I want to talk to you today about people. That seems to me to be a pertinent subject — very pertinent subject. It seems to me like there might be some efficacity in talking about people.

Now, it's a broad, general subject and you may not have noticed it, but you are studying about people. See, you might — this might — you might have overlooked this. Of course, you're also studying about universes, but there is a very great oddity involved here.

An individual who is studying a universe is also studying people. There is where science has made its error. Science is a great cult which swept out across the land when everybody got down to a point where he hated everybody. They said all is materialism, there's nothing else. And that, really, is what is known as science today; it is a materialistic concept. You ask a scientist about what he is doing and he is talking about materialism. Now, that isn't the root meaning of the word science. The root meaning of the word science simply means truth or knowledge. The basic word is scio which is knowing in the fullest sense of the word. Now, we've taken science into the word Scientology as a boring from within.

The gentlemen who are studying science today, who are practicing science, are having a dreadful time. They really are having a dreadful time; so much so that the Atomic Energy Commission has just released a bulletin which says, "In order to keep ahead of Russia we have got to have smarter scientists and technicians." Now, that's a marvelous thing. Scientists and technicians have to be smarter in order to keep ahead of Russia. This I seriously doubt by the way, but nevertheless we have cast the die there that somebody recognizes that our boys aren't getting smarter, they're getting more stupid.

Why are these scientists getting more stupid? Because they're going on an hundred-and-eighty-degree vector — wrong. They're trying to study this stuff in order to find out about life and they never will. They just never will find out about life by studying matter. It's something like trying to study a child's toys to find out what he's going to do next and you're not liable to know. It's liable to lead you very far astray.

Now, we take the AEC and find out that their provisos on the subject of security alone are sufficient to make their scientists stupid. Let's take a look at this and recognize that two-way communication about secrets and recognize that all the boys that are working down there in the AEC have "secret" in front of their face all the time. Those things which they're doing, talking about, exchanging, fooling with, are totally secret.

Not only are they going up against the impossibility of learning more about this universe, learning more about knowledge, you might say — that's an impossibility — by studying this stuff, which is simply the product of knowledge; not only are they doing this, but they are making it secret, which is a total dramatization, by the way. The reason this stuff is here is because it's totally a secret. How's — how total could a secret be? Well, it's almost total when it's lead but it gets real total when it's plutonium. It gets so total that if you get too much plutonium together, everybody knows about it. In other words, you go on the next inversion, see?

All right. So we have cognited down here at the AEC right now that our boys are stupid. Now, I'd hate to have an atomic scientist hear me say that, because he undoubtedly has, and should have, a very high idea of his own team, you know? "Us Americans are in there pulling together and all that sort of thing; we're figuring out all this stuff." He should have something like this. But look, the security measures of the AEC have even broken that down.

Now, I'd hate to be hung with the idea I've just said, "All American science is stupid." But there's a comparable remark. I realized before the war was very old that — World War II — veterans always have a tendency to speak about the war you know, and they might really be speaking about the Spanish-American or something but it happened to be the war they were in, whichever war that is, you see. And about spring of 1942 I had a cognition. I knew how battles were won and lost. I had some sort of an idea then who would win the next war -who would win that war we were involved in. We'd already finished a war by the spring of 1942, a war we lost. But that side would win that had the least-stupid general staff. That was the only criteria you had to have; the least-stupid general staff. And it was obvious to me by that time, that the Japanese general staff, although this seemed utterly impossible, was more stupid than our general staff. And I looked at these impossibilities and realized that we would eventually win the war because I had seen the Japanese general staff pull some boo-boos which were so cataclysmic, that I knew they could never recover from them.

They didn't even know basic theory of war. Our boys at least had read Clausewitz, 1815. You see, as stupid as Clausewitz is — who says, "War is the act of compelling by force your will upon the enemy," you know? Dahh! War is simply convincing somebody — the end of war is convincing somebody they lost; or convincing somebody they better now do what you want them to do and you have a workable definition. The rest of the definitions are unworkable. Why get force in there?

All right. The least-stupid general staff will win. Now, I have no doubt whatsoever that the Atomic Energy Commission and its personnel will win.

No doubt whatsoever. But they have interposed two things here: MEST as the prime concentration, forgetting all about life and interdepartmental and interscientist secrecy. One boy on the project can't talk to another boy on the project about certain things. And what's going to happen to your team? Supposing you had a football team where the quarterback knew a lot of things which the end mustn't know and the center knew a lot of things that he mustn't let the ends in on. And we expect this team to get in there and fight for dear old Molasses U? Hm? They won't. After a while they will say, "Let's see, what's the name and address of the enemy?" or something, you know.

"He undoubtedly has a better team than we got." You see how this would work out?

