Chapter Three

SELF-DETERMINISM

The processes of Scientology seek to increase the self-determinism of the individual. Self-determinism is the ability of the individual to be where he wishes to be, to do what he wishes to do, to be or to do at the time he so desires. It also includes the individual's ability to change his mind at will and without self-conflict. Self-determinism also involves the ability of the individual to control, which can be subdivided into the ability to start, to change and to stop.

Self-determinism does not imply selfish determinism which is the consideration of only oneself to the exclusion of others. The truly self-determined person does take into account his interrelationship with the rest of life and the universe. The ability to be self-determined goes hand-in-hand with the ability to be responsible. A person must be at least responsible in terms of his own beingness, doingness and havingness. In terms of living, he should certainly have, with certainty, the full ability to start, stop or change any of the body's physical conditions and actions. He should be able to create at will any emotional response as desired and handle it as desired. He should have the full creative use of all thought processes; he should have the ability to imagine creatively; he should have full volitional recall of everything he has ever experienced. He should be able to communicate and to receive communication through the body and to understand that which he perceives through the body, and he should be able to make himself understood to whomever or to whatever he wishes. As himself, he should have the ability to decide, to change his mind, to understand, to communicate, to create energy, to create whatever qualities he wishes to be, to express or to have. These qualities are the beginnings of self-determinism. They may be goals for some, but they are, on a gradient scale, attainable ones through Scientology.

As a person becomes less able, he becomes less and less self-determined. He tends to agree more and more that other people and other things are responsible for his state. Within Western culture, in particular, there is a tremendous tendency to assign blame or cause elsewhere. One often hears people say, for instance, that " This bad weather makes me feel blue ". They act as if the weather itself were in full operational control of the body. Others say, " These clothes make me feel cheerful," as if the clothes had life of their own which was directly manipulating the motor controls of the body. Many people blame their own state of beingness and feeling on the govern ment, the weather, the family, the great God Motah, the dog, the neighbour or any one of millions of possible other causes. As a person becomes free and increasingly self-determined, he becomes also increasingly able to consider himself the orientation point and cause for anything concerning himself. He is also capable of sharing responsibility freely.

One of the earlier Dianetic Axioms (Number 118) states : " An organism cannot become aberrated unless it has agreed upon that aberration, has been in communication with a source of aberration and has had affinity for the aberrator". So it can be pointed up that aberration is learned from other sources, but while aberration is largely caused by what is done to the individual, it still includes the very definite fact that it takes the addition of his own self-determinism about what has been done to him. In other words, how the individual reacts to any experience or source of aberration is strictly a matter of his own self-determinism. The collection of responses which any person holds in present time are, to large degree, based upon his experiences plus his postulates and decisions regarding them. At any moment, however, the individual has the power to change anything about himself, if he so desires; for most, however, this idea has little reality since people have so thoroughly tied themselves up with the rope of their own mental agreements. Nonetheless, as a person's power of choice can be increased he is more able to construct his life more to his own liking.

Scientology seeks a greater freedom for man. One of the ways this can be accomplished is through the increase of self-determinism within the individuals of which the species is composed. What is freedom? Some have been prisoners too long, so that now they would only desire to return to prison if they were free, just as many people long to be free of their jobs and when they are free for a short time they cannot wait to return. Freedom is the ability to choose, to have choice through one's own free desire and not through enforcement or inhibition. When a person feels he is incapable of changing his mind, or when he feels he cannot choose, or when he considers that he has only one alternative which isn't his, he becomes aberrated and less self-determined. The essence of compulsion and obsession is a condition of no-choice. As one observes people who are not able physically, emotionally, in their thinking, socially or who are otherwise unable, he will discover that they feel that they have no choice concerning that condition. They consider themselves trapped, hemmed in and broken pieces in a grisly game which is more slavery to be endured than a joyous adventure to be enjoyed.

When the individual increases his power of choice, he no longer considers himself to be other-determined. But, at the bottom, he feels that everything and everyone else determines him, and that he no longer has volition of his own and that he is responsible for little or nothing.

The very structure of the society and the language which we use tend to make it very simple to assign cause to other determinism. Popular lyrics express eternally ideas like, " You made me love you," and " Don't blame me for falling in love with you ". The implication being that one has no choice in the matter. They say, " I can't help feeling lonely " and on and on as if the individual has no power of choice. If this whole concept of romantic love is agreed to day after day, individuals then put themselves through their own power of choice into the position where they have none. Ironic, isn't it? If everyone is responsible for the emotional condition of everyone else's body and not for his own, this brings about emotional chaos. And, it is interesting that there are an increasing number of divorces and broken homes. If each person were willing and able to be fully responsible and sell-determined in his or her own part of a love relationship, there might be more enduring relationships.

