending my way. I’m overwhelmed.

Today, I was planning to start telling the story of how I got into Scientology in the first place. But the news of the day has me going in a different direction.

Two mass shootings in a 24-hour period? Four in ONE WEEK? I can’t handle it.

The Gilroy Garlic Festival on Monday. The Walmart in Mississippi on Tuesday. Another Walmart in El Paso yesterday. Then downtown Dayton this morning.

Is there nothing that can be done to stop all this?

Aside from anyone’s political views, I think there’s a deeper problem at the root of it all: The “Us-versus-Them” mentality.

I know it well, because I lived it in Scientology. It’s the feeling that “We [insert group name here] have the only answers to the world’s problems, and everyone else is wrong.”

That’s how Scientology operates, in a nutshell. The viewpoint is that anyone who is not a Scientologist is somehow a lesser being, who can either be enlightened and become a Scientologist, or who will continue to live a horrible existence, lifetime after lifetime.

Scientologists call non-Scientologists this lovely derogatory term: WOG. We were informed by L. Ron Hubbard that it derives from the term “Worthy Oriental Gentleman”. Our goal was to turn “wogs” into Scientologists. But “Wog” is actually a term used mainly in British English as an ethnic or racial slur and is highly offensive.

Anyway, we always used the word “Wog” to refer to anyone who wasn’t a Scientologist. Scientologists use this word daily, even now, with no real concern for what it actually means. It doesn’t matter to them, because they are clearly superior to all you unenlightened lesser beings.

As someone with a Linguistics degree, I should have seen what was happening with the usage of this term. But I was too far “into it” to notice anymore. My education, after all, meant nothing compared to the universal truths I was learning in Scientology. Really, I’m not kidding. That’s what I was taught.

The parallels to what’s happening now with these mass shootings struck me really hard this morning.

It’s truly become an “Us vs. Them” society. Everywhere I go, I see examples of it. I mean, it’s hard to miss when you really start looking.

Once I escaped Scientology and the Scientology mindset, it took a few years for me to return to the mindset I’d had my whole life: There is no “Us vs. Them”. There’s just US.

I lived all over the place as a kid—Canada, Nigeria, the Canary Islands, California—and everywhere I went, I noticed the same thing: People are people. We’re all part of one big human race.

I always tried to see another person’s point of view and not judge them so harshly. Did I always agree? Hell no. But I always tried my best to give another person respect.

I know it’s kind of simplistic to think that we can look at another person without the blinders of ideology, but maybe it’s possible.

Then again, maybe it’s not possible. But I’m certainly going to try to live my life that way. I’ve experienced firsthand what “Us vs. Them” can do to a person. It blackens your soul.

I choose to live in a world of US. I invite you to join me.