We actually invite all sorts of odd conducts. Now, the AEC is aware of several things. It's aware of the ineffectiveness of psychotherapy; because -they obviously have tried it because they have now debarred it. It cannot take place in their personnel. There must be no psychotherapy. Oddly enough, the AEC has no slightest allergy, of any kind, to Scientology, a religion. Every once in a while somebody's very fond of saying, "Who knows about Dianetics, who knows about Scientology?" Just the US out here, that's all. You can't go to a dinner party in Washington without getting involved in violent arguments on the subject. If you mention the subject or if anybody — foolishly -you permit anybody to introduce you as a Dianeticist or a Scientologist, you're in for it! You will be cursed and protected by both sides of the question. It is not a null subject. And of all of the organizations in the field of the mind, there is only one that is persona grata with the Atomic Energy Commission: the HDRF and the HASI. Now, this is an oddity, isn't it? It shows they haven't gone completely stupid. They will at least look around outside the agency there and find what contemporary thought is taking place concurrent with studies of assr, solid objects and spaces. They'll at least do this. You think the Russians are doing that? Mm-mm. Boy, I'll bet you they got electric fences eighty-five feet high all around each one of their boys.

In the first place, their atomic science is being carried forward, for the most part, by Germans that they captured from Berlin, thanks to our cooperation. And they took these boys into Russia and they put them in a stockade and these guys have been thinking ever since, for Russia.

A German, by the way, is an interesting scientist anyway. He's a fascinating fellow when it comes to science. He is so stupidly thorough about everything he does that it takes him forever to line up the gradient steps between beginning and end of any thought or formula. He just goes on and on — I know this by the way, in studying engineering in my day, you had to study German. You had to study German engineering because the German engineer was the boy. And now, I was over in Germany recently and a whole bunch of young engineers were sitting there and they held me rather in awe; I was an American. And in order to get by they have to study American engineering. It's just reversed.

All right, here's your Russian scientist with a crew of German scientists and technicians. What kind of a team do you think this will make in the final run, huh? And with Russian secret-police background and ideas — you know they're very well oriented on secret police — how much security do you think they enforce? Well, all right, as a Scientologist you ought to be able to sum up these two teams immediately and see that the AEC couldn't possibly lose, up against a secret-police-oriented crew like the Russian crew, see? We don't care what their basic training is, even. It's just this crew and that crew and who's going to win? It'll be the one with the most teamwork or the one with the least stupidity. And although we could find a lot of things terribly wrong with the American Atomic Energy methods of carrying things out, they're still better than the Russian methods of doing this or the English or the French or the Italian or anybody else's, see?

Now, this principle is something that you ought to understand fairly thoroughly in dealing with people. It is not the smartest person who wins; it is the least stupid person who wins. Just reorient yourself on it.

So you take a preclear. You process him up scale. You get him into what you consider foul condition and then he goes out and does a much better job than he ever did before. You say, "Well, I couldn't possibly have done anything for this guy at all," see? You did. You made him less stupid than the people around him. He came out of the sessions with less prejudice, less hate.

He didn't come out of them with more ARC, you understand. We're still dealing on the other scale. See, it's just less hate, less prejudice, less stubbornness. Now, let's just take another look at this, see? And we'll see we have an optimistic view here. It's possible to have an optimistic view, even when dealing with people. All right.

Now, we look at an object and we recognize that if we were trying to understand the totality of existence by examining this object, we'd have a time. We would have a difficulty, I assure you.

If we tried to examine the totality of existence by looking at a tin can, once more we'd have quite a time trying to embrace even full cans. Now, we could extrapolate from an empty can to the fact that a can could be full and that for some reason or other it got emptied by something. But without an enormous amount of experience with other objects, we wouldn't be able to understand that empty can. Not even the can itself. It would have no goal, no purpose, nothing. We'd be looking at the can. We'd say, "Well now, it's empty because there's nothing in it, but there's some signs of something having been in it." Second we do that we have to assume another something, a somethingness that can be in it. See?

If we really took all we could know possibly about this empty tin can, it would be a cylinder of metal with a closed bottom and an open top and some space in it and around it. There might be some fragments of something inside. There might be a piece of label. But if we say this label says so-and-so and so-and-so and therefore I know this is a can of spinach — Popeye brand — we are assuming the knowledge of something else. We're assuming the knowledge of the English language which includes more knowledge, which was preknowledge, you see? So the task of studying just this can is a task of studying just this can, see? And if we have no other experience to call upon with relationship to this can, we have two things: We have the can entirely differentiated or we have only data about the can. That's all, see? You see the end goal of this as far as knowledge is concerned?

I want you to get out of this the idea of how much the preclear really knows. He has a fabulous array of associations, utterly fantastic, which are all fitted in as identifications and similarities and so on. You show him an empty tin can and hell say, "Yes, it's made by the American Can Company; its label says tomatoes; tomatoes are grown out in the Middle West and probably the canning is done out in the Middle West because I notice that on the label there, it's a very bad, inartistic picture. Therefore, it must have come from the Middle West." And then he'll tell you, "It weighs so-and-so and it does so-and-so." And he'll go on and on and on about this can. He's not talking about the can at all. He's talking about the relationship of the can to the rest of the universe in his experience. So he's handling billions of data.

What's he really know when you hand him the can, as far as any observation is concerned and without the assistance of memory or concatenations?

