Introduction: Ron NEVER used the word “self-determination”, which also applies to the English word “self-determination”. Thanks to the complete digitization and scanning of all documents, this can be easily proven. Ron used a word that does not actually exist in English: “self-determinism”. Learn the difference between self-determination and self-determinism.
This newsletter has different impacts depending on the language. My native language is German, and I discovered a remarkable translation error since Scientology started being translated into German. It’s a type of "false friend."
[False friend is a term from interlinguistics that refers to word pairs from different languages that look very similar but have different meanings in their respective languages. For example, the English word "warehouse" sounds like the German "Warenhaus," but it actually means “storage facility” or “wholesale store.”]
Ron NEVER used the word "self-determination". Thanks to the complete digitization and scanning of all documents, this can be easily verified.
Ron used a word that technically doesn’t exist in English: "Self-Determinism."
Note: The adjective in both languages is "self-determined" (selbstbestimmt).
Difference between Self-determination vs Self-determinism
Self-determination
The term Self-Determination is one you would typically look up in a standard dictionary. The word often invites people to invent their own definitions or interpret it in a dramatic way.
Here are the definitions from the Wordbook:
self-determination, n.
1. direction from within only, without influence or force from without.
2. the deciding by the people of a nation what form of government they shall have, without reference to the wishes of any other nation, especially one to which it has been subject.
Definition 1. comes relatively close to the meaning of self-determinism but does not capture Ron’s definition.
Self-determination is often understood in the sense of: "I decide what I do! No one tells me what to do!"—a rather simplistic or even childish interpretation of the term.
In reality, Self-determination is more about something granted from the outside, whereas Self-determinism refers to a higher, more desirable state.
Self-determinism
Axiom 111: Self-determinism consists of maximum affinity, reality, and communication.
Axiom 117: The components of Self-determinism are affinity, communication, and reality.
You can find further definitions here:http://www.slovary.pro/en.php?search=self-determinism&submit=Search
If Self-determinism is defined as "maximum affinity, reality, and communication," it must be high on the scale. In other words, it corresponds to values of 4.0 or higher on the Tone Scale.
Here’s a particularly relevant excerpt from the book "Introduction to Scientology" by Richard DeMille, who worked closely with Ron at the time and also authored the book "How to Live Though An Executive."
Attributes of Self-Determinism
Excerpt from Introduction to Scientology by Richard DeMille, in collaboration with L. Ron Hubbard
Some of the attitudes of self-determinism, as stated in the Hubbard Chart of Attitudes and elsewhere, are listed here. The self-determined individual:
Survives,
is Right,
is Responsible,
Wins,
Controls objects,
Perceives the minds of others,
is Truth,
is Faith (Trust),
Knows,
Causes,
is Free,
Creates, changes and uncreates Space,
Creates, changes and uncreates Time,
Creates, changes and uncreates Energy, is a source of Motion,
Creates, changes and uncreates Illusions.
or:
What Self-Determinism Is Not
Perhaps we should say something about what self-determinism is not. Again, we avoid misunderstandings by clearing away previous conceptions before discussing present conceptions.
Self-Determinism is not selfishness.
Self-Determinism is not selflessness.
Self-Determinism is not arrogance, pride, willfulness, stubbornness, bigotry, zealotry, egomania, or fascism.
One must be self-determined in order to understand self-determinism.
Self-Determinism is a principle which can be understood in direct proportion to the degree to which it is experienced.
A man who has signed ninety-nine-percent of his self-determinism over to his environment can read about self-determinism until he is black in the face, but he will understand only one-percent of the thing he is reading about.
The student is asked, again, not to be in too big a hurry to understand what is meant by self- determinism. All of Scientology is a study of self-determinism.
Self-Determinism is a principle which must be used, not merely talked about. One does not become self-determined by hanging a sign on one's body which says "Self-Determined!" any more than the government can make everyone rich by printing lots and lots of money. This kind of "wealth" and this kind of "self-determinism" are only a mirage.
Self-Determinism is on a gradient scale. The higher one goes on that scale, the more one manifests creativity, perceptivity and sanity. Such high-scale behavior can be recognized easily only by high-scale beings. Low-scale beings almost inevitably fail and refuse to recognize high-scale behavior.
This may sound, at first, like the rankest snobbism, but the student will discover for himself – and, therefore, is not even asked to take the word of the present writer for the fact – that those who live on the bottom of the sea cannot fully consider the life of the birds. Fortunately, if the fish take a strong enough interest in considering their own lives, they may rise to the top of the water and grow wings. This is known as processing.
Contradictions of Self-determination
Self-determination has evolved in our society into a concept that can be used both to avoid control and to exert control over others.
The right to self-determination is often taken to absurd extremes. Without delving into specifics, it seems politically incorrect to even question this right.
For a Scientologist, the question may arise: Can one require someone to take a course or undergo auditing? In our society, there are thousands of similar questions – any parent can sing a song about them.
It seems almost absurd to debate whether it is unreasonable to require someone to participate in a course or take auditing, while at the same time we accept paying all taxes to the state, adhering to written and unwritten laws, and, in extreme cases, even going to war to kill other human beings – an action that, under different circumstances, would be punishable by long prison sentences or even the death penalty.
Can auditing other-determine a poor Homo sapiens at all? From my perspective, this is the wrong viewpoint, the wrong flow. The correct flow is this: In this vast shark tank, we are helping an individual regain their true self-determinism!
It’s wonderful to end one year and begin a new one with this cognition!