Some people never become self-determined and responsible. The new-born infant is incapable of feeding itself, or of moving its own body around, of changing its own diapers, of doing the many things necessary to its continued survival. As a result, he is placed in a position where, mechanically, other people must be responsible for him. In theory, as he grows older, he is allowed to be increasingly more responsible for himself. When he reaches maturity, he is supposed to be, in theory again, fully responsible for himself. However, many parents having enforced responsibility for so long cannot let junior have his own power of choice. They also place him in a position where they say he is responsible for how they feel, and that they are responsible for how he feels because they " know best ". And so the squirrel cage goes with each person agreeing that someone else is responsible for how he feels, and agreeing that he is responsible for how they feel. John doesn't want to do something because Mary will be " hurt ". This is stating, in effect, that he literally controls Mary's nervous system, that he is in full charge of Mary's body and that Mary has no choice in the matter; why is she silly enough to ruin her own body with mis-emotion ? Could it be that this is a way of enforcing A R C, particularly when there is such a strong cultural fear of refection?

All behaviour patterns are learned. They are agreed upon (learned) by the individual with his own self-determinism because he considers that they are necessary. In order to learn the rules of behaviour, one accepts the idea that approval is necessary. Perhaps force and punishment make him feel that he has to agree and, as a child, he does want to be part of the game of life in which he finds himself. Yet there does come a time in a person's life when the need for approval should be a matter of choice and of decision rather than a continuing effect of childhood compulsion. He should be able to survive with, or without, approval. In this particular sense, however, very few people ever grow beyond childhood, having, as children, required love, affection and approval, these things have become habitually compulsive and they no longer feel they have any choice. They have become addicts of a drug much more powerful than any chemical could ever be. Not that love, affection and approval are, in themselves, bad. It is because love and affection were too often given in return for " good " behaviour and, as an adult, the person may be compelled to be on this. same " good " behaviour in situations which do not require it. Mother had often said, " No one will love you if you act like that," and because the child had agreed to the importance of love he either stopped immediately or became a rebel with a guilty conscience. Self-determinism includes one's own power of choice. When he agrees to an external reality because he feels it is forced on him and that he has no choice, he becomes, in effect, less self-determined and more dependent on others for his direction. When this happens with sufficient force or with sufficient agreement the individual becomes sick, insane, criminal, psychotic or dead.

Approval is a type of communication feedback. The person does something and can then determine the accurateness of his action by the reactions of others, such as approval. Certainly there should be an awareness of the reactions which follow an action, but not to the point where the person is chronically and compulsively more concerned with the reactions of others to the exclusion of his own beingness.

A curious aspect, again, is where the parents make the child responr sible for their emotions and physical condition, particularly when the child is very young. A child will not intentionally hurt other human beings because his intentions are basically good, so he will refrain from those actions or communications which others say hurt them. The immaturity of parents who make a child responsible for their emotions and their physical state tends to be passed on through the generations and this is one way in which the absence of self-determinism comes about in the individual.

Among other things, the mature human being should be capable of being fully responsible for his own memory, for his own imagination, for his own thought, effort and emotion; and he should be willing to respect the right of every other individual to be likewise responsible.

The processing techniques of Scientology are designed to increase self-determinism. As a person increases his communication ability, he becomes also more willing and able to be responsible and to be self-determined. He tends, for example, to create his own grief or anger or enjoyment rather than saying his little brother did it to him. He creates his own cheerfulness rather than saying a good meal did it to him. He creates his own boredom instead of saying that the music or the play did it to him. Self-determinism does not mean, however, that one is incapable of being an effect. Self-determinism includes both the ability to be cause and to be effect. If one looks at the two ends of a communication line he discovers cause at one end and effect at the other. Unless one can both originate and receive communications he will have little understanding. However, the self-determined individual chooses to be an effect rather than doing so through compulsion, oppression or suppression. For instance, a person can sit and quite cheerfully enjoy a motion picture and be effect; yet he has certainly placed himself in that position and knows that he has placed himself there. This is self-determinism in one aspect. He could change his mind and leave if he wished.

Self-determinism does not imply the need for force. It does not mean that one must force himself to be, to do, or to have anything. This would not be a very high degree of self-determinism. One certainly should have the ability to use force when necessary, but, for the most part, the attempt to alter anything by force tends to fail because that which he attempts to alter by force tends to persist. Selfdeterminism involves freedom, which means that one is freely able to be where he wants to be, doing what he wants to do, when he wishes to do it.

" Will-power " is not a very high degree of self-determinism because will-power implies that one must force himself to act. Fuller self-determinism implies doing something easily without strain or effort or self-imposed force.

The self-determined person does not need to blame needlessly either himself or others. He is able to share, play, work, problems and living in general. He trusts himself, has a large degree of confidence in himself and in others, and has a high sense of justice. He can be tolerant or intolerant and he can be either emotionally very stable or volatile as he so desires. These are some of the potential qualities of the self-determined person. He who is self-determined is the master of his own fate and the captain of his own soul. A self-determined race of men working together can create a happier and freer world than has ever been known.