He knows that there is a cylinder with a closed bottom and an open top and some space. Does he know it has weight? No, he wouldn't know it has weight for the excellent reason that he has to have Earth to know it has weight.

Furthermore, he has to have a hand and Earth to know it has weight.

Now, this gets to be a very interesting thing then when you examine knowledge. You can examine knowledge as unit knowledge. And oh, the discipline upon which you must dwell and with which you must work if you are going to take unit knowledge. If we took a can and a crock, just two items, we would have the basic number of knowledge, which is two. We must have two data in order to have knowledge. To have the one can, this one cylinder of metal, with a closed bottom and an empty top and a space around it, we do not have knowledge; we have a datum.

Now, it takes an enormous array of material to comprehend all relationships of experience of this can just by looking at it; it's quite a trick — quite a trick to do that. But we'd have to have a can and preferably some other object in order to have knowledge. Why? Because we can evaluate the can by the crock, the crock by the can. We would have data of comparable magnitude. To obtain knowledge, then, you have to have data of comparable magnitude to the number of at least two and from these two you can go on from there and get fancy if you want to. But if you sail out from a unit datum; one, only one, you get an impossibility. That datum, that object, has to be associated with other objects before you expand into what we call knowledge. Therefore, where does knowledge start? It doesn't start with a single item. It starts with two data, two objects — has to. Do I make my point?

Of course, it's very interesting that Buckminster Fuller discovered this.

He discovered it in something called dymaxion geometry. Very interesting fellow this Buckminster Fuller. The world has been passing him by at a mad rate but I understand the other day, not too long ago, he was handed some fancy appointment of some kind or another. Somebody started teaching this stuff in design work. It's about time they did. He was too far ahead.

All right. Here we have, then, the principle of oneness as the defeating principle of knowledge. I don't care what else you learn about Scientology, for God's sakes learn that. The principle of oneness is the defeating principle of knowledge. Curious isn't it, that there's been so much insistence on oneness?

We find somebody, a big organization, rather Johnny-come-lately in the religious field — new, brassy new, it's only a couple of thousand years old — the Roman religious government which succeeded the regime of Caligula. No, that isn't what it's called, but it's close to it. Well, this organization came up with the oneness. And it was an interesting thing that right at the time they came up with this one-datum idea with regard to deity, they also came up with the principle of "the way to rule them all is keep them ignorant." And they carried on for hundreds of years on this principle: that ignorance is bliss. If you can just get stupid enough, you'll be happy.

In other words, you had a central government there, of the Roman government, which knew very well that it couldn't succeed if anybody got bright because they knew how dumb they were. They must have known it or they wouldn't have insisted on this other. You would have thought that somebody along the line would have been cocky enough to say, "Well, I'm at least as bright as these other guys and I can certainly out-figure them one way or the other." But nobody did. They were a bunch of mental cowards. That's a hard, harsh word. They were a bunch of stupid mental cowards, that's better. And they said, "The only way we can rule the human race and keep this empire under control is to teach nothing but ignorance." And they went out on this principle of oneness, oneness, oneness.

Now, we look at something interesting. We look at nationalism as a study of oneness and about the biggest blunder man has made in the last 150 — 200 years, has been nationalism. It's a new thing. Nationalism is brand-new. It's brand, spanking new. It is a recent idea. Before that time we had racialism and tribalism and other things like this. But we find France suddenly getting the idea of nationalism about 160 years ago, something like that. They suddenly got this idea of nationalism and they went mad. They killed everybody.

Well, maybe that's sane for a Frenchman but it's certainly not very conducive to the better good of the nation, is it?

And so we look into the odd places of Earth and we discover this principle of oneness working in an interesting direction: toward defeat, stupidity, disaster. And this should be very curious to you. We are under the threat now of the destruction, without our consent, of the entire planet of Earth. Because of what? Because of oneness.

The early Roman Empire did not make this stupid mistake; they had the Blues and the Greens. You say the United States hasn't made this stupid mistake; there's the Democrats and the Republicans. They are not a dichotomy. They are not two political parties. They're two levels of the country. If the Blues and the Greens were fighting in there, to win elections and that sort of thing, you would at least have internal knowledge. But they both defeat themselves by coming up and becoming, regularly, a oneness — a one-government thing. Which then stands there and looks at all other governments as a one government thing.

So we have the oneness of Russia and the oneness of the United States and something's going to blow. Because the United States cannot study Russia. Everything is unit information. Communism, Russia — look at the identifications. Russia isn't even vaguely a communism, never has been! Never will be! It's a military dictatorship, right this moment, run by a bunch of generals that got tired of a secret-police officer named Beria. And they have good parties and they're having a good time right now. The system which they use is the system where the minimum number of people can govern the maximum number of people. And they may call it communism, they may not. We don't know what they call it in Russia. We haven't any idea at all what this idea of communism is unless we study communism and then unless we study Russia.

