WHAT IS OUT ETHICS?
 
                                ACT - 44
                            4 February 1994
 
                 Copyright (C) 1994 Homer Wilson Smith
       Redistribution rights granted for non commercial purposes.
 
>     I am still chewing on the ETHICS?  query and it would appear that
>ETHICS may be the most misunderstood or not understood area in what
>was the Church of Scientology.  AUTHORITARIANISM IS NOT ETHICS.  I
>will attempt to summarize something on this this weekend.  How would
>you define ETHICS?

 
     You know its a hell of a lot easier to give specific examples of
things that might be out ethics, than it is to give an extraction of WHY
they are out ethics.
 
     Any specific action, like murder, theft, lying, etc do NOT define
out ethics because all are good in the right circumstances.
 
     In part ethics has to do with playing games by the rules, and out
ethics may have to do with winning by cheating.  When the penalties of
losing hurt more than the penalties of getting caught for cheating then
people will choose to cheat.  The penalties of losing are horrendous in
life, starving to death etc, so there is much corruption, temptation and
seduction, which may also have to do with out ethics.
 
     Corruption is the crack in the armor of total responsibility.  It
is blaming others, a feeling of non Sovereignty in the choice of the
game, a feeling I had nothing to do with this so I can justify doing
things I would not otherwise do.
 
     Temptation is the light shining through the cracks in the armor,
the light that says if you do these things you will live better etc.
even if you are doing in your friends or eating away at your long term
assets for the sake of short term gains.
 
     Seduction is giving in to temptation and doing what ever it is that
you hope to win by.
 
     People tend to define ethics in moral codes, never break an
agreement, never desert a comrade in need, never withdraw your
allegiance once granted, etc.  Most seem to be self serving to the
person handing you the moral code.
 
     The primary moral code handed to one by others is hand over
everything you own and let us suck your blood.
 
     Lying to oneself about cause and effect might be unethical, it
sticks one in motivators to justify PRIOR overts.  What you did to me
today justifies what I did to you yesterday, etc.  You CAUSED me to do
what I did to you yesterday by doing to me what you did to me today.
 
     Wanting to cause death forever or hell forever to anyone for any
reason seems to be unethical because it diminishes one's own divine love
for everyone and the ability and desire to salvage other's from ruin.
As LRH says, who would ruin when they could salvage?
 
     There is classy anger which aims to teach a lesson to someone who
will remain your friend afterwards, and unclassy anger which attempts to
hurt the other person beyond any possible repair of the friendship
later.  It's called Breaking the Chalice.
 
     I am not sure that any of these things could be said to be WRONG in
some absolute sense, because if a thetan is Sovereign, then any of them
and the situations they appear in were created and planned for by the
thetan in the Divine Pan Determined state, so how can they be really
'wrong'.
 
     However within the context of a game that is already defined with
rules and agreements, then perhaps unethical behavior or postulates
might make sense.  But again if they are even possible within a created
game, the Sovereign Units which made up the game rules,must have left it
open to be able to do these things, so that unethics becomes merely
another part of the game.
 
     In the end a thetan can't really break the rules of a game, because
it has to be part of the rules that he can break the rules.
 
     In some sense each game defines a set of rules which determine what
a win is and what a loss is, and what the correct rules are for playing,
and ALSO WHAT CHEATING IS.  So cheating is a well defined part of the
game.  You can win by cheating but only if you don't get caught.
 
     The more important and earlier question is why play a game at all
that has such terrible consequences to losing?  What moral high ground
can an umpire hold about what rules are right and what rules are wrong,
when the losers end up dying crucified to a cross for miles around for
having played BY the rules?
 
     People play by the rules all the time and lose big time.  Is there
out ethics, just because one loses?  What good is ethics if it doesn't
help you win?  What good is ethics if it helps you lose?
 
