Another in the ever-growing series of essays by Terra Cognita. See earlier posts here: The Reg, The Horrors of Wordclearing, Why Scientologists Don’t FSM, Respect, The Survival Rundown – The Latest Scam, Communication in Scientology… Or Not, Am I Still A Thetan?, To Be Or Not To Be, An Evaluation of Scientology, Fear: That Which Drives Scientology and Justification and Rationalization.

The Almighty Stat

To a Scientologist, nothing is more important than statistics—or “stats” for short. LRH was all about measuring production, and all production can be measured with one stat or another. Having his stats up or down for the week, determines whether a staff member gets a pass or finds himself in deep shit.

The push for stats in Scientology is all consuming. Stats are everything. Witness the opening of every “event,” in which endless stats flaunt incredible expansion by the church. Most of these stats are false and meaningless, but who cares? They’re stats!

Upstats vs Downstats

In Scientology, a person is identified by being “upstat” or “downstat.” An upstat is a person who works long hours, makes lots of money, and contributes to the church. They’re progressing up the bridge at a good clip, donating to the IAS, and making regular advanced payments for their next service.

A downstat is anyone, from a poor Scientologist not making steady progress on his bridge, to an over-worked staff member not producing to the expectations of his senior, to a homeless person begging for spare change on the street.

LRH famously said that when you reward upstats you get upstats, and when you reward downstats you get more downstats. This has been perverted to mean that a Scientologist must never help the needy, indigent, or anyone down on their luck. Scientologists look down their noses at people like this—even people within their own church. Compassion and understanding are foreign concepts to the Scientologist. Exhibiting kindness, sympathy, and concern for the less fortunate simply breeds more downstats. Everyone is responsible for their own condition. Just make it go right.

In Scientology, the very worth of the individual is measured by his production—and by extension, his stats. Little is more important.

Thursday at Two

In order to squeeze more work out of his followers, LRH ended the Scientology work week on Thursdays at 2 PM. He reasoned that if the week ended on Friday, staff would slack-off and play all weekend. And of course, stats would suffer.

Prior to the end of the week, staff rush around frantically, doing anything they can to get their stats up. Every last bit of production must be achieved before Thursday at two. The consequences for down stats are too horrific to confront. I’m sure there’s not a current or past staff member who hasn’t felt this anxiety or who hasn’t been chewed out by a senior for not having their stats up. Or at least made to feel less human.

No doubt, many of you reading this have your own war stories.

The Stat Push

Every staff and student in Scientology has experienced the infamous stat push. Nothing is more important to a staff member than having his stats “up” for the week. Nothing. He will lie, cheat, cut corners, and harangue to make sure the line on his graph points upward and doesn’t dip. Stats must be pushed higher. Anything less is unacceptable.

Seniors fly into tirades and juniors work long into the night to push up their stats. Nothing is more frightening to a staff member on Thursday morning than not knowing how he’s going to get his stat up before two.

Students, too, are susceptible to the stat push—especially as they near the end of their courses when supervisors push and prod them to put in extra time, and rush them through their final drills and “practicals.” Many a supervisor has pulled a student off auditing a twin so that he could get bonus points for a student completion. The majority of supervisors are more concerned with stats than with making sure their students thoroughly get what they’re studying.

Scarcity of new public has forced staff to go to more and more extraordinary lengths to get their stats up. As church membership continues to plummet, stats are harder and hard’er to attain. And thus, staff have been forced to pound the remaining public for more and more of everything: more time on course, greater attendance at events, and of course, more money.

The push for stats is yet another method used by the church to control staff and work them to the bone. The true believers are convinced that the world is going to hell in a handbasket and that nothing less than all-out production will stem the tide of worldwide takeover by the psychs.

Statistic to Graph to Condition

All statistics in Scientology are graphed. The line going up or down determines what “condition” a staff member is in for the week. The “trend” of the line over a number of weeks determines what condition they’re in over that period of time.

Scientologists are expected to apply the correct condition depending on the slant of the lines on their graph. Sometimes this makes sense. Other times not so much.

Per LRH, a person could have stellar, astronomical stats for weeks on end, but if they weren’t trending upward, he would be in a condition of emergency or danger. The Recruitment Officer in an org could hire two or three new staff every week for ten weeks in a row (a phenomenal achievement) and still be placed in a lower condition because his stats were “flat” and not rising. (I speak from personal experience.)

Note: The subject of “conditions” is a huge topic in Scientology—one of which maybe I’ll tackle in the future.

Student Points

Perhaps the most ridiculous and arbitrary stat is “student points.” For every action a student completes on course—everything from clearing a definition of a word to auditing his twin to Nirvana—he’s awarded a set number of points. Dutifully, he adds up all his points at the end of each day and records the total on his graph. Per policy, he’s then supposed to apply the correct condition to his studies the next time he’s on course. Nobody ever does. Ever. In the whole warped history of Scientology, no student has ever paid attention to his student graph. Much less, applied the “correct” condition upon sitting down and opening his course pack. If he truly did, he’d be reading hundreds of thousands of pages a day by the time he got a third of the way up the bridge.

Most supervisors pay no attention to student graphs, either. They’re only interested in the combined total of all student points for the week and the number of students finishing courses before Thursday at two. In fact, they’re so concerned with student points and completions that they will go to bizarre lengths to insure a student finishes a course before the legendary deadline. The closer a student gets to the end, the harder the sups push. That the student understands and can apply what he’s studying is secondary.

The Myth

If conditions were applied “correctly” to all stats and graphs, every single man, woman, and child on planet Earth would be Clear by now (more likely, OT8). Per LRH, by applying the correct condition, stats will rise. And thus, will rise every week into eternity by simply following his formulas. But of course that’s never happened in the whole history of the universe. And yet, staff members go on applying the same old “emergency” and “danger” conditions week after week, month after month, and year after year.

Older staff have written up and applied the same tired formulas hundreds and hundreds of times. Which makes me wonder: what must they think after writing up and applying a particular condition for the two hundredth time? How many times can they apply the same sequence of non-existence, danger, and emergency and see no positive results before their heads finally explode?

A continually rising stat is impossible to attain. Eventually, the constraints of the physical universe will put the kibosh on any further production. A bricklayer can only lay so many bricks per day before there will come a point in his workday when he simply cannot physically lay any more bricks. In Scientology, an auditor can only audit so many hours per day and an MAA can only declare so many people per week. Then what? Assign the bricklayer a “danger” condition? Put the auditor in “emergency?” Drop the MAA down from treason to confusion?

More Lies

Mike, and many others, have reported on Davey Miscavige’s continuous lying regarding stats, including wildly inflated figures on the number of new Scientologists, the number of flourishing and prospering orgs, and the nonstop wins happening worldwide, etc., etc., etc. Pretty much every stat that comes out of the man’s mouth is bogus. And yet, diehard Scientologists hang on his every word, and—as measured by their applause at events—presumably believe every ridiculous number.

LRH said that stats don’t lie. What he failed to mention was that the people tabulating and reporting them do.

Still not Declared,

Terra Cognita