Now, every once in a while some smart boy has said this, that we have to study these two different things separately. But he usually is saying it so that you won't hold Russia against communism. Communism has to be discovered and examined in relationship to other political ideologies and philosophies before we understand it at all. But the second we realize that there are other political philosophies and ideologies, then what do we get?

Ha! We get knowledge and with knowledge we have peace. We have ARC.

Looks to me like the way to defeat war would simply be to make it necessary for everybody to study all the ideologies there were. You certainly would never, never have a war.

Right now, although in Scientology we really don't believe we're at war with psychology, psychology believes we're at war with it. They have been an only one for a very, very long time. We've been very careful not to be an only one. We have Dianetics and Scientology, at least as a thin, synthetic dualism.

We have the Church of Scientology and the Church of American Science. If these two organizations wish to fight, wonderful — it's all right — but they won't. We have the HASI and the HDRF. Right here in Washington we have the Founding Church and the Church of Scientology. I'm not organizing to get a maximum amount of applause from men. I just want a maximum amount of effectiveness. And no effectiveness is to be found in war, unless you want to make a lot of mass and collision, you know, and get enough pressure.

Well, where's all this leading? Well, I'm coming down the dynamics. Let's look at you, let's look at you, when we're talking about people. And we realize that you, as an American, or as an Englishman, are brought up on the idea, for the most part, of your individuality.

The basic political philosophy on which any government, really, you've had much to do with, is built, is rugged individualism. The political philosophy which you are living, and know very little about — hardly anybody knows about it for the excellent reason it's never been studied, because by definition it's not studiable — is rugged individualism. Rugged individualism could be studied only if you had two rugged individuals. And now, if we studied both these rugged individuals we could then, maybe, understand rugged individualism but we never would have understood rugged individualism. Because perforce, we'd have had to study one person to have had a pure study of rugged individualism. We would have had to study this tin can and let no crocks come around, please.

So rugged individualism looks to me like it's kind of a defeatist end.

How does this work out in processing? You just start processing somebody along a line which confirms his separation from everything and his IQ will go down, down, down, down. If we — if we perforce got somebody to adopt individualistic characteristics which were entirely original with him and made him dream these up and specialize on these until he had carved himself out a unit character, I doubt if at the end of the process the fellow would be able to talk English. It'd be pretty hard to design this process because it'd have to be run by an auditor who is sitting right there as another being. So it'd have to be unit-processed, wouldn't it? It'd have to be self-processed.

So the optimum process from the standpoint of psychology would simply be this: One individual, self-processing himself into further individualities and differences from the rest of the human race. That'd be a good goal if we wanted to make everybody stupid and wipe the whole thing out. That would just be gorgeous. That would be exactly what we could use. On something else, not Dianetics and Scientology, if you please.

Now, this is a very, very peculiar thing, isn't it? I seem to be talking directly against some of the fondest ideas of the Western Hemisphere. Western culture is founded upon the idea that you have rights as an individual.

Well, it's a funny thing that communism, with one slogan only, collectivism, totally unworkable, hashed up, seems to be making inroads on this Western philosophy of individualism — seems to win. It's conducted by criminals, it's the darnedest thing you ever heard of. Nobody in his right mind could ever sit down and work out the steps which communism wins with. They're too stupid. Well, there must be some ingredient amongst them that isn't stupid.

Actually, the British Empire worked on the same theory for 350 years and won at every hand. And their slogan was, "We're a team and play the game." Teamwork. And when they really got individualized and so forth, as the years went around, and had to confirm their national philosophy by adopting the ideology of socialism, we found them losing on every hand. See, they were drifting off into individuality.

This is quite an interesting thing, that a stupid philosophy like communism could make any inroad anywhere and could be found in an American university almost anywhere you looked. What the dickens is this? Well, communism is an inversion on truth. There's just one tiny little ingredient in it which makes it work and that's that thing called collectivism. That's just that tiny ingredient. And - but that ingredient is so powerful that you can cover it up with a lot of stupidity and still win. And a collectivism will always win in the teeth of a rugged individualism.

I remember well, up along the Rhine, we used to go into punitive expeditions into Germany and knock apart a few villages. It was very interesting, very interesting. The legions were trying to keep peace along the Rhine. The legion used to go in there — they were collectivists, very definitely, legionnaires. They were united against their officers. There's nothing quite as feared or as hated as a Roman officer. And the boys were very proud, the legionnaires were, in the early days. They were citizens of Rome, that was enough. This fellow was a citizen of Rome; that was enough. And he associated with citizens of Rome and that was enough and everything was fine.

And everybody else was stupid, dumb, barbaric and there was no other thing, which eventually defeated them. It was only one nation of Rome, see.

Well, over the Rhine they'd go and chew up the village, punitive expedition and so on. Eventually, they got the Germans, from the tribes across the Rhine, so that they would serve as auxiliaries to Roman forces, and they would go in and punish their own neighbors. It's very interesting. But the legion won at every hand, it kept right on winning. Actually, the legion got in such horrible shape that the men wouldn't even exercise after a few hundred years, with their exercise — heavy armor on. And they got, finally, to a point where they wouldn't even wear armor in battle because it was too heavy.