     So maybe there is a higher level of asking whether the game ITSELF
is unethical.  For example games where some one winning means another is
losing opens the door to cheating, so in itself might be considered an
unethical game.  Such competition type games however seem to be a
ubiquitous part of life, so its hard to condemn all of them.  Besides we
don't seem to have much choice about playing them, you have to eat, and
eating involves making something else lose in some sense, and if you
don't win you die horribly.
 
     Perhaps games where the penalties of losing are worse than the
penalties of cheating could be called unethical games.
 
     But that just makes people build very dire penalties into cheating
to make losing and playing on the up and up more attractive.  It hardly
makes the game any more DECENT.
 
     And in any case, some games are so bad that people think if they
lose them, they won't ever get to play another game ever again.  Thus
the very playing of games for all the rest of time is tied to winning
this game here and now.
 
     Therefore the penalties of losing are ultimate.  You find many
people in this kind of game with their own Immortality and Sovereignty
on the line.  They consider they don't have Immortality or Sovereignty,
never had it and still don't, BUT if they win at the game of life,
auditing, proper behavior etc, they will win Immortality and Sovereignty
forever more.
 
     This is so horrible to them that they make a virtue out of it,
'Well its the ACCOMPLISHMENT that counts, if this game of life and death
weren't REAL it wouldn't be fun or worth playing.'
 
     Facts are though that any being has an ARC break on BEING CREATED.
They may not be able to confront it in session, and if they really
believe it is true they will make a virtue out of it.  If they think it
might be false, many years later when they wake up a bit, they will want
to audit it first thing, and they had better have an auditor who can
stomach the charge.
 
     I would say that putting one's Immortality and Sovereignty on the
line in a game, or pretending that it is on the line, might be
considered an unethical game.  But why I don't know.
 
     If we are Sovereign, then any possible condition was planned and
accounted for with approval by all those playing, including any 'out
ethics' that might send someone to Hell.
 
     I think we have an even higher subject which is that of Permanent
Loss.
 
     To a Sovereign Being, there is no Permanent Loss, only the
apparency of it if he chooses to indulge in the veil.
 
     But if we weren't Sovereign, then clearly real things are at risk,
even if we can attain such Immortality and Sovereignty.  We might NOT
attain those things and thus die forever, or even end up in hell
forever.  Thus things become very serious.  Clearly in this case, if
there are rules which invariably lead to Immortality and Sovereignty,
then we must follow them rigorously and eschew other avenues as 'out
ethics'.
 
     Even if we are Sovereign clearly we can think we are not Sovereign.
This may be the game to end all games.
 
     Adore talks about the Doubt Effect.  If you doubt something good,
that will make you feel so bad you will be sure that the good thing
could not possibly be true.  It works on out-indications also, if
someone has a headache, they might say well the reason I have this
headache is because of such and such, and BEING WRONG, their head ache
of course immediately aches a little more so they hold their head go and
Ohhh!  I must be right, ouch.
 
     Doubt about Sovereignty leads to (a false) Certainty of No
Sovereignty.  Apparently it is here that Targs enter your space and feed
off the horror.  You see if you believe you are not Sovereign, then
clearly there must be OTHER CAUSE, and the Targs are only too happy to
fill the role.
 
     Any psychosomatic condition is a pocket of apparent and acting Non
Sovereignty.  It says you didn't do it and you don't know who or what
did, and you will NEVER get rid of it.
 
     Spotting the Non Sovereignty pocket to any psychosomatic, over and
over, will often break up some of the tougher ones.  Watch it though,
the source of the pain is rarely where the pain is, unlike in real
injuries.  So with a psychosomatic you have to look elsewhere in your
space to find the (numb) source of the pain that is out of place.
 
     Anyhow the moment you have entered the realm of apparent non
sovereignty, the ARC break with Source is so strong there is little
incentive left to be nice or decent, one merely wants to kill everything
in sight until its all gone.
 
     "Mock up something so horrible it makes you want to make nothing
out of everything."
 
