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Long story short, when I was a kid I attended a school that was operated by Scientologists. L Ron Hubbard had some strong feelings on how to learn, and so the c

Long story short, when I was a kid I attended a school that was operated by Scientologists. L Ron Hubbard had some strong feelings on how to learn, and so the curriculum at my school followed suit. I do think that a lot of what I did as a kid - clearing misunderstood words, using clay models or drawings or physical blocks to understand concepts - has been instrumental to my ability to learn new stuff. I do not endorse or support Scientology by any means, but a lot of this is true: http://www.studytechnology.org/sh1_1.html http://www.studytechnology.org/sh1_1.html

jl2718 5y ago
Knowing nothing about Scientology, it seems to mix a lot of practicality with mysticism as a complete system. Coming from that sort of background, what would you say is the best single source of guidance for a ‘complete system’ of modern practicality?
Viliam1234 5y ago
Some of the ideas are useful, as long as you don't dogmatically insist that they apply to all problems. People using words they don't understand, that is definitely a problem. Actually, two different problems: either they believe that the word means something else, or they just parrot words without thinking about their meaning at all. Both are problems, but require different approaches to fix. Sometimes you understand each word in the sentence, but you still don't understand the entire sentence. Maybe the sentence is unnecessarily complex or abstract. Or maybe it is a statement of "what", but you don't understand "why"; like if you read Fermat's Last Theorem. And sometimes (and this is the part Scientologists don't want to hear), the statement is just plainly false or nonsensical, and learning the meaning of every single word in a dictionary is not going to help with that. Though you can force people into submission by making them read the dictionary long enough that they give up and pretend that the statement now makes perfect sense to them. Similarly, engaging multiple senses is helpful. Describe by words, make people repeat using their own words, make them write notes, show a picture or an animation, let them draw their own pictures, use Lego pieces or clay models, whatever. It is not the magic of clay (although the clay is quite flexible), but the magic of approaching the same concept from many angles. I suspect that most low-level Scientologist teachings were created by taking some respected ideas (of given era) generated by someone else, and making them simple and dogmatic. (The high-level teaching about removing evil spirits from your body are unrelated to anything practical.)

jl2718 5y ago

Knowing nothing about Scientology, it seems to mix a lot of practicality with mysticism as a complete system. Coming from that sort of background, what would you say is the best single source of guidance for a ‘complete system’ of modern practicality?

Viliam1234 5y ago

Some of the ideas are useful, as long as you don't dogmatically insist that they apply to all problems. People using words they don't understand, that is definitely a problem. Actually, two different problems: either they believe that the word means something else, or they just parrot words without thinking about their meaning at all. Both are problems, but require different approaches to fix. Sometimes you understand each word in the sentence, but you still don't understand the entire sentence. Maybe the sentence is unnecessarily complex or abstract. Or maybe it is a statement of "what", but you don't understand "why"; like if you read Fermat's Last Theorem. And sometimes (and this is the part Scientologists don't want to hear), the statement is just plainly false or nonsensical, and learning the meaning of every single word in a dictionary is not going to help with that. Though you can force people into submission by making them read the dictionary long enough that they give up and pretend that the statement now makes perfect sense to them. Similarly, engaging multiple senses is helpful. Describe by words, make people repeat using their own words, make them write notes, show a picture or an animation, let them draw their own pictures, use Lego pieces or clay models, whatever. It is not the magic of clay (although the clay is quite flexible), but the magic of approaching the same concept from many angles. I suspect that most low-level Scientologist teachings were created by taking some respected ideas (of given era) generated by someone else, and making them simple and dogmatic. (The high-level teaching about removing evil spirits from your body are unrelated to anything practical.)