Discussion in 'General Scientology Discussion' started by vumba, Jan 16, 2019.
My sister pointed something out the other day.... why, when we suffered the hardship of beans and rice for so long in the SO in the UK, did we not grow our own fruit and veg.? We had ample land and resources to do so, and even many unused poly tunnels! Crazy! It would have been a great task for EPFers. Just more 'can't have'.
How long of a time did the menu consist of beans and rice?
Because no SO member had the luxury of any free time to tend a garden. Beans & rice was a punishment, not due to being unable to buy decent food.
Beans and rice wasn't just a consequence of a low gross income or frugal Financial Planning Committee allocation. When this was happening in the late 70s at Big Blue, at one point there was an eval that came out blaming the AGFs (Assistant Guardian for Finance) for siphoning too much money from the orgs to pay for the many legal cases they were fighting. A rare instance of honesty, but only to deflect from Hubbard's part in it.
And as we now know Hubbard had pallets of cash in Switzerland and Lichtenstein. It was a competition between Hubbard and the GO to skim the orgs down to the most irreducible minimum FPs. They could have used reserves to avoid the rice and beans. Let's also be clear, when we talk about rice and beans here we are not talking about something nice that you would order in an upscale Mexican Restaurant with cheese, chile relleno, etc. It's really just rice...and beans. And you are told that combined they make a complete protein - which makes it so much better. That it was so plain was a message. This isn't just the FP. You are being punished.
No, I think by this time collectively the crew had signaled to Hubbard the extent to which they would tolerate neglect and abuse. By this time in PAC I think about a third of the staff had been through the RPF. Pay would be from nothing to $20.00 a week for an 80 to 130 hour week but pay was often $6.00 to $10.00. Why should Hubbard go out of his way to try to maintain a higher standard of living for the crew when we taught him that deprivation worked just as well?
Letting the crew start their own victory garden would be rewarding a downstat. The whole idea behind rice and beans was to get staff to get stats up, sell, sell, sell! Working in a garden would be off-purpose from doing your post and expanding Scientology. If you give them that then what will they be expecting next - more family time, actually taking annual 3 week LOAs (Leave of Absence), dental care?
It is important to find the threshold where staff tolerate deprivation to the point where only those who are broken in spirit remain and those who rebel leave. It is a constant vetting process. I used to be in disbelief at how difficult it was to get someone to join staff and then how they were treated so badly that they left. Now I look upon it as an essential part of cult indoctrination. The people who are in senior management now have probably been through the RPF and The Hole 3 - 5 times. It's that kind of person that they need and want.
I think it is important to point out that when the beans and rice thing started in the late 70s stats were crashing for reasons wholly attributable to LRH.
In the early 70s when you went into a mission it was fun. It was a happening scene. But the Sea Org was in it's formative period out at sea and would soon literally take over orgs like ASHO, and send out missions (special projects) to other orgs and even mission franchises and so began the heavy ethics and SP witch hunts.
The RPF was run up for the renovations at both Flag and Big Blue around 76-78. Sure, a lot of staff stayed through it but a lot of valuable veteran staff blew or routed out.
The FBI were onto the GO by 1977 and Hubbard started the Safe Environment Fund to get Scientologists to outright give him money for legal fees to bail him out of the mess he created with Operation Snow White. Like the IAS, that was money that would have been going to the orgs which was diverted to the GO. There was a big spike in bad press.
Then around 1979 Hubbard started the so called inflation price increases which essentially transformed Scientology from a grass roots activity to an elitist one. Anyone doing the math had to admit that any chance of global clearing was now impossible.
Hubbard started his war against the missions with the declaration that people could attest to Natural Clear causing them to skip mission services and pass go straight to higher level orgs where more money went to Hubbard. But these clear attestations caused problems because people knew they were a cheat and then had to pay thousands for the Clear Certainty Rundown. The Bridge got messy and more public bailed.