They were really caving in at every hand. But, nevertheless, they were still winning. It was fantastic! Just shows you, the world was pretty stupid, but they were less stupid than the rest of the world. They must have gone downhill more slowly than the rest of the world did.

Why were they able to clean up the Germans? Do you realize the whole concept of knighthood came out of Germany? Individual valor, purity and everything else? A Roman legionnaire talked about fleshpots and how many dames he could buy and how drunk he could get. He could lie and cheat faster than anybody else he met. He was a skunk as far as an individual character was concerned. And these German knights in shining armor got mowed down at every hand. Why? The German was a rugged individualist and he lost every time. They would come forward with the most gallant feats of knighthood you ever witnessed in your life, one at a time. Vying with each other, charging all out of line.

This principle extended clear on in — in German knighthood — extended clear on up to about 1300 and something, when the last crusade went down and accidentally met an army under Bayazidthe Thunderer, an army of Turks. They didn't even know this army was there, these knights didn't.

Bayazid the Thunderer didn't even know. He was trying to meet Tamerlane and have a fight with Tamerlane. And the advance guard of knights, of the last crusade, rode into the advance guard of Bayazid the Thunderer, and a few minutes later there were 10,000 knights off of their horses or dead. And a little later on were being lined up, having their heads chopped off, one after the other, while Bayazid was still waiting for Tamerlane. It was not even a clash of armies. And yet, you say, this last crusade must have been a very weak crusade. Oh no, it happens to have outnumbered Bayazid. But the knights did not wait for the foot soldiers. The knights had 125,000 foot soldiers, who had been trained under Frederick and who were very fine foot soldiers. And they would have been ample to have done anything with, but the knights had to get in there, you know, competition, hurrah, charge -dead. Get the idea? Individualism. Now it's pretty, it's pretty, but is it smart?

It's very, very nice, but does it work? The answer happens to be no; it never has and it never will.

All you've got to do is introduce one word into a society to have its germ of destruction adequately laid. Just one word has got to be introduced into a society — "competition." And if we can just have enough competition and we can have everybody in competition with everybody else, nobody can have a game. It'll eventually get to a point where nobody is permitted to play this game. And then some degraded philosophy, like communism or something, can move in on that society. Communism isn't even smart. You'd swear, if you had to line up the principles of communism, that it had been invented by some three-year-old kid along with some mud pies. But when it's faced with something that's pretty smart, but has this stupidity in its midst, it will win.

Therefore, it ought to be pretty easy to defeat such a thing as a communistic influx, and it is. All you have to do is understand collectivism. Communism will go thud! Because it has nothing else to support it.

Let's take a look, then, at man at large. The only reason I'm using a third dynamic example is so that you can see it out of relationship to yourself. I don't care anything about communism.

I was down in Hyde Park one day, and I finally got absolutely disgusted with somebody who was standing up there making speeches about the glories of communism. Ah, he couldn't do it at all. I mean, he was real stupid, real dumb. He was going on and on-boy, the people were listening to him though.

We have a fellow, by the way, who goes out and makes speeches on Scientology in Hyde Park. Only he happens to be one of the foremost magicians in Great Britain. He has no trouble, whatsoever, holding an audience. We even got into Look or Time, or something, this week as being one of the clubs or something, that regularly appeared in Hyde Park. Oh boy, Scientologists in general in Great Britain just grit their teeth when they see old George Wichelow going out and making speeches in the back of the truck and in marketplaces and so forth. But there's just more people that know about Scientology in Great Britain. There's more people know about it than you can possibly count.

All right. Now, let's take a look at ideologies. Now, if I were really, terrifically destructive, if I felt that same nation ought to really go by the boards, I could probably be a wonderful beater-on-the-drummer for individualism.

That's what I'd do. "Yea, individualism must be supported at all costs. Do you realize that you will be herded together and regimented like sheep?" Get the pitch? Just keep it up long enough and nobody'll have a game anymore. And then you can send in a bunch of ratty legionnaires, caved-in, with every kind of a disease and vice known to man, and they just start picking off the rugged individualists one after the other, pang, pang, pang, pang.

That's why we get this truism. I mean, it's factually true that I really don't care about any side of any ideology because I see them too clearly as ideologies. They are an easy subject. I've seen twelve barbaric tribes practicing better ideologies than any we have in the Western world. Any Polynesian island practices better communism than Russia. Any Chinese practices better democracy than the United States. So these ideologies are not being purely practiced here, so why pay much attention to them?

Let's look at something much more important than that. Let's look at man himself in his effort to keep going. And let's find out he's using these ideologies as crutches. He's having a tough time, too. Because every now and then he gets a society that is apparently running beautifully, but it will have some seed of destruction inside itself which will eventually cave it in. And the last thing in the world that you would suspect of the United States of America, that its germ of destruction was competitive individualism. That's the last thing in the world you'd suspect as the germ of destruction which keeps an atomic scientist from being as bright as he could be; which keeps our naval officers from being as bright as they could be and as good a ship handler.

