Scientology Prison Outreach
Volunteer Minister

William Goehler K77832
PO Box 409040 MCP
Ione, California 95640

Something CAN be done about it!
8-8-21

My license- and yours- is bequeathed by L. Ron Hubbard himself in the following article that is our 8-8 sermon today, titled:

THE GAME CALLED MAN^1

People at large are not aware of a very interesting thing. They are not aware that anything can be done about anybody. The cop who gives you a ticket takes it in his normal stride that this is just the way it is. The hospital attendants who've picked the remains out of the drunken-driving wreck, the very best thought in various professions that should have to do with this, are all agreed that there's nothing you can do about it.

In other words, you have a cop down here and he is on the juvenile delinquent unit, and he goes around and he arrests them and he throws them in jail and they get out of jail and he throw them in jail and he gets them out of jail. And he says, " After a while they'll go to the big house and then they'll serve two years and they'll come out and we'll put them back in and then they'll come out and we'll put them back in and they'll come out. And that's the way this all is and there's nothing can be done about it anyway." And he says, " What's the use of arresting these car thieves? What's the use of arresting them? You just send them to jail and they spend a year or so in jail and they get out and twenty-four hours after they got out, why, they steal another car. There's nothing you can do about these people. They're crazy. And there's nothing you can do about the mind, and so it's all hopeless. So why should I be nice to anybody? Why should I be decent to anybody? It's just all a sorry mess and there's no piece of string you could pull out of it and start it getting unraveled, no place." That is his state of mind. Only he doesn't even know he's in this state of mind, usually.

Now, let's see how this barrier all by itself would influence a large society such as this. Here we have this remarkable thing: a computation that the only way to bring about law and order or to bring about control or direction or even betterment, is by applying more restraint, more law, more handcuffs. And that is the computation.

It is not a willful computation particularly. It is just the way it is all done. The more force we apply to the criminal, to the juvenile deliquent, to the stupid, the more force we apply to the student who will not study, the more stupidity, the less study, the more juvenile deliquency, the more crime. In order words, we're just adding to it- add, add, add, add.

Someplace along the line some group has to take the responsibility over turning the tide of this course of thought. And in view of the fact that we are dealing with the spiritual side of life and not its swords, it can be done. If we tried to do it with a sword, we would still be doing the same thing that the society is doing: control with handcuffs, jail cells, operations, electric chocks, duress, punishment, bad- control, threat, fear. All of these things give us simply more deter-coration. But we don't have to go along that line.

We have found a singular fact. And that is that a small increase in freedom brings an increase in civilized attitude. Here is a great oddity, because the society at large doesn't believe this. If you increased somebody's freedom you would increase the amount of trouble in the society; that is the way they would think about it, and that happens to be a lie. By decreasing freedom you increase trouble. By increasing freedom you decrease trouble. that is the truth.

(Processing is another word for auditing, which is the form of spiritual counseling unique to Scientology. The auditor- from the latin audire "to hear"- one who listens, asks sets of questions called "processes" which help the individual look at his own existence and improve his ability to confront what he is and where he is.) Now somebody comes up once in a while and he says," Now, under processing, isn't it really true- now, confidentially- isn't it really true that you uninhibit somebody?" "Uninhibit somebody." He's assuming that everybody is inhibited. this isn't particularly true either. He's assuming a whole bunch or irrational things0 that there are big, black beasts that crouch just below the surface and thin veneer of the society, and these beasts at any moment are liable to bounce free. His level of belief in his fellow man could not be written and sent through the mails! But he believes that the second we would take off any restraint we would find ourselves confronting a bunch of rather poorly behaved gorillas, at the very, very best." If you make somebody freer they immediately jump for the trees and begin to swing by their tails."

it is a completely unjustified conclusion, becasue we discover that when a calm, permissive attitude is taken around a child who has been in bad condition - who has been upset, nervous and so forth. That doesn't mean no control. People who have inherited from psychology the idea that the modern way to do with a child is just to leave them alone and let them run - no, that isn ot the way you raise children. You have to put a little bit of control on them and control them with certainty or they get sick. Remember that.

We take this child who has been nervous and upset, and we give this child a little bit greater freedom, a little more participation in the game. We consult with the child as to whether or not it is all right to go to the show: Sure enough, the child is liable to get kind of confused and disconcerted for a few days, wonder what on earth is going to happen - something is wrong, see? They will rattle around and then all of a sudden they will say, "You know, there's a little reality about this. They really do want my opinion as to whether or not to go to the show," And all of a sudden the kid settles down and becomes a civilized person.