     One has to ask why a Sovereign Being would indulge in the Doubt
Effect and enter the realm of Non Sovereignty, since it is going to burn
him into a ball of hate and he knows it.
 
     "What are the aesthetics of Sovereignty?"
     "What are the aesthetics of Non Sovereignty?"
 
     "What are the aesthetics of wanting to die and being able to die?"
     "What are the aesthetics of wanting to die but not being able to
die?"
 
     "What are the aesthetics of not wanting to die but having to die?"
     "What are the aesthetics of not wanting to die and not being able
to die?"
 
     I think in the end, without any connotations of good or bad, the
world works on Logic which is Soveriegn above all else.  Things IS, and
that means they ain't ISN'T and that is true for all universes, and all
times and all people and could not be any other way.  There is no
changing that.
 
     It is possible that persistence itself is caused by the application
of illogic to an AS-ISness.  It is unclear why you can't just get
something to persist merely by willing it to persist.  Why indulge in an
alteris-ness?
 
     Perhaps Sovereign Units POSTULATED that persistence would only
happen if there was an alterisness, but then why did THAT postulate
stick?  It is cute to suggest that maybe they alterised it, but the
postulate that alterisness causes persistence had to be in force BEFORE
any alterisness could have caused a persistence!
 
     So what is causing the persistence of the postulate that
alterisness causes persistence?
 
     Your Targs all twisted up in knots yet?
 
     In any case the application of illogic seems to be a key way that
thetans create games and problems and situations for themselves.
 
     If a game is merely any problem that needs to be solved, and if
problems only persist due to illogic, then the way to win any game is to
apply logic.  Thus one could be considered out ethics if one tried to
win the game of solving a problem by applying MORE illogic!
 
     Thus LRH says Ethics is REASON.  He never quite came down to saying
Ethics was Logic.
 
     The fact is I have no idea of what out ethics is.
 
     What I do know is I am in a game I wish to win MUCH more than I
wish to play.
 
     I WANT TO WIN MORE THAN I WANT TO PLAY.
 
     If I were to win tomorrow I would be out of here, there would be no
regrets about how easy it was or how short the game was.
 
     If someone offered me a cheating way out of here, that got me out
and left everyone else in smoke and flames, I wouldn't think twice about
taking it.  There is a sucker born every minute and here is where they
die.
 
     Friends, noble causes, worthwhile purposes, grand ideals are not
worth one second's risk dying on a Cross for, nor spending an Eternity
in Hell.
 
     "Hey you, Mr.  Devil there, how many friends will it cost me to buy
my way out of here for GOOD with no strings attached?
 
     That many you say?
 
     No problem, that's cheap, I have been saving up friends a long time
for just such an emergency."
 
     Ethics Smethics.  Ethics is what gets you out of here.
 
     Since the being wants to win more than he wants to play, he won't
PLAY the game, he will try to get others to play it for him, to take all
the risks and give him all the rewards.  I don't claim this is wrong,
but it is common to those who are more bent on winning than on the
quality of play.  But that could just as easily be a valid game move in
even a less serious game.
 
     So maybe ethics has to do with games, not with behavior within the
game.  Maybe it is any game that drives the being into being unwilling
to play it, yet sticks him into having to play it.  This causes chaos in
the sportsmanship arena.
 
     However if he CHOSE such a game from a Sovereign point of view,
then even such games can not be considered bad.
 
     So you know I don't know what out ethics is.
 
     My final conclusion is that ethics is reason applied to conditions
to get what one wants to accomplish.
 
     Source, existence, *CONDITIONS*

     Conditions impose logic upon how to succeed.

     If you have to do A in order to get to B, then you damn well
better do A to get to B.

     Out Ethics would then simply be doing something other than A
to get to B after having recognized that A is required to get to B.

     Your move.
 
     Homer
 
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Homer Wilson Smith           This file may be found at
homer@rahul.net              ftp.rahul.net/pub/homer/act/act44.memo
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