Scientology

Religion's Henry Ford

Roy Wallis

I want to argue three not uncontentious points. First, that Henry Ford and L. Ron Hubbard, Scien tology's founder, have some important characteristics in com mon. Second, that in part at least this similarity stems from the fact that both epitomise a significant

stage in the development of the domains of industry and religion. Third, that in broadterms Ford and Hubbard and their respective creations emerged as a result of the same social forces changing the shape of western society, industrialisation, urbanisation and increased social mobility.

What characteristics do Ford and Hubbard share? Both were clearly men of considerable vision. Ford foresaw a revolution in mass transport. 'Motor cars for the multitude' was the basis of Ford's motivation. Hubbard has a similar dream, to 'clear the planet.' He likewise has a commodity to purvey. In place of personal transport, Hubbard offers personal salvation to the consuming multitude. Both saw a market need, invented a means of fulfilling it, and erected vast and complex organisations to manufacture the commodity required. Hence, a brief account of the social changes creating these new market demands. may go some way to explain their success.

Whatever the 'ultimate' causes of industrialisation in the west, the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society is the unavoidably central feature of historical development in recent centuries. Industrialisation and its usual concomitant urbanisation drew men off the land and thrust them into the industrial towns. It broke down the relatively stable agrarian order in which a man was born to a particular station in life, was happy to achieve the standard of living and style of life appropriate to that station, and expected no more. Traditional integrated social groups replaced by conflicting social classes.

Industrial production demanded efficiency, and this in turn required the allocation of individuals to jobs on the basis not of birth, but of ability. Social mobility became a characteristic feature of industrial societies, and a belief in the possibility of mobility, an important motivating factor in the lives of men. With the disappearance of traditional status groups setting the appropriate level of wealth, leisure and consumption," such standards were increasingly set by those in the next group up the status hierarchy rather than those in the same status group.

Ford happily grasped this simple principle. While the Model T may have lacked something in comfort and elegance, it brought to the masses what had hitherto been available only to a privileged elite, a speedy and efficient means of personal transport.

A mass market led to mass production, the organisation of manufacturing for the maximisa tion of capacity. The need for increased efficiency and economy in mass production inexorably led to commodity standardisation, mechanisation, intensive job specialisation, and assembly line manufacturing.

Hubbard also sensed a market opportunity. Industrialisation and urbanisation led to an inevitable differentiation of occupation and life experience. It led to the ap pearance of distinct sub-cultures within the same urban environment, with distinctive values and styles of life.

Religious beliefs and institutions became differentiated in turn to cater for a more diversified clien tele — Unitarianism for the professional classes, Methodism for the new urban and industrial proletariat etc. A market' situation for religious beliefs and practices developed along with that for other kinds of consumer goods. As religion became a market commodity it fell prey to the logic of market production, specifically in terms of shifts in the nature of the product to meet consumer preference. Science having taken over as the dominant explanatory paradigm for the natural world with startling success, today's ur ban industrial consumer is less in need of a cosmology than of a solution to the problems for which science has provided less compelling answers. He seeks a solu tion to problems of anxiety, psychological insecurity, the difficulties of interpersonal interac tion, and a means of achieving the increasingly high standards of performance which an advanced industrial society demands.

Religion has gradually become re-orientated to provide a solution to these problems, and religious professionals in advanced industrial societies increasingly seek relevance in a therapeutic role.

Under the impact of an open class structure in which social mobility became not only possible, but valued intrinsically, and in which Protestantism's stress on individual salvation had become widely diffused, individual achievement in this world emerged as the principal consumer demand. This demand, traditional Christianity orientated to the provision of heavenly salvation was ill-equipped to meet.

Christian Science and more particularly New Thought struggled to supply the demand and yet preserve continuity with the religious tradition. They in turn faced a declining market, however, through their commitment to a concern for physical health, as science with its medical advances provided a more rational (i.e. more predictable and routinely effective) technology for coping with physical illness.

The pressing need for a technology to cope with psychological problems remained unsatisfied, until Ron Hubbard invented a product tailored to suit demand. '

Scientology offers a doctrine which explains psychological problems, difficulties of interpersonal and intergroup behaviour in terms of traumas experienced by the thetan, the spiritual being which inhabits our physical form. The thetan is immortal and immensely powerful, and yet over the course of millennia began losing its powers under the impact of trauma. How the thetan became restricted to inhabiting human bodies is narrated as a tale of mythopoeic proportions (which there is no space adequately to recount here) but in brief, having invented the physical universe as a game to relieve boredom, the thetan gradually became trapped in his own creation and lost his awareness of his spiritual nature and his supernatural (for human beings) powers. The road back to Operating Thetan is arduous and expensive, but the rewards are not all delayed to the end.

In the progression towards full rehabilitation of the thetan, the individual can expect to regain abilities which will assist him as a human being — the elimination of psychosomatic illness, enormously enhanced ability to control his body and recover from physical illness, a greatly increased IQ and ability to communicate with others, the ability to achieve with relative ease all those things which have hitherto eluded his grasp. Scientology has never been inexpensive (but neither has the motor car) but Hubbard made 'available to a mass market a commodity — psychological reassurance and psychotherapy — formerly available only to an elite.

Hubbard is acutely aware of the current market situation for belief systems and has organised Scientology accordingly. The commodity he purveys is marketed with the same techniques as the motor car, although the media outlets available to him are more restricted. Glossy hard-sell mail advertising is a central feature of the campaign, but direct selling is employed at offices like that in Tottenham Court Road, with added inducements to buy in the form of attractive receptionists and a free personality test as a loss leader.

Other marketing features,

exploited more generally by sellers of consumer durables than by religious organisations, are sizable discounts for cash in advance and for the purchase of packages of courses or auditing. Until recently, planned obsolescence seemed an integral feature of ScientologY marketing, with old techniques rapidly being replaced by neW ones, requiring the consumer or

practitioner to re-equip himself at no small cost.

The courses themselves are organised on a continuous system, standardised and automated so that there need be no delay before the consumer begins. Typically each course has a duplicated pack of material written by Hubbard, which has to be worked through, and taped lectures by Hubbard to listen to. Service is therefore completely individualised, yet quite depersonalised. Auditing, the 'confessional' or quasi-therapeutic practice of Scientology, is also mechanised. The pre-clear (or consumer) holds the terminals of an E-meter, a skin galvanometer, which it is claimed responds to changes in the state of the thetan. Auditing involves the delivery in a stereotyped tone of voice of standardised commands or questions from lists prepared by Hubbard. The auditor observes the movement of the needle on the dial of the E-meter until it takes on a characteristic pattern when the processes is completed. Auditing, therefore, compared to the diffuse skills required of the priest or the psychiatrist, is a semiskilled occupation, and auditors can be trained and replaced with relative ease. The pre-clear is .delivered a standard service at a standard rate. ("Any colour so long as it's black!") There are clearly other similarities between Hubbard and Henn' Ford. Powerful and successful men of this ilk tend to believe their capabilities in one field give them the right to pontificate in other domains. This may occasionallY lead to savage campaigns on subjects about which they have a particular prejudice. Hubbard has never displayed the least an' tisemitism, but the attacks 0.0 psychiatry and psychiatrists in Scientology publications are at least as scurrilous as those directedat th the s in Ford's Dearbo Independent. The most important parallel remains that which marks both these great American trepreneurs as figures symbolic.° a major transformation of in dustry and religion, able to We% tify a nascent market demand, and to synthesise the organisation an' the commodity to satisfy it. Roy Wallis is Lecturer t Sociology at the University ° Stirling