"Scientology is the study of knowingness. It increases one's knowingness, but if a man were totally aware of what was going on around him, he would find it relatively simple to handle any outnesses in that"
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Scientology is framed here less as a religion than as a cognitive upgrade: “the study of knowingness” promises not belief, but a kind of mental instrumentation. Hubbard’s diction is doing sales work. “Knowingness” sounds technical while remaining conveniently undefined, a made-to-measure term that can expand to fit any claim. It’s also self-sealing: if Scientology “increases” your knowingness, any skepticism can be reclassified as insufficient progress.
The second sentence sharpens the pitch into a fantasy of total mastery. “If a man were totally aware” sets an unreachable ideal, then dangles the payoff: life becomes “relatively simple” to “handle” whatever is “out.” That last word, “outnesses,” is classic Hubbardese - awkward, proprietary, and therefore gatekeeping. Invented jargon doesn’t just describe reality; it recruits you into a private map of reality, where the organization supplies the legend.
The subtext is disciplinary as much as therapeutic. Problems aren’t political, structural, or moral; they’re perceptual errors, lapses in awareness. The implied instruction: stop arguing about the world and start auditing your own “awareness” until dissent feels like a symptom. Contextually, it fits mid-century self-improvement culture and Dianetics’ promise of engineering the self, while nudging followers toward a hierarchy: those who have “handled” more outnesses are closer to the coveted state of total awareness - and therefore more authorized to lead, charge, and define what “going on” even means.
The second sentence sharpens the pitch into a fantasy of total mastery. “If a man were totally aware” sets an unreachable ideal, then dangles the payoff: life becomes “relatively simple” to “handle” whatever is “out.” That last word, “outnesses,” is classic Hubbardese - awkward, proprietary, and therefore gatekeeping. Invented jargon doesn’t just describe reality; it recruits you into a private map of reality, where the organization supplies the legend.
The subtext is disciplinary as much as therapeutic. Problems aren’t political, structural, or moral; they’re perceptual errors, lapses in awareness. The implied instruction: stop arguing about the world and start auditing your own “awareness” until dissent feels like a symptom. Contextually, it fits mid-century self-improvement culture and Dianetics’ promise of engineering the self, while nudging followers toward a hierarchy: those who have “handled” more outnesses are closer to the coveted state of total awareness - and therefore more authorized to lead, charge, and define what “going on” even means.
Quote Details
| Topic | Knowledge |
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