Why, do you know life at Annapolis is one of the most dog-eat-dog affairs you ever got into? And knowing what I know about West Point, the last person I ever would have let down here near this White House would have been somebody who went through it. Because that guy can't play a game. He can play golf, but remember, that's not with anybody.

The most cutthroat practices you ever heard of, favoritisms of all kinds, would perforce be practiced in the vicinity of competitive individualism. Now we're striking right straight at the very root, stock and cords of American democracy, or are we? Maybe — maybe we're slicing off a few rotten roots when we take a look at this, because if this country goes much further on not playing the game, there won't be anybody take any responsibility for anything in the whole country.

You walk into a government agency and you give them any problem that is related to that agency but is not exactly right in the middle of the paragraph that tells it what it could do and it won't have a single thing to do with it. So you go over to another agency and they look in the middle of the paragraph which tells them what they can do, and if your problem isn't in the middle of that paragraph — and maybe your problem lies dead between these two agencies — it'll never be done.

You know that civil defense is being conducted as a different organization than atomic energy in this country? That's impossible, but it is. And the information in atomic energy is so secure that nobody in civil defense could find out about it. They're very individualistic. Well, where — where would you think this would lead in terms of war, hm? Hm? Where would this go in terms of war? That would finish a nation which got involved in an atomic war. All right, there's only one little sign of that.

About all you've got in this universe is a game. And the only way you can fall out of contact or get really buried and dulled in this universe, would be to fall away from playing a game. And if you can be driven far enough out of playing a game, you're done. That's all he got, is a game. That's all a government is, is a game. That's all people are, is a game. Well, it gets to be very interesting to watch a country fall apart and become ineffective and inefficient to the degree that its individual citizens can no longer play a game.

Now, what kind of a game do you think it is sitting in a motion picture theater or before a television set? There isn't anybody on that screen knows anybody is cooperating with them or playing that game of looking. They just kind of assume it and let it go from there because it's all being paid for by soap powder. It's being paid for by soap powder because everybody has to get on the air and say what better soap powder they've got; that they're an individual soap powder. If I hear once more a television announcer say, "The greatest name in soap powder," I'm liable to bust the screen. The greatest name in soap powder, djahh! You know they haven't got any soap powder? They've got detergents which are mildly effective. Most of them stink so they have to be perfumed.

And we think this is a great thing. The thing you should do is have a lot of competition so everybody invents better detergents than everybody else, invents better detergents… And when you get all through, we can't afford soap. We think, by the way, that if one person got all the detergents there were in the whole country under one aegis that therefore the price would go out of sight. And you know, that if that company was run by an individual thoroughly indoctrinated in rugged individualism and dog-eat-dog and the tooth-and-claw nature of society, that's exactly what would happen. He would put the price of soap out of sight. So we're trying to remedy rugged individualism with more rugged individualism and it doesn't work very well.

All right. What's the remedy? Is there any remedy for this, and does it have any application whatsoever to processing? Believe me, it has. Because it has an opera — an operational procedure right in you, right in you. Now, nobody's trying to make you a chameleon that can change its colors and character at will. Because it's fun to have quirks and eccentricities, but that, having quirks and eccentricities, does not debar you from a group as long as the quirk and eccentricity is not, "I will have nothing to do with the group." Do you see this is the finished, final quirk and eccentricity that would move somebody out of life, out of the game, out of any emotion or effort or really any thinking at all?

It would just be that final thing: I am such an individual that I can't be part of a group. Well, that eccentricity all by itself is a stable datum in a society which practices rugged individualism. And eventually everybody in the society gets so nobody in the society will let anybody else play a game.

Now that's another — another angle on it. Take a look at it.

Now, we're too prone to say each individual himself is unable to play a game. No, let's get a little more overt, huh? Let's just move up scale just one little peg; one little gradient. Let's say that each individual in the society is kind of bound and determined he's not going to let anybody else play the game. Let's bring him up tone a bit. Oh brother, then do you have a mess on your hands.

You go down here to get a job. Society is founded on the basis that it's a cooperative endeavor, that's all that keeps it going. You go down here to get a job, see? And the fellow says, "Oh, well, what's your experience, your former qualifications?" "Well, I don't know. I don't have any former qualifications because I've never worked before." "Oh well, it takes experience. You know? You've got to have a record before we will let you go on for further servitude. You can't play this game because you haven't played it." Youth faces that all the time.

You know something funny? Many a time an individual's refused a job when the job is wide open and three minutes later — after this individual left, refused the job — why, the foreman was in there saying to the personnel man that kicked him out, "Have you got anybody yet who can load the trucks?" And the personnel says, "No, we have nobody qualified for it yet." Why would he do a thing like that? Sounds insane. It is insane. He just is darn sure he's not going to let that other fellow who came in and applied, play part of his game. He has the right to deny people the right to play a game and he will use it and use it and use it until you finally get the ne plus ultra, the reductio ad nauseum of all personnel officers: an army personnel officer. Now, he can sit there and he can say, "Ahh, ahhhhh boy. Let's not let anybody play any kind of a game anybody can play. They're all forced in here on me and I've got to assign them to something. Let's cross them up." Personnel itself gets to be, finally, in such a society, that profession which denies other people the right to play a game. A security officer is that individual who keeps people from being hired. What's the difference? Every once in a while, in civil service these days, they suddenly release somebody from civil service.