The way you make an uncivilized person is to deny him civilized conduct. If you assume his civilization and give him the freedom necessary to participate in the game called life, you guarantee his good behavior. How do you suppose we are ever going to get rid of the criminal population if at all times the criminal, on being released from prison is then shunned by the society and never hired for anything? Where can he turn but more criminality?

Similarly, the backward child has to study longer, has to sit there longer, has to work harder, has to grind harder, in order to get any place- less freedom, less freedom, less freedom. They actually get more and more and more stupid." They are dumb, so the thing to do with them is really pour the education to them: Give them examinationsL tell them that if they don't get A in arithmetic, Pop and Mom are going to feed them to the garbage man," In other words, threat and duress.

Nobody ever assumes this child can know or do anything, and this attitude continues on throughout his life. Very few people assume anything good about him at all. Nobody assumes that he can do anything. And as long as this is the attitude of the society, look at the enormous danger poised before that individual's eye at al lmoments. Look at that danger. The danger is "If I really fit myself into this society- a society of people who believe that I am stupid and incompetent, that I have to be taught everything eight times - if I really fit myself in and cooperate with my fellows and do unto others the way I'd like to have them fo unto me, with the prevailing attitude, I wuold be the deadest duck I'd ever met. So I don't dare let myself get into a position where I am in cooperation with my fellows."

If you had every player on a football field afraid to touch the ball, and every player bound and determined that the others were not going to touch the ball either you would sure have some football game, wouldn't you? You would have twenty-two men out there and the ball sitting in the middle of the field, and these guys would be arguing with each other: "Well, you're really not trustworthy to touch that ball. i don't know whether I want you on my team or not, because of ..." It would a be a great game, wouldn't it?

Did it ever strike you that life at large could be as much fun, on its broadest scale, in the fullest definition as a nice football game? That there could be as much enthusiasm to even the small, mundane, ordinary things as there might possibly be to playing a very exhilarating game? it is almost far fetched, isn't it, to think that talking to one's fellow man and engaging in cashing a check and doing this and doing that could be a continuous exhilarating experience, even though it wasn't big and huge and dramatic.

it isn't the amount of motion or action, it isn't the stake, it isn't the grandeur or the trappings that make a game. It is the willingness of those about us to play a game which makes a game. And when we onerous, arduous, dog-eat-dog endeavor.

And the degree that people are unwilling to play the game in this society is measured by the number of handcuffs, the number of jails, the number of hospitals and institutions and the number of laws.

Now, it takes a few laws to make a game. You will always have to have some barriers and restrictions to make a game. but when you get too many you get no game, except this game; the game of making more laws that will make more laws necessary. And that is a game for attorneys but not for citizens.

Wherever we look, them. and find people miserable or unhappy or believing that they could not possibly survive or have a good time, all we are looking at is a community which is composed, in the majority, of people who cannot play a game and will not let other people play one.

A good civilization would be that civilization in which the individuals of which it was composed could play a game and knew they could play a game and were playing a game called culture. And if that attitude could exist you would immediately, of course, have human rights, respect for one's fellows; all these things would fall into line.

but let me assure you of this: if everybody in such a society were to believe that nothing could be done about it at all (let's say that they weren't particularly apathetic about it, but they had simply been taught this as an educative datum, that there is no remedy for antisocial actions; that they all believed this), then you would have a guarantee that the situation would deteriorate.

So that is our primary barrier. That is the primary thing we have to overcome with scientology: Something can be done about it, not what can be done about it. That is up there too high. it is possible for something to occur that would put a person into better relations with life and his fellows. The society doesn't know that, has no inkling of it.

Just because you know a lot of these things puts a responsibility on you, but just because you know Scientology is no reason or license to stop living. You should be able to live much more fully. But feel very free to use or not use exactly what you know to use it as you think it ought to be used, to create the effect you want to create or just to create a random effect. That is a wide license, isn't it?

The material is yours. Go ahead and take it.

As I said earlier; My license- and yours- bequeathed by LRH. This authorizes us to apply his material, here in my zone of influence anyway. If you're interested in playing along, please contact me. In the meantime, I will continue doing what I can to help avenge Prometheus.

L. Ron Hubbard challenged us all when he said: "If one does not like the crime, cruelty, injustice and violence of this society, he can do something about it. he can become a VOLUNTEER MINISTER and help civilize it..."^2 Challenge accepted.

For the Love of Truth,
William Goehler, SPO-VM
Universal Life Church

1. The background, Ministry, ceremonies & Sermons of the Scientology Religion (1999 L. Ron Hubbard Library) Bridge Publications pg. 325
2. Ibid. pg 37