Then the prohibition on children started in the Sea Org causing more valuable veteran staff to leave. Hubbard probably did it as a cost saving measure and to avoid liability but having children in the SO was pure cruelty.
They started a push on outer org trainees in the early 80s as a way to further asset strip the orgs and all those people now had to coexist with regular crew and living conditions got more crowded and OOTs returned more stressed and fanatical than before.
As I was eating rice and beans it seemed Hubbard always had enough money to buy more real estate and start new renovation or remodeling projects. At the time I dismissed this as a long term investment in expansion that would result in improved conditions for the crew later but that never happened in my time.
Now that I can see what followed things only got worse. Forced abortions, the rise of the fanatical second generation, supplanting woked American recruit prospects with Religious Visas, The Hole, the Basics regging madness, retreading the Objectives, 6 month sec-checks, the Truth Rundown, IAS crush regging, competing over status, extravagant empty real estate portfolios.
I'm not sure if I'm remembering the early or the later "poor" period, probably the earlier one. Mick Parkee and Ian Feldmesser were both in the galley at the Stables, and they worked hard to feed the crew. Beans & rice wasn't just plain beans and rice: one day it was soybean fritters with brown rice, the next bean loaf, etc. It was very creative, and I found it very tasty, far better than the sausage-and-mash level. I told them to pleeeeease write up a cookbook for others to use. Years later I spoke to Ian Feldmesser -- posted in the PAC galley -- and mentioned this in regard to the white rice and bean slop he had prepared. I forget what he said, but the create had certainly disappeared.
I was familiar with FP at the time. Yes, it was more important to send silly bits of paper to bad addresses than feed the crew well or buy toilet paper or even staples. I don't know if this could honestly be chacterised as a punishment, or simply one more example of Hubbard not caring at all about crew welfare.
I was hearing rumors about the rice and bean diet served to SO.
I was a Public auditor in ASHO's HGC during that time. The D of P would bring me a plate of food when I audited non-stop thru the dinner hours, and the plate was always of good and varied foods. I thought at the time, and I think now, that D of P was using me to counter the rumors about the rice and beans going around "the Field".
I think we are talking about the same time frame - late 70's, very early 80s. There would be separate chow lines for ASHO and AO crew. Estates personnel would police the lines so no one cheated over to AO's side. You may have seen something off of AO's menu or a temporary lull in the rice and beans diet for ASHO. AO was generally credited for subsidizing all other orgs and units in Big Blue for the maintenance of Big Blue and conversely other orgs, especially ASHO would be faulted for being chronically downstat and leaching off of AO.
It was Hubbard's idea to create a "physical" version of the Bridge at Big Blue. Public would start at LA Org, proceed to ASHO and within line of sight proceed to AO. It sounded good on telex but I think in application it was a huge mistake. In application ASHO ripped off LAO public and AO ripped off ASHO public, the Flag Banking Officers and Assistant Guardians for Finance ripped off everybody, especially AO. The whole system was very predatory and my theory is that LAO and ASHO did better when they were separate, had more isolated or independent fields, and were more difficult to predate on and FOLO (Flag Operations Liaison Office) wasn't in the same place where they could just walk a block and constantly flood them with impossible orders.
Then International Management moved to Hollywood...oh boy!
The estates crew had to work with the FP food allocations from each org and given their limited resources and what the FPs had to work with after all the higher powers skimmed the FPs they did an amazing job. Just a handful of people preparing beans and rice for that many people 3 times a day was amazing. They weren't the problem.
For anyone wanting to dial down into the financial scene at Big Blue around this time I recommend reading Mark Plummer.
Well you were t wrong sadly.
Over at Flag Bureau, we were put on rice and beans at one point, and the galley staff did all they could to add stuff to it to make it a decent meal. Looking back, I salute them.
They certainly had to be inventive.
Laurie Englehart was Captain Flag Crew for a long time. I thought she did a great job also. Hope you are out and doing well Laurie!
I really liked Laurie and Dave Englehart.
Likewise. I think I read that Dave was RPFed and is out of the SO now.