It says in the Constitution you have to be faced by your accusers, and a few other things. But all of a sudden somebody gets this ticket and is told to walk. That's the end. You can't play the game called the Department of the Interior anymore. Why? The fellow looks it over, he's a bad security risk, he's told. "All right. What have I done?" "Well, we can't tell you that." You get how security plays hand in glove with this, "Can't play a game" and how it could be very dangerous to a society?

Now, all that a society lives on is the will to live, on the part of its individuals. And when those people are thoroughly and completely individualized, they have no further will to live, will to work. The society is totally dependent upon that interesting fact. And although I've said a lot of things here today which are not of any importance at all, that one is important. It sounds like such an obvious thing. Well, think it over for a moment.

The only thing this society lives on is the will to live on the part of others. The only way this game can go on being played at all is willingness to play this game. And I don't see any cheerleaders down here in this government or in the states or in the cities, getting in there trying to raise that will to live. No, they're saying, "Tax. You can't play. If you do so-and-so…" Or you find one of the civil service employees that was discharged the other day, was discharged because he'd received a recommendation from a professor of history or something who long ago had given him this recommendation; they found it in his record and this professor of history had turned up to be a communist. That is enough? That is enough to deny this individual the right to play the game which he'd been playing for years? No, that's insanity. Of course, that's what insanity is.

All right. So, let's — let's take a look at the fact that a society exists only on this one thing: the willingness to work, the willingness to live — that's all a society has in it: the willingness to play the game on the part of its individual citizens. And they take that for granted. And they keep stopping it and taxing it and bleeding it and getting it one way or the other, shunted this way and that, abusing it somehow or another. And that's all it can live on.

There isn't any other sustenance in the society of any kind. Do you realize that a carrot grows simply because of the willingness of a carrot to live and grow? It's the only reason a carrot grows. Must be something there willing to grow. And the only reason a citizen will be a good citizen is a willingness to be a good citizen. So don't come around and complain about all the juvenile delinquency. It's just an unwillingness to be a good citizen. Why is it an unwillingness to be a good citizen?

Let's look straight at the government and find out it will not permit a juvenile to be a citizen. Young enough to die for his country, but not young enough to drink — one of the cracks you've seen the teenagers making, you know. He can't have a drink in a bar, but he can go out and get shot in the army.

Good golly, a guy can't have a job, he can't take part in the society. He's shunted around, ordered here and there to do this and that with no real interest on his own part at all, until he's 21. Well, 21 in Rome was old age. A girl was an old maid in the South 60 years ago if she got to 21 without being married. She was an old maid. And yet we make these kids live to the age of 21 before they can participate in this society or be responsible for any part of it. And then we do this terrific thing of saying, "I wonder why there's so much juvenile delinquency?" The only willingness there is, is the willingness of the kid to be a good citizen and if he doesn't have any willingness to be a good citizen it's because he's not being permitted to be a citizen. You want to stop all the juvenile delinquency in the entire country? Make everybody a citizen when he's 12. No more juvenile delinquency, that's that. Take out all these child labor laws. All they are is a bunch of holier-than-thou "my Gods" that lived back there sixty years ago and said, "Oh, isn't it terrible all these children working, working, capitalism bleeding everybody." You know, Karl Marx.

Most exaggerated soap opera I ever read. Karl Marx does not say anywhere in his damn book, Das K–-which is the lousiest piece of writing I've read in many a day. I read it the other day and I thought, "Oh no, don't tell me this has been sparking people off!" Anyway, the only — the only thing he never mentions-"these poor factory workers that are being worked to the bone and bled" and he even describes them as being thrown out on the dump heap when they die in the factory and so on. He's real good, real rabble-rouser. The only thing he never brings up is this interesting point: What the hell are they doing working for a factory like that! Did anybody tell them they had to? No! In the day that he was talking about, all they had to do was get a Butler rifle and go West. They didn't have to be there in Charlotte, South Carolina or Boston, Massachusetts working for a factory. So what's all this sob stuff about the poor woiker?

They didn't have to work under those conditions. Well, it must have been that these individuals were terrifically willing to work. Look at that. They must have been terrifically willing to work. They're not that willing to work today, so we decided things are better. Are they?

The only thing that exists in this society is the willingness to work, the willingness to live, the willingness to play the game. And those are the only things that are taxable or stoppable by the government. And. if the government itself is simply intent on being a parasite on that willingness to work, willingness to play the game, then that government itself will fail and will always fail and always has failed. Then all of a sudden a government will come along that itself is willing to work and is willing to play a game and is willing to let every citizen in the country play a game or at least say so. And of course that society then wins and that government then wins. And when a — when a government no longer will let everybody play the game it starts to go by the boards. And when it's finally forbidden the last person that would help it to play the game called government, it then folds up to any tramp who comes in with a peashooter, such as a communist. He comes in and says, "Collectivism and everybody can play this game." See? Everybody says, "It's better than we're doing now. Well, okay. Let's play a game called communism.

