There was a fatal omission in Hubbard’s organizational policy. What he did was brilliant to create a Department of Correction also known as Qualification. What he missed was establishing a devil’s advocate section. In name there was a product called org correction, but only in name. Missing was innovation and critical examination across the boards. Unlike Queen Elizabeth, Hubbard had no court jester, who could tell him the unsweetened truth and critique. The only one who seemed to have come closest to such a function was Geoffrey Filbert, in the sixties. No one was actively taking an all encompassing active, critical examination of the org, its policies, its tech and its possible corruption, dishonesty. The key word is criticism, criticism in general was frowned upon, being understood as a symptom of withholds and overts. The one missing function was constructive criticism.
If constructive criticism had been institutionalized a scientology dictator like Miscavige would not have been possible.
Perhaps we ought to use the word critique rather than criticism in the context of this essay.
Critique is a method of disciplined, systematic study of a written or oral discourse. Although critique is commonly understood as fault finding and negative judgment,[1] it can also involve merit recognition, and in the philosophical tradition it also means a methodical practice of doubt.[1] The contemporary sense of critique has been largely influenced by the Enlightenment critique of prejudice and authority, which championed the emancipation and autonomy from religious and political authorities.[1]
The term critique derives, via French, from Ancient Greek κριτική (kritikē), meaning “the faculty of judgment”, that is, discerning the value of persons or things.[2] – Wikipedia
Org correction and evaluations were based on existing policies and primary assumptions and would never bow to examine and systematically question basic beliefs. If we start from a basic such as THETA which is REASON then it would be quite reasonable to subject and scrutinize anything at all by the use of reason. Others have realized the importance of criticism:
Internal criticism
A threat rather than a resource: why voicing internal criticism is difficult in international organizations Ben ChristianJournal of International Relations and Development (2021)
“…internal criticism is ambivalent—it can be both a resource and a threat to IOs. Its suppression or avoidance may thus not only be dysfunctional for the organisation (impeding organisational learning processes) but also functional (protecting external reputation and preserving internal stability).
“One thing is clear: voicing internal criticism is demanding and challenging—and must therefore be organised. Brave ‘exceptional individuals’ (Autesserre 2014: 43) are undoubtedly important, but their influence remains limited so long as they are lone warriors. Thus, leadership, senior managers, and rank-and-file employees must work together to actively create conditions that encourage the expression of internal criticism—both in terms of the general criticism culture and with regard to innovative structures and formats.“
Link to article https://rdcu.be/cBodIhttps://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41268-021-00244-w
Constructive criticism is like free speech a requirement for a healthy organization, society or group. Thus organizations should establish and add to the org boards, criticism and innovation sections in the correction department. The purpose of the criticism section is to assume the worst about the organization and to do everything, to expose corruption, incompetence and malpractice. But it should not even be limited to that, it should be free to question and doubt anything in particular basic assumptions. In HCOB of 9 June 1960 THE BASIC ASSUMPTIONS OF SCIENTOLOGY VERSUS OVERTS LRH freely criticizes some of the basic assumptions of physics, Freudian psychology and psychiatry and shows pride in the fact that scientology at least has inspected its own assumption points.
To understand how the artist felt, however, is not criticism; criticism is an investigation of what the work is good for. … Criticism … is a serious and public function; it shows the race assimilating the individual, dividing the immortal from the mortal part of a soul. [George Santayana, “The Life of Reason,” 1906]
One of the reasons this type of criticism was never encouraged or further developed in scientology is that disagreements and pointing out contradictions in Hubbard’s writings, policies or thoughts were frowned upon and generally considered symptoms of misunderstanding or even misunderstood words.
Dialectics
Dialectic or dialectics (Greek: διαλεκτική, dialektikḗ; related to dialogue; German: Dialektik), also known as the dialectical method, is a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned argumentation.
Dialectics and critique are related in the sense that both are exposing different if not opposite viewpoints on a subject. My ‘Critique of Pure Scientology’ provides many a dialectical response to several of Hubbard’s pronunciamentos, assumptions and axioms.
Hubbard states that ‘man is basically good’ as the antithesis to Freud’s view of man as innately evil (Homo Homini Lupus (man is a wolf to man)). A synthesis would be that man is innately neither good nor evil but intent on increasing hers power which can be done in good or evil ways.