The Hubbard Chart of Attitudes is part of the Handbook for Preclears and can be obtained in the Ron's Org, as well as the book Introduction to Scientology.
Much love
Max Hauri
An Analysis of Self-determinism
Excerpt from the book Advanced Procedure and Axioms from L. Ron Hubbard.
The goal of the auditor with his preclear is not the release of a psychosomatic, not the improvement of appearance, not greater efficiency or better interpersonal relations. These are incidental. The goal of the auditor with the preclear is the rehabilitation of the preclear's self-determinism.
In order to understand this goal, let us examine some data and have a thorough understanding of what self-determinism is. Before Dianetics there were vague pushes in that direction but the state itself lacked definition and definitely had no bridge built to it.
Self-determinism is that state of being wherein the individual can or cannot be controlled by his environment according to his own choice. In that state the individual has self-confidence in his control of the material universe and the organisms within it along every dynamic. He is confident about any and all abilities or talents he may possess. He is confident in his interpersonal relationships. He reasons but does not need to react.
On the tone scale, we have at the optimum level, I am, at the lowest level, I am not. Between we have, from the optimum level down, varying degrees of I am and I am not. The lower one goes, the more I am not there is and the less I am. Here is the graph of the state of beingness and the state of not beingness. Not beingness is death. This is a range from 20.0 down to 0.0. Full self-determinism along every dynamic is found at 20.0. A complete other-determined individual is at 0.0. A gradient scale lies between.
There is a parallel column on the tone scale to the I am, I am not gradient scale. This is the I know, I know not scale. I know is at 20.0. I know not is at 0.0. Between these lie, as one descends, I understand, I am trying to understand, I will not understand, I am afraid to understand, I cannot understand, I know not.
Another parallel scale would be, I have trust at 20.0 and I trust nothing at 0.0. As one descends, one reaches less and less trust and more and more distrust until we have death.
The mystic for millennia has been talking about faith. He never built a bridge to it. He made a fundamental error in converting faith into have faith. When he said have faith he invited understanding, then confusion of understanding, because one does not understand faith. One is faith. The source, content of and contact with faith is you. The result of this mystic error – and it is a very gross error – was to place individuals so far down the tone scale that "love" and propitiation became bywords and hocus pocus the order of the day. Here is a 1.1 religion. It is afraid to understand because it has to have faith, but it is not faith because faith is not understanding. Hence the general confusion at 1.1. A by-product of this is the fact that individuals who thus have faith are running too slow. You get esp, hypnotism, mixed-up facsimiles with others, martyrdom, physical illness and all manner of unwanted things at this slow speed. It is too close to the static of death at 0.0, and its people are awfully dead, ineffective and irrational.
People who are trying to have faith are not faith. Thus they fear (1.1) and propitiate (1.1) and are generally confused. One will not buy unreason at 20.0. They began by knowing faith and then became confused by having faith explained.
Because of spectacular successes (rare as rarity), the mystic continued to strive for something he already had because he had no way to get back to where he was. The enormously successful points of being faith in the sea of unsuccessful having faith kept the mystic striving. It is possible now to achieve faith, or regain what one has lost.
I am, faith, I know are at 20.0 on up. At 20.0 on the gradient scale they are at optimum unity with MEST (the physical universe) but as they rise from 20.0 they become less and less effective on MEST until top static is reached at 40.0. The scale is a circle. 40.0 and 0.0 are the same, so it is possible to go two ways towards death. One is less well off at 21.0 than he is at 20.0 since the MEST is dwindling away. The austere but spindly and weak mystic who dwells upon abstracts is less able to know. There is an entire scale above 20.0, which matches the scale below 20.0 in undesirability. The organism slows down above 20.0. The static is thoroughly unobtainable with one's body, evidently, for the static at the top in a pure state 40.0 is, for one thing, a -270 degrees C. A person who relaxes to not being in body is at first assailed by counter-efforts and then begins to chill. The various phenomena of mysticism are in the main explained by this scale. When one forsakes individuality on the way up, he, of course, can commingle with thoughts and other individualities. When he slows down below toward 0.0 he is again getting confused in his individuality, shifts valences easily, is hypnotic and is in a generally undesirable condition.
Another prime error has been made and is part of our culture, both religious and scientific, and that is the error of single source. At 1.1 single source looks to be the case. Also at 39.0. At neither point, however, is there any clear view. All life forms are not from a single source. The ideas of Nirvana, Valhalla, Adam, the original cell, each is now rather completely disproven. There is a source for every genetic line. By this is meant both a theta (thought static) and MEST form. There are as many sources as there are living organisms, each line distinct and individual. The similarity of form in a species is due to similar environments and age of the class, not single source. A negative proof lies in the finding that health, sanity and effectiveness exist where the greatest self-determinism can be rehabilitated. A positive proof is that, if it were single source, the discovery of the genetic line facsimiles, the blueprint of the body, should permit just one individual to go back and clear the original upsets for the whole human race. It has been tried several times. It affects none but the preclear. His source is the very model of self-determinism.
What then are you trying to do with your preclear? You are rehabilitating him from a state of partially I am not to I am, from understand to know, from distrust to trust.
If you only concentrated upon distrust in others of him and his distrust of others, his enforced faiths on others and the enforced faith of others on him, and with his trust and distrust on all dynamics, particularly self, and de-sensitized such facsimiles, your preclears would be at around Ten at least. Occluded cases may be only broken trust cases for the preclear cannot trust himself, thus cannot trust his recalls. Run trust-distrust, and enforced and broken "know" and "I am" and "faith" in Act Four.
L. Ron Hubbard
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