It's better than what we've had." Do you see how, then, a very, very stupid philosophy could win, hm? That's how it wins across the face of the Earth.

You don't think Chiang Kai-shek was running a government do you?

Huh! Chinese warlord? Huh? He's an interesting character. He always has been, he always will be. He assigned the island of Formosa to — right after we gave it to him as conquered territory — under the government of one of the stupidest fascists he had on his staff. A guy who was just hungry for nothing but money, money, money. The guy goes in, the Formosans said, "I thought we were going to be free after this war?" And he said, "Oh, no, you don't. More taxes." So they started to shoot at him; he shot at them. He killed 10,000 Formosans in the first few weeks of his regime. Interesting, isn't it? This is the kind of a fellow that Chiang Kai-shek appoints, you see, to rule various provinces. You wonder why he lost China? He wouldn't let anybody play the game called nationalism. So that any gang of tramps or criminals could walk in and take China.

Let's get this less-stupid principle. Now, why can an individual win in this society at all? He practically has to — he just has to be vaguely willing to live, see? Vaguely willing to keep on and he can win. But that's only in relationship to his fellow citizen. A good government would be a government which let people play the game, not only of government, but of being a people.

Now, given that principle, we could really dream one up, couldn't we? Man, couldn't we have a government? We could have an ideology that nobody had ever heard the likes of. As a matter of fact, I could probably sit down and write a book on the subject and have it go out here and it would be a bestseller and it would overthrow Russia. That's the basic principle.

Just invent a government that lets everybody play the game called government, which is essentially what they did 170 years ago — lets everybody play the game called government but lets anybody be part of the government, actively participate in governing while the government is in there governing.

That is what we missed in this country. You just go down to the Interior Department, tell them you don't like the zoological park here in Washington and you'd like to do something about it. They'll tell you to write a letter to your senator and forget you. They won't even interview you decently.

Believe me.

All right. So all we'd have to do is invent something so that not only could everybody play the game called government but you could also play the game called citizen. You could also play the game called worker. You could play the game called artist and you could exercise free choice in what game you played inside that government, and so on. It couldn't possibly be overthrown! It's that horrible thing called an unrevolutionable government. If you just reached up to a high level of that, nobody could overthrow it.

How about you as an individual and what's this employment of all of this data on the third dynamic? Believe me, if anything applies on the third dynamic, it applies on the first dynamic. Let's look it over.

How willing are you to let other people play the game? Well, you must be pretty willing because you're here as Scientologists. You must be darn willing to let somebody else play the game. Something else that's more important than this: How willing are you, as an individual, to assume anybody else's identity? How unpartisan can you get? Same thing as saying, how pandetermined can you get? How many identities are you willing to assume?

How many of your favorite eccentricities are you willing to give up? How many can you dream up and put into effect, how fast? And then how many can you get rid of?

Think of the movie actress who plays the insane role. The movie actress plays an insane role on the screen that's successful, and they go insane — then goes insane right away.

Well, all right, so you invent an eccentric character. You say, "Today I feel pretty old, you know." You go walking down the street and complaining to everybody about how old you feel. It's a game. And tomorrow, why, how fast can you snap out of that and be nice and young? "My, I feel young today." Of course, the funny part of it is, your friends will keep telling you, "Yesterday you felt old; what are you doing feeling young today? You're inconstant." Why don't you just play one game at a time — that's one of the best operations.

So that you, as an individual, could be said to have an enforced individuality when your individuality, if you are at all — feel incompetent or disabled in any degree — you must be working on an enforced individuality or an inhibited individuality, which amounts to the same thing. Communism is an inhibited individuality. So is socialism.

Don't you think that it'd be a matter of discovering free choice on your individualness, if you wanted to be entirely free? The recovery of free choice on individualism is probably the highest theoretical goal in auditing. Free choice on individualism. If you could attain that, you could do the darnedest things. Oh! Free choice on individualism carries with it practically every magical trick you could think of.

If you as an individual had a free choice over your individuality; if you could survive or succumb as any individuality; if you did not have to consistently protect one individuality, you would have recovered free choice in life, wouldn't you? And that's the highest ability there is: the establishing or disestablishing of an individuality on the level of free choice. If you can do that, you can handle anybody — anybody anywhere at any time. That's a horrible thing to face, somebody who has free choice as an individual. Don't think you could handle a Democrat if you're being a Republican. All you have to be is a better Democrat than the Democrat you're handling. And be him too. Oh, this sounds insidious.

Only reason I'm talking to you about it today is a process called Union Station. Fascinating process. Union Station is a Locational Process. It belongs at the level of Locational Processing. And it's a very effective process and it makes things work out just about along the lines I've been talking to you about in this first hour. Now we're going to take a five-minute break here and I'll talk